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      Trump’s latest tariffs ‘are real’ unless deals improve, economic adviser says

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      Donald Trump has seen some trade deal offers and thinks they need to be better, Kevin Hassett, the White House economic adviser, said on Sunday, adding that the president will proceed with threatened tariffs on Mexico, the European Union and other countries if they don’t improve.“Well, these tariffs are real if the president doesn’t get a deal that he thinks is good enough,” Hassett told ABC’s This Week program. “But you know, conversations are ongoing, and we’ll see where the dust settles.“Hassett told ABC’s This Week program that Trump’s threatened 50% tariff on goods from Brazil reflect Trump’s frustration with the South American country’s actions as well as its trade negotiations with the US.On Thursday, Brazil threatened to retaliate against Trump’s plan with its own 50% tariff on US goods. “If he charges us 50%, we’ll charge him 50%,” Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the Brazilian president, told local news outlet Record, a day after Trump threatened to impose steep duties on Brazilian goods.Hassett’s comments come one day after Trump announced on his Truth Social social media platform that goods imported from both the European Union and Mexico will face a 30% tariff rate starting on 1 August, angering European capitals who had thought they had previously reached a deal with Trump. The prior deal would have involved a 10% tariff, five times the pre-Trump tariff, which the bloc already described as “pain”.The German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, on Sunday said he will work intensively with French president Emmanuel Macron and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen to resolve the escalating trade war with the United States.“I discussed this intensively over the weekend with both Macron and Ursula von der Leyen,” Merz told German broadcaster ARD, adding he had also spoken with Trump about the matter.“We want to use this time now, the two and half weeks until August 1 to find a solution. I am really committed to this,” Merz said.Merz said the German economy would be hit hard by the tariffs, and he was doing his best to make sure US tariffs of 30% were not imposed.Unity in Europe and a sensible dialogue with the US president were now needed, Merz said, although countermeasures should not be ruled out. “But not before August 1,” he said.EU trade ministers are scheduled to meet on Monday for a pre-arranged summit and will be under pressure from some countries to implement €21bn ($24.6bn) in retaliatory measures, which are now paused until 1 August, the same day as Trump’s new deadline.Macron has called on the EU to “defend European interests resolutely” in response to Trump’s threats.French cheese and wine producers have warned of the damaging impact that Trump’s threatened 30% tariffs on imports from the EU would have on the country’s agriculture industry.A 30% duty would be “disastrous” for France’s food industry, said Jean-François Loiseau, the president of food lobby group ANIA, while Francois Xavier Huard, the CEO of dairy association FNIL, said: “It’s a real shock for milk and cheese producers – this is an important market for us.”In the interview with ABC News on Sunday, Hassett also said that Trump has the authority to fire the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, for cause if evidence supports that, adding that the Fed “has a lot to answer for” on renovation cost overruns at its Washington headquarters.Any decision by Trump to try to fire Powell over what the Trump administration calls a $700bn cost overrun “is going to depend a lot on the answers that we get to the questions that Russ Vought sent to the Fed”, Hassett said.Vought, the White House budget director, last week slammed Powell over an “ostentatious overhaul” of the Fed’s buildings and answers to a series of questions. Trump has repeatedly said that Powell should resign because he has not lowered interest rates, and the Wall Street Journal reported this week, citing anonymous sources, that Hassett is vying to succeed him as the Fed chair. More

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      DoJ drops charges against Utah doctor accused of destroying Covid vaccines

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      The US Department of Justice dropped charges on Saturday against Michael Kirk Moore, the Utah doctor accused of destroying more than $28,000 worth of government-provided Covid-19 vaccines and administering saline to children instead of the shot.Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, announced the news in a statement on the social media platform X, saying the charges had been dismissed under her direction.“Dr Moore gave his patients a choice when the federal government refused to do so,” Bondi said. “He did not deserve the years in prison he was facing.”According to a 2023 press release from the US attorney’s office in Utah, Moore distributed at least 1,937 fraudulent vaccination record cards in exchange for either direct payment or required donations to a specific charity. The minors he gave saline shots to were under the impression, at the request of their parents, that they were receiving a Covid-19 shot. Moore ran the operations from a plastic surgery center in Midvale, Utah, and was charged, along with three other co-defendants, with conspiracy to defraud the United States.Far-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene thanked Bondi in a statement on X and called Moore a “hero who refused to inject his patients with a government-mandated unsafe vaccine”.The Utah senator Mike Lee also weighed in, saying on X that he was glad Moore could remain a free man and that countless Americans endured lies and lockdowns during the pandemic.Moore was indicted by the justice department in 2023. He pleaded not guilty to the charges, which also included conspiracy to convert, sell, convey and dispose of government property, and the conversion, sale, conveyance and disposal of government property.The fake vaccination records were sold under Moore’s scheme for $50 each, and operations allegedly ran between May 2021 and September 2022. Attorneys for Moore argued that the regulations set at the time by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) were unconstitutional.The charges against Moore were brought in when Joe Biden was president, but Covid-19 conspiracists and skeptics have been embraced in the new administration under Trump.Recently, the Trump administration canceled a $766m award to Moderna on the research and development of H5N1 bird flu vaccines, and officials announced new restrictions and regulations for Covid mRNA vaccines.The US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, who has for decades baselessly sowed doubt about vaccine safety, contrary to scientific research, thanked Moore in a statement on X back in April.“Dr Moore deserves a medal for his courage and his commitment to healing,” Kennedy Jr said. More

