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      George Santos prosecutors seek seven-year prison term for campaign fraud

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      Prosecutors are seeking more than seven years in prison for disgraced former congressman George Santos after he pleaded guilty to federal fraud and identity theft charges.The US attorney for the eastern district of New York argued in a court filing on Friday that a significant sentence was warranted because the New York Republican’s “unparalleled crimes” had “made a mockery” of the country’s election system.“He lied to his campaign staff, his supporters, his putative employer and congressional colleagues, and the American public,” the office wrote. “From his creation of a wholly fictitious biography to his callous theft of money from elderly and impaired donors, Santos’s unrestrained greed and voracious appetite for fame enabled him to exploit the very system by which we select our representatives.”The office also argued that Santos had been “unrepentant and defiant” for years, dismissing the prosecution as a “witch-hunt” and refusing to resign from Congress as his web of lies was debunked.Even after pleading guilty before trial, prosecutors said his claims of remorse “ring hollow”, noting that he has not forfeited any of his ill-gotten gains or repaid any of his victims.“The volume of Santos’s lies and his extraordinary pattern of dishonesty speaks to his high likelihood of reoffending and the concomitant need to remove him from the community he has repeatedly victimized,” prosecutors wrote.The 87-month sentence proposed by prosecutors represents the high end of court guidelines in such cases. That would be roughly four to five years behind bars plus a mandatory minimum two-year sentence for aggravated identity theft, they said.Santos’ lawyers did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment Friday, which was the deadline for both sides to submit their sentencing memos to court.A federal judge on Long Island is scheduled to hear arguments and decide on Santos’ sentence during a court hearing on 25 April.The once-rising Republican, who represented parts of Queens and Long Island, served barely a year in office before he was ousted by his House colleagues in 2023 – just the sixth congressperson ever expelled in the chamber’s history.Santos’ political demise came after it was revealed that he had fabricated much of his life story, leading to questions about how the political unknown had funded his winning campaign.The now-36-year-old cast himself as a wealthy businessman who had graduated from top colleges, worked at prestigious Wall Street firms and held a valuable real estate portfolio. In truth, he was struggling financially and faced eviction.Santos admitted in August that he duped voters, deceived donors and stole the identities of nearly a dozen people, including his own family members, to make donations to his congressional campaign.He was initially due to be sentenced in February, but a judge granted him a three-month reprieve to come up with more than half a million dollars in court fines.As part of his plea deal, Santos agreed to pay nearly $375,000 in restitution and $205,000 in forfeiture.Santos’s lawyers said at the time that he had little more than $1,000 in liquid assets and needed more time to build his newly launched podcast Pants on Fire in order to begin paying off the debt.Prosecutors maintain Santos profited handsomely from his infamy, arguing he has earned more than $800,000 from appearances on the video-sharing website Cameo and from a new documentary since his expulsion from Congress.Two of Santos’s campaign staffers have also pleaded guilty to federal charges in connection to the campaign financing scheme.Sam Miele, his former campaign fundraiser, was sentenced in March to one year and one day in federal prison. He admitted to impersonating a high-ranking congressional aide and charging donors’ credit cards without authorization while raising campaign cash for Santos.Nancy Marks, Santos’s former campaign treasurer, admitted she submitted to federal regulators bogus campaign finance reports filled with fake donors and even a fake $500,000 personal loan from Santos himself.The embellishments helped Santos hit campaign fundraising thresholds needed to qualify for financial backing from the national Republican party.Marks is due to be sentenced in May. More

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      North Carolina judges back Republican colleague in bid to toss votes and overturn election

