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      A cultural revolution? Trump’s America feels oddly familiar to those watching from China

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      When Vickie Wang, a budding standup comedian, gets on stage in New York, she’s not just thinking about what jokes to crack. She’s also thinking about which ones to avoid. “I don’t criticise the administration directly,” she said. Or if she does, she makes sure it’s not recorded for social media. “I would never publicly publish something where I directly criticise the government … I think it’s a learned behaviour from China”.Wang, 39, lived in Shanghai for nearly a decade, leaving in 2022. In 2025 she relocated to the US. When she arrived, she went on a frenzy of “revenge bingeing on democracy”, going to talks, protests and diving into New York’s public library.But in the year since Donald Trump was elected as US president for the second time, there has been a “palpable change” in the atmosphere, she says. “In China, I knew where the line was, whereas in the US I’m standing on shifting sands.”Wang’s fears reflect a new political reality in the US which many Chinese people, or people who have lived in China, find eerily familiar. Enemies are ostracised. The president demands absolute loyalty. Journalists are targeted. Institutions are attacked.Trump has not been shy about his admiration for Xi Jinping, China’s strongman leader. He has described Xi as a “great guy”. As they agreed a temporary truce in the trade war on Thursday, the bonhomie between the two leaders of countries with diametrically opposed political systems was evident. And after decades of hope in the US that closer ties with China may help the rising power to liberalise, under Trump 2.0, it seems as if the US is being pulled in the Chinese direction, rather than the other way around.“The United States is undergoing a period of cultural revolution,” said Zhang Qianfan, a professor of constitutional law at Peking University. “The top leader, Donald Trump, is trying to mobilise the grassroots in order to sideline or undermine the elite … similar to what happened in China half a century ago”.View image in fullscreenEver since Trump unleashed the so-called Department for Government Efficiency, or Doge, on the Washington bureaucracy at the start of his term, many in China have viewed US politics through the lens of the Cultural Revolution. Whether it is the mobilisation of the youth to execute the leader’s will, or purging institutions of perceived enemies, Trump as viewed from China has delivered Mao-style chaos to the US, albeit without the same levels of violence.But since the upheaval of the early months of the new administration has calmed, a new, different kind of political atmosphere has settled in the US, which in different ways also feels familiar to many Chinese people.‘The lighthouse has become dimmer’The most profound similarity between Trump’s America and China is the crackdown on free speech.Deng Haiyan, a police officer turned Chinese Communist party (CCP) critic, found himself in the eye of a storm this year, the likes of which he’d only previously experienced in China. Deng has lived in the US since 2019, having fled China because of harassment from the authorities.In September, after the death of Charlie Kirk, Deng tweeted that Kirk was a “scumbag”. Like people across the US – many of whom lost their jobs as a result of making negative comments about Kirk – Deng faced a huge backlash. His family was doxed and he was accused of being a Chinese spy seeking to divide the US.“This incident was a real shock to me. I never imagined that something like this could happen in the United States – something that should only happen in an authoritarian country,” Deng said.Deng’s pile on came from fellow social media users, rather than the state, but that kind of social surveillance also has similarities with China.“In terms of going after those who disagree with you and starting to surveil public speech about issues that are sensitive … That’s starting to emerge here,” said Maria Repnikova, an associate professor at Georgia State University. “That’s something that you see in China today as well,” she said, adding that there were now fears in the US of students reporting on teachers, a type of surveillance that has been encouraged by the CCP.Zhang, the Peking University law professor, said that liberal Chinese intellectuals like himself used to look to the US for political inspiration, in part because openly discussing domestic politics in China is dangerous. But now, “America is no longer some kind of god for Chinese liberals. America’s image has declined across the board”.“We used to see America as the beacon of constitutional democracy, but after Trump took power, this lighthouse seems to have become dimmer”.Chinese liberals, who are often, at least in private, critical of China’s political system, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than America’s, Zhang said. “It’s sort of painful to accept this … but after the pandemic the government seems to be doing the right thing in improving the environment and developing electric cars and investing in hi-tech,” Zhang said, while “the West, as represented by the United States, seems to be declining”.The Trump administration’s acquisition of stakes in US companies has also drawn comparisons with China, where the line between government and private industry is often blurred.On Monday the US government announced it would become a shareholder in a startup specialising in rare earth processing, after taking similar stakes in other companies it considers vital to national security. The deals have left some investors nervous that the US is entering a new era of government meddling in private industry.There are still major differences between Trump’s America and China. In October, several news organisations including the Guardian refused to sign to a Pentagon policy that demanded they only report on government-authorised news. US courts have blocked or overturned many of Trump’s actions, something that would be unthinkable in China’s CCP-controlled judiciary.Isaac Stone Fish, the founder of Strategy Risks, a China-focused advisory firm, said: “The United States could descend into the worst crisis of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than it is now, and it will still be freer, more open, and more liberal than China under Xi.”Zhang notes that while many intellectuals in China were shocked to see US universities capitulate to government demands regarding diversity and inclusion practices and free speech on campus, in China, the top universities are all state-owned by default. University leaders, which are appointed by the government, “have no liberty of saying no. They can’t afford to be disobedient”.Still, people in the US are starting to take precautions that were once confined to more authoritarian countries. One professor at a US university who was previously outspoken on US-China issues declined to be interviewed for this article. He said: “The truth is that I am scared of the censorship here: I actually feel less afraid to criticise Xi these days than say anything bad about Trump.”Additional research by Lillian Yang More

