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      Trump’s military pressure on Maduro evokes Latin America’s coup-ridden past

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      The ghosts of sometimes deadly Latin American coups of the past are being evoked by Donald Trump’s relentless military buildup targeting Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s autocratic socialist leader, whom Washington has branded a narco-terrorist.Salvador Allende, the democratically elected Marxist president of Chile toppled in a military coup in 1973, and Rafael Trujillo, the longstanding dictator of the Dominican Republic who was assassinated in 1961 in an ambush organized by political opponents, are just two regional leaders whose fates serve as a warning to Maduro.Allende is believed to have killed himself, although some doubt that explanation, as troops stormed the presidential palace in the Chilean capital, Santiago, in a coup – fomented by then president Richard Nixon’s administration – that ushered in the brutally repressive military regime of Gen Augusto Pinochet.The CIA is believed to have supplied the weapons used to kill Trujillo.Guatemala’s elected president, Jacobo Arbenz, escaped into exile after being overthrown in a 1954 coup also instigated by the CIA. But the event triggered a 30-year civil war that killed an estimated 150,000 people and resulted in 50,000 disappearances.The agency is also thought to have made at least eight unsuccessful attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro, the leader of Cuba’s communist regime, which is still in power and is closely allied to Maduro.The plot to depose Castro also included the failed Bay of Pigs invasion carried out by Cuban exiles and organized by the CIA in the early months of John F Kennedy’s presidency in 1961, but which was defeated by Cuba’s armed forces.Now, as the US stages its biggest naval buildup in the region since the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, some believe Maduro’s life is equally at risk.Washington is preparing to carry out military strikes imminently inside Venezuela on already pinpointed targets that have been identified as military facilities used to smuggle drugs, according to reports.US officials are leaving little doubt that this could lead to fatal consequences for Maduro.“Maduro is about to find himself trapped and might soon discover that he cannot flee the country even if he decided to,” the Miami Herald quoted a source with close knowledge of US military planning as saying. “What’s worse for him, there is now more than one general willing to capture and hand him over, fully aware that one thing is to talk about death, and another to see it coming.”The Trump administration has offered a $50m bounty for information leading to the arrest or conviction of the Venezuelan leader, after announcing in August that it was doubling the $25m reward initially offered during Trump’s first presidency.Explaining his decision this month to authorize covert CIA actions against Venezuela, Trump pointedly refused to say whether US forces were authorized to “take out” Maduro. However, Fulton Armstrong, a former CIA Latin America analyst, said the intense security surrounding the Venezuelan leader in effect rendered the reward a “dead or alive” proposition, meaning any attempt to snatch him is likely to result in his death.“Anybody who’s going to try to take him is going to be so heavily armed that any defense that he put up would lead to them pulling triggers,” said Armstrong.“Let’s say it’s locals and they want the bounty. Most of them will assume that they’ll get the bounty dead or alive. Our forces would be a little bit more disciplined, but then imagine the adrenaline that anybody trying to do a snatch would have coursing through their veins. They’re going to be trigger-happy.“Only a fool would think that they can go in there and say, ‘OK, let me put handcuffs on you and escort you to the car.’ That’s not how it’s going to work.”Maduro has survived at least one apparent attempt on his life, when two drones exploded as he was speaking at a military parade in Caracas in 2018. Television footage shows several members of his security team rushing to his side to shield him after the explosions.Maduro accused neighboring Colombia of being responsible, although some opponents suggested the episode was a false flag operation staged to win sympathy.In May 2020, Venezuelan security forces foiled an attempt by about 60 dissidents, accompanied by two former US Green Berets, to capture and oust him in a plot that involved infiltrating the country by sea. The episode was afterwards dubbed the “Bay of Piglets” in mocking reference to the botched plot against Castro.But a fresh sign of Washington’s determination to get its hands on Maduro emerged this week when the Associated Press reported that a US agent, working for the Department of Homeland Security, had unsuccessfully tried to bribe the Venezuelan president’s pilot into diverting his plane to enable American authorities to capture him.The Trump administration has deployed a daunting array of military hardware off the Venezuelan coast in what appears to be an intimidating statement of intent to bring about regime change in the country.Last week, the Pentagon announced that the USS Gerald Ford, the biggest aircraft carrier in the US navy, would sail from Europe to join a military force consisting of destroyers armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles, B-1 and B-52 bombers, and special forces helicopters.At least 57 people have been killed in more than a dozen US military strikes on alleged drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean and Pacific. Washington has accused Maduro and other senior Venezuelan officials of being at the head of a cartel smuggling drugs into the US. Maduro denies the charge and experts dispute the significance of Venezuela’s role in the illegal drug trade.Trump has intensified the pressure further by authorizing the CIA to carry out covert activities inside Venezuela, although the contents of his instructions are classified and unknown.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionArmstrong argued that Trump was aware that his policy could prove fatal for Maduro.“What person wouldn’t be aware of that potential because you’re trying to take out a head of state, a tenacious head of state,” he said.“We do assassinations on a routine basis of people that we suspect of not even being senior members of groups that we consider to be terrorists. If we’re authorizing the assassination of regular combatants in the war on terror, how crazy is it to think that the administration would authorize the use of lethal means, if necessary, to snatch the head of a cartel.”Another former CIA officer, speaking on condition of anonymity because of their previous involvement in targeted assassinations in the Middle East, said decisions to authorize such killings were normally taken with great care and based on threat severity.“It is very specific and usually because there is a lethal threat to America and our allies. They are done super carefully,” the former agent said.“The president and the [national security council] come up with the plan, and then they decide who’s going to take the shot … Is it going to be the military [or some other agency], will it lead to war?”High-profile assassinations in recent times include Osama bin Laden by a Navy Seal team in 2011; Qassem Suleimani, the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Qods force, killed by a drone strike ordered by Trump in 2020; and Ayman al-Zawahiri, Bin Laden’s former deputy in al-Qaida, who was killed by a drone in Afghanistan in 2022 during Joe Biden’s presidency.“Bin Laden was an easy decision – he killed thousands of Americans, and even before the 9/11 attacks he had done lesser stuff,” said the ex-officer. “Suleimani, too, was easy because he had killed so many Americans.”Maduro, however, presents a less clearcut target, even though Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, has described the Venezuelan regime as “the al-Qaida of the western hemisphere”.“The idea of going after a guy, Maduro, who is a sitting leader of a sovereign country, whether we like the country or not, just seems really strange and disproportionate,” the former agent continued. “Maduro is not Hitler. Bin Laden, Suleimani and al-Zawahiri were not heads of countries.“If you look at our history, even in the last 40 or 50, years, we’ve been staying away from going after world leaders.”Disclosures about the CIA’s role in backing coups and assassination attempts on foreign leaders during the 1950s and 1960s led to committees being established in Congress to oversee the agency’s activities.While there is no evidence that Trump has authorized Maduro’s assassination, John Ratcliffe, the CIA director, told senators during his confirmation hearings that he would make the agency less risk averse and more willing to conduct covert action when ordered by the president.Armstrong suggested the administration’s preferred course was to goad Maduro’s opponents in the Venezuelan military and other parts of society to topple him in a coup, setting the scene for a democratic transition while precluding the need for direct US action.But some analysts believe such a scenario would probably spawn a replacement loyal to the leftist movement spearheaded by Maduro’s late predecessor, Hugo Chávez – with a full-blown democratic transformation potentially taking years to bear fruit.Angelo Rivero Santos, a former Venezuelan diplomat in the country’s US embassy and now an academic at Georgetown University, said the chances of a coup were likely to be dashed by domestic realities and the fact that even Maduro’s critics have rallied around the flag in response to recent US pressure. .“The year 2025 is not 1973,” he said, referring to the coup that deposed Chile’s Allende. “Statements from the opposition show that this is not heavily supported inside the country.” More

