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in US PoliticsUS struck another boat illegally carrying drugs off Venezuela coast, Trump says
US forces on Saturday evening struck another vessel illegally carrying drugs off the coast of Venezuela, Donald Trump said on Sunday to thousands of sailors at a ceremony celebrating the US navy’s 250th anniversary. He added that the US would also start looking at drug trafficking happening on land.Trump made the comment during a speech at Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia, next to the Harry S Truman aircraft carrier. It was not immediately clear if he was referencing a strike announced on Friday by defense secretary Pete Hegseth.During his speech, Trump said the navy had supported the mission “to blow the cartel terrorists the hell out of the water. There are no boats in the water anymore. You can’t find them.”The navy has also been utilized to join an armed conflict with drug cartels, leading to four strikes in the Caribbean on what the administration says are fast-boats engaged in drug trafficking.Trump added that if drug smugglers were not coming in by sea, “we’ll have to start looking about the land because they’ll be forced to go by land. And let me tell you that’s not going to work out out well for them either.”The United Nations has condemned the US strikes – which the US defends as countering “narco-terrorist” members of Tren de Aragua, designated a foreign terrorist organization, in international waters – as extrajudicial executions.“International law does not allow governments to simply murder alleged drug traffickers,” the UN said last month. “Criminal activities should be disrupted, investigated and prosecuted in accordance with the rule of law, including through international cooperation.”The navy celebrations come amid a shutdown of the federal government that has left some military personnel working without pay. Trump has accused Democrats of enabling the shutdown and attempting “to destroy this wonderful celebration of the US Navy’s Birthday”.“I believe, ‘THE SHOW MUST GO ON!’” Trump posted on Friday night on his social media site. “This will be the largest Celebration in the History of the Navy. Thousands of our brave Active Duty Servicemembers and Military Families will be in attendance, and I look forward to this special day with all of them.”Trump has pledged to rebuild the navy’s shipbuilding capacity after warnings that the service is in danger of losing its status as the world’s dominant naval power.The US fleet is at its smallest size since before the second world war, while state-subsidized Chinese shipyards have surpassed the productivity of US shipyards.Navy secretary John Phelan, who was confirmed in March, has identified “urgency” as a missing element in naval shipbuilding and ordered an accelerated production schedule for the Columbia- and Virginia-class submarine programs.The navy celebrations come after months of turmoil at the Pentagon as Hegseth rearranges the military’s top leadership of the army, navy, air force and coast guard.In a controversial speech to military leaders last week, Hegseth declared an end to “woke” culture and announced new directives that include “gender-neutral” or “male-level” standards for physical fitness.Hegseth said: “The only mission of the newly restored Department of War is this: warfighting, preparing for war and preparing to win, unrelenting and uncompromising in that pursuit not because we want war, no one here wants war, but it’s because we love peace.”At the meeting, Trump proposed using US cities as training grounds for the armed forces and he spoke of needing military might to combat what he called the “invasion from within”. More
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in US PoliticsNewsom to sue Trump over California national guard deployment to Oregon
California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, announced on Sunday that he is suing Donald Trump over the alleged deployment of 300 California national guard personnel to Oregon.“They are on their way there now,” Newsom said in a press statement. “The Trump Administration is unapologetically attacking the rule of law itself and putting into action their dangerous words – ignoring court orders and treating judges, even those appointed by the President himself, as political opponents.”Newsom’s proposed lawsuit follows a federal judge’s ruling that blocked the Trump administration from deploying the Oregon national guard to Portland. US district judge Karin Immergut agreed with arguments it would inflame rather than calm tensions in the city.Immergut said in her ruling, which delays sending the guard until at least 18 October, that there was a lack of evidence that the recent protests in Portland justified the move.Caroline Turco, Portland’s senior deputy attorney, said that there had been no violence against Ice officers for months and that recent Ice protests were “sedate” in the week before the president declared the city to be a war zone, sometimes featuring fewer than a dozen protesters.“This isn’t about public safety, it’s about power,” Newsom said. “We will take this fight to court, but the public cannot stay silent in the face of such reckless and authoritarian conduct by the President of the United States.”In a statement on X, Oregon attorney general Dan Rayfield said the state is “quickly assessing our options and preparing to take legal action.