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      How the rightwing sports bro conquered America

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      View image in fullscreenThis February, Pat McAfee was broadcasting live on ESPN, the most watched sports network in the US, when he aired a salacious rumor about the sex life of a teenage college student. Once a workaday punter with the Indianapolis Colts, McAfee is now the most influential pundit in American sports with an eponymous ESPN show, who has more than 11m followers across YouTube, X, Instagram and TikTok.To howls of merriment from his panel, McAfee spelled out the rumor centered on a 19-year-old female student at Ole Miss, a public university in Mississippi, as it was “being reported by everybody on the internet”: that the student had sex with her boyfriend’s father. “Ole Miss dads are slinging meat right now!” roared “Boston” Connor Campbell, one of McAfee’s sidekicks.McAfee did not directly name Mary Kate Cornett, the college freshman at the center of the rumor, but she has since described how McAfee’s amplification of this “completely false” story encouraged others in the sports talk world to do likewise, resulting in her receiving a deluge of threats and harassment. Cornett has engaged lawyers to explore suing McAfee, ESPN and others involved in spreading the rumor for defamation. McAfee appeared moderately chastened by the episode: “I never, ever want to be a part of anything negative in anybody’s life, ever,” he said recently while addressing the outrage that his boosting of the rumor prompted. But he has not yet apologized, and in no way does his future as one of ESPN’s most bankable stars seem in jeopardy. Whatever blowback ensued has blown right on by.The whole episode served as a demonstration of power: the world of sports influencers such as McAfee, which is particularly influential among young men and can be understood as an extension of the Donald Trump-aligned “manosphere”, now stands as an important bastion of the culture of insensitivity and entitlement on which Trumpism thrives.View image in fullscreenA new generation of sports talk starsThe Pat McAfee Show, a two-to three-hour afternoon blast of high-volume sports chat, sweating and raw, uncomplicated American male heterosexuality, launched in 2019. It has quickly become a favored media stop for many of the top names in US sports and culture. Tom Cruise spent 30 minutes on the show recently (“I appreciate the shit outta you,” McAfee told Cruise); LeBron James stopped by for an hour.Throughout the show’s history, McAfee has courted controversy: he’s called WNBA star Caitlin Clark a “white bitch”, he’s made jokes about child abuse, he’s helped air rumors linking celebrities to Jeffrey Epstein. None of it seems to matter: McAfee, whose show moved to ESPN on a five-year, $85m deal in 2023, powers on unperturbed, growing in cultural might with each passing month.McAfee is now the avatar of a new generation of sports talk stars who have upended the rules about public speech, remade culture in their own brash image, and are completely bulletproof.View image in fullscreenAmong McAfee’s peers in this dripped-out new world of costless needling are Barstool Sports boss Dave Portnoy; former NFL players Will Compton and Taylor Lewan, who co-host the show Bussin’ With the Boys; and NFL receiver-turned-podcaster Antonio Brown. Sports are also a major, though not exclusive, topic of conversation for Joe Rogan, Theo Von and other leaders of the manosphere. The Wikipedia pages of many of these figures contain hefty “controversy” tabs. Portnoy has faced extensive and credible accusations of sexual misconduct; Brown refers to WNBA star Clark, an athlete on whom the anti-woke right seems psychotically fixated, as “Cousin Itt”, referencing the Addams Family’s hirsute, non-verbal relative, and is so crassly sexist online that even the famously feminist redoubt of Barstool Sports has described him as a “crackpot”.In an earlier era, reckless promotion of tasteless gossip about a teenager’s sex life might have been enough to sink a career like McAfee’s. Provocation, abrasiveness and a delight in offending have been essential to sports talk – on radio and cable TV – for decades. But in the years before social media, on-demand programming and betting turned sports into an all-hours, all-platforms juggernaut, there were still lines that sporting pundits could not cross: shock jock Don Imus, for instance, built his career on being outspoken but was fired by WFAN/MSNBC in 2007 after making racist and misogynist comments including describing the Rutgers women’s basketball team as “nappy-headed hos”.Today’s sports broadcast world runs according to a new set of rules, in which “respectable” TV and the demi-monde of sports podcasts, streaming, and shitposting increasingly intersect: all engagement is good engagement, and the best type of filter is no filter. Whatever faint norms of decorum constrained earlier generations of professional sports talkers have faded completely.There’s a reciprocal flow of testosterone and ideas between these shows, the world of sports, social media and real life. A handful of subjects and themes recur: veneration of the military, glorification of strength and traditional “male” values, celebration of gambling, the denigration of women and anything thought to represent “woke” culture. On any given day across the sporting bro-zone you might hear Bussin’ With the Boys and their guests rail against pronouns and cancel culture, the hosts of Barstool Sports’ Pardon My Take podcast argue Taylor Swift needs to “release a sex video” to make her presence at NFL games tolerable to the average male fan, or McAfee devote 30 minutes (as he did recently) to describing his day among “maybe the baddest motherfuckers on earth”: the drill instructors at the US Marine Corps training center on Parris Island in South Carolina. These interests and obsessions mirror the president’s cultural politics, turning the sports bros into critical emissaries for Trump’s peculiar brand of popularly elected vandalism.It’s worth questioning, of course, how influential these influencers really are. A recent poll from the Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics found that 35% of young men had an unfavorable view of Rogan, while a further 36% had never heard of him or did not know enough about him to have an opinion. The much-rehearsed idea that the minds of young male voters have been irretrievably colonized by the manosphere is surely overblown.But there seems little dispute that these influencers have been effective in platforming rightwing figures and ideas. The sports bros are an essential part of that legitimizing apparatus – all the more so because their endorsement of the right’s reflexes, priorities and modes of attack is couched in the ostensibly apolitical language of sports. The cultural supremacy of the sports bros is now so total that Barstool’s Dave Portnoy is now famous for his online pizza reviews that can make or break restaurants in America. When a casual day trader from Massachusetts who built his media empire on college gambling advice becomes the arbiter-in-chief of America’s favorite food, something fundamental has shifted in how we determine cultural authority.View image in fullscreenThe sports bro supremacyThe unsinkability of these sporting mouths, bobbing forever on the surface of our cultural consciousness, parallels the envenomation of online discourse and the transformation of Trump from presidential punchline into the most consequential political figure of the century. Trump, let’s not forget, first reached the White House after navigating a storm of outrage over the Access Hollywood tape, a victory that set a precedent for the practitioners of “locker room talk” who have found fame in his wake. With the tacit endorsement of the sports bros, on whose shows he became a regular guest during last year’s election, Trump not only seized the young male vote, he also engineered a complete reversal in his own reputation throughout the sporting world from his first to second terms.Interestingly, McAfee himself declined an invitation to have Trump on his show during last year’s election campaign, reasoning that he and his sidekicks are “not the ones” to be asking questions about politics – an uncharacteristic moment of modesty. But UFC-adjacent comedian Theo