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      Labor activist takes on Teamsters leader allying with Trump: ‘He doesn’t represent the workers’

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      The Teamsters International president, Sean O’Brien, is putting the “working class in jeopardy” by allying with Donald Trump, according to a prominent labor activist challenging his leadership of the powerful union.O’Brien has “no business being a labor leader” and “shouldn’t be trusted”, Richard Hooker Jr – who is running against O’Brien’s re-election next year – told the Guardian.Hooker has emerged as a leading critic of O’Brien, who described Trump as “our enemy” during his first term in the White House, while criticizing the Teamsters leadership at the time for lack of opposition to Trump, and said it was “unfortunate” so many Teamsters members voted for Trump during his victorious campaign to lead the union in 2021.As Trump marched back to power, however, O’Brien pivoted. He met privately with the president last January, and hailed him as “one tough SOB” during an unprecedented address at last summer’s Republican national convention.“When he was running, the first time he was saying the truth about Trump,” Hooker said, suggesting O’Brien made his early attacks on Trump just to win election as Teamsters president. “Now that he’s elected, he has decided to go along with Trump and everything that he’s done. But not just Trump, also the ruling class, the employer class, billionaire class, because that’s who Trump represents. He doesn’t represent the workers.”View image in fullscreenAfter O’Brien’s convention speech, the Teamsters – one of the largest unions in the US, representing more than 1.3 million workers – controversially declined to endorse a candidate in November’s presidential election. The union had endorsed every Democrat on the ticket since 2000.The Teamsters deferred comment to the O’Brien slate’s campaign. O’Brien and his campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment.With O’Brien up for re-election next year, Hooker, the secretary-treasurer and principal officer of Teamsters Local 623 in Philadelphia, is leading a rival slate of other union leadership candidates against O’Brien’s slate.The election will take place November 2026. Hooker’s campaign is currently gathering union signatures to make the ballot for the Teamsters national convention in June, where they will vie for 5% of delegates to make the ballot for the November election.Born and raised a preacher’s son around Fayetteville, North Carolina, Hooker began working at UPS shortly after high school in 1999 while attending Drexel University. As a package handler at a UPS warehouse near Philadelphia international airport, he became disillusioned with union leadership as a shop steward with the Teamsters when grievances about their contract were dismissed.His bid to lead Local 623 came up short in 2016. But in 2020, the married father of four became the first Black man to ever lead the union, which represents workers at companies including UPS and Greyhound.Now Hooker is running to replace O’Brien at the top of one of the most influential unions in the US, due to frustrations over his decision to align with Trump, the 2023 UPS contract as UPS recently reported cutting 48,000 jobs, and allegations of intimidation against criticizing O’Brien’s administration.View image in fullscreen“You have your supposed leader flirting with someone who does not care if you have a pension – someone who does not care if you have healthcare, who does not care if you have the [National Labor Relations Board], if you have protect protections at the [Equal Employment Opportunity Commission] or [Occupational Safety and Health Administration],” said Hooker. “If you align yourself with someone who is OK with being in a relationship with that type of person, then they have no business being a labor leader, because what you’re doing is you’re putting your members and the rest of the working class in jeopardy.“I get the whole bipartisanship, I get working across the aisle. I get that. But when someone has a history of annihilating workers and the working class, then we have no business being with that person.”Hooker also wants the Teamsters to re-affiliate with the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of labor unions in the US. He would be the first Black man to lead the union. He has already started to receive harassment after launching his campaign, including an anonymous voicemail left at his office earlier this week which used racist language.View image in fullscreenRepublicans and Trump have often cited O’Brien in claims that Republicans are making inroads with labor and the working class, including from the Republican senator Markwayne Mullin, who sparred with O’Brien during a Senate hearing in 2023, but recently appeared on his podcast.Since Trump took office in January, the fallout from O’Brien’s relationship with Trump has intensified. Teamsters has also faced criticism for hiring Peter Cvjetanovic – whose face became a symbol of the 2017 Unite the Right white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia – for an administrative job at the union’s headquarters in Washington DC. Cvjetanovic was later reportedly fired.O’Brien has maintained regular communication with Trump throughout his presidency, he claimed in an interview earlier this year with the Hollywood Reporter, while making several appearances on conservative media shows, including podcasts led by Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, and Bari Weiss, where he said Trump’s presidency so far was “a solid B” grade for the Teamsters.Under O’Brien, Teamsters has also significantly shifted its political donations, pouring money into Republican congressional candidates and groups rather than predominantly Democrats.“What has the union got from Trump? What have we got? We haven’t gotten anything now,” said Hooker. “Reaching across the aisle to some Republicans who have an issue of working with labor and making things better for labor, I understand that, and I agree with that.“But Trump does not have that résumé or history of doing anything for workers. Not one single thing. He comes in and eliminates contracts for workers. Even before he got elected, he told Elon Musk that he likes what he does when people go out on strike, he eliminates them. That’s who he is.” More