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      House Democrat accuses Trump’s DoJ of ‘gigantic cover-up’ over shut Epstein inquiry

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      A top Democrat has demanded to know why the Trump administration “inexplicably killed” a criminal investigation into the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged co-conspirators as he accused the justice department of a “shameful and gigantic cover-up”.Jamie Raskin, a House judiciary committee ranking member and congressman from Maryland, claimed the decision to end the investigation in July had shielded an alleged network of “powerful individuals accused of enabling and engaging in the massive billion-dollar sex trafficking operation” while ignoring the accounts of women exploited by Epstein.In a letter to the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, on Monday, Raskin asked: “Why would the Trump Administration, the Department of Justice (DOJ), and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) kill an ongoing criminal investigation into a massive and decades-long criminal sex trafficking ring that preyed on girls and young women? Who exactly are you intending to protect by this action?”Raskin demanded to know why the investigation had abruptly ended despite the fact that nearly 50 women had provided information to prosecutors and the FBI as part of the years-long investigation into Epstein and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, who was jailed in 2022. He claimed the women had identified to investigators at least 20 co-conspirators.“The information provided by this huge group of women was precise and detailed: they described how Mr Epstein, Ms Maxwell, and their co-conspirators orchestrated a sophisticated and clandestine sex trafficking conspiracy that trafficked them to at least 20 men,” Raskin wrote.“These survivors shared with the DOJ and FBI the specific identities of many of these co-conspirators, how this operation was structured and financed, and which individuals facilitated these crimes.”Efforts to pursue these leads appear to have been halted when Trump came into office, a press release from the committee claimed.The Epstein case has been under renewed scrutiny since the justice department and the FBI concluded in a memo in July that no secret client list of Epstein existed and no further charges were expected as investigators “did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties”. The memo contradicted previous claims made by Trump and Bondi, as well as conspiracy theories alleging Epstein was at the center of a larger plot.Raskin said the US attorney’s office for the southern district of New York had been running an investigation into the disgraced financier’s alleged co-conspirators until January 2025, when prosecutors were ordered to transfer the case files to the justice department’s headquarters in Washington DC.Since then, “the investigation into co-conspirators has inexplicably ceased, and no further investigative steps appear to have been taken”, Raskin wrote, citing information provided by lawyers representing Epstein’s accusers.He said the women had made clear to the justice department and the FBI that Epstein and Maxwell did not act alone. “Yet, the Trump Administration has inexplicably killed this investigation, declared these survivors ‘not credible,’ and falsely claimed no evidence exists to support charges against additional co-conspirators,” Raskin added.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHe accused the justice department of abandoning promises made under the Biden administration to coordinate with victims in its pursuit of Epstein’s co-conspirators. “Your DOJ has abandoned those promises in pursuit of a shameful and gigantic cover-up,” he wrote.Raskin has asked Bondi for details of investigative steps relating to the case undertaken by the justice department since January 2025.In an email response, justice department spokesperson Natalie Baldassarre blamed Democrats and the shutdown.“The Democrats have shut down the government and Congressional correspondence during a lapse in appropriations is limited. We look forward to continuing our close cooperation with the Committee in pursuit of transparency, as we have already provided 33,000 pages to the House Oversight Committee – more than was ever requested by the committee when the Ranking Member’s party was in the majority, once the Democrats stop playing games with taxpayer dollars and vote to re-open the government.” More

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      Liz Cheney wanted to follow her father’s legacy. Instead, Trump ended her career