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      More than 65,000 people in North Carolina who believed they were eligible to vote could have their ballots thrown out nearly five months after election day, flipping the results of a supreme court election, a state appeals court ruled on Friday.The 2-1 ruling from the North Carolina court of appeals came in response to Republicans’ months-long effort to overturn the results of the state supreme court election in November. The Democrat Allison Riggs, who currently sits on the court, defeated appellate judge Jefferson Griffin, a Republican, by 734 votes. After the election, Griffin filed a protest seeking to get around 60,000 votes thrown out.Griffin currently sits on the North Carolina court of appeals – the body that issued Friday’s ruling. A panel of three of his colleagues heard the case.“To permit unlawful votes to be counted along with lawful ballots in contested elections effectively ‘disenfranchises’ those voters who cast legal ballots, at least where the counting of unlawful votes determines an election’s outcome,” Judges John Tyson and Fred Gore wrote for the majority.In a statement, Riggs said: “We will be promptly appealing this deeply misinformed decision that threatens to disenfranchise more than 65,000 lawful voters and sets a dangerous precedent, allowing disappointed politicians to thwart the will of the people.”The election is the only 2024 race still undecided.The state board of elections previously rejected Griffin’s request and a superior court judge upheld their decision. Friday’s ruling from the court of appeals overturned that ruling and ordered the state board to give challenged voters 15 days to prove their eligibility.When the case reaches the seven-member North Carolina supreme court, Riggs will be recused from hearing it. Without her, Republicans will have a 5-1 majority. If the court were to deadlock, the ruling from the court of appeals would stand.More than 60,000 of the voters challenged failed to provide either a driver’s license number or the last four digits of their social security number on their voter registration forms. Another 5,500 challenged ballots came from overseas voters who had failed to provide ID.Republicans had filed a lawsuit making similar arguments ahead of election day last year and had it rejected. North Carolina has required the identifying information since 2004 to register to vote, but the state did not update its voter registration form until 2023.The ruling also said that voters who had never lived in the state, grew up overseas, and cast a ballot in the state were ineligible to vote and their votes should not count. That category of people typically includes children of North Carolinians who moved abroad before they turned 18.In a lengthy dissenting opinion, judge Toby Hampson noted that Griffin had not identified a single voter who cast a ballot who should not have been able to. Instead, he said, he was trying to change the rules around eligibility after the election.“The diligent actions these voters undertook to exercise their sacred fundamental right to vote was, indeed, the same as every other similarly situated voter exercising their voting right in the very same election,” he wrote.“Changing the rules by which these lawful voters took part in our electoral process after the election to discard their otherwise valid votes in an attempt to alter the outcome of only one race among many on the ballot is directly counter to law, equity, and the constitution.”Hampson said he was doubtful that many voters would respond to a notice to prove their eligibility.“The proposition that a significant portion of these 61,682 voters will receive notice and timely take curative measures is a fiction that does not disguise the act of mass disenfranchisement the majority’s decision represents,” he wrote.Bob Phillips, the executive director of the North Carolina chapter of Common Cause, a watchdog group, called the ruling a “disgrace” that “could disenfranchise tens of thousands of lawful voters and invite similar challenges nationwide”.Ken Martin, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, said the decision had “no legal basis and is an all-out assault on our democracy and the basic premise that voters decide who wins their elections, not the courts”. More

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      The Guardian view on Donald Trump’s tariff ultimatum: tribute for access to America’s empire | Editorial