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      Trump news at a glance: Friday rulings hamper administration on food stamps, voting access

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      President Trump received a trio of legal setbacks Friday related to the government shutdown and his attempts to tweak voting access in US elections.First, two federal judges issued back-to-back rulings in separate cases ordering the administration to use contingency funds to continue paying for food stamps under the Snap program.One judge in Rhode Island blocked the Trump administration from suspending all food aid for millions of Americans, in a case brought by a group of US cities, non-profit organizations and a trade union. At almost the same time, in a separate but similar case, a judge in Massachusetts ruled that the government must continue to fund the program that helps low-income households stave off food insecurity, in a case brought by the Democratic attorneys general from 22 states and the District of Columbia and three governors who sued the administration.And later Friday, a US district judge in Washington DC ruled that Trump’s proof-of-citizenship directive to overhaul US elections was unconstitutional.“Because our constitution assigns responsibility for election regulation to the states and to Congress, this court holds that the president lacks the authority to direct such changes,” judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly wrote in her opinion.That’s a blow to the administration and its allies who have argued that such a mandate is necessary to restore public confidence that only Americans are voting in US elections.Trump administration blocked from suspending Snap benefits for millions of AmericansTwo federal judges issued back-to-back rulings on Friday in separate cases ordering the Trump administration to use contingency funds to continue paying for food stamps during the government shutdown.A federal judge in Rhode Island blocked the Trump administration from suspending all food aid for millions of Americans, in a case brought by a group of US cities, non-profit organizations and a trade union.Read the full storyTrump can’t require citizenship proof on the federal voting form, judge rulesDonald Trump’s request to add a documentary proof of citizenship requirement to the federal voter registration form cannot be enforced, a federal judge ruled today.US district judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in Washington DC sided with Democratic and civil rights groups that sued the Trump administration over his executive order to overhaul US elections. She ruled that the proof-of-citizenship directive is an unconstitutional violation of the separation of powers, dealing a blow to the administration and its allies.Read the full storyJustice department seeks 2020 election records from Georgia countyTrump’s justice department on Thursday asked election officials in Fulton county, Georgia, to turn over records related to the 2020 election, a request that underscores how the administration is trying to revive one of the president’s biggest falsehoods about the election he lost five years ago.Investigators have cleared Fulton county of malfeasance in 2020. Nonetheless, a Republican majority on the board voted to reopen the investigation last year.Read the full storyHarrison Ford lays into Trump on climateHarrison Ford has said that Donald Trump’s assault on measures to address the climate crisis “scares the shit out of me” and makes the US president among the worst criminals in history.In a blistering attack, Ford told the Guardian Trump “doesn’t have any policies, he has whims. It scares the shit out of me. The ignorance, the hubris, the lies, the perfidy. [Trump] knows better, but he’s an instrument of the status quo and he’s making money, hand over fist, while the world goes to hell in a handbasket.”Read the full storyHow Stephen Miller is creating an ‘anti-immigration machine’The historic shifts in US immigration under Donald Trump have been dictated by Stephen Miller, the president’s immigration czar, who in recent months has turned the state department’s visa and refugee operations into what some current and former diplomats have described as a personal fiefdom.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, has said she will not suspend the US government’s aggressive immigration crackdown in Illinois over Halloween, denying a request from the state’s governor that children might enjoy the holiday “without fear”.

      Trump called on the Senate to scrap the filibuster, so that the Republican majority can bypass Democrats and reopen the federal government. The Senate majority leader, John Thune, a Republican known for defending Senate traditions, has repeatedly rejected proposals to weaken or remove the 60-vote rule.

      What is the filibuster and why does Trump want to get rid of it? Here’s what you need to know.

      More than half of Americans disapprove of Donald 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. According to the poll, 56% of the respondents disagree with Trump’s recent move while 28% are in favor of it.