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      Weeks before one of America’s best-known businessmen, Donald Trump, was sworn in as president on an overcast day in Washington DC, a different politician with a similarly familiar name took her oath of office elsewhere in the Capitol.Liz Cheney was then both a freshman congresswoman from Wyoming and a stalwart of the neoconservative philosophy espoused by her father Dick Cheney, the former vice-president under George W Bush who died on Monday. Trump had repudiated Bush’s invasion of Iraq in his campaign for president, but the congresswoman nonetheless went on to become an ally in bending Republican lawmakers to his will.It was only after the January 6 insurrection that Cheney broke with Trump, making what turned out to be a lonely stand against his dominance of Republicans that wound up ending her political career. The then-former president orchestrated her ouster, first from Republican leadership, then from the House of Representatives entirely. Liberals would lionize Cheney for her defiance as an emblem of the “good Republicans” they long hoped would one day expel Trump from the party, even though she never broke with her conservative Republican politics.The Cheneys’ view of American power may now seem farther from relevance than at any time since Bush left office, but signs of it linger in Trump’s new administration. Though he promised to be a peacemaker while campaigning for re-election last year, the president has ordered the first-ever US bombing raid on Iran, blown up boats he claims are carrying drugs off the coast of Venezuela and ordered a formidable naval flotilla to the South American country’s coastline, while mulling airstrikes on its territory.“Many of the people who are around him actually were in favor of the Iraq war, and I think with that influence, he’s being influenced towards regime change war in Venezuela,” the Republican senator Rand Paul told reporters last week.Liz Cheney is certainly excluded from that group. Rising to chair the House Republican conference just after winning her second term in office, Cheney’s time in leadership was brief. After a mob of pro-Trump rioters stormed the Capitol, she became the highest-ranking Republican to break with the president.“The president of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack. Everything that followed was his doing. None of this would have happened without the president,” Cheney said, as she voted to impeach Trump over the violence.She would go on to serve as vice-chair, and one of two Republicans, on the House committee that investigated the attack. But her political fate was sealed. House Republicans voted to strip her from her leadership post in May 2021, and she lost her primary the following year, in both cases to lawmakers that have hewed closely to the president’s positions.Through it all, Cheney remained a conservative in the tradition of her father. As recently as 2021, she joined him in defending waterboarding, the brutal interrogation technique Bush’s CIA used against terrorism suspects, and restated her opposition to abortion and the Affordable Care Act. When Joe Biden’s priorities came up before the House, she mostly voted against them.None of that was enough to stave off Trump’s wrath. As Republicans moved to depose her from leadership, she took to the House floor to call the former president “a threat America has never seen before”.“He risks inciting further violence. Millions of Americans have been misled by the former president. They have heard only his words, but not the truth as he continues to undermine our democratic process, sowing seeds of doubt about whether democracy really works at all,” she said.Nor did her father hold his tongue.“He is a coward. A real man wouldn’t lie to his supporters. He lost his election, and he lost big. I know it. He knows it, and deep down, I think most Republicans know,” the former vice-president said of Trump in a television ad for his daughter’s failed bid for a fourth term in 2022.Both Cheneys would go on to endorse and, in Liz’s case, campaign with, Kamala Harris last year. Trump in turn blasted Dick Cheney as “an irrelevant RINO” or Republican in name only, and “the King of Endless, Nonsensical Wars”. Biden later awarded Liz Cheney the Presidential Citizens Medal and, in his final hours as president, issued her a pre-emptive pardon after Trump threatened her prosecution.When the president this year ordered seven B-2 bombers to fly more than 14,000 miles from Missouri to attack Iran’s nuclear sites, John Bolton, a neoconservative veteran of both the Bush and Trump administrations who has since become a bitter enemy of the president, praised him for taking a course of action he had advocated for decades.“I can say unequivocally, I think President Trump made the right decision for America in attacking the Iranian nuclear program,” he told Bloomberg Surveillance. “We could have done it in the first term, too.”Cheney, by contrast, remained silent. More

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      De Niro to JLaw: should celebrities be expected to speak out against Trump?