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      When Donald Trump stood before union auto workers in the Rose Garden he declared “Liberation Day”, promising to stand up for Main Street. Whether that pledge will be fulfilled is moot. He will declare victory either way. What the US president offered was not just an economic programme, but an imperial one.Mr Trump’s logic, if it exists, lies in the 397-page report on “foreign trade barriers” he brandished on Wednesday. Its message is brutally simple: you may sell your goods to Walmart shoppers, but only if you let US cloud services hoover up your data, US media flood your screens and US tech monopolies operate on their terms – not yours. TikTok is the test case for Trump’s platform nationalism: only US firms may mine data, reap profits and rule the digital empire.A one-week ultimatum and a fabricated national emergency lay bare the theatrics driving Mr Trump’s agenda. The US president’s proposed tariffs and economic nationalism are not about correcting trade imbalances; they are about coercing others into accepting American economic dominance – without requiring the US to sacrifice its domestic advantage.The US continues to run goods deficits not because it “borrows” from abroad, but because the rest of the world willingly exchanges real goods for dollars it cannot issue. Mr Trump demands tribute for that privilege: control over digital infrastructure, forced access for hi-tech rentiers and suppression of rival technologies. The realpolitik is that you can sell to American consumers – but only if you buy into American rules, platforms and financial dependencies. Though Mr Trump’s foreign policy is transactional, its domestic effect will probably be transformative – and not in a good way. Tariffs raise prices for everyone, especially the poor, while shielding local producers from competition. Meanwhile, as Mr Trump made clear, the revenues are earmarked not for public investment or industrial policy, but for tax cuts that benefit the wealthy. In this regime, tariffs redistribute upward: the poor pay more, so billionaires pay less.This is not so much anti-globalist as post-globalist. It seeks not withdrawal from the world, but a world that submits to new terms. The US empire still earns – but now demands more and spends less. Foreign aid is slashed and multilateral rules are replaced by bilateral bargains struck at speed. If allies want to trade, they must also license Google Cloud services, buy Boeing jets and resist Chinese influence. Trade, technology and security are bundled into a single, rent-seeking foreign policy.Markets, however, are less convinced – and their continued crashing reflects not just recession fears, but a dawning recognition that this model is not a one-quarter adjustment. It is a paradigm shift. The pain, even Mr Trump concedes, may be real. But for him, pain is purgative. It disciplines labour, justifies austerity and remakes the economy in the image of the deal.China’s retaliatory tariffs raise the prospect of a dangerous trade war. But Beijing is signalling that if it can’t win in the US-led system, it will build its own. For other major economies, including the UK, the task is not to replicate American leverage, but to reduce dependence on it – by deepening regional integration, investing in technological autonomy and limiting exposure to US-controlled chokepoints in finance, tech and defence. Resistance may provoke retaliation, but submission ensures subordination. In the long run, strategic cooperation – not bilateral concession – is the only durable answer to tariff imperialism. More

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      I worked in Trump’s first administration. Here’s why his team is using Signal | Kevin Carroll