Von and Barstool Sports’ Bussin’ With the Boys both featured extended conversations with Trump during the campaign.These appearances showed Trump to be extremely well-versed in sports, which is perhaps no surprise when you consider the amount of time he spends tweeting about them, watching them and playing them – not to mention his own tangled history with the business side of sports (Trump owned a New Jersey-based team in the short-lived United States Football League during the 1980s). These podcasts also helped humanize Trump, presenting him as a relatable guy who works long hours and is sympathetic enough to engage a jumpy figure like Von in a conversation about drug addiction. The warm audience Trump received helped normalize his politics and support.Today the sporting world, with a few notable exceptions, genuflects before Trump in a way that seemed unthinkable during his first term. Beyond the unquivering Trumpian stronghold of Dana White’s UFC, the big professional leagues such as the NFL and NBA either kept their distance from the 45th president or were at outright war with him; now No 47 is the guest of honor at the Super Bowl and every second athlete is doing the Trump dance, the double fist pump and minor hip swivel that the president has turned into his signature choreographic move on the campaign stage.The president’s political endurance has perhaps, in turn, acted as a kind of bro bat signal, helping to validate the obnoxiousness and resistance to introspection on which the sports bros thrive: if he doesn’t have to censor himself, apologize or pay lip service to feelings, why should they?View image in fullscreenThe personality of American culture has long been split between purity and profanity. The death of consequences for figures like McAfee suggests the balance of power has definitively swung in favor of the trolls and tough guys, and now none of puritanical old America’s sanctities will hold them back. It says everything about the sports bros’ invincibility that among the top names floated by progressives to counter the blitzkrieg of Trump’s second term and lead them to 2028 is Stephen A Smith, the sports pundit who turned relentlessness into a career and is something of a spiritual godfather to the McAfees and Portnoys of the world. The only person who can defeat a sports bro is another sports bro.Might there be another strategy for the left to combat this tide flooding the sporting-cultural zone? Recent reports suggest Democrats are slinging money to all corners of the country in a desperate attempt to find the progressive answer to Rogan: the chatter is all about “speaking with American men” and investing to generate a “return on culture”, and Democrats such as Hakeem Jeffries and Josh Shapiro have in recent months zombied from sports podcast to sports podcast in a doomed and focus group-refined attempt to revive a cadaverous Democratic party with the tonic of their everyman cool.These appearances might be wooden and inauthentic, but it does suggest a key role for sports in the left’s attempt to pull itself off the canvas following the catastrophe of last November. Sports are hardly the exclusive preserve of the right. The Golden State Warriors’ four-time championship winning head coach, Steve Kerr, is probably the most vocal critic of Trumpism at work in American sports today, and Democrats have long associated themselves with sports: Barack Obama, of course, is an accomplished hooper, while Zohran Mamdani, the socialist candidate for New York City mayor who loves Arsenal and cricket and has spun his appearances at Knicks games during the recent NBA playoffs into campaign trail gold, is living proof that it’s possible to be passionate and knowledgeable about sports while eschewing the ugliness of bro culture.But left-leaning sports pundits? That’s a tougher ask. The pallor of recent attempts to seed a more robust progressive presence online highlights how severely Democrats have been left behind in the new world of sports talk. Broadcasts such as the Pat McAfee Show are powerful engines of political orientation not because they address politics directly – they almost never do – but because their politics emerge in the interstices of everything said on screen.There aren’t many popular voices in sports punditry that do for the left what McAfee and his cohort do, casually yet masterfully, for the right: embody an ethos, solidify an idiom and transmit a set of values that find a natural downstream outlet in electoral politics. Influential Twitch lefty Hasan Piker occasionally discusses sports but they are not his main focus; pundits such as Pablo Torre and Bomani Jones lean liberal but they do not have the same reach that the McAfees of the world do, and they don’t express their politics with anything like the same splash. Over the past decade sports broadcasters who discussed politics from a leftist perspective, such as former ESPN host Jemele Hill, were gradually forced out of the mainstream. NFL star Travis Kelce, who hosts a popular podcast with his older brother Jason, seems vaguely progressive in orientation but he also said playing in front of Trump at this year’s Super Bowl was “a great honor”, a tellingly wimpy political intervention. Like LeBron before him, he’s too big to get too real, too good to get dirty; the Kelce-James brand of progressivism is very much by the book, a progressivism of the civics class. Where the right is loud, the sporting left speaks with a militant squeak.View image in fullscreenA lack of voices on the leftOn-field athletic competition is about domination, strength, winners and losers, yes, but it’s also about finesse, beauty, cunning and wit; it’s a place where conservative fantasies of order and the cerebrations of the progressives can both find a home.But if any side should be controlling the field of sports talk, it is the left, since so many of the inequalities that plague society at large now infect sports as well, which are increasingly run on extractive lines for the benefit of predatory rentiers, autocrat-backed sovereign wealth funds and private-equity ghouls. Meanwhile the leveling mechanisms that still keep the American professional leagues interesting and unpredictable – collective wage bargaining, drafts, salary caps and luxury taxes – have their roots in this country’s unlikely tradition of sporting socialism. Far from being a natural stage for the tiresome politics of cultural revenge in which the right traffics, sports (as a thing to shoot the shit about) offer a rich canvas for the exploration of many issues about which the left cares deeply: race, gender, class, social mobility and the corrupting influence of money.The left should not be afraid of learning from the lords of the sporting bro-zone even as it spurns their machismo and lack of tact. A culture used to crew necks can’t go back to buttoned collars.For example, as part of his deal with ESPN, McAfee is allowed to swear live on TV: “The following progrum is a collection of stooges talking about happenings in the sports world,” announces a disclaimer that airs before each show, read aloud in a geriatric voice reminiscent of Grampa Simpson. “There may be some ‘cuss’ words because that’s how humans in the real world talk.” This is one area where the bros and the left should make common cause: swearing is good. Viewers love McAfee not despite the fact he’s loose, unpolished and has a dirty mouth; they love him because of these things. This is a man, let’s not forget, who first came to prominence at age 23, while playing for the Colts, after being arrested in downtown Indianapolis for taking a pre-dawn swim in a canal. Asked to explain why he was soaking wet, McAfee replied: “I am drunk.” The charge was dismissed but the hearts of a city were won, and a media career was born.Why can the left not take the best of McAfee and his ilk while jettisoning the worst? Surely it’s possible to talk sports in a way that’s biting, real, unfiltered, funny and even mean – to “connect with men where they are”, as we are repeatedly told the left must – without descending into toxicity, cruelty, belligerence and hate. If progressives want to reclaim the White House, they could do worse than to start rambling for hours on end about games and players that have nothing to do with politics at all. Sports-loving leftists of America, unite: you have nothing to lose but your parlays. More