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      If you were hoping Jennifer Lawrence might be able to tell you who to vote for and why, you’re in for some disappointment. “I don’t really know if I should,” the actor told the New York Times recently when asked about speaking up about the second Trump administration – and she’s not the only one. “I’ve always believed that I’m not here to tell people what to think,” Sydney Sweeney recently told GQ, after a year in which she was the subject of controversy over a jeans ad and a possible Republican voter registration. This marks a shift from Donald Trump’s first term, when more celebrities seemed not just comfortable speaking out against the administration, but obligated to do so. Now voters will no longer be able to so easily consult with Notes-app-made posts on Instagram to decide who and what they care about before they head to the polls. The era of movie-star-swung elections has come to an end.Of course, this era didn’t really exist in earnest. Celebrity opinion doesn’t seem to hold much genuine sway over the public, with the possible exception of the segments of each that belong to Taylor Swift. (Call that an extremely vocal plurality, if not necessarily a majority.) If it did, the George Clooney/Jennifer Lawrence/Tom Hanks/Scarlett Johansson party would soundly thump the Dean Cain/Tim Allen/James Woods/Chuck Norris party in every contest. In her recent interview, Lawrence is speaking to precisely that point, albeit without invoking any catty status differences: “As we’ve learned, election after election, celebrities do not make a difference whatsoever on who people vote for,” she continues. “So then what am I doing [when speaking out against Trump]? I’m just sharing my opinion on something that’s going to add fuel to a fire that’s ripping the country apart.”Lawrence still isn’t actually shy about confirming her feelings (“The first Trump administration was so wild and just, ‘how can we let this stand?’” she says earlier in the interview, and she alludes to the dispiriting feeling when some voters actively chose a second term after seeing the results of the first). Sweeney, for her part, is more genuinely evasive. (“I’m just here to kind of open their eyes to different ideas. That’s why I gravitate towards characters and stories that are complicated and are maybe morally questionable, and characters that are – on the page – hard to like, but then you find the humanity underneath them.”) But the effect is similar: putting the work first and doing that shut-up-and-sing thing that has been thrown around, in some form another, for half a century or more but felt particularly amped-up around the George W Bush administration, when applied to the artists formerly known as the Dixie Chicks, among others.View image in fullscreenTo some extent, Lawrence is correct to advocate for her work as more potentially meaningful than issuing a statement that underlines her celebrity status, noting that her political views are pretty easy to read in terms of what her production company puts out into the world (including a documentary about abortion bans), and what she does as a performer: “I don’t want to start turning people off to films and to art that could change consciousness or change the world because they don’t like my political opinions,” she says elsewhere in the interview. “I want to protect my craft so that you can still get lost in what I’m doing, in what I’m showing.” In other words, it’s the artistic principle of “show, don’t tell” bleeding over into politics.More personally, who wouldn’t grow exhausted by the expectation that these opinions should be publicly expressed and available for judgment and nitpicking, and prefer instead to speak through art, if that alternate platform was available to them? Trump doesn’t consume art, but he does perform the old-media equivalent of constant name-searching, which means he is likely to name-check any celebrities with high-profile opposition to him – or even those he senses are somehow aligned with his movement, like Sweeney, whose jeans ad he nonsensically praised. Getting dragged into the Trump sphere is a real lose-lose proposition for anyone who wants a genuinely interesting career in the arts. If that sense of self-preservation spares us some cookie-cutter awards show speeches that don’t move the needle outside of the auditorium applause-o-meter, or Clooney relitigating the specifics of Democrats’ mistakes and pitfalls in the 2024 election, all the better.The other side of that strategy, though, is a form of quivery brand management that doubles as faulty market research, implying a tidy split between Trump supporters and those who oppose the president’s policies. In fact, 77 million voters pulling the metaphorical lever for Trump in 2024 out of approximately 258 million adults in the US equals a less-than-robust 30%, not 50 – a percentage his approval rating has rarely crossed. Currently, that number continues to sit below 40% by most estimates. Maybe that’s splitting hairs; 77 million voters is a hell of a lot of people, and 37% of 258 million is even more than that, even if it’s not a majority. But the gesture toward “lowering the temperature”, as so many including Lawrence allude to, feels less noble and more businesslike capitulation. Personal politics becomes a choice between allowing people to read between the lines (as Lawrence does) or an outright opacity (like Sweeney’s) that is, ironically, very politician-like. It also fits with an executive mindset that treats audiences more like shareholders than human beings.View image in fullscreenAs little as celebrity advocacy tends to move the needle on broad political decisions, and likely more effectively moved toward particular issues rather than tilting at the windmills erected by specific politicians, it’s also cathartic to see which folks aren’t backing down. It is telling, too, that some of the most outspoken figures are those closer to Trump’s advanced age. Harrison Ford, for example, had no compunction about telling the Guardian that he considers Trump one of history’s biggest criminals. Robert De Niro has gone further as an anti-Trump spokesperson, recently noting that he was “very happy” to see so many mobilizing against Trump at recent No Kings protests, and repeatedly bringing up his concern that Trump will not abide by the legal term limits on his presidency: “We cannot let up because he is not going to leave the White House. Anybody who thinks, ‘Oh, he’ll do this, he’ll do that,’ is just deluding themselves.”Does anyone need to hear this alarm sounded by De Niro in particular? Probably not, and surely some former fans will dismiss him as an anti-Trump crank. But at 82, the actor is too late in his career to spend much time calculating what is best for business, which also inures him from charges of empty virtue-signaling. He is clearly saying this stuff because he fully believes it. It’s not that De Niro needs Lawrence, Sweeney or whoever else to stand alongside him, but for all the strangeness of a legendary actor reinventing himself as a cable-news staple, it does seem like De Niro better understands his fellow baby boomer New Yorker. He especially seems to get that Trump is a poisonously ironic figure to inspire this kind of celebrity silence.This president is himself a celebrity first, a corrupt politician second, and an actual political strategist in a distant and possibly accidental third. He may well survey his presidency and secretly conclude that his greatest triumph was asserting that celebrity over others – to get away with literally telling people how to think and how to vote (or maybe in the future, that voting is no longer necessary) while cowing others from expressing their opinions on the matter. If celebrities had no political sway at all, Trump would be doddering and leering his way around a TV studio. Lawrence and Sweeney are right to aspire toward their work saying more than they do – but maybe not for the reasons they think. Celebrity without art is what gets you Donald Trump in the first place. For this administration, it’s not the singing that’s important; it’s the shutting up. More

