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More than half of Americans disapprove of Trump’s demolition of the White House’s East Wing and the construction of a new ballroom, according to a new poll from the Washington Post, ABC News and Ipsos.The survey was conducted between 24 and 28 October and indicates 56% of the respondents disagree with Trump’s recent move while 28% are in favor of it. Most of the survey’s respondents were white, one-third of them voted for Donald Trump and another third for Kamala Harris in the 2024 election.By 24 October, the East Wing, historically the home base for the first lady and her staff, had been reduced to rubble to make way for a $300m ballroom that Donald Trump says is being paid for through his funds and private donations.The East Wing was first known as the East Terrace and was built in 1902 during Theodore Roosevelt’s administration. In 1942, Franklin Roosevelt created the East Wing in its current form to add working space during the war, and conceal an underground bunker that had been constructed for the president and staff.Its demolition marks a reversal of the president’s earlier promise in July that none of the White House’s existing infrastructure would be torn down during construction of the ballroom.“It will be beautiful. It won’t interfere with the current building. It won’t be – it will be near it, but not touching it. And pays total respect to the existing building, which I’m the biggest fan of. It’s my favorite,” Trump said at the time.The ballroom, which is set to be 90,000 sq ft, nearly twice the size of the White House, will accommodate nearly 1,000 people, according to Trump.The White House has said the ballroom will be ready for use well before Trump’s term ends in January 2029.Thursday’s poll echoes a Yahoo/YouGov poll that was released earlier this week which found 61% of respondents saying they did not support Trump’s ballroom plan while 25% backed the move.Reactions to the ballroom have stretched far and wide and escalated since demolition began. Elaine Kamarck, a former official who worked in the building from 1993 to 1997, told the Guardian earlier this month that it’s “an abomination”.“It’s typical Trump and it’s going to look awful. They’re knocking down the entire East Wing of the White House. It’s not the end of the world but it’s just one more reason that Americans are getting sick of King Trump,” she said. More
A (small) handful of US Senate Republicans issued a legislative rebuke to president Donald Trump’s world-rattling trade tariffs in a rare alignment with their Democratic counterparts.Four Republicans – Susan Collins of Maine, Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul of Kentucky, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska – joined the opposition party, voting 51-47 on a resolution to end the base-level tariffs on more than 100 nations that the president put into place via executive order.It was the third time the Republicans have voted alongside Democrats on a tariff resolution this week, previously rallying to end tariffs targeting Brazil and Canada.Going against Trump is rare for Republicans in his second term. But despite the opposition in the Senate, the House is unlikely to take any similar action. House Republicans created a rule earlier this year that will block resolutions on the tariffs from getting a floor vote.US Senate votes to reject Trump’s global tariffs on more than 100 countriesThe US Senate took a stand against Donald Trump’s global tariffs affecting more than 100 countries on Thursday, voting to nullify the so-called “reciprocal” tariffs.The tariff resolutions are a rebuke to the tariffs themselves and to Trump overstepping his authority and bypassing Congress. Senator Tim Kaine, a Democrat from Virginia, told reporters that the symbolic opposition should catch the president’s attention.Read the full storyUS will limit number of refugees and give priority to white South AfricansThe Trump administration is going to restrict the number of refugees it admits into the United States next year to the token level of just 7,500 – and those spots will mostly be filled by white South Africans.The low number represents a dramatic drop after the US previously allowed in hundreds of thousands of people fleeing war and persecution from around the world.The administration published the news on Thursday in a notice on the Federal Registry.Read the full storyTrump-Xi meeting: US president says rare earths deal and tariff cut agreedDonald Trump has described crucial trade talks with the Chinese president in South Korea as “amazing”, saying their dispute over the supply of rare earths had been settled and that he would visit China in April.Xi Jinping has not commented on Thursday’s discussions but noted that the economic and trade teams from both countries had “reached a basic consensus on addressing our respective major concerns” during recent talks in Kuala Lumpur, according to Chinese state media. That had “provided the necessary conditions” for their meeting on Thursday, he added.Read the full storyNew York declares state of emergency to issue food banks $65m amid shutdownNew York’s governor, Kathy Hochul, on Thursday declared a state of emergency to free up funds so that she could issue $65m in assistance to food banks because federal funding for the national food stamp program is set to lapse on 1 November.Oregon and Virginia have also issued emergency