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      No senior US government official in the now-infamous “Houthi PC Small Group” Signal chat seemed new to that kind of group, nor surprised by the sensitivity of the subject discussed in that insecure forum, not even when the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, chimed in with details of a coming airstrike. No one objected – not the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, who was abroad and using her personal cellphone to discuss pending military operations; not even the presidential envoy Steve Witkoff, who was in Moscow at the time. Yet most of these officials enjoy the luxury of access to secure government communications systems 24/7/365.Reasonable conclusions may be drawn from these facts. First, Trump’s national security cabinet commonly discusses secret information on insecure personal devices. Second, sophisticated adversaries such as Russia and China intercept such communications, especially those sent or received in their countries. Third, as a result, hostile intelligence services now probably possess blackmail material regarding these officials’ indiscreet past conversations on similar topics. Fourth, as a first-term Trump administration official and ex-CIA officer, I believe the reason these officials risk interacting in this way is to prevent their communications from being preserved as required by the Presidential Records Act, and avoid them being discoverable in litigation, or subject to a subpoena or Freedom of Information Act request. And fifth, no one seems to have feared being investigated by the justice department for what appears to be a violation of the Espionage Act’s Section 793(f), which makes gross negligence in mishandling classified information a felony; the FBI director, Kash Patel, and attorney general, Pam Bondi, quickly confirmed that hunch. Remarkably, the CIA director John Ratcliffe wouldn’t even admit to Congress that he and his colleagues had made a mistake.The knock-on effects of this are many. The secretary of state, Marco Rubio, needs to address his colleagues’ characterization of European partners as “pathetic” with foreign ministers now dubious of the US’s intentions. Allies already hesitant to share their countries’ secrets with the US, because of valid counterintelligence concerns regarding Trump’s affinity for Vladimir Putin, will clam up even more rather than risk their sources being compromised by Trump’s appointees. Gabbard and Ratcliffe may have perjured themselves before Congress regarding whether their Signal chat included classified national defense information; certainly, their credibility on Capitol Hill is shredded. As a former CIA case officer, I suspect these directors’ own subordinates will prefer not to share restricted handling information with them going forward. Hegseth, confirmed as secretary by a vote of 51-50 despite concerns over his character and sobriety, lost any moral authority to lead the defense department by reflexively lying about his misconduct, claiming that the story by Jeffrey Goldberg, the unsuspecting Atlantic editor improvidently included in the text chain, is somehow a “hoax” despite the fact the White House contemporaneously confirmed its authenticity.Trump dismisses this scandal, now under investigation by the Pentagon’s inspector general, as a witch-hunt, and his followers will fall in line. But every senator who voted to confirm these national security officials, despite doubts regarding their temperaments and qualifications, quietly knows that they own part of this debacle. For fear of facing Republican primary challengers funded by Elon Musk, these senators failed in their solemn constitutional duty to independently provide wise advice and consent regarding nominations to the US’s most important war cabinet posts. How would the senators have explained their misfeasance to service members’ bereaved families – their constituents, perhaps – had the Houthis used information from the Signal chat, such as the time a particular target was to be engaged, to reorient their antiaircraft systems to intercept the inbound aircraft?I happen to have served in Yemen as a sensitive activities officer for special operations command (central). Conspicuous in their absence from the Signal chat were uniformed officers responsible for the recent combat mission: the acting chair of the joint chiefs of staff Adm Christopher Grady, central command’s Gen Michael Kurilla and special operations command’s Gen Bryan Fenton. These good men would have raised the obvious objection: loose talk on insecure phones about a coming operation jeopardizes the lives of US sailors and marines standing watch on warships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, naval aviators flying over the beach towards the target, and likely special operators, intelligence officers and human sources working in the shadows on the ground.You don’t need 30-plus years in uniform to know that holding a detailed yet insecure discussion about a pending military mission is wrong; the participants in the chat knew, too. They just didn’t care, not as much as they cared about keeping their communications from being legally discoverable. They’re safe in the knowledge that in a new era without benefit of the rule of law, Patel’s FBI and Bondi’s justice department will never bring charges against them, for a crime which uniformed service members are routinely prosecuted for vastly smaller infractions. As the attorney general made plain in her remarks about this matter, federal law enforcement is now entirely subservient to Trump’s personal and political interests.Most senior US government officials in 2025 are, unfortunately, far gone from the fine old gentleman’s tradition of honorable resignation. But participants in the Signal chat should consider the Hollywood producer character Jack Woltz’s pained observation to the mafia lawyer Tom Hagen in The Godfather about his indiscreetly wayward mistress: “A man in my position cannot afford to be made to look ridiculous.” Trump, the justice department and the Republican Congress may not make them resign, but to the US’s allies and adversaries, and to their own subordinates, these officials now look ridiculous.

      Kevin Carroll served as senior counselor to the former homeland security secretary John Kelly and as a CIA and army officer More

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      Senators unveil bill to claw back power over tariffs amid Trump trade wars