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      Trump news at a glance: Trump shocks EU and Mexico with tariffs as he gives Ice agents ‘total authorization’ to protect themselves

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      Donald Trump has said he will impose tariffs of 30% on the European Union and Mexico from 1 August, threatening Europe that it would pay a price if it retaliated and telling Mexico it had not done enough to stop North America from turning into a “Narco-Trafficking Playground”.“If for any reason you decide to raise your Tariffs and retaliate, then, whatever the number you choose to raise them by, will be added onto the 30% that we charge,” he wrote in a letter to the EU.EU trade ministers will meet on Monday for a pre-arranged summit and will be under pressure from some countries to show a tough reaction by implementing €21bn ($24.6bn) in retaliatory measures, which they had paused until midnight the same day.Here are the key US politics stories at a glance:Donald Trump announces 30% tariffs on goods from EU and MexicoDonald Trump announced on Saturday that goods imported from both the European Union and Mexico will face a 30% US tariff rate starting 1 August, in letters posted on his social media platform, Truth Social.The tariff assault on the EU came as a shock to European capitals as the European Commission and the US trade representative Jamieson Greer had spent months hammering out a deal they believed was acceptable to both sides.Read the full storyTrump authorizes Ice agents to protect themselves using ‘whatever means’ necessaryDonald Trump has given “total authorization” to federal immigration agents to protect themselves after a series of clashes with protesters, including during enforcement raids on two California cannabis farms.“I am giving Total Authorization for Ice to protect itself, just like they protect the Public,” Trump posted on Truth Social on Friday, adding that he was directing the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, and border czar, Tom Homan, to arrest anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) protesters who impede immigration enforcement operations.Read the full storyTrump cuts to Fema questioned as Texas flood cleanup continuesRecently departed officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) say the organization is dangerously underresourced and overstretched in the event of further natural catastrophes, as the cleanup continues from this month’s torrential rain storms and flooding in Texas that left more than 120 dead.Read the full storyKash Patel denies rumors he’s quitting the FBI over DoJ ruling on Epstein filesFBI director Kash Patel has denied swirling resignation rumors over reported unhappiness at a justice department decision to close the book on Jeffrey Epstein after administration officials teased a big reveal earlier in the year.In a Saturday social media post, the agency director said: “the conspiracy theories just aren’t true, never have been. It’s an honor to serve the President of the United States – and I’ll continue to do so for as long as he calls on me.”Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      David Gergen, a veteran of Washington politics and an adviser to four presidents, Republican and Democrat, has died aged 83.