“The President is obviously hellbent on deploying the military in American cities, absent facts or authority to do so,” he wrote. “It is up to us and the courts to hold him accountable. That’s what we intend to do.”The California national guard referred questions to the defense department. A department spokesperson declined to comment.“President Trump exercised his lawful authority to protect federal assets and personnel in Portland following violent riots and attacks on law enforcement. For once, Gavin Newscum should stand on the side of law-abiding citizens instead of violent criminals destroying Portland and cities across the country,” read a response from the White House deputy press secretary, Abigail Jackson.The news from Oregon came just a day after Trump authorized the deployment of national guard troops to Chicago, the latest in a string of similar interventions across several US states.Trump had first announced the plan on 27 September, saying he was “authorizing full force, if necessary” despite pleas from Oregon officials and the state’s congressional delegation, who said there had been a single, uneventful protest outside one federal immigration enforcement office.For years, Trump has amplified the narrative that Portland is a “war-ravaged” city with anarchists engaging in chaos and unlawful behavior.During his first term in 2020, he deployed federal forces to the city amid the protests over the murder by police of George Floyd in Minneapolis. The protests spread across the US but were especially heightened in Portland. Despite protests against Ice being relatively small in the state this year, Trump has used them as a justification to deploy troops.Speaking on X about the latest move from Trump, Newsom said: “It’s appalling. It’s un-American, and it must be stopped.” More
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in US PoliticsBad Bunny pushes back on Kristi Noem threat that immigrants stay away from Super Bowl
Bad Bunny responded to homeland security secretary Kristi Noem’s threats to send federal immigration enforcement agents to the Super Bowl next year, joking during Saturday Night Live that everyone was happy about his planned half-time performance, “even Fox News”.The 31-year-old Puerto Rican singer who has criticized the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration policies hosted the season premiere of Saturday Night Live, using his opening monologue to address controversy around his 2026 Super Bowl performance.“It’s good to be back. This is my second time hosting and my fourth time being here,” he said as he took the stage. “I’m doing the Super Bowl half-time show. I’m very happy and I think everyone is happy about it.”The line was followed by a quick montage of Fox news contributors, each saying one word that was clipped together to say, “He should be the next President.”During the opening, the artist included some words in Spanish that he devoted to “all the Latinos and Latinas in the entire world and here in the United States”.“More than being an accomplishment of mine, it’s an accomplishment for everybody, demonstrating that our mark and our contribution to this country will never be able to be removed or erased by anybody,” he said in Spanish. Afterwards, he said in English, “If you didn’t understand what I just said, you have four months to learn.”The announcement that Bad Bunny would headline the Super Bowl half-time show sparked a wave of conservative outrage including from Noem.Trump’s homeland security secretary said on a rightwing podcast on Friday that only Americans should attend next year’s Super Bowl and warned that Ice agents “will be all over” the event. She also said the NFL will “not be able to sleep at night” over its decision to choose Bad Bunny as the half-time performer.Bad Bunny was born and raised in Puerto Rico, a US territory, and is an American citizen.Bad Bunny has said that fears that his fans would be subjected to immigration raids prompted him to exclude the US from his forthcoming world tour. The musician just wrapped a three-month concert series in San Juan, Puerto Rico, which drew in an estimated 600,000 attendees.“My residence was beautiful, everyone loved it,” he said during his monologue, acknowledging the success of the recent tour.In other sketches during the 51st season opener, Colin Jost stepped in as Pete Hegseth. “You will now be yelled at by a former Fox News host,” a colleague announced as Jost entered, before the sketch turned to an angry tirade on the US military.“Our military will now have the same rules as any good frat party: No fat chicks. And if you’re a fat dude, goddam it, you better be funny as hell,” Jost said, a clear reference to Hegeth’s recent call out against diversity and fat shaming of troops as he directed generals to fall in line or quit.Trump, played by James Austin Johnson, also made a brief appearance, not as the sketch’s target but as its self-appointed monitor. “I’m just here keeping my eye on SNL, making sure they don’t say anything too mean about me.” More
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in US PoliticsKristi Noem calls Chicago a ‘war zone’ after federal agents shoot woman