declarations to release state cash to go towards emergency food assistance as the federal government shutdown imperils Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) benefits for nearly 42 million Americans.Read the full storyTrump directs Pentagon to match Russia and China in nuclear weapons testingDonald Trump has instructed the Pentagon to immediately start matching other nuclear powers in their testing of nuclear weapons, specifically citing Russia and China.In a post to Truth Social, Trump said “because of other countries’ testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis. That process will begin immediately.”Read the full storySenate postpones hearing for Trump’s surgeon general pick after she goes into laborThe Senate hearing for Donald Trump’s nominee for surgeon general, Casey Means, has been postponed after the nominee went into labor with her first child. Means had planned to make history as the first nominee to appear virtually before the Senate health, education, labor and pensions committee due to her pregnancy on Thursday.Read the full storyIllinois governor calls on Trump officials to halt ICE raids for HalloweenJB Pritzker, the governor of Illinois, has urged the Trump administration to suspend its immigration crackdown in his state from Friday to Sunday, to allow children to “spend Halloween weekend without fear”.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:
US immigration officials have been increasingly detaining people in small, secretive holding facilities for days or even weeks at a time in violation of federal policy, a Guardian investigation has found.
Prince Andrew is to leave his home at the Royal Lodge in Windsor after he was served with a formal notice to surrender the lease, Buckingham Palace has said. King Charles has initiated a “formal process to remove the Style, Titles and Honours of Prince Andrew”, who will now be known as Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, the palace said. Andrew did not object to the process, PA reported.
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents were involved in a shooting in southern California on Thursday, prompting a federal investigation. The shooting was the second such incident in the region in recent weeks.
The wife of a British political commentator who was detained by immigration authorities while on a speaking tour of the US said she had only been able to speak with him for “30 seconds” since he was taken into custody on Sunday over his pro-Palestinian advocacy.
Ghosts and goblins might not be the only scary things popping up this Halloween. Prices for the holiday’s most popular candy treats are rising, spooked by Donald Trump’s tariffs and climate change.
Catching up? Here’s what happened Wednesday 29 October. More
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents were involved in a shooting in southern California on Thursday, prompting a federal investigation.The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in a statement that ICE officers were conducting a vehicle stop in Ontario when another driver, who was not the target, approached. Officers ordered the driver to leave the area, according to the statement.“As the driver began to pull away, the car stopped and attempted to run officers over by reversing directly at them without stopping,” Tricia McLaughlin, the DHS’s assistant press secretary, said in a statement.“An ICE officer, fearing for his life, fired defensive shots at the vehicle. The subject fled the scene and abandoned his vehicle.”The shooting was the second such incident in the Los Angeles area in recent weeks. Last week, federal agents shot a Los Angeles man who livestreams US immigration enforcement operations on social media.Officials said at the time that Carlitos Ricardo Parias, a TikTok creator with a large following, attempted to ram federal agents’ vehicles after agents surrounded him and boxed in his car. Officers shot him in the elbow while a ricochet bullet hit a deputy US marshal in the hand.In Phoenix on Wednesday, an ICE officer shot at a vehicle that officials had tried to stop. The driver began to drive away and officials said the officer was in the vehicle’s path, ABC 15 reported.The shootings come as the Trump administration attempts to significantly expand its deportation operations across the US. The government is reportedly moving to overhaul ICE leadership in order increase the pace of removals.Meanwhile, conditions in ICE facilities are troubling. The Guardian reported this week that US immigration officials are increasingly holding people in small and secretive facilities for days and in some cases weeks, a violation of federal policy. At least 16 people died in ICE facilities between January and September.Deportation operations have upended communities across the US, particularly in southern California, where the fear of raids and removal has left residents on edge and in some cases fearful to leave their homes.The homeland security department said in its statement that Thursday’s shooting “was another example of the threats our ICE officers are facing day-in and day-out as they risk their lives to enforce the law and arrest criminals”.“ICE officers now face a 1,000% increase in assaults against them, including cars being used as weapons, and death threats against our agents are up 8,000%,” McLaughlin said. “Let me be clear: anyone who assaults, impedes, obstructs, or threatens the lives of federal officers will be arrested and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.” More