      White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller was the driving force behind a purge of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents who had investigated Donald Trump, a new book reveals.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened 30 October 2025. More

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      Judge rules Trump can’t require citizenship proof on federal voting form – US politics live

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      Donald Trump’s request to add a documentary proof of citizenship requirement to the federal voter registration form cannot be enforced, a federal judge ruled today.US district judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in Washington DC sided with Democratic and civil rights groups that sued the Trump administration over his executive order to overhaul US elections.She ruled that the proof-of-citizenship directive is an unconstitutional violation of the separation of powers, dealing a blow to the administration and its allies.“Because our Constitution assigns responsibility for election regulation to the States and to Congress, this Court holds that the President lacks the authority to direct such changes,” Kollar-Kotelly wrote in her opinion.The ruling grants the plaintiffs a partial summary judgment that prohibits the proof-of-citizenship requirement from going into effect. It says the US Election Assistance Commission, which has been considering adding the requirement to the federal voter form, is permanently barred from taking action to do so.Donald Trump arriving at Palm Beach international airport earlier, in West Palm Beach, Florida. He’s spending the weekend at his Mar-A-Lago estate in Palm Beach.The White House has announced a new rule restricting the ability of credentialed journalists to freely access the offices of press secretary Karoline Leavitt and other top communications officials in the West Wing, near the Oval Office.A memorandum issued late today bans journalists from accessing Room 140, also known as “Upper Press”, without a prior appointment, citing the need to protect potentially sensitive material. It said the change would take effect immediately.It follows restrictions put in place earlier this month for credentialed reporters at the Department of Defense, who were asked to sign a pledge not to gather any information – including unclassified documents – that had not been authorized for release. It prompted dozens of journalists to vacate their office in the Pentagon and returned their credentials. The department promptly announced a “next generation of the Pentagon press corps” featuring 60 journalists from far-right outlets.Earlier today, Donald Trump announced that he has renovated the bathroom inside the Lincoln bedroom at the White House, and shared an image of the lavish white-and-black-marbled remodel.“I renovated the Lincoln Bathroom in the White House. It was renovated in the 1940s in an art deco green tile style, which was totally inappropriate for the Lincoln Era,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform, attaching a photo showing that version. “I did it in black and white polished Statuary marble. This was very appropriate for the time of Abraham Lincoln and, in fact, could be the marble that was originally there!”It comes as Trump has renovated other parts of the White House, including his heavily criticized demolition of the East Wing to build a $300m ballroom, paving over the Rose Garden and decorating the Oval Office with gold.The Lincoln bedroom was originally used by Abraham Lincoln as his office and cabinet room.Nancy Mace, a South Carolina Republican congressperson, caused a fracas when she cursed at and berated law enforcement at the Charleston international airport yesterday, Wired reports.According to an incident report, Mace cursed loudly at police officers and made repeated derogatory comments towards them. “She repeatedly stated we were ‘fucking incompetent’, and ‘this is no way to treat a fucking US representative’,” the report states.The report also says that a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) supervisor told officers that Mace had treated their staff similarly and they would be reporting her to their superiors.“Any other person in the airport acting and talking the way she did, our department would have been dispatch (sic) and we would have addressed the behavior,” the incident report concludes.Donald Trump’s request to add a documentary proof of citizenship requirement to the federal voter registration form cannot be enforced, a federal judge ruled today.US district judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in Washington DC sided with Democratic and civil rights groups that sued the Trump administration over his executive order to overhaul US elections.She ruled that the proof-of-citizenship directive is an unconstitutional violation of the separation of powers, dealing a blow to the administration and its allies.“Because our Constitution assigns responsibility for election regulation to the States and to Congress, this Court holds that the President lacks the authority to direct such changes,” Kollar-Kotelly wrote in her opinion.The ruling grants the plaintiffs a partial summary judgment that prohibits the proof-of-citizenship requirement from going into effect. It says the US Election Assistance Commission, which has been considering adding the requirement to the federal voter form, is permanently barred from taking action to do so.Donald Trump is set to sit down with Norah O’Donnell, a CBS anchor, this afternoon, Semafor is reporting, in what would be the president’s first interview with the network since its parent company Paramount settled a $16m lawsuit with him.Trump sued CBS News and Paramount over the editing of an interview with Kamala Harris during the 2024 presidential election. Despite serious doubts about whether Trump’s legal argument would stand up in court, Paramount decided to settle the lawsuit for $16m in July.According to Semafor’s report:
      CBS is in the midst of a deliberate repositioning aimed, at least in part, at gesturing to the center and the right.
      The network decided against renewing the contract of Stephen Colbert, the late night host who has regularly needled Trump and expressed support for mainstream Democrats (critics, internally and externally, said Colbert was increasingly too expensive to maintain).
      Following new owner David Ellison’s acquisition of Paramount, he quickly bought the Free Press and installed its founder Bari Weiss atop CBS News; Weiss had made a name for herself as an opinion writer who critiqued what she believed was the illiberal and censorious online left in academia, progressive politics and the news media. CBS also appointed a new ombudsman who had previously run the Hudson Institute, a conservative thinktank.
      In recent months, the Trump administration’s pressure has altered editorial policies at the network. CBS agreed earlier this year to release full transcripts of future 60 Minutes presidential interviews. And following criticism from homeland security secretary Kristi Noem’s team over an interview on the network’s Sunday show, Face The Nation, CBS News announced that in the future it would only air unedited interviews on the program.
      Trump has returned the favor by publicly nodding in the network’s direction. On Air Force One earlier this month, he speculated with the press corps about who would be the next anchor of CBS Evening News, and praised the Ellisons.
      “Larry Ellison is great, and his son, David, is great. They’re friends of mine. They’re big supporters of mine. And they’ll do the right thing,” Trump said. “And it’s got great potential. CBS has great potential.”
      In addition to praise from the president and some one-on-one access, Trump’s decision, for the moment, to bless Paramount could help it improve its business in other ways. The New York Post reported that people close to Trump believed Paramount had the inside track with federal regulators in its bid to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery; its most likely rival potential bidder, Comcast, faces a more steep regulatory hurdle if Trump’s statements about the company are considered.
      Donald Trump said earlier today that the United States and Canada will not restart trade talks, but that Canadian PM Mark Carney had apologized to him for an Ontario political ad that featured Ronald Reagan saying tariffs spell disaster.“I like [Carney] a lot but what they did was wrong,” Trump said. “He apologized for what they did with the commercial because it was a false commercial.”Trump last week called off negotiations over the ad aired by the Canadian province, adding that he was raising tariffs on Canadian goods by an additional 10%.The ad by the Ontario government featured former president Reagan, who was known for his support of free marks and free trade, saying that tariffs on foreign goods lead to trade wars and job losses.A ground stop had been in effect at New York’s JFK airport until 7.30pm ET due to staffing shortages in the air traffic system, according to the New York City emergency management department, but according to Reuters, it was lifted around 3.30pm ET.In a statement earlier on Friday, the New York City department had said that flights headed to JFK were being held at their departure airports.The department also said that JFK, as well as nearby airports LaGuardia and Newark are all “under FAA traffic restrictions” this evening and are under ground delay programs due to staffing shortages and wind in the region.As of 3.30pm ET, it seems as though the ground delays are still in place.New York governor Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, has called on the Trump administration to “release emergency nutrition assistance for the 3 million New Yorkers set to lose their SNAP benefits tomorrow”.“No state should have to sue the federal government to ensure families can put food on the table,” she said. “But when Washington Republicans refused to act, New York took them to court to mitigate this crisis.”Hochul said that her administration “remains prepared for the worst” and is “fast-tracking over $100 million for food banks and pantries” and has declared a state of emergency.Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar, the ranking member of the Senate agriculture committee, which oversees the food aid program, has released a statement following the court’s decision decision, saying that Trump officials “now have no excuse to withhold food assistance from Americans”.“The court’s decision confirms what we have said all week: The administration is choosing not to feed Americans in need, despite knowing that it is legally required to do so,” said Klobuchar. “The court was clear: the administration is ‘required to use those Contingency Funds as necessary for the SNAP program.’”If the administration decides not to issue Snap, Klobuchar said that it “is purely a cruel political decision, not a legal one.”“They should immediately act – as the court has required – to ensure food assistance continues to go to families in need” she added.

