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    Trump nominee to lead whistleblower office drops out after racist texts surface

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    Paul Ingrassia, Donald Trump’s nominee to oversee federal whistleblower protections, has dropped out after racist text messages he sent surfaced this week.Ingrassia, currently a White House liaison at the Department of Homeland Security, was the subject of a report on Monday published in Politico. The report featured text messages where he allegedly described himself as having “a Nazi streak” and suggested Martin Luther King Jr Day should be “tossed into the seventh circle of hell”.In a post on Truth Social on Tuesday evening, Ingrassia said: “I will be withdrawing myself from Thursday’s HSGAC hearing to lead the Office of Special Counsel because unfortunately I do not have enough Republican votes at this time.“I appreciate the overwhelming support that I have received throughout this process and will continue to serve President Trump and this administration to Make America Great Again!”After the release of the alleged text messages earlier this week, reporters asked John Thune, the Senate majority leader, if the administration should pull Ingrassia’s nomination to lead the office of special counsel. Thune said on Monday: “I think so. He’s not going to pass.”Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin also said on Tuesday, prior to Ingrassia’s withdrawal, that he would not support Ingrassia’s nomination: “I’m a no. It never should have got this far. They ought to pull the nomination.”By late afternoon on Tuesday, at least five Senate Republicans told the Washington Post they opposed Ingrassia’s nomination. Had his nomination gone to a vote, Ingrassia could have lost up to three Republican votes on the homeland security committee, which Republicans control by a single seat. Democrats were expected to vote unanimously against the confirmation.The 30-year-old’s attorney, Edward Paltzik, questioned the authenticity of the messages to Politico and suggested they could be AI-generated. He said they were “self-deprecating” and “satirical humor”, adding that his client is “the furthest thing from a Nazi”.Prior to the publication of the alleged texts, Ingrassia found himself in hot water after a separate Politico report from earlier this month revealed he had been investigated by the Department of Homeland Security. The investigation took place after he allegedly canceled the hotel reservation of a female colleague before a work trip and told her that they would share a room. Politico noted that the woman filed a complaint against Ingrassia and later retracted it. Ingrassia has denied any wrongdoing.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump’s nomination of Ingrassia came down in June and would have seen the agency that protects federal employees from prohibited personnel practices such as retaliation from whistleblowing being led by a relative novice.Historically, the agency has been led by nonpartisan lawyers with decades of experience. Ingrassia was admitted to the New York bar last year.Joseph Gedeon contributed reporting More

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      Speaker Mike Johnson says he won’t block House vote to release Epstein files

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      The Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, on Tuesday said he would not prevent a vote on legislation to make the Jeffrey Epstein files public, even as the chamber remained out of session for a fourth straight week.Johnson has kept the House of Representatives in recess ever since the shutdown began at the start of the month, after Democrats and Republicans failed to reach an agreement on extending government funding beyond the end of September.That has had the knock-on effect of delaying the success of a legislative maneuver