The Trump administration is going to restrict the number of refugees it admits into the United States next year to the token level of just 7,500 – and those spots will mostly be filled by white South Africans.The low number represents a dramatic drop after the US previously allowed in hundreds of thousands of people fleeing war and persecution from around the world.The administration published the news on Thursday in a notice on the Federal Registry.No reason was given for the drop in numbers, which are a dramatic decrease from last year’s ceiling set under the Biden administration of 125,000.The Associated Press previously reported that the administration was considering admitting as few as 7,500 refugees and mostly white South Africans.The government memo said only that the admission of the 7,500 refugees during 2026 fiscal year was “justified by humanitarian concerns or is otherwise in the national interest”.The figure had previously been reported after documents about the plans were leaked.The announcement swiftly drew criticism from refugee organizations, with the International Refugee Assistance Project saying: “This determination makes it painfully clear that the Trump administration values politics over protection.”“By privileging Afrikaners while continuing to ban thousands of refugees who have already been vetted and approved, the administration is once again politicizing a humanitarian program. It is egregious to exclude refugees who completed years of rigorous security checks and are currently stuck in dangerous and precarious situations,” it added.Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, CEO of the US-based Global Refuge, took issue with the ethics of the decision.She said: “This decision doesn’t just lower the refugee admissions ceiling. It lowers our moral standing. For more than four decades, the US refugee program has been a lifeline for families fleeing war, persecution, and repression. At a time of crisis in countries ranging from Afghanistan to Venezuela to Sudan and beyond, concentrating the vast majority of admissions on one group undermines the program’s purpose as well as its credibility.”Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council posted on X.He wrote: “Since the US Refugee Program was created in 1980, it has admitted over two million people fleeing ethnic cleansing and other horrors. Now it will be used as a pathway for white immigration. What a downfall for a crown jewel of America’s international humanitarian programs.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn February, Trump signed an executive order to cut financial aid to South Africa after he accused its Black-led government of “unjust racial discrimination” to white Afrikaners, a minority group who are descendants of Dutch and French colonial settlers.The Trump administration has repeatedly claimed that the South African government is implementing anti-white policies through a new land expropriation law that allegedly targets Afrikaners’ land.The South African government has pushed back, calling the claims false as well as denying US accusations that Afrikaners are being subjected to racially motivated violence in rural areas.Across South Africa, 72% of farms and agricultural holdings are owned by white individuals, who make up 7.3% of the total population of the country, according to Action for Southern Africa. Meanwhile, Black Africans, who make up 81.4% of the country’s population, only own around 4% of the land.Thursday’s announcement is not the first time Trump has slashed refugee resettlement numbers.During his first term, in 2020, Trump set a limit of 15,000 refugees for the 2021 fiscal year. The previous year, in 2019, he had already reduced the limit to 18,000 for the 2020 fiscal year. More
The Senate hearing for Donald Trump’s nominee for surgeon general, Casey Means, has been postponed after the nominee went into labor with her first child.Means had planned to make history as the first nominee to appear virtually before the Senate health, education, labor and pensions committee due to her pregnancy on Thursday. The hearing was originally scheduled for two days after her due date, a person familiar with the matter told CNN. It remains unclear when the hearing will be rescheduled.In a statement shared with the Guardian, Emily Hilliard, press secretary for the department of health and human services (HHS), said: “Everyone is happy for Dr Means and her family. This is one of the few times in life when it’s easy to ask to move a Senate hearing.”Trump nominated Means in May to serve as US surgeon general, the president’s second pick for the role often referred to as “the nation’s doctor”. Means, a wellness influencer and physician with an inactive medical license, follows the abrupt withdrawal of Trump’s first nominee, Dr Janette Nesheiwat, whose confirmation hearing was canceled amid rightwing criticism and questions about her credentials.Means, 38, is a Los Angeles-based medical entrepreneur who rose to prominence in conservative wellness circles for her critiques of mainstream medicine and her advocacy for improving the nation’s food supply.She is the author of the bestselling book Good Energy and a leading figure in the “Make America healthy again” (Maha) movement. Her selection underscores the growing influence of the health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, within the Trump administration.In a social media post, Trump said that Means “has impeccable ‘Maha’ credentials”.