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      How Trump is weaponizing the DoJ to ‘bully, prosecute, punish and silence’ his foes

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      Donald Trump’s intense pressure on the US Department of Justice (DoJ) to charge key foes with crimes based on dubious evidence and his ongoing investigations of other political enemies is hurting the rule of law in the US and violating departmental policies, which scholars and ex-prosecutors say may help scuttle some charges.They also voice dismay about charges filed against ex-FBI director James Comey and Letitia James, the New York attorney general, by Lindsey Halligan, the ex-White House lawyer and novice prosecutor, who Trump installed in a key US attorney post after forcing out a veteran prosecutor who deemed the cases weak.Comey, charged with lying to Congress about an FBI leak and obstruction of Congress, and James, charged with bank fraud and false statements to a financial unit, have pleaded not guilty and are garnering hefty support from ex-DoJ officials and legal experts challenging the paltry evidence against them.Over 100 ex-DoJ officials filed an amicus brief on 27 October mirroring part of Comey’s legal defense that his prosecution was a “vindictive” one, and should be dropped given longstanding departmental policies barring such legal tactics. Trump’s animus against Comey stems from the FBI’s inquiry of Russia’s role in helping Trump’s campaign in 2016 when Comey led the FBI.James Pearce, an ex-DoJ lawyer and a senior counsel at the Washington Litigation Group who helped organize the amicus, said: “It explains that the justice department’s policies seek to ensure fair and impartial prosecutions – which the constitution’s due process clause requires. Unfortunately, the public record suggests that the Comey prosecution neither adheres to those policies nor comports with the constitutional obligations underpinning them.”Other amicus briefs supporting Comey were filed in late October by groups including the Protect Democracy Project and Democracy Defenders Fund.View image in fullscreenFurther contesting the Comey and James charges, Democracy Defenders Fund sent a letter to the DoJ inspector general signed by ethics advisors to presidents Bill Clinton, George W Bush and Barack Obama blasting Trump’s move to make Halligan an interim US attorney and file charges against them, and seeking an investigation of the prosecutions.“After Watergate, no precept was more central to the re-professionalization of the justice department than distancing the White House from decision making about individual prosecutions,” said Peter Shane, who teaches constitutional law at New York University“Trump’s conspicuous public involvement in triggering prosecutions against his enemies along with the seemingly paltry ‘evidence’ against Comey and James, in particular, is likely to mean that at least some of these cases will be dismissed before trial. There is also a serious legal question whether Halligan has been legitimately appointed to the USA position in Virginia.”Other legal experts say the justice department has been “weaponized” to further Trump’s revenge drive against Comey, James and other current and former officials who Trump blames for his legal problems including two impeachments and federal charges that he tried to subvert his 2020 election loss.“The overt and explicit ‘weaponization’ of the justice department, in defiance of the professional judgment of career prosecutors that the criminal prosecutions are unwarranted, is the worst type of corruption of the rule of law,” said Philip Lacovara, who was counsel to the Watergate special prosecutor.View image in fullscreen“The department’s principles of federal prosecution explicitly prohibit federal prosecutors from considering partisan and political factors in deciding whether to pursue criminal charges. But Trump has made these considerations a primary motive for bringing down the weight of the federal law enforcement apparatus on the heads of his political enemies.”Lacovara’s points were underscored by how the DoJ has seemed to move in lockstep with Trump’s suggestions that foes he’s publicly attacked on Truth Social and in other public and private ways should be prosecuted or investigated.Notably, Trump implored Pam Bondi, the attorney general, in late September on Truth Social to bring charges against Comey, James and Adam Schiff, a Democratic senator, not long before the DoJ indicted the first two.Just a day after Trump had forced out the Virginia prosecutor who declined to indict key Trump foes, Trump upped the pressure on Bondi“What about Comey, Adam ‘Shifty’ Schiff, Leticia???” Trump wrote. “They’re all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done,” stressing that “we can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility.”In his missive addressed to “Pam”, Trump hyped the stakes for him: “They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!A person familiar with the inquiry of Schiff, and reports suggest that pressures from some DoJ leaders have increased on the US attorney in Maryland who has been exploring charging Schiff