Kristi Noem, Donald Trump’s homeland security secretary, called Chicago “a war zone” on Sunday after federal agents shot a woman and the governor of Illinois accused the administration of fueling the crisis rather than resolving it.Speaking on Fox News Sunday morning, Noem took aim at the city’s mayor, Brandon Johnson, who has been a vocal critic of the Trump administration’s Ice raids and deployment of the national guard in Illinois, a measure he called “unhinged and unhealthy”.“It’s wrong, there should be consequences for that and for leaders that stand up and knowingly lie about the situation on the ground,” Noem said. “His city is a war zone and he’s lying so that criminals can go in there and destroy people’s lives.”Noem’s remarks followed Trump’s authorization to deploy 300 members of the Illinois national guard to Chicago, with orders to protect federal officers and property. The move came just weeks after national guard troops were sent to Washington, where the president federalized the city’s police force in what he described as a “crackdown” on crime, a pattern now extending to a string of other US cities. “We’re going to be doing Chicago probably next,” Trump had said at the time.Noem defended the administration’s course of action, insisting on Fox that residents supported the government intervention. “They understand that where we have gone we have made it much more free,” she said. “People are much safer, we have got a thousand criminals that are off the streets of Chicago, just because we’ve been there.”Appearing on CNN’s State of the Union with Jake Tapper on Sunday, the Democratic Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, accused the administration of fueling the crisis rather than resolving it. “They are the ones who are making it a war zone,” he said.“They need to get out of Chicago. If they’re not going to focus on the worst of the worst, which is what the president said they are going to do, they need to get the heck out.”Border patrol agents on Saturday shot and injured a woman while firing at someone who tried to run them over. The woman who was shot was a US citizen and was armed with a semi-automatic weapon, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said, noting that the woman was accused in a US Customs and Border Protection intelligence bulletin last week of doxing agents.Pritzker also condemned the deployment in a post on X on Saturday, writing: “The Trump Administration’s Department of War gave me an ultimatum: call up your troops, or we will.” Pritzker called the decision “absolutely outrageous and un-American,” and added that it had been made “against our will”. More
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in US PoliticsTrump sets sights on liberal mega-donor George Soros: ‘A chilling message to other donors’
Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, said “everything is on the table” and left it there. But Donald Trump threw discretion to the wind and was far more specific about his choice of enemy to go after.“If you look at Soros, he’s at the top of everything,” the US president said.The gathering with reporters took place in the Oval Office last month as Trump ordered a crackdown on “leftwing terrorism” and threatened to investigate and prosecute those who financially support it.There is no evidence linking George Soros, a 95-year-old billionaire who has supported democratic causes around the world, or Reid Hoffman, who helped start PayPal and the networking site LinkedIn, to terrorism. But both are top donors to the Democratic party. And both were named by Trump as potential participants in a vast conspiracy to finance violent protesters against the government.It is no coincidence, critics say, that the president is intensifying his attacks on Soros little more than a year before the midterm elections for Congress. The billionaire has reportedly contributed more than $170m to help Democrats during the 2022 midterm cycle. A justice department investigation could deter both Soros and other would-be donors in 2026.Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “Anyone who contributes to the Democrats can expect Soros treatment if they’re giving a large amount of money. We’ve seen Trump quite skillfully using intimidation and threats to bring prominent law firms, major universities and others to their knees. This is another effort to cower opposition. The point here is to make it harder for Democrats to raise money.”Soros has long been a go-to bogeyman for the right. He was born to a Jewish family in Budapest, Hungary, in 1930 and emigrated to London after surviving the Nazi occupation of his home country. He moved to New York and, in 1970, founded Soros Fund Management, which grew into one of the most successful hedge funds in history. In 1992, he was dubbed the “man who broke the Bank of England” after short-selling $10bn worth of British pounds during the UK’s currency crisis.View image in fullscreenSoros began philanthropic work in the late 1970s, funding scholarships for Black South Africans under apartheid. In the 1980s, he provided support to dissidents and pro-democracy groups in communist eastern Europe. This work evolved into the Open Society Foundations (OSF), now one of the biggest funders of groups that support human rights, government transparency, public health and education in more than a hundred countries.Soros has donated more than $32bn to the OSF but in 2023 handed over its stewardship to his son Alex, who this summer married Huma Abedin, a longtime aide to Hillary Clinton and herself the target of rightwing conspiracy theories. Within the US, the OSF has supported groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union, the Equal Justice Initiative, Indivisible, MoveOn, Planned Parenthood, the National Immigration Law Center and the Black Alliance for Just Immigration.Patrick Gaspard, who was president of the OSF from 2017 to 2020, coinciding with Trump’s first term, said: “It’s hard to believe but at one point George’s work had bipartisan support. Republican senators