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      Senior senators introduced new bipartisan legislation on Thursday seeking to claw back some of Congress’s power over tariffs after Donald Trump unveiled sweeping new import taxes and rattled the global economy with sweeping new import taxes.The Trade Review Act of 2025, co-sponsored by Senator Chuck Grassley, a top Republican lawmaker from Iowa, a state heavily reliant on farm exports, and Senator Maria Cantwell, a Democrat from Washington, whose state shares a border with Canada, would require the president to notify Congress of new tariffs, and provide a justification for the action and an analysis on the potential impact on US businesses and consumers.For the tariff to remain in effect, Congress would need to approve a joint resolution within 60 days. If Congress failed to give its consent within that timeframe, all new tariffs on imports would expire. The legislation would also allow Congress to terminate tariffs at any time through a resolution of disapproval.Grassley was not among the four Republican senators who voted to approve a Democratic-led resolution that would nullify the national emergency Trump used to justify 25% tariffs on Canadian imports, which passed shortly after the president’s so-called “liberation day” tariff announcement on Wednesday.Yet support from Grassley, third in line to the presidency as the president pro tempore of the Senate, is a sign of the deep unease many Republicans have with the president’s efforts to remake global trade.“For too long, Congress has delegated its clear authority to regulate interstate and foreign commerce to the executive branch,” Grassley said in a statement, adding that the proposed measure was a way to “reassert Congress’ constitutional role and ensure Congress has a voice in trade policy”.The legislation is modeled after the War Powers Act, passed in 1973, that seeks to limit the president’s ability to engage US troops into “hostilities” without Congressional approval.“Trade wars can be as devastating, which is why the Founding Fathers gave Congress the clear constitutional authority over war and trade,” Cantwell said in a statement.“Arbitrary tariffs, particularly on our allies, damage US export opportunities and raise prices for American consumers and businesses. “As representatives of the American people, Congress has a duty to stop actions that will cause them harm.”In a Rose Garden ceremony on Wednesday, Trump announced that the US would impose a major round of new tariffs on many of its largest trade partners and ones uninhabited by humans. The tariffs unleashed chaos across world financial markets, as economists warned that the levies would raise prices for consumers and businesses.Several countries threatened counter-measures as they digested Trump’s trade war escalation. More

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      Dear Disney: don’t cave to Trump. We need you to shape dreams for kids everywhere | Jeff Yang