with mortgage fraud, but has lacked sufficient evidence to do so. Schiff and his attorney have attacked the investigation as vindictive and politically driven.The weekend before Comey’s indictment, Schiff hit back at Trump’s Truth Social posts targeting him. “There’s no hiding the political retaliation and weaponization. It’s all out in the open.”Trump’s ire at Schiff stems from when Schiff was a member of the House and served as manager during Trump’s first impeachment.Similarly, Trump’s hatred of James, who the DoJ charged soon after Comey, was fueled by a successful civil fraud case that her office brought against Trump’s real estate empire in 2024 that initially had a hefty $500m penalty.The penalty was overturned last month, but Trump and his two eldest sons remain barred for a few years from holding leadership posts with the family real-estate behemoth.Another Trump foe, John Bolton, ex-national security adviser, who has been a vocal Trump critic, was charged last month by Maryland’s US attorney with mishandling classified information. Legal experts note the investigation of Bolton began during the Biden administration and may be stronger than the cases against other Trump enemies.Bolton has pleaded not guilty.View image in fullscreenWithin the DoJ, a key figure in pushing hard for charges against some of Trump’s avowed enemies has been Ed Martin, a combative lawyer with strong Maga credentials including promoting bogus claims of election fraud in 2020 and legal work he did for some of the January 6 rioters.Martin displayed his Maga bona fides the day before the Capitol attack, when he told a rally of fervent Trump backers: “Thank you for standing for our president. But remember, what they’re stealing is not just an election. It’s our future.”Martin was originally tapped by Trump to be US attorney for DC, but after serving in that role on an interim basis, Trump withdrew his nomination for Senate approval after a key Republican senator indicated he wouldn’t support him.Soon after moving to the DoJ in May, Martin was put in charge of a “weaponization working group”, to go after alleged weaponization by DoJ under Democratic presidents.Martin’s radical views about prosecuting or publicly shaming Trump foes were palpable when he told reporters while exiting the US attorney’s post that if people “can’t be charged, we will name them … and in a culture that respects shame, they should be people that are ashamed”.Bondi tapped Martin over the summer to investigate the Schiff allegations, and to that end he met with Bill Pulte, the federal housing finance agency director, who had sent a criminal referral in May for Schiff to the DoJ, according to NBC.Boosting his stature at the DoJ, Martin has also been given the titles special attorney for mortgage fraud, associate deputy attorney general and pardon attorney.Former prosecutors raise strong concerns about Martin’s various DoJ roles including spurring some indictments of Trump’s foes.“His chief value to the administration is to go after people Trump has identified as enemies by any means or tactics he can find, whether legally sound or not,” said Mike Gordon, a senior DoJ prosecutor on January 6 cases and one of about 20 prosecutors ousted by Trump’s DoJ.Other ex-prosecutors see Martin’s modus operandi as dangerous.“Ed Martin’s role as both the pardon attorney and head of the weaponization working group is concerning in light of a long list of public comments he has made,” said Barbara McQuade, a former US attorney for eastern Michigan who now teaches law at the University of Michigan.“His letter writing campaign while he was serving as interim US attorney, demanding answers to questions from Democratic politicians, members of the media, and university leaders also suggests a political agenda that is antithetical to the independence of the justice department.”More broadly, Lacovara calls DoJ’s compliance with Trump’s demands to charge his enemies “a truly Orwellian shift in generations-long justice department tradition: Trump has managed to condemn investigations into his personal conduct by non-political professional prosecutors, while simultaneously and expressly commanding his political appointees in the justice department to prosecute his perceived political enemies.”Democrats in Congress too are irate over Trump’s use of DoJ for revenge against foes.“When Richard Nixon conducted retaliation against his political enemies, he did it in secret and tried to cover his tracks,” said Jamie Raskin, a Democratic representative of Maryland.“But Trump’s campaign of political persecution to bully, prosecute, punish and silence his political foes is taking place in broad daylight and on TV … I have faith, however, that judges and juries at the district level, unlike Bondi and Halligan, will uphold the rule of law.”Looking ahead, Michael Bromwich, ex-DoJ inspector general, said: “The flimsy cases being brought against people who Trump considers his enemies will fail, but the damage to the system of criminal justice and the Department of Justice will endure. That will be the legacy of the people who currently run the DoJ as a subagency of the White House.” More