      As US regulators restrict Covid mRNA vaccines and as independent vaccine advisers re-examine the shots, scientists fear that an unlikely target could be next: cancer research.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on Friday 11 July. More

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      Kash Patel denies rumors he’s quitting the FBI over DoJ ruling on Epstein files

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      FBI director Kash Patel has denied swirling resignation rumors over reported unhappiness at a justice department decision to close the book on Jeffrey Epstein after administration officials teased a big reveal earlier in the year.In a Saturday social media post, the agency director said: “the conspiracy theories just aren’t true, never have been. It’s an honor to serve the President of the United States – and I’ll continue to do so for as long as he calls on me.”Over the past week, Maga hardliners, including Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, former White House adviser Steve Bannon and – reportedly – FBI deputy director Dan Bongino, have been strongly critical of a joint decision by US attorney general Pam Bondi and the FBI to not release further information about Epstein held in government files, including a so-called client list.Critics have slammed the FBI-justice department conclusion about Epstein’s official autopsy that the disgraced financier had hung himself in his cell. Many have refused to accept that, repeating a conspiracy theory that Epstein, who died in August 2019 while awaiting trial, was in fact murdered to silence him.“This systematic review revealed no incriminating ‘client list’,” the memo stated. “There was also no credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions. We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.”Rumors of a rift between the FBI and the justice department over the memo have been denied by deputy attorney general Todd Blanche, who wrote on social media that there is “no daylight” between the FBI and the Department of Justice leadership on the issue.“I worked closely with [Kash and Bongino] on the joint FBI and DOJ memo regarding the Epstein Files. All of us signed off on the contents of the memo and the conclusions stated in the memo. The suggestion by anyone that there was any daylight between the FBI and DOJ leadership on this memo’s composition and release is patently false,” Blanche said.But on Friday, NBC News reported that Bongino is considering stepping down from his post at the FBI after a “heated confrontation” with Bondi over the issue.“Bongino is out-of-control furious,” the person who has spoken with the deputy FBI director said. “This destroyed his career. He’s threatening to quit and torch Pam unless she’s fired.”Donald Trump has also grown testy with repeated questions about Epstein, who was once a neighbor in Palm Beach. He erupted on Tuesday when he was pressed on an apparent one-minute gap in a 10-hour video recorded outside of Epstein’s cell.“Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?” he said. “This guy’s been talked about for years … Are people still talking about this guy, this creep? That is unbelievable.”Bondi has since explained that the missing minute of surveillance film was simply the recording equipment resetting itself, as it does every night.Still, it is not clear that Maga hardliners are willing to let the Epstein conspiracy theories go – they have provided a constant stream of material that supposedly supports their theories of a deep state.But no evidence has emerged that Epstein was engaged in a conspiracy to blackmail high-profile visitors, including Britain’s Prince Andrew, to his homes in New York, Florida, New Mexico and the US Virgin Islands.The FBI-DoJ memo stated that it had uncovered “a significant amount of material”, including more than 300GB of data and physical evidence that included “a large volume of images of Epstein, images and videos of victims who are either minors or appear to be minors, and over ten thousand downloaded videos and images of illegal child sex abuse material and other pornography”.“Through this review, we found no basis to revisit the disclosure of those materials and will not permit the release of child pornography,” the memo said. More

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      Donald Trump announces 30% tariffs on goods from the EU and Mexico