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      I remember the moment I truly recognized the power Disney has to move young hearts and minds.It was when I attended a sneak preview of Disney’s adaptation of the Chinese legend of Mulan, about a young woman who disguises herself as a man and takes up her wounded father’s sword to defend her nation.I enjoyed the movie, with its combination of swashbuckling, slapstick and show tunes. But as I filed out of the theater, what I saw hit me like a fire-dragon rocket: two blond, apple-cheeked siblings, probably under the age of eight, leaping and sparring and loudly arguing over the right to pretend to be the movie’s main character, Mulan. A boy and a girl, neither of them Asian, both so enthralled by the film’s Chinese protagonist that they each aspired to be her.It reminded me that Disney doesn’t just tell stories; it shapes dreams, creating heroes iconic enough to inspire young kids to imagine and be more, and providing empowering figures that enable people from different backgrounds to see themselves – and one another.It’s still staggering for me to think that Mulan, a story from China with a gender-blurred title role, was greenlit, made and released in 1998 and is now broadly accepted alongside Bambi as a timeless animated classic – especially now that Maga has announced it’s coming after the House of Mouse, with the apparent objective to make sure that nothing like it is ever made again.On 27 March, the Trump-appointed Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chair, Brendan Carr – a dead ringer for Who Framed Roger Rabbit’s mirthless toon-terrorizer Judge Doom – sent a letter to Disney’s CEO, Bob Iger, informing him that he had directed the agency’s enforcement bureau to begin an investigation into Disney’s diversity, equity and inclusion policies.Carr stated that he wanted to ensure that Disney had not been “promoting invidious forms of DEI discrimination”, calling out as examples the company’s employee affinity groups, its “Reimagine Tomorrow” multicultural showcase and especially the company’s “inclusion standards”, a set of goals that aim to increase the number of characters from underrepresented groups to half of the regular and recurring roles on its TV network, ABC.It’s hard to explain why any of these are “discriminatory” or “invidious”; voluntary employee-led clubs – which have no restrictions or requirements for membership – are discriminatory? A website featuring remixes of Disney songs sung by artists of color and explanations of how to sign “Mickey Mouse” in ASL is invidious? Even the “inclusion standards” are just broadly aspirational objectives, which could be met in any number of ways: Disney’s definition of “underrepresented groups” includes women, people of color, LGBTQ+ people, disabled persons and military veterans.But the mere threat of the investigation has triggered Disney to begin a cautious reframing of some of these initiatives. The Reimagine Tomorrow site is gone, and now points to a generic inclusion page headed by the message: “At Disney, we want everyone to belong and thrive.” The company’s business employee resource groups have been redubbed “belonging” employee resource groups.Carr’s letter makes it clear that mere semantic shifts won’t be enough, demanding that Disney’s policies be “changed in a fundamental manner”. And while Carr cites “equal opportunity rules” and the need to ensure “fair and equal treatment under the law”, it’s obvious that he won’t be satisfied until Disney changes the one thing that the FCC is restricted from regulating by the US constitution: its content.View image in fullscreenOf course, the first amendment prevents the government from infringing on freedom of expression, except in very narrowly delimited ways. Where the FCC is concerned, the only way it can impose its will on a creative company’s storytelling choices is if they are obscene, indecent or profane or contain dangerous disinformation. So the agency can’t just demand that Disney stop making shows about Asian princesses or Black superheroes or Latina anthropomorphic automobiles.Yet that’s just what Carr is doing – using the back door of equal employment opportunity to claim that by casting people who aren’t straight or white or male in its movies and TV programs, Disney is unfairly withholding employment from straight white males. And unless Disney is ready to announce Timothée Chalamet as the new Black Panther, which, thank God, it isn’t, targeting the studio’s ability to hire diverse talent is a deliberate attempt to force it away from making diverse stories.That would spell business disaster for Disney.Yes, the studio has had its share of flops, which the Maga mob has blamed on multicultural casting – including, most recently, its unfairly pilloried live-action remake of the 1937 animated masterpiece Snow White, starring Rachel Zegler, whose mother is Colombian. The film, made on a $240m budget, has so far earned just $142m at the box office, its prospects poisoned by controversy over Zegler’s advocacy on behalf of Palestine and racist backlash over her Latina heritage from online creeps.But similar attacks were also levied against Disney’s The Little Mermaid remake, starring the African American actor Halle Bailey as Ariel, and that film was a box-office success and global streaming blockbuster. It also made the storyline relevant in new ways to young women – which makes sense, given that Disney’s goal with its remakes isn’t simply to photocopy the past, but to extend and refresh it, reaching untapped audiences of the present and emerging markets of the future.If that means they sometimes swing and miss in the short term, in the long run it all evens out, because Disney doesn’t actually plan their business by quarter or year – they blueprint it by age bracket. Their franchises are designed to be evergreen and intentionally aligned to “graduate” kids up a ladder of content: girls go from Muppets to Disney Fairies to Disney princesses to Disney’s Descendants. Boys go from Cars to Pirates to Star Wars to Marvel superheroes. The ultimate goal is to ensure that there’s something for every stage of growing up until young adulthood arrives and their fans become parents themselves, allowing Disney to earn money across the consumer life cycle, generation after generation.And every generation of Americans is more diverse. Baby boomers were 29% people of color. Gen X, 41%. Millennials, 46%, gen Z, 50%. The youngest rising cohort – those born after 2012, and currently squarely in Disney’s prime target demo – is officially the first to be “majority minority”, with kids of color making up a full 52% of gen Alpha.Whatever Trump’s mandate may be, Disney’s demographic mandate should be stronger. The company defiantly and successfully resisted attempts by Ron DeSantis to strong-arm it into ending its diversity practices in Florida. While Trump’s flying assault is coming from a higher top rope, the Mouse should still be mighty enough to fend it off and roar back.Disney’s incentive will be what it always has been: making money. But for diverse communities, the positive manifestation of Disney’s profit motive has been that kids growing up today know what it feels like to be mirrored in the media they consume, with all of the psychological and emotional benefits that confers.I’ve seen this first-hand, as someone who grew up in an era nearly devoid of Asian representation in Hollywood, and who went through the bizarre experience of having my elder son, Hudson Yang, star in the first hit TV series focused on an Asian American family. To this day, Hudson still receives surprise hugs from people who grew up tuning into Fresh Off the Boat once a week, and wide-eyed stares from kids who have discovered it years later through TikTok clips and streaming reruns.The network that aired the show for six seasons, beginning in 2014? Disney’s ABC, a decade before inclusion standards existed and before Maga was around to protest them. And that gives me optimism that Disney will keep doing what it has done so well for generations, regardless: give children from a wide array of backgrounds an answer – “now and here” – to the question in Mulan’s signature ballad: “When will my reflection show who I am inside?” More