and Congress members would meet with George Soros regularly, openly. They would tout his work in helping to bring down the iron curtain and help instill democracy in western Europe. They were proud to have the association.”That changed in 2004, when, disenchanted by the Iraq war, Soros emerged as a major backer of Democratic candidate John Kerry during his unsuccessful presidential campaign against George W Bush. He has since been a major donor to Democrats, giving $125m to one liberal Super Pac in 2021, according to the campaign finance tracker OpenSecrets.Republicans have megadonors of their own, including Miriam Adelson, Charles Koch, Timothy Mellon and Elon Musk, whose donation of more than $270m to Trump’s presidential campaign dwarfed Soros’s input. Even so, Soros’s influence has made him a frequent target of criticism and conspiracy theories, especially from rightwing groups and authoritarian governments.Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican congresswoman from Georgia, posted on the X social media platform in 2023: “No other person has undermined our democracy more than George Soros. Why is [he] still allowed to maintain his citizenship?”The critiques often play on antisemitic tropes. Emily Tamkin, author of The Influence of Soros, said: “You couldn’t imagine a more perfect cartoon villain than Soros because he’s a foreigner, he works in finance, he lives in New York and, I would say most saliently, he’s Jewish, which means that you can have all sorts of stereotypes and conspiracies take hold without ever saying the word ‘Jewish’.”When Trump ally Viktor Orbán of Hungary was running for re-election in 2018, he targeted Soros with antisemitic dog whistles, saying: “We are fighting an enemy that is different from us. Not open, but hiding; not straightforward but crafty; not honest but base; not national but international; does not believe in working but speculates with money; does not have its own homeland but feels it owns the whole world.”View image in fullscreenTamkin added: “This idea of the rootless cosmopolitan or the greedy New Yorker obsessed with money. ‘Globalist’ is one you’re hearing a lot. I don’t ever need to say the word ‘Jew’ for antisemitic synapses to light up, which helps these conspiracies travel extremely effectively. That’s exactly what we’re seeing now in the United States and we should be clear about that.”Soros has long been considered a villain by Trump and his conservative base. In August, the president said without evidence that Soros and his son should be charged under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or Rico, because of their alleged support for violent protests.Last month, the New York Times reported that the justice department has directed prosecutors to consider possible charges against the Open Society Foundations. Soros’s office sent a letter to “friends and colleagues” stating: “Allegations that George or OSF are in any way engaged in unlawful activity or in fomenting or promoting violence are 100% false.”Then, in the wake of charges against former FBI director James Comey, came Trump’s remarks in the Oval Office, suggesting that Soros and Hoffman could be prosecuted for sponsoring “professional anarchists and agitators”. There is no evidence to support these claims.Gaspard is not surprised that Trump is once again seeking to demonise George and Alex Soros. “Everyone knows – you can set your clock to it – that when the midterm elections come, when the presidential elections come, that family is going to be involved in some fashion in politics with capital ‘D’ Democrats,” he said.“Trump and those around him are interested in making the name toxic, the investments toxic, and to then find ways to destabilise what should be a source of strength for progressives and the centre left. Then this thing happens where the work of the philanthropy gets conflated with the rights of the individual to participate in American politics and to invest in national politics. That conflation is dangerous.”The move against Soros comes as Republicans face an uphill battle in next year’s midterms, when the party that holds the White House traditionally suffers losses. The jobs market is showing significant signs of weakening, consumer prices remain stubbornly high and this week the federal government shut down.But Trump has already intervened to protect his allies in Congress by pushing for the redrawing of congressional district maps, seeking to purge voter rolls, taking aim at mail-in voting and ordering the justice department to investigate ActBlue, the Democrats’ prime fundraising tool. The assault on Soros could be aimed at choking off money from bigger donors.Rick Wilson, a cofounder of the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, said: “Right now Trump’s in a lot of trouble across the board politically: the job situation is terrible, the economy is crashing out, the Epstein files are still dividing the party. All these things have led to a moment where they need some bait and they need some distraction out there.“Soros is a great target for that and I’m sure it’s also trying to send a chilling message to any other Democratic donor that they should watch out or he’ll go after them. If they don’t avoid transgressing against Trump, they’ll be in the same spot that Soros finds himself in.”Wilson, a former Republican strategist, added: “It’s absolutely about scaring people and freaking people out and causing fear and suppressing free speech. They do not want people to fund campaigns or Super Pacs or organisations that oppose Trump or Trumpism or their movement and so they’re going to seek to punish people and scare them off.” More