      Two federal judges ruled almost simultaneously this afternoon that the Trump administration must continue to fund Snap, the nation’s biggest food aid program, using contingency funds during the government shutdown. The rulings came a day before the US Department of Agriculture planned to freeze payments to the program, which serves about one in eight (or 42 million) Americans.

      The US will not send any high-level officials to the upcoming Cop30 climate summit in Brazil, a White House official told Reuters, alleviating some concern among world leaders that Washington would send a team to scupper the talks.

      Public tours in the White House will resume in December, according to a statement from the office of the first lady. They had been suspended indefinitely in August amid construction for Trump’s controversial $300m ballroom project.

      Donald Trump denied that he is considering strikes inside Venezuela, even amid reports that his administration may expand its counter-drug campaign in the Caribbean. It comes as the UN high commissioner for human rights said today that US military strikes against boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean allegedly carrying illegal drugs from South America are “unacceptable” and must stop.

      The president reaffirmed that the US would resume nuclear testing, and did not answer directly when asked whether that would include the traditional underground nuclear tests common during the cold war. “You’ll find out very soon, but we’re going to do some testing,” Trump told reporters onboard Air Force One as he flew to Palm Beach, Florida, when asked about underground nuclear tests. “Other countries do it. If they’re doing to do it, we’re going to do it, okay?”

      A Republican-dominated Ohio panel adopted new US House districts that could boost the GOP’s chances of winning two additional seats in next year’s elections and aid Donald Trump’s efforts to hold on to a slim congressional majority. You can view the map here.