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      Trump news at a glance: sweeping tariffs announced; Musk could be nearing end of role

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      Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs on some of its largest trading partners on Wednesday, upending decades of US trade policy and threatening to unleash a global trade war on what he has dubbed “liberation day”.Trump said he will impose a 10% universal tariff on all imported foreign goods in addition to “reciprocal tariffs” on a few dozen countries, charging additional duties onto countries that Trump claims have “cheated” America.The 10% universal tariff will go into effect on 5 April while the reciprocal tariffs will begin on 9 April. Markets plunged as they opened in Asia on Thursday – you can follow the latest here, live.Trump launches trade onslaught with celebratory airFor the start of what appears to be a dramatic shift in American trade policy, one that could cause ricochets in the global economy, Trump tried to sell the tariffs with a celebratory tone.Nine giant US flags flanked Trump on stage in the Rose Garden, as the president spoke in front of his cabinet and a crowd of union workers wearing hard hats and fluorescent construction worker vests. Before Trump came on stage, a marine band played celebratory music to excite the crowd.At one point, Trump paused his speech to throw a Maga hat into the crowd. In the next breath, he announced the 10% universal baseline tariff.Read the full storyCanada exemption ‘like dodging a bullet into the path of a tank’Canada’s exemption from Donald Trump’s global tariffs was “like dodging a bullet into the path of a tank”, said one business leader as other levies are poised to hit key industries that drive the country’s economy.Speaking speaking to reporters on Parliament Hill, prime minister Mark Carney said 25% tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum, as well as on automobiles, will come into effect within hours.Read the full storyRepublicans join Democrats in symbolic Senate vote to rescind Canada tariffsSeveral Republican senators joined Democrats to pass a resolution that would block Donald Trump’s tariffs on Canada, a rare rebuke of the president’s trade policy just hours after he announced plans for sweeping import taxes on some of the country’s largest trading partners.In a 51-48 vote, four Republicans – Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and both Kentucky senators, the former majority leader Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul – defied Trump’s pressure campaign and supported the measure. Democrats used a procedural maneuver to force a vote on the resolution, which would terminate the national emergency on fentanyl Trump is using to justify tariffs on Canada.Read the full storyMusk to soon step down from Trump administration – reportElon Musk’s polarizing stint slashing and bashing federal bureaucracy will probably soon end, with the world’s richest man’s government service hitting its legal limit in the coming weeks. Insiders reportedly told Politico that Musk will leave when 130-day cap on government service expires.Read the full storyGloating at Musk after liberal judge wins Wisconsin raceDemocrats were tasting unfamiliar triumphalism on Wednesday after the election for a vacant Wisconsin supreme court seat turned into an emphatic repudiation of Elon Musk, Donald Trump’s richest supporter and key ally.Read the full storyWaltz’s team set up at least 20 Signal chats – reportDonald Trump’s national security adviser, Mike Waltz, and his team have created at least 20 different group chats on the encrypted messaging app Signal to coordinate sensitive national security work, sources tell Politico.Read the full storyUS health secretary and agency sued by 23 states over $11bn funding cutTwenty-three states and the District of Columbia are suing the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, alleging the abrupt terminations of $11bn in public health funding were “harmful” and “unlawful”.Read the full storyHead of DC’s African American museum on leaveKevin Young, the director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) in Washington DC, is not currently in charge of the museum and has been on leave since 14 March, as Donald Trump targets the Smithsonian museum network for its content.Read the full storyJoe Rogan breaks with Trump on Venezuelan deportationsJoe Rogan, the influential podcast host and prominent supporter of Donald Trump, has criticized the president’s administration over the deportation of a professional makeup artist and hairdresser to a prison in El Salvador, calling it “horrific”.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      Joe Biden’s former White House chief of staff paints a devastating picture of the then-US president’s mental and physical state before the debate with Donald Trump that sent his 2024 campaign into a tailspin.