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in US PoliticsWhy Trump’s speech to US military top brass was such a disaster | Sidney Blumenthal
No dictator or would-be dictator on day one has ever assembled before him in one room the entire senior officer corps of his armed forces in order to have them belittled as failures and humiliated for their slovenly personal appearance, while degrading whole classes serving in the army, navy and air force degraded as inferior and unworthy. No dictator has ever pleaded for generals and admirals to applaud his remarks, followed by deafening silence.Donald Trump is used to entering to the din of a mob jazzed up with YMCA. “I’ve never walked into a room so silent before,” Trump said when he addressed the country’s highest-ranking military leaders at the Marine Corps Base Quantico on Tuesday. “Don’t laugh. Don’t know if you’re allowed to do that.” He was trying to force some tittering, an old lounge act gag to rouse a dead audience. “You know what? Just have a good time.” The comedian who felt his routine was bombing before he even began sought to relax the room. Then Trump instinctively replaced the ingratiating gestures with threats. “If you don’t like what I’m saying, you can leave the room. Of course, there goes your rank, there goes your future.”Trump’s syllogism perfectly encapsulated his psychology of victimhood and politics of retribution. If you do not bend the knee to him, he is personally wounded. Your failure to worship him must be punished. Your slight of his majesty condemns you to ruin.Trump cannot grasp that the silence of the commanders during his unprecedented address to them demonstrated their highest duty. Their discipline showed fidelity to uphold their oath to the constitution. By their stillness they presented themselves as models for the rest of the officer corps and the troops. They are not loyal to Trump or any cult of personality, but to his constitutional role. They were being used as a backdrop for a campaign-like rally, but they were resistant to serving as partisan players.Trump’s inability to understand their stolidity in the face of his provocations showed his incomprehension not only of the military but the presidency under the law. When he took offense at their stoney silence his rebuke disclosed that he saw them merely as his pawns. They were to his mind no different from his personal attorneys he had installed at the Department of Justice to do his bidding, including the suppression of the Epstein files.Trump had come on an urgent mission for them to carry out. He was there to tell the military chiefs they were to be his unquestioning agents for the greatest reversal of military strategy since the “war on terror” –a new war to be waged against his perceived political opponents at home in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which prohibits the domestic deployment of the US military as a police force.All the senior generals in all the world had been gathered for the unprecedented event at the Marine Corps Base Quantico on the order of secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth. They had no inkling for what momentous occasion they were being summoned. They dared not speculate that Hegseth brought them to be his captive audience for his self-referential vanity Ted talk attempting to rehabilitate his image and assert his authority. That would have seemed too stupid for words.But the commanders could have gotten more than a hint that they were being rounded up for the latest episode of It Can’t Happen Here, by reading Trump’s executive order of 22 September, Designating Antifa as a Domestic Terrorist Organization, an “organization” that does not exist. This was followed by a National Security Presidential Memorandum No 7 on 25 September citing the murder of Charlie Kirk and a series of disparate events as pretexts: “This political violence is not a series of isolated incidents and does not emerge organically. Instead, it is a culmination of sophisticated, organized campaigns … ”According to NSPM-7, a new “national strategy” would be implemented against an ideology of “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.” Jimmy Kimmel was not mentioned.These vapors were not a description of an ideology so much as a hodgepodge of Maga shibboleths. If there were any ideology expressed it was an inchoate fascism based on a repressive impulse that conjured up an all-purpose enemy called “Antifa”. Any sense of irony, of course, was completely missing. In fact, January 6 was the last attempt to overthrow the US government, incited by Donald Trump. The leadership of Trump as a paragon of “traditional American views on family, religion, and morality” defies satire and only underscores the recurrent demand for the release of the Epstein files.The theatrical presentation at Quantico began with Hegseth darting back and forth on the stage. He was a motivational speaker as a drill sergeant with a book to hawk – and a warm-up act for the headliner. Observing him was like seeing the negative of a photograph. The darkest parts were reflections of his own grievances at the criticism and censure provoked by his past behavior.The former national guard major said he had been been “deemed an extremist”; he was flagged as a possible “insider threat” by fellow officers. (Hegseth has denied that he is an extremist). Despite numerous accounts of his alcoholism, he told Megyn Kelly in an