      Donald Trump has called on the Senate to scrap the filibuster, so that the Republican majority can bypass Democrats and reopen the federal government. The filibuster is a way for a relatively small group of senators to block action by the majority. The filibuster rule allows a minority of 41 senators to prevent a vote on most kinds of legislation. The Senate majority leader, John Thune, a Republican known for defending Senate traditions, has repeatedly rejected proposals to weaken or remove the 60-vote rule.
      A federal judge in Rhode Island has blocked the Trump administration’s plan to suspend all Snap food aid benefits for millions of Americans amid the ongoing government shutdown, Reuters reports.US district judge John McConnell in Providence issued a temporary restraining order at the behest of cities, nonprofits and a union who argued the US Department of Agriculture’s suspension of Snap starting from Saturday was unlawful, and told the administration it “must distribute” aid using a set of emergency funds – and potentially other sources – and pay the benefits as soon as possible.He ruled minutes after another judge in Boston ruled that the suspension was likely unlawful in a related case pursued by a coalition of Democratic-led states that also sought to avert the suspension.That judge has ordered the Trump administration to indicate by Monday if it would provide either full or partial SNAP benefits in November.“There is no doubt and it is beyond argument that irreparable harm will begin to occur if it hasn’t already occurred in the terror it has caused some people about the availability of funding for food, for their family,” McConnell said during a virtual hearing.The US will not send any high-level officials to the upcoming Cop30 climate summit in Brazil, a White House official has told Reuters, alleviating some concern among world leaders that Washington would send a team to scupper the talks.Brazil will host a high-level leaders’ summit next week before the two-week UN climate negotiations begin in the Amazonian city of Belem.Earlier this month, the US threatened to use visa restrictions and sanctions to retaliate against nations that would vote in favor of a plan put forward by the United Nations shipping agency, the International Maritime Organization (IMO), to reduce planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions from ocean shipping.Those tactics led a majority of countries at the IMO to vote to postpone by a year a decision on a global carbon price on international shipping. The White House official said Donald Trump has already made his administration’s views on multilateral climate action clear in his astonishing speech at last month’s United Nations general assembly, where he called climate change the world’s “greatest con job” and chided countries for setting climate policies that he said “have cost their countries fortunes”.“The president is directly engaging with leaders around the world on energy issues, which you can see from the historic trade deals and peace deals that all have a significant focus on energy partnerships,” the White House official told Reuters.The Trump administration has pursued bilateral energy deals in its trade negotiations to boost US liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports with countries like South Korea and also the European Union. On Friday, the US energy secretary, Chris Wright, said there is “room for great energy trade between China and the United States” given China’s need for natural gas as the two economic giants negotiate over tariffs.Trump announced on his first day in office that the US would exit the 10-year-old Paris climate agreement, taking effect in January 2026, and the state department has been reviewing the US’s engagement in multilateral environmental agreements. Earlier this year, the US also put pressure on countries negotiating a global treaty to reduce plastic pollution not to back an agreement that would set plastic production caps.The White House official told Reuters that “the tide is turning” on prioritizing climate change, pointing to a memo circulated this week by billionaire and longtime climate philanthropist and investor Bill Gates, who said it is time to pivot away from focusing on meeting global temperature goals and claimed that climate change will “not lead to humanity’s demise”.Public tours in the White House will resume in December, according to a statement from the office of the first lady.“The White House will reopen its doors for public tours on Tuesday, December 2, 2025, with an updated route offering guests the opportunity to experience the history and beauty of the People’s House. In celebration of the holiday season, all December tours will feature the White House Christmas decorations on the State Floor,” it said.Public tours were suspended indefinitely in August amid construction for Trump’s controversial $300m ballroom project.China “made a real mistake” by threatening to shut off exports of its rare earths, US treasury secretary Scott Bessent told the Financial Times (paywall) in an interview published today.US and Chinese leaders had reached an “equilibrium” but warned that China would not be able to keep using its critical minerals as a coercive tool, Bessent told the paper, adding that China “made a real mistake” by “firing shots” on rare earths. More

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      US judge blocks Trump order requiring proof of citizenship to vote

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      Donald Trump’s request to add a documentary proof of citizenship requirement to the federal voter registration form cannot be enforced, a federal judge ruled on Friday.US district judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in Washington DC, sided with Democratic and civil rights groups that sued the Trump administration over his executive order to overhaul US elections.She ruled that the proof-of-citizenship directive was an unconstitutional violation of the separation of powers, dealing a blow to the administration and its allies who have argued that such a mandate is necessary to restore public confidence that only Americans are voting in US elections.“Because our Constitution assigns responsibility for election regulation to the States and to Congress, this Court holds that the President lacks the authority to direct such changes,” Kollar-Kotelly wrote in her opinion.She further emphasized that on matters related to setting qualifications for voting and regulating federal election procedures “the Constitution assigns no direct role to the President in either domain.”Kollar-Kotelly echoed comments she made when she granted a preliminary injunction over the issue.The ruling grants the plaintiffs a partial summary judgment that prohibits the proof-of-citizenship requirement from going into effect. It says the US Election Assistance Commission, which has been considering adding the requirement to the federal voter form, is permanently barred from taking action to do so.A message seeking comment from the White House was not immediately returned.The lawsuit brought by the Democratic National Committee and various civil rights groups will continue to play out to allow the judge to consider other challenges to Trump’s order. That includes a requirement that all mailed ballots be received, rather than just postmarked, by election day.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOther lawsuits against Trump’s election executive order are ongoing.In early April, 19 Democratic state attorneys general asked a separate federal court to reject Trump’s executive order. Washington and Oregon, where virtually all voting is done with mailed ballots, followed with their own lawsuit against the order. More

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      Trump justice department seeks 2020 election records from Georgia county

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      The justice department on Thursday asked election officials in Fulton county, Georgia to turn over records related to the 2020 election, a request that underscores how the administration is trying to revive one of the president’s biggest falsehoods about the election he lost five years ago.Investigators have cleared Fulton county of malfeasance in 2020. Nonetheless, a Republican majority on the board voted to re-open the investigation last year. On the night of the 2024 presidential election, the board voted to subpoena a slew of documents. This summer, the board passed a resolution asking the justice department to intervene and help them get the documents. The subpoenas issued last year seek records related to voter lists, chain of custody forms, ballot images, security seals, and ballot scanner paperwork.The 30 October letter from the department’s civil rights division, obtained by the Guardian, asks Fulton county to turn over a slew of records that were subpoenaed by the state election board. The letter’s existence was first reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.“Transparency seems to have been frustrated at multiple turns in Georgia,” Harmeet Dhillon, a Trump ally who leads the civil rights division, wrote in the letter. She also said the voting section had received correspondence from “voter transparency advocates” of “multiple instances of government obstruction of transparency requests, including high-resolution ballot scans, signature verification documentation, and various metadata requests”. She asked the county to turn over the records within 15 days.A spokesperson for the Fulton county elections board did not immediately return a request for comment. A justice department spokesperson declined to comment beyond what was in the letter.The department’s request comes as the justice department has asked 40 states to turn over voter roll information and has sued eight states that have refused. The White House also recently hired Kurt Olsen, a lawyer who worked on cases seeking to overturn the 2020 election results to work on voting issues. Heather Honey, another prominent election denier whose misleading research was used to sow doubt about the 2020 election results, has also been appointed to an election-related role in the Department of Homeland Security.To justify its request, the justice department cited a provision of the Civil Rights Act that requires election officials to retain election records and gives the attorney general the right to request them. The law requires records be retained for 22 months after a federal election – a period that has long elapsed since the 2020 contest.The letter also said the department also needed the records to comply with two federal statutes, the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act.Justin Levitt, a law professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, said the federal statute that allows DoJ to request election records requires the justice department to provide a “basis” for requesting them. That was absent in Dhillon’s letter, he said.“In DoJ’s letter, I see a purpose: we want to check up on what you did,” he said. “But the letter just cites a general swath of federal statutes without saying anything about why there’s a basis to believe that the records they’re seeking will shed light on a federal statutory violation. [The] DoJ doesn’t just get to go fishing because it’s curious.” More