      A judge dismissed the corruption case against New York City mayor Eric Adams weeks he bowed to Trump administration pressure cooperate on immigration crackdowns.

      Former Biden administration health secretary Xavier Becerra became the latest Democrat to join the crowded field seeking to become California’s next governor.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 1 April 25. More

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      Republicans join Democrats in Senate vote to rescind Trump Canada tariffs

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      Several Republican senators joined Democrats to pass a resolution that would block Donald Trump’s tariffs on Canada, a rare rebuke of the president’s trade policy just hours after he announced plans for sweeping import taxes on some of the country’s largest trading partners.In a 51-48 vote, four Republicans – Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and both Kentucky senators, the former majority leader Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul – defied Trump’s pressure campaign and supported the measure. Democrats used a procedural maneuver to force a vote on the resolution, which would terminate the national emergency on fentanyl Trump is using to justify tariffs on Canada.While Trump’s sweeping new tariffs, introduced in a White House Rose Garden ceremony on Wednesday, did not include additional levies on Canada, the Senate vote amounted to a significant bipartisan condemnation of the president’s escalating global trade war with allies and enemies alike.“Tariffs will hurt our families. Canada is not an enemy,” the Democratic senator Tim Kaine, the bill’s sponsor, said in a floor speech on Wednesday. “Let’s not label an ally as an enemy. Let’s not impose punishing costs on American families at a time they can’t afford it. Let’s not hurt American small businesses. Let’s not make our national security investments in ships and subs more expensive.”Republicans have expressed varying degrees of unease over Trump’s clampdown on free trade – once a pillar of conservative orthodoxy – but few were willing to cross him, and many GOP leaders and supporters, including the House speaker Mike Johnson, were in the Rose Garden on Wednesday – a day dubbed “liberation day” by the president – as a way of championing the historic barrage of tariffs on goods from overseas he believes will boost American manufacturing.The Senate’s legislation has practically no chance of passing the Republican-controlled House and being signed by Trump, but it showed the limits of Republican support for Trump’s vision of remaking the US economy by restricting free trade. Many economists are warning that the plan could cause an economic contraction, and GOP senators are already watching with unease as Trump upends the United States’ relationship with the rest of the world.Before the vote, the Senate majority leader John Thune of South Dakota urged Republicans to oppose the resolution, arguing that the tariffs were needed to “ensure that President Trump has the tools to combat the flow of fentanyl from all directions”.In a post on his social media platform, Truth Social, sent just before 1am ET on Wednesday, Trump assailed the four GOP senators who had expressed opposition to his tariffs, imploring them to “get on the Republican bandwagon, for a change, and fight the Democrats wild and flagrant push to not penalize Canada for the sale, into our Country, of large amounts of Fentanyl”.He vowed not to sign the measure if it reached his desk.Defending her vote, Collins said that the tariffs would hurt working families in her state of Maine, which shares a long border with Canada.“The price hikes that will happen for Maine families, every time they go to the grocery store, they fill their gas tank, they fill their heating oil tank, if these tariffs go into effect, will be so harmful,” she said in a Wednesday floor speech. “And as price hikes always do, they will hurt those the most who can afford them the least.”She also argued that fentanyl from Canada was not a major threat to the US, as Trump’s national emergency claims. “The fact is the vast majority of fentanyl in America comes from the southern border,” she said.Democrats argued that Americans were turning against Trump’s agenda, pointing to a string of strong performances by their party in recent special elections that included a consequential victory in a Wisconsin state supreme court race on Tuesday night.“The American people are seeing how bad Trump is,” the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, said in a floor speech. “Tariffs is a good part of it. And they are not supporting people like Elon Musk and those who support Donald Trump.”Earlier on Wednesday, the representative Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House foreign affairs committee, said he would also force a similar vote in the House on the tariffs.“Republicans can’t keep ducking this – it’s time they show whether they support the economic pain Trump is inflicting on their constituents,” he wrote on X. More