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      Donald Trump announced on Saturday that goods imported from both the European Union and Mexico will face a 30% US tariff rate starting 1 August, in letters posted on his social media platform, Truth Social.The tariff assault on the EU came as a shock to European capitals as the European Commission and the US trade representative Jamieson Greer had spent months hammering out a deal they believed was acceptable to both sides.The agreement in principle put on Trump’s table last Wednesday involved a 10% tariff, five times the pre-Trump tariff, which the bloc already described as “pain”.EU trade ministers will meet on Monday for a pre-arranged summit and will be under pressure from some countries to show a tough reaction by implementing €21bn ($24.6bn) in retaliatory measures, which they had paused until midnight the same day.In his letter to Mexico’s leader, Trump acknowledged that the country had been helpful in stemming the flow of undocumented immigrants and fentanyl into the United States.But, he said, the country had not done enough to stop North America from turning into a “Narco-Trafficking Playground”.“We have had years to discuss our Trading Relationship with The European Union, and we have concluded we must move away from these long-term, large, and persistent, Trade Deficits, engendered by your Tariff, and Non-Tariff, Policies, and Trade Barriers,” Trump wrote in the letter to the EU. “Our relationship has been, unfortunately, far from Reciprocal.”Claudia Sheinbaum said on Saturday she is sure an agreement can be reached before Trump’s threatened tariffs take effect on 1 August.Speaking during an event in the Mexican state of Sonora, the Mexican president added that Mexico’s sovereignty is never negotiable.The higher-than-expected rate has dealt a blow to the EU’s hopes of de-escalation and a trade deal and could risk a trade war with goods of low margins including Belgian chocolate, Irish butter and Italian olive oil.The EU was informed of the tariff hike before Trump’s declaration on social media.In a letter to the EU, Trump warned that the EU would pay a price if they retaliated: “If for any reason you decide to raise your Tariffs and retaliate, then, whatever the number you choose to raise them by, will be added onto the 30% that we charge.”The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said the 30% rate would “disrupt transatlantic supply chains, to the detriment of businesses, consumers and patients on both sides of the Atlantic”.She said the bloc was one of the more open trading places in the world, and still hoped to persuade Trump to climb down.“We remain ready to continue working towards an agreement by August 1. At the same time, we will take all necessary steps to safeguard EU interests, including the adoption of proportionate countermeasures if required,” she said.Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, called for “goodwill  … to reach a fair agreement that can strengthen the west as a whole. It would make no sense to trigger a trade war between the two sides of the Atlantic.” She added that both sides should avoid “polarisation”.The decision to hike the tariffs will also be another test of Trump’s ability to act in good faith in negotiations.Brussels will view the latest threat as a maneuver by Trump to extract more concessions from the EU, which he once described as “nastier” than China when it came to trade.Bernd Lange, head of the European Parliament’s trade committee, said on Saturday that Brussels should react immediately with countermeasures against Trump’s “outrageous” threat to hike tariffs on imports from the European Union.The EU had been negotiating intensively with Washington for more than three weeks and had made concessions, said Lange.“It is brazen and disrespectful to increase the tariffs on European goods announced on April 2 from 20% to 30%,” Lange told Reuters.“This is a slap in the face for the negotiations. This is no way to deal with a key trading partner.”While Trump indicated earlier this week that his new rates, also levelled against big economies including Japan, South Korea and Brazil, will not apply until 1 August, his latest tactic will create much distrust.Europe should make it clear that these “unfair trade practices” were unacceptable, Lange said.“We have postponed the first stage of our countermeasures for the time being, but I am firmly convinced that they must now be implemented immediately,” he said.“The first list of countermeasures must be activated on Monday as planned, and the second list should also follow quickly.”Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, downplayed the impact of the threatened 50% tariff. Trump and Lula have indicated a willingness to negotiate, though Lula also said: “Trump could’ve called, but instead posted the tariff news on his website – a complete lack of respect which is typical of his behavior towards everyone.”Even if Trump had agreed to the proposal put on his table on Wednesday, further negotiations would have been needed in any case to create a legal text that can be formally registered by the US government, a process that is itself laden with risk.The UK took seven weeks to get its agreement registered with a promise included to reduce tariffs on car exports from 27.5% to 10%, but the agreed zero tariff for the British steel industry was omitted.Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former congressional budget office director and president of the center-right American Action Forum, said the letters were evidence that serious trade talks had not been taking place over the past three months. He stressed that nations were instead talking among themselves about how to minimize their own exposure to the US economy and Trump.“They’re spending time talking to each other about what the future is going to look like, and we’re left out,” Holtz-Eakin said.He added that Trump was using the letters to demand attention, but, “in the end, these are letters to other countries about taxes he’s going to levy on his citizens”.The new tariff ends a turbulent week for the EU with Trump announcing an extension for talks until 1 August on Monday, then on Tuesday announcing the EU would “probably” receive a letter setting its new US tariff rate within 48 hours, claiming the bloc had shifted from being “very tough” to “very nice”.But diplomats viewed it as a mixed message as Trump stressed that he was still talking to negotiators from the bloc, but that he was displeased with European policies toward US tech firms. More

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      ‘Tremendous uncertainty’ for cancer research as US officials target mRNA vaccines