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      Trump administration blocked from suspending Snap benefits for millions of Americans

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      Two federal judges issued back-to-back rulings on Friday in separate cases ordering the Trump administration to use contingency funds to continue paying for food stamps during the government shutdown.A federal judge in Rhode Island on Friday afternoon blocked the Trump administration from suspending all food aid for millions of Americans, in a case brought by a group of US cities, non-profit organizations and a trade union.At almost the same time, in a separate but similar case, a federal judge in Massachusetts ruled that the government must continue to fund the program that helps low-income households stave off food insecurity, in a case brought by the Democratic attorneys general from 22 states and the District of Columbia and three governors who sued the administration.Without intervention, the US Department of Agriculture said it planned to suspend payments for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as Snap or food stamps, on Saturday, 1 November, putting millions of low-income households that rely on the benefits at risk of food insecurity and financial hardship.John McConnell, a US district judge in Providence, issued a temporary restraining order in the Rhode Island case at the behest of those plaintiffs. They had argued that the US Department of Agriculture’s suspension of Snap benefits due to kick in on Saturday was unlawful.Snap, the nation’s largest anti-hunger initiative, provides assistance to nearly 42 million – one in eight – low-income Americans each month. The USDA has said insufficient funds exist to pay full benefits, as issuing food stamps costs the public purse between $8.5bn and $9bn every month.The Trump administration contends the agency lacks authority to pay them until Congress passes a spending bill that will ending the enduring government shutdown which began on 1 October.The plaintiffs in the civil case being heard in Rhode Island are represented by the liberal legal advocacy group Democracy Forward. The group argued that the federal government’s decision to suspend the nutritional benefits was wrong and unlawful, as the USDA still had funds available to fulfill its obligation to fund the Snap program.Such available funding includes $5.25bn in contingency funds that Congress has previously provided for the USDA to use when “necessary to carry out program operations”, the plaintiffs said.Aside from the contingency funds, the plaintiffs argued that a separate fund with about $23bn in it could also be utilized to avoid what would be an unprecedented suspension of Snap benefits.In the Massachusetts case, the US district judge Indira Talwani in Boston gave the administration until Monday to say whether it would partly pay for the benefits for November with contingency money or fund them fully with additional funds.It wasn’t immediately clear how quickly the debit cards that beneficiaries use to buy groceries could be reloaded after the ruling. That process often takes one to two weeks.The rulings are likely to face appeals.In their challenge, the Democratic-led states argued that the agriculture department has the legal authority – and available funds – to at least partly maintain the program during the shutdown.“Because of [the] USDA’s actions, Snap benefits will be delayed for the first time since the program’s inception,” the states said in their complaint. “Worse still, [the] USDA suspended Snap benefits even though, on information and belief, it has funds available to it that are sufficient to fund all, or at least a substantial portion, of November Snap benefits.”The Trump administration has maintained that the department’s contingency fund is intended for natural disasters such as hurricanes, tornadoes and floods, not government shutdowns. The government has acknowledged that it has billions of federal dollars left, including emergency funds especially marked for Snap, but top officials have maintained they are unable to tap into those reserve funds.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe administration warned that a court order requiring it to use emergency reserves to fund Snap would be “operationally fraught”, arguing it could take weeks to deliver benefits and might leave families with less than half their normal monthly allotment. In court filings, officials noted that such a partial payment “has never been made – and for good reason”.The argument appears to contradict the department’s lapsed-funding plan, released in late September, which stated that Congress’s “evident” intent was for Snap operations to continue during a government shutdown and pointed to “multi-year contingency funds” that could be tapped in the event the closures dragged on. The plan has been removed from the department’s website.The USDA’s website now carries a strikingly partisan notice, accusing Senate Democrats, incorrectly, of shutting down the government to provide healthcare to undocumented immigrants and trans Americans. “Bottom line, the well has run dry,” the notice says. “At this time, there will be no benefits issued November 01.”The administration’s refusal to intervene underscored a broader strategy during the shutdown, now the second-longest in US history. Throughout the impasse, Trump has selectively reprogrammed federal funds to protect priorities central to his political agenda – such as paying troops and law enforcement officers, including those involved in immigration enforcement – while allowing other programs like Snap to starve.Bracing for the loss of federal nutrition assistance, food banks and pantries, already stretched thin amid rising food prices, were bracing for a surge in demand. Officials in states such as Virginia, Maryland, Louisiana, Hawaii and Minnesota have announced plans to tap state and local funds to provide food aid and assist food banks in the interim.The governors of New York, Delaware, Oregon and Virginia have declared the looming crisis a state of emergency, while states set aside millions to help offset the lapse of federal benefits.“Unlike Washington Republicans, I won’t sit idly by as families struggle to put food on the table,” New York’s governor, Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, announced on Thursday.In California, the Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, said he would deploy the California national guard under his command to support food banks and announced $80m in state support to fill the Snap gap.Reuters and the Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      CDC employees on chaos of being fired, rehired and fired again: ‘stuck in limbo’