interview: “I never had a drinking problem,” but then reportedly promised a senator that he would “not touch alcohol while I have this position”. Hegseth was accused of sexual assault in 2017, and settled a lawsuit brought by the woman who had accused him. (The settlement terms were confidential. Hegseth has said the allegations were false).As a Fox News host, Hegseth had been a prominent advocate for pardoning or granting clemency to service members accused or convicted of war crimes. Hegseth described them as “warriors” rather than “war criminals”. “If he committed premeditated murder, then I did as well … Put us all in jail,” he said about one of them. Hegseth voiced support for members of his own unit in Iraq killing three unarmed detainees who were told to run and then shot. Once Hegseth was confirmed, he purged the top-rank judge advocate general. He’s pushing a plan to send many of the rest to work in immigration courts.Hegseth said that the military should not “fight with stupid rules of engagement”, his long-time complaint against rules designed to protect civilians and enforce military law against war crimes.Now, in his speech, Hegseth declared he was clearing away “the debris”. He encouraged loosening regulations aimed at preventing forbidden violence within the armed forces. He announced the “overhauling” of the inspector general and whistleblower complaint process, which would undermine legal protections and shield violent or reckless offenders from accountability. He would, he said, impose discriminatory measures of “gender-neutral” or “male level” physical standards for combat roles, stating: “If that means no women qualify for some combat jobs, so be it.” (In 2023, more than 17% of the military force was composed of women, with thousands in combat roles.)Hegseth swaggered in front of the commanders, barking obscenities – “Fafo”, or Fuck Around and Find Out. “No more identity months, DEI offices, dudes in dresses. No more climate change worship. No more division, distraction or gender delusions. No more debris. As I’ve said before and will say again, we are done with that shit.”The generals sat expressionless at his vulgarity that could be charged under the Uniform Military Code of Justice as a violation against indecent language that “neglects to the prejudice of good order and discipline”.According to Pete, it was the flabby generals who needed to work out like Pete. “It’s completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon and leading commands around the country and the world. It’s a bad look,” he said. “No more beardos.” That means you, Gen Grant.Hegseth, at last, was seemingly getting his revenge for being tagged as an “insider threat”. He shouted: “No more side-tracking careers, no more walking on eggshells.” He accused the brass of harming the military by evaluating the mental stability of officers: “We’ve weeded out so-called toxic leaders under the guise of double-blind psychology assessments, promoting risk-averse, go-along-to-get-along conformists instead.” Then he plugged his book: “You might say we’re ending the war on warriors. I heard someone wrote a book about that.” The title of his book was The War on Warriors.Not once did Hegseth mention “Russia” or “Ukraine”. He made not the slightest reference to Russia’s huge missile attacks bombarding Ukraine, Russia’s drones over Romania, Estonia and Denmark, the tensions over US wavering within the western alliance, or utter anything that might be construed as a strategic thought.After his menacing speech, Hegseth made way for Donald Trump. Trump displayed his usual contempt for the military by baiting them with an array of partisan barbs to which they remained rigidly motionless. He slipped into a whirlpool of self-celebration followed by anxiety. There were bits about the “Gulf of America”, calling Joe “the autopen” and watching the 1950s TV series Victory At Sea, before Trump came to his worry of falling down stairs. “Every day, the guy is falling downstairs,” Trump said about Biden. “We can’t have it. I’m very careful. You know, when I walk downstairs,like, I’m on stairs, like these stairs, I’m very – I walk very slowly.” He could not contain his envy of Barack Obama. “So one thing with Obama, I had zero respect for him as a president, but he would bop down those stairs. I’ve never seen it. Da-da, da-da, da-da, bop, bop, bop. He’d go down the stairs. Wouldn’t hold on. I said, it’s great. I don’t want to do it.”In the middle of his stream of consciousness, he dropped his new mission for the military against the “enemy from within”, with major American cities as the “training grounds … the ones that are run by the radical-left Democrats … And this is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room. That’s a war, too. It’s a war from within.” Silence.The next day, 1 October, in Memphis, Hegseth appeared as a member of a posse with attorney general Pam Bondi and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller to speak before a rally of Ice agents and federal marshals in anticipation of the arrival of a contingent of national guard troops. Miller delivered his imitation of Patton. “The gangbangers that you deal with – they think they’re ruthless? They have no idea how ruthless we are. They think they’re tough? They have no idea how tough we are. They think they’re hardcore? We are so much more hardcore than they are.” Miller, not any mere general, gave the order. “You are unleashed.”You could tell Stephen Miller embodied the new “warrior ethos”. No beard. Shaved head, too. And lawless.
Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth. He is a Guardian US columnist More
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in US PoliticsTrump news at a glance: President authorizes sending national guard into Chicago as judge blocks Portland deployment
Donald Trump has moved to deploy the national guard to Chicago, the White House confirmed on Saturday, even as a federal judge blocked his administration from deploying troops to Portland, Oregon.White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson confirmed that the president had authorized using Illinois national guard members, citing what she called “ongoing violent riots and lawlessness” that local leaders have not quelled.In Oregon meanwhile, US district judge Karin Immergut concurred with the state’s assertion that Trump deploying federalized national guard troops to Portland would likely inflame rather than calm protests.“Today’s ruling validates what Oregonians already know: justice has been served, and the truth has prevailed,” Oregon’s governor, Tina Kotek, said after the restraining order was granted. “There is no insurrection in Portland. No threat to national security. No fires, no bombs, no fatalities due to civil unrest.Trump authorizes national guard deployment to Chicago, White House saysDonald Trump has moved to deploy the national guard in another city by authorizing 300 troops to protect federal officers and assets in Chicago, where the government said border patrol agents shot and injured a woman while firing at someone who tried to run them over.The Democratic Illinois governor, JB Pritzker called the move unnecessary and “a manufactured performance – not a serious effort to protect public safety.”Read the full storyJudge blocks Trump administration from deploying national guard to PortlandDonald Trump has suffered a setback to his strategy of dispatching the military to Democrat-led cities he describes as lawless, after a US district judge blocked his administration’s attempt to deploy the national guard to Portland, Oregon.Trump had announced on 27 September that he would deploy troops to Portland, “authorizing Full Force, if necessary”, ignoring pleas from local officials and the state’s congressional delegation. A coalition of 17 mayors in the state had opposed the deployment.Read the full storyWhite House official inadvertently reveals plans to send elite army unit to PortlandA senior White House official accidentally leaked details of plans to send an elite army unit to Portland, in the latest intelligence leak by the Trump administration.Anthony Salisbury, a top deputy to Stephen Miller, the influential White House policy adviser, was observed using Signal in a public place to discuss a plan to deploy the army’s 82nd airborne division to the Democratic-run Oregon city.Read the full storyUS envoys head to Egypt for Gaza ceasefire talks as Trump says ‘we are very close’ to dealDonald Trump’s son-in-law and a senior envoy are heading to Egypt to begin ceasefire negotiations, the White House has said, as the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said he hoped to bring all remaining hostages home in the coming days.Read the full storyPete Hegseth fires US navy chief of staffPete Hegseth, the US defense secretary, abruptly fired the navy chief of staff on Friday, removing an aide who had been key to the Trump administration’s efforts to reshape the Pentagon.Jon Harrison, who was appointed in January, had been key to broad changes made to the navy’s policy and budgeting offices.Read the full storyJudge halts Trump administration from detaining immigrant children after they turn 18A federal judge has temporarily halted a Trump administration initiative that would have kept immigrant children in custody after their 18th birthdays, preventing their transfer to adult detention centers that advocates said were planned for this weekend.Read the full storyA ‘hostile takeover’: ousted CDC official raises alarm over RFK Jr approach to infectious diseaseRobert F Kennedy Jr, the secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), has avoided meetings with top health officials, even as deadly outbreaks unfolded, and pushed to make unprecedented changes to the childhood immunization schedule, according to a recently ousted leader of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).Read the full storyWhat else happened today:
Kristi Noem, Donald Trump’s homeland security secretary, has said that only Americans should attend next year’s Super Bowl and warned that Ice agents “will be all over” the event.
A federal judge has concluded that the justice department’s prosecution of Kilmar Ábrego García on human-smuggling charges may be an illegal retaliation after he successfully sued the Trump administration over his deportation to El Salvador.
Catching up? Here’s what happened on 3 October 2025. More