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      As US regulators restrict Covid mRNA vaccines and as independent vaccine advisers re-examine the shots, scientists fear that an unlikely target could be next: cancer research.Messenger RNA, or mRNA, vaccines have shown promise in treating and preventing cancers that have often been difficult to address, such as pancreatic cancer, brain tumors and others.But groundbreaking research could stall as federal and state officials target mRNA shots, including ending federal funding for bird flu mRNA vaccines, restricting who may receive existing mRNA vaccines and, in some places, proposing laws against the vaccines.The Trump administration has also implemented unprecedented cuts to cancer research, among other research cuts and widespread layoffs at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).At least 16 grants involving the word “mRNA” have been terminated or frozen, according to the crowdsourced project Grant Watch, and scientists have been told to remove mentions of mRNA vaccines from their research applications, KFF Health News reported in March.Researchers fear that therapeutic cancer vaccines will get “swept up in that tidal wave” against mRNA vaccines, Aaron Sasson, chief of surgical oncology at Stony Brook University, said in April.When it comes to mRNA breakthroughs, “the next couple of years are the most critical”, Elias Sayour, a professor for pediatric oncology research at the University of Florida, said.“If the progress we’ve made to date – which has been prodigious – if that is just stopped or stymied, it can absolutely affect the trajectory and the arc,” he said.The uncertainty around mRNA specifically, and research broadly, could also discourage researchers and institutions from beginning new projects, he said.“If we continue to seize on these gains in the next 10, 20 years, I do see a scenario where we’ve completely transformed how we take care of a large swath of human disease,” he said.Research on mRNA cancer vaccines has been under way for more than a decade, with more than 120 clinical trials on treating and preventing cancers. mRNA shots have shown promise for preventing the return of head and neck cancer; lymphoma; breast cancer, which accounts for 11.6% of all cancer deaths in the US; colorectal cancer; lung cancer; and kidney cancer, among others.Pancreatic cancer has a 10% survival rate and is the second leading cause of cancer deaths in the US, but in a small study, about half of the patients who received an mRNA vaccine did not see their cancer return, and they still had strong immune responses three years later.Early mRNA vaccine trials also indicated the recurrence of melanoma could be cut in half. And a small study co-authored by Sayour on glioblastoma showed the vaccines started affecting the tumors within 48 hours.Like any vaccine, mRNA cancer vaccines train the body to recognize and destroy harmful cells.Unlike foreign pathogens, such as infectious diseases, cancer is caused by the growth of the patient’s own cells.Some cancer vaccines are highly personalized, using a patient’s own cancer cells to treat their tumors or train their immune system to kill off those dangerous cells if they recur.“The ability to create specific vaccines for patients has tremendous, tremendous promise, but that was technology not possible five or 10 years ago,” said Sasson. “It really is a shift in the paradigm of how we treat cancers.”Researchers are also investigating vaccines that would target cancer cells more broadly by identifying “fingerprints” of certain cancers, said Sayour.Additionally, the vaccines could be created for other conditions, such as type 1 diabetes and multiple sclerosis, he said.“It has potential to get rid of a lot of the chronic morbidity we see from disease, to cure diseases that are degenerative, to overcome cancer evolution and cure patients,” Sayour said. “mRNA could be the healthcare that the movable-type printing press was for human knowledge.”Yet federal and state decision-makers have targeted mRNA vaccines in recent months.Vinay Prasad, director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), reportedly overrode scientists at the agency to limit some Covid vaccines, including a new mRNA shot from Moderna, to children older than 12. Prasad also introduced similar limitations on the Covid shot from Novavax, which does not use mRNA.On Thursday, the FDA approved the original Covid mRNA vaccine from Moderna for children between the ages of six months and 11 years – but they narrowed its use to children with at least one underlying condition. (The vaccine for people older than 12 was approved in 2022.)Prasad argued, in two memos recently released by the FDA, that the risks of Covid had dropped, while “known and unknown” side-effects could outweigh the benefits of getting vaccinated.Covid remains a leading cause of death in the US, with 178 deaths in the week ending 7 June, the last week for which the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) offers complete data.At the meeting of the CDC’s advisory committee on immunization practices (ACIP) in June, two of the new vaccine advisers – appointed by the health and human services (HHS) secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, after he fired the previous 17 advisers – broached the safety of Covid mRNA vaccines, indicating future scrutiny of these shots.Vicky Pebsworth, a registered nurse who has volunteered for years with the National Vaccine Information Center, said she was “very concerned” about side-effects from the Covid mRNA shots and asked for more data on safety, including “reproductive toxicity”.Shortly before being appointed to the ACIP, Pebsworth and the founder of the National Vaccine Information Center argued that the FDA should not recommend mRNA Covid-19 shots for anyone “until adequate scientific evidence demonstrates safety and effectiveness for both the healthy and those who are elderly or chronically ill”.At the June ACIP meeting, Retsef Levi, a professor of operations management at the MIT Sloan School of Management, said he believed mRNA side-effects were “being reported at rates that are far exceeding other vaccines even when you normalize to the number of doses, which does suggest something, I think”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionPreviously, Levi argued: “The evidence is mounting and indisputable that mRNA vaccines cause serious harm including death, especially among young people. We have to stop giving them immediately!”Another new ACIP adviser, Robert Malone, has also repeatedly argued against mRNA vaccines.In 2021, Kennedy, then chair of the anti-vaccine organization Children’s Health Defense, petitioned the FDA to revoke all approvals, and ban future approvals, of all Covid vaccines. He has called Covid shots the “deadliest vaccine ever made”.In May, Kennedy changed Covid vaccine recommendations from “should” to “may” for children, and eliminated the recommendation for pregnant women entirely.Also in May, the US canceled $766m in contracts for research on mRNA vaccines against H5N1 bird flu. Investment in the mRNA vaccine was not “scientifically or ethically justifiable”, Andrew Nixon, the HHS communications director, said in statements to the media, adding that the “mRNA technology remains under-tested”.Millions of mRNA vaccines have been given around the world, and the vaccines have been shown to be safe and effective in multiple studies.Bans or limitations on mRNA vaccinations have been introduced in seven states. One such bill in Idaho sought to pause “gene therapy immunizations” for 10 years – a category in which they incorrectly place Covid vaccines, and which could affect other therapeutics.Similarly, in Washington state, commissioners in Franklin county passed a resolution urging the local health facility to stop providing and promoting gene-therapy vaccines; they also incorrectly included Covid mRNA shots in this category.“There’s this scorched-earth mentality now, but I’m hopeful that once the dust settles, we’ll be able to reinstate or allow vaccine work for cancer purposes to proceed,” Sasson said.Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the US, and two in five people will be diagnosed with some form of cancer in their lifetime.There are currently only two FDA-approved vaccines that prevent cancer – hepatitis B and human papillomavirus (HPV) – and both have been targeted by anti-vaccine activists.In January, Trump hosted the launch of Stargate AI at the White House. The project could eventually identify cancers and develop mRNA vaccines in days, Larry Ellison, the chair of the tech company Oracle who is involved with the project, said at the launch.The project will be funded by private, not federal, dollars, but the work on cancer would draw upon research on cancer and mRNA, among other fields.Yet the Trump administration has slashed other critical funding for cancer research, prevention and treatment.The administration canceled more than $180m in grants through the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in the first three months of its term, and proposed cutting $2.7bn from the cancer center in the next NIH budget.The administration has cut back funding for some family planning providers, which frequently offer screenings for HPV and other cancer markers.Lawmakers have also made enormous cuts to Medicaid and insurance through the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which could mean uninsured and underinsured people wait longer for cancer treatment – or forgo it entirely.“There’s the potential for great harm, for massive public health issues to be set aside during this really broad approach of canceling research,” said Sasson. “There’s significant harm that’s going to happen by these sweeping changes.”For scientists who still have funding or those who are entering the field, “there’s tremendous uncertainty as to what the future will look like”, Sasson said.But he is optimistic that mRNA vaccines for cancer and other illnesses will be able to move forward.Scientists are often portrayed as “just trying to survive” funding cuts, but that’s not entirely accurate, said Sayour, before adding: “I don’t think many people in my field do this because they’re just trying to survive. I would want nothing more, honest to God, than to put myself out of business. We do this because we want to make a difference.”Sayour echoed concerns about both indirect and direct forces shaping progress on mRNA vaccines.“But I also want to be optimistic that our best days are ahead of us,” he said. More