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      As layoff notices swept through the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on 10 October, Aryn Melton Backus thought she would be safe this time.Then she received the email: she was part of a major reduction in force (RIF) during the US government shutdown. It wasn’t the first time she’d been fired from the CDC by email, nor the second.Backus has been terminated and then reinstated three times this year.Her experience demonstrates the inefficiencies and tumult at US health agencies as leaders continue cutting into the workforce and ending programs vital for Americans’ health.The latest round of shutdown RIFs is illegal, according to the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), which is among the unions representing federal workers that are suing the government to stop the layoffs. A quarter of the CDC has now been cut by multiple rounds of layoffs.Some employees who had to work without pay through the shutdown received RIF notices; others who were furloughed learned they would never return to their jobs. Employees who were supposed to be protected from RIFs by an ongoing lawsuit received them anyway. The human resources department at CDC was brought back from unpaid furlough in order to process about 1,300 layoffs – and then their own, as the entire HR department was eliminated.Some of the gutted departments are required by law to continue their work, despite having no employees. The ethics office and the institutional review board (IRB) were also ended, which means the CDC will no longer have oversight on ethical violations and research protocols.The entire library staff at the CDC, an integral part of research and recommendations, was terminated. The Washington office, which developed policy briefings and provided information to Congress members, was eliminated as well.The National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, the national health and nutrition examination survey, and the staff focused on suicide prevention also suffered layoffs.The multiple cuts across the agency mean the CDC is not able to carry out much of its work, even as some employees remain, said Karen Remley, who previously ran the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities and was a state health official in Virginia.In April, for instance, the entire team behind the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (Prams) was cut, which means a critical tool for understanding maternal and child health is now missing.“You can’t take out Prams and keep the registry and have all that work happen,” Remley said. “This artificial separating and splitting really means the work on the local level stops.”Meanwhile, CDC employees have endured attacks and harassment.On 8 August, a gunman fired 500 rounds of ammunition at the CDC headquarters, killing David Rose, an officer, and traumatizing agency employees and their families.Health agency employees have been doxed, with their identities and personal information revealed. Matthew Buckham, Kennedy’s acting chief of staff, was co-founder of the group that maintains a “DEI Watch List” targeting HHS employees. The agency has also been roiled by high-profile departures.“At the highest level of leadership in the CDC, there are no public health or medical professionals left to help guide CDC recommendations,” said Abigail Tighe, a former CDC employee and founding member of the National Public Health Coalition, which held a recent press conference where Backus and other former CDC employees spoke.“Billions in contracts and direct funding to state and local public health agencies has been canceled or clawed back, and the American people are cued up to suffer. It is hard to succinctly put into words what the decimation of the CDC means for everyday Americans.”The first round of layoffs at CDC came on Valentine’s day. Probationary employees – who were in the first year or two of their jobs, either because they had been recently hired or had moved to new positions – along with established senior employees received notices.A judge ruled in September that the probationary terminations went too far and some of the employees were reinstated and placed on administrative leave.In the meantime, RIF notices went out on 1 April, eliminating entire offices such as the office on smoking and health, where Backus worked. She didn’t even receive the notice at first because her access to the CDC network, including email, had been cut off.The lawsuit specifically prevents employees like Backus from being reorganized into new offices or terminated from the agency, she said. That’s why she thought she would be safe this time – but she still received a third layoff notice. That notice was rescinded after less than 24 hours. About 700 employees were reinstated, while 600 remain terminated.“I still remain on administrative leave, unable to do my job,” Backus said. “My situation just highlights the chaos and confusion that federal employees have experienced over the past year. I’m stuck in limbo, following court cases, gathering information, and trying to figure out what my next steps should be.”Charlotte Kent, former editor-in-chief of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), said: “We have so many people who, if they’ve been [un-RIFed], have been on administrative leave. We have the inefficiency of so many government resources, our taxpayer dollars, going to fight the illegal activities that have been done by the administration.”The MMWR was among the departments completely gutted and then reinstated – which was particularly surprising, because the highly regarded scientific journal was specifically included in the president’s budget request for the first time this year.“To have it cut at this point is just shocking,” Kent said.“It’s like being in a strange game where there’s no rules,” said one former CDC employee who was RIFed on 10 October and spoke anonymously to avoid reprisal from the Trump administration. “It’s honestly like Squid Games – we don’t know what’s going to happen next.”John Brooks, who retired last year from the CDC after 26 years and served as the chief medical officer for several emergency responses, said the RIFs demonstrated a “stunning level of incompetency”. Firing the CDC Washington staff means “Congress no longer has a means of direct access to the agency it funds when it needs information or briefings”.The Trump administration reportedly says about 700 of the terminations were a coding error.“It is clear to us that this was not a coding error,” said Tighe. “This RIF was carried out just as all the other ones have been, where they fire as many people as they think they can get away with, there’s public outcry, there’s outcry from congressional members and then they bring back the things that they think people cannot get over.”She called the firings “an intentional attack on the American people and the public’s health”.“Our country is on an uncertain and frankly frightening path,” Tighe said. “We would love to see Congress step in.” More