“Her academic achievements, together with her life’s work, are absolutely outstanding,” Trump said. “Dr Casey Means has the potential to be one of the finest Surgeon Generals in United States History.”Asked about the nomination shortly after it was announced, Trump said: “I don’t know her. I listened to the recommendation of Bobby.”Means, through her book, blog and speaking appearances, has championed holistic health with a focus on whole and natural foods, exercise, and curbing pharmaceutical prescriptions for chronic ailments.The Stanford Medicine-trained doctor has also suggested that psychedelics such as psilocybin can be beneficial for mental health, decried broad pesticide use and warned against long-term use of hormonal birth control.Means and her brother, former lobbyist Calley Means, served as key advisers to Kennedy’s long-shot 2024 presidential bid and helped broker his endorsement of Trump last summer. The pair made appearances with some of Trump’s biggest supporters, winning praise from conservative pundit Tucker Carlson and podcaster Joe Rogan.Calley Means is now a White House adviser who appears frequently on television to promote restrictions on Snap benefits, removing fluoride from drinking water and other Maha agenda items. More
More than 40 million Americans will stop receiving food stamps on 1 November, as the US government shutdown enters its fifth week.The Department of Agriculture says the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) will be suspended until Congress reopens the government. While the Trump administration argues the department does not have the legal authority to use a $5bn contingency fund to continue the aid, Democrats disagree, and two dozen states have sued the government to force the program to continue.Meanwhile, Democrats are also refusing to vote to end the shutdown because health insurance costs are set to go up dramatically as insurers prepare for a lapse in subsidies. Senate Democrats are demanding that any short-term government funding deal include an extension of the enhanced subsidies for Affordable Care Act plans, while Trump and the Republicans have said they will not negotiate until the government is back up and running. Extending the subsidies would require $350bn in federal spending over the coming decade.We’d like to hear from Americans who are about to lose Snap food assistance due to the shutdown, as well as from people whose healthcare may become unaffordable due to rising premiums. Have you received any notices or paperwork that your insurance will change soon? Tell us. More
For many Americans, government shutdowns are a painful experience, but in the current shutdown, Donald Trump – that supposed champion of workers – has gone out of his way to make things more painful for millions of workers and their families.As part of his effort to clobber the Democrats in the shutdown showdown, the US president has repeatedly treated workers like pawns by employing a callous calculus that the worse he makes things for workers, the greater the pressure on congressional Democrats to cry uncle and end the shutdown on his terms. Not only are several of Trump’s shutdown moves blatantly anti-worker, but legal experts say many of them violate federal law.Take the Trump administration’s abrupt decision to effectively cut off funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) beginning this Saturday. That’s the food stamp program used by millions of workers and their families – a total of 42 million people, one-eighth of the US population.Last Friday, the administration said it wouldn’t let the Department of Agriculture’s $5bn-plus contingency fund be used to ensure continued food benefits after 1 November. Nutrition experts and Snap recipients warn that this will result in increased hunger in the world’s richest nation. The administration cut off funding by asserting that the contingency money could only be used for natural disasters, and it did so even though it had said just before the shutdown began that the contingency fund could be used to finance Snap benefits.JB Pritzker, the governor of Illinois, slammed the move, saying that working families “are about to go without food assistance because Trump and congressional Republicans want to score political points and refuse to reach a deal.” Pritzker added: “They can find the money to pay masked federal agents wreaking havoc in our communities but not help people in need put food on the table.”Cutting off food stamps will hurt millions of low-wage workers as well as seniors, veterans and many other vulnerable Americans. “People receive Snap in every part of the country and in every state,” said Sharon Parrott, president of the Center of Budget and Policy Priorities, a progressive thinktank. “It is quite something to be sitting on billions of dollars that could be used for food assistance for people who need help and to refuse to release it.”This past Tuesday, two dozen states sued the Trump administration, asserting that the Snap cutoff was unlawful. David A Super, a federal budget expert at Georgetown University, told the New York Times that “nothing in the law imposes that limit” of using contingency funding only for natural disasters. He added: “This [funding cutoff] is blatantly lawless.”The government shutdown