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      Trump news at a glance: Trump tours Texas disaster zone as administration dodges questions over future of Fema

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      Donald Trump has defended the state and federal response to deadly flooding in Texas, while administration officials continue to dodge questions about his plans to abolish the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema).Speaking at a round table in Kerrville, Texas, Trump said Fema deployed multiple emergency response units and praised all the officials involved in what he said was an effective and swift response.“Every American should be inspired by what has taken place,” Trump said. He called a reporter a “bad person” for asking a question about families of the dead who are saying that their loved ones could have been saved had emergency warnings gone out before the flooding. Trump said: “I think this has been heroism. This has been incredible, the job you’ve all done.”Here are the key US politics stories at a glance:Trump defends Texas flood handling as disaster tests vow to shutter FemaDuring a trip on Friday to look at the devastation caused by the catastrophic flooding in Texas, Donald Trump claimed that state and federal officials had done an “incredible job”, saying of the disaster that he had “never seen anything like this”.The trip comes as he has remained conspicuously quiet about his previous promises to do away with the federal agency in charge of disaster relief.Read the full storyState department issues first termination orders to staffThe US state department has begun issuing the first of more than 1,350 termination notices as part of a huge reorganisation of US’s diplomatic corps under the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, according to internal documents and US diplomats at the state department on Friday.Career diplomats and other staff began to receive the notices on Friday morning, days after the supreme court lifted a ban on the Trump administration moving forward with mass firings of government employees that will affect hundreds of thousands of federal workers.“Hearing ‘I got mine!’ around the floor,” one current state department employee told the Guardian.Read the full storyWorker dies after chaotic immigration raid at California farmA farm worker died on Friday from injuries sustained a day earlier in raids on two California cannabis farm sites as US immigration authorities confirmed they arrested 200 workers after a tense standoff with authorities.Jaime Alanis’s death was confirmed in a social media post by the United Farm Workers advocacy group. “We tragically can confirm that a farm worker has died of injuries they sustained as a result of yesterday’s immigration enforcement action,” the post read.Read the full storyUS border czar doesn’t know fate of men deported to South SudanTom Homan, the US border czar, has said he does not know what happened to the eight men deported to South Sudan after the Trump administration resumed sending migrants to countries that are not their place of origin, known as third countries.“They’re free as far as we’re concerned. They’re free, they’re no longer in our custody, they’re in Sudan,” Homan told Politico on Friday. “Will they stay in Sudan? I don’t know.”Read the full storyTrump to resume weapons deliveries to Ukraine through Nato alliesDonald Trump appears poised to deliver weapons to Ukraine by selling them first to Nato allies in a major policy shift for his administration amid frustrations with Vladimir Putin over stalling negotiations to end the war in Ukraine.Read the full storyTrump yanks $15m in research into Pfas on US farmsThe Trump administration has killed nearly $15m in research into Pfas contamination of US farmland, bringing to a close studies that public health advocates say are essential for understanding a worrying source of widespread food contamination.The administration’s move is “not just stupid, it’s evil”, a former EPA attorney said.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      Myanmar’s military leader praised Trump and asked him to lift sanctions, as the junta sought to capitalize on a tariff letter from the US president believed to be Washington’s first public recognition of its rule.

      Trans teenagers who say gender-affirming care saved their lives are protesting as two leading US hospitals halt their treatments.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 10 July 2025. More