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      US elections 2025 live: Americans go to the polls, with elections in New York City, New Jersey, Virginia and California

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      We are restarting our live coverage of US politics.Americans are heading to the polls on Tuesday in a number of elections that will show where support for Donald Trump’s Republicans stands and whether Democrats have cause for hope.Much attention in the US and abroad will be on Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic candidate for mayor, who is facing off against former governor Andrew Cuomo, who is running as an independent after losing the Democratic primary against Mamdani earlier this year, and Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa.In California, voters could tear up their congressional maps to turn Republican districts into Democratic ones in an effort to counter gains the GOP is expected to make elsewhere after the party gerrymandered maps in states including Texas and Missouri.Virginia and New Jersey will hold high-stakes gubernatorial and legislative elections that may serve as a proxy for voters’ views on the president.We will bring you the latest news and reactions as election day unfolds.New York City has probably the most high-profile mayor in the country, and in June, Mamdani, a 34-year-old state assemblyman and democratic socialist, won the Democratic primary in an upset over former governor Andrew Cuomo.Though Cuomo remains in the race as an independent, polls show Mamdani with a formidable lead, and if he wins, his brand of left-wing politics will be given a prominent platform.On Monday, the candidates for New York City mayor spent a frantic final day campaigning across the city. Zohran Mamdani, the frontrunner, whose campaign has been centered on affordability, has maintained a commanding lead, with most polls showing him leading by double digits.The 34-year-old Democratic nominee, a state assembly member from Queens, began his Monday walking across the Brooklyn Bridge at sunrise. He was joined by the New York attorney general, Letitia James; the city comptroller, Brad Lander; as well as several city and state lawmakers and throngs of supporters.He finished the walk at city hall, where he told a news conference that “we stand on the verge of ushering in a new day for our city”, and was scheduled to join volunteers before they began a final day of canvassing in Astoria, Queens, later in the day.Andrew Cuomo, the former Democratic governor running as an independent after losing to Mamdani in June’s primary, kicked off the last day of the campaign with an interview on the Spanish-language radio station La Mega before heading to a campaign stop in the Bronx. He reportedly planned to visit all five boroughs on Monday.Running a distant third has been Curtis Sliwa, the Republican candidate and founder of the Guardian Angels, a non-profit organization dedicated to “unarmed crime prevention”. According to social media, Sliwa spent part of Monday morning at Coney Island and was set to host a tele-rally in the evening.We are restarting our live coverage of US politics.Americans are heading to the polls on Tuesday in a number of elections that will show where support for Donald Trump’s Republicans stands and whether Democrats have cause for hope.Much attention in the US and abroad will be on Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic candidate for mayor, who is facing off against former governor Andrew Cuomo, who is running as an independent after losing the Democratic primary against Mamdani earlier this year, and Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa.In California, voters could tear up their congressional maps to turn Republican districts into Democratic ones in an effort to counter gains the GOP is expected to make elsewhere after the party gerrymandered maps in states including Texas and Missouri.Virginia and New Jersey will hold high-stakes gubernatorial and legislative elections that may serve as a proxy for voters’ views on the president.We will bring you the latest news and reactions as election day unfolds. More

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      Senate Republicans strike down Democratic proposal to fully fund Snap

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      Senate Republicans shot down a Democratic-led attempt to fully fund Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) benefits on Monday during the government shutdown – a move that heightens uncertainty for the 42 million Americans participating in the country’s biggest anti-hunger program.Jeff Merkley, a Democratic senator, and Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, attempted to pass a resolution via unanimous consent that would have forced the Department of Agriculture to fund Snap benefits for the month of November.But Republican senators objected, with John Barrasso, Senate majority whip, arguing that a solution toward ensuring those benefits lies in reopening the government.“This isn’t lawmaking. It’s a political stunt by the Democrats. The resolution they’re offering is empty,” Barrasso said. “Democrats knew their actions threatened food assistance. They were fully aware of it.”The move comes after the administration announced it will use money from an agriculture department contingency fund to restart Snap food benefits, but the money would only grant partial assistance. The administration said there’s only $4.65bn available in that fund to pay for Snap benefits, which would only cover about half of the $8bn in food assistance payments people receive every month.“Trump is using food as a weapon against children, families, and seniors to enact his ‘make Americans hungry agenda,’” said Merkley in a statement.“It’s unbelievably cruel, but Trump cares more about playing politics than making sure kids don’t starve. Kids and families are not poker chips or hostages. Trump must release the entirety of the Snap funds immediately.”The diminishing funds come as Senate Republican leaders continue their attempts to pass a bill to reopen the government, with 13 tries so far and a clear resolution nowhere in sight.Food banks and pantries across the country are already struggling amid the cuts to federal programs, scrambling to meet the increased demand driven by federal workers who have gone unpaid during the shutdown.Should the shutdown continue past Tuesday, it will be the longest one in history. The previous record was set in 2019, during Trump’s first term, when he demanded that Congress give him the funds to erect a border wall between the US and Mexico. More

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      Trump news at a glance: president endorses and threatens on eve of New York City mayoral election