began on 1 October, after Democrats blocked legislation to finance the government unless Trump and Republicans agreed, as part of any deal, to take an important step to help working Americans – extending subsidies that help 22 million Americans pay for Obamacare. Trump refused.The Snap cutoff is just one of the anti-worker moves Trump has taken during the shutdown. He alarmed 670,000 furloughed federal workers by threatening not to provide them with backpay. After previous government shutdowns, the hundreds of thousands of furloughed federal employees almost always received retroactive pay for the time the shutdown lasted. Not only that, during Trump’s first term, he signed the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act, which was understood to guarantee backpay to federal workers furloughed during shutdowns.But during the current shutdown, Trump suddenly backtracked on that legislation and threw an unwelcome curveball to the 670,000 furloughed workers. He warned them that there is no guarantee they will receive backpay for the four-plus weeks they have been furloughed.This was widely seen as “a strong-arm tactic” to pressure congressional Democrats to agree to reopen the government and drop their demand to extend Obamacare subsidies. Senator Patty Murray of Oregon, the senior Democrat on the Senate appropriations committee, called this Trump tactic illegal and “another baseless attempt to try and scare & intimidate workers”. She wrote on X: “The letter of the law is as plain as can be – federal workers, including furloughed workers, are entitled to their backpay following a shutdown.”In a draft memo, the Trump White House indicated that only workers it deemed essential – like military personnel and air traffic controllers – may be automatically entitled to backpay. In a slap at the 670,000 furloughed workers, Trump told reporters that backpay was iffy for federal workers, saying it “depends on who you’re talking about” and there were “some people that really don’t deserve to be taken care of”.In another anti-worker move, Trump and Russell Vought, the director of the White House office of management and budget, seized on the shutdown to announce permanent layoffs of 4,000 federal workers. They did this after Trump called the shutdown an “unprecedented opportunity” to revamp the government and cut “Democrat agencies”. In previous shutdowns, furloughed workers weren’t laid off; they returned to their jobs when the government reopened.On Tuesday, Susan Illston, a federal district court judge in San Francisco, extended an injunction temporarily blocking the layoffs. She calling them capricious and a form of “political retribution’ and said that such mid-shutdown layoffs were “unprecedented in our country’s history”.Everett Kelley, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees, a union representing 800,000 federal and Washington DC government workers, called the layoffs illegal. “Federal workers are tired of being used as pawns,” Kelley said. He added: “It is disgraceful that the Trump administration has used the government shutdown as an excuse to illegally fire thousands of workers who provide critical services to communities across the country.”We shouldn’t be at all surprised that Trump has pursued new anti-worker policies during the shutdown, considering that he has embraced dozens of anti-worker policies during his nine months back in office. Notwithstanding his repeated promises to help miners, Trump halted enforcement of a regulation that protects coalminers from a devastating, often deadly lung disease. Enraging labor leaders, Trump has moved to strip collective bargaining rights from more than 1 million federal workers. He scrapped the minimum wage requirement that federal contractors pay their employees at least $17.75 an hour; as a result, many full-time workers will see their wages fall by more than $9,200 a year. Trump fired the chair of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), leaving the country’s top labor agency without a quorum to protect workers from companies’ unlawful anti-union tactics.Meanwhile, Trump has slashed regulations on oil companies and crypto-billionaires to help them increase profits. Trump “talks a good game of being for working people, but he’s doing the absolute opposite,” said Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, the main US labor federation. “This is a government that is by, and for, the CEOs and billionaires.”For weeks now, Trump could have easily ended the shutdown by doing a straightforward favor for America’s working class. But he has refused to do so because he doesn’t want to be seen as bending in any way in his showdown with the Democrats. Trump could end the shutdown in an hour or two by telling congressional Republicans: “Let’s do the working class a solid by extending Obamacare subsidies.” That would be a boon to millions of workers because without the extension, Obamacare premiums will more than double on average for 22 million Americans.All this shows that Trump has acted coldly, cruelly and calculatingly toward working-class Americans during the shutdown. Any president who truly cared about American workers, any president who wanted to reduce their worrying and their pain, would, during the shutdown, be doing the opposite of what Trump has done.
Steven Greenhouse is a journalist and author, focusing on labor and the workplace, as well as economic and legal issues More