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      Donald Trump has no qualms weighing in on local elections – especially in his native New York City.And on the eve of the mayoral election between Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani, longtime Democrat-turned-independent Andrew Cuomo and Republican Curtis Sliwa, the US president had a message for Republican New Yorkers.“I would much rather see a Democrat, who has had a Record of Success, WIN, than a Communist with no experience and a Record of COMPLETE AND TOTAL FAILURE,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Monday.Before the uncanny endorsement, Trump also renewed threats to punish New Yorkers based on the election outcome, writing on his platform that it was “highly unlikely that I will be contributing Federal Funds, other than the very minimum as required” if Mamdani wins.Later on Monday, Mamdani responded publicly to Trump’s remarks at a campaign event in Astoria, Queens.“The Maga movement’s embrace of Andrew Cuomo is reflective of Donald Trump’s understanding that this would be the best mayor for him – not the best mayor for New York City, not the best mayor for New Yorkers, but the best mayor for Donald Trump and his administration,” he said, according to the New York Times.Trump threatens to cut funds if Mamdani wins mayoral electionOn the eve of New York’s well-watched mayoral election, Trump issued a threat to its voters: stop Zohran Mamdani or pay.“If Communist Candidate Zohran Mamdani wins the Election for Mayor of New York City, it is highly unlikely that I will be contributing Federal Funds, other than the very minimum as required, to my beloved first home,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social. “I don’t want to send, as President, good money after bad.”Trump urged NYC Republicans to vote for Cuomo, who has been a lifelong Democrat but ran in this year’s mayoral race as an independent to bypass the Democratic primary.The Trump administration is well on its way toward making good on this threat even before the votes have been counted. The White House began sparring with the state over New York’s plan to enforce congestion pricing for car traffic earlier this year, which Trump revisited in a separate Truth Social post on Monday evening. The White House withheld $18bn for a tunnel project as the government shutdown started. A federal judge ordered the federal government to reverse the rescission about $34m in counterterrorism funding for the New York City, ruling the move as “arbitrary, capricious and a blatant violation of the law”.Read the full storyTrump administration to halve usual funds to Snap recipients this monthAmid mounting uncertainty among the nearly 42 million people on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), the Department of Agriculture said it would use contingency funds to keep benefits going, albeit just 50% of the usual funds recipients receive on their cards.The announcement, in a court filing by the government at the US district court in Rhode Island, came after Donald Trump said the administration would comply with a court order to provide emergency funding after previous refusals to do so on purported legal grounds.Read the full storyFederal judge bars national guard troops in Portland, OregonA federal judge in Oregon on Sunday said she “found no credible evidence” that protests in the city grew out of control before the president federalized the troops earlier this fall.US district court judge Karin Immergut, a Trump appointee, barred the administration from deploying the national guard to Portland, Oregon, until at least Friday.It is the latest development in weeks of legal back-and-forth in Portland, Chicago and other US cities as the Trump administration has moved to federalize and deploy the national guard in city streets to quell protests.Read the full storyAmericans ‘dumbfounded by cruelty’ of Trump officials slashing Snap benefitsThe Guardian wanted to know how important Snap was to the approximately 42 million people enrolled in the program. Many of those who responded to our callout were elderly, or out of the workforce because of significant mental of physical health issues, and worried that a cutoff of the benefit would send their lives into a tailspin.Steven of Wisconsin, 59, said he is recovering from surgeries, and has been unable to work for the past year because of his health. “I’ve already reduced my intake since before Snap was cut. Now it means no milk, no eggs, no vegetables, and definitely no meat,” he said, adding:“It’s like the siege of Stalingrad, but from your own government.”Read the full storyCBS News heavily edits Trump 60 Minutes interview, but the transcript reveals allTrump sat down with correspondent Norah O’Donnell for 90 minutes, but only about 28 minutes were broadcast. A full transcript of the interview was later published, along with a 73-minute-long extended version online.During the interview, in a clip that did not air on the broadcast, Trump needled CBS over the settlement and repeated his claims against the network.“Actually, 60 Minutes paid me a lotta money. And you don’t have to put this on, because I don’t wanna embarrass you, and I’m sure you’re not,” Trump said.Read the full storyTrump says he doesn’t know who crypto tycoon is, despite pardoning himThe president was asked in that 60 Minutes interview why he pardoned Changpeng Zhao, the billionaire founder of cryptocurrency exchange Binance, for enabling money laundering despite him causing “significant harm to … national security” according to federal prosecutors.“OK, are you ready? I don’t know who he is,” Trump told CBS News’s Norah O’Donnell.In 2023, Zhao pleaded guilty to charges that he broke rules designed to stop money laundering – after Binance allegedly failed to report suspicious transactions with organizations including Hamas and al-Qaida.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      Why is Donald Trump threatening military intervention in Nigeria? The president’s remarks about alleged persecution of Christians is seemingly in response to pressure from his evangelical base.

      Trump said he feels “very badly” for the British royal family after King Charles stripped his brother, Andrew, of his titles over the former prince’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, the late, convicted sex offender.

      Throwing a sandwich at a federal agent turned Sean Charles Dunn into a symbol of resistance against Trump’s law-enforcement surge in the country’s capital. This week, federal prosecutors are trying to persuade a jury of fellow Washington DC residents that Dunn simply broke the law.

      The head of the US Food and Drug Administration’s drug center abruptly resigned on Sunday after federal officials began reviewing “serious concerns about his personal conduct”, according to a government spokesperson.

      The collective wealth of the top 10 US billionaires has soared by $698bn in the past year, according to a new report from Oxfam America published on Monday on the growing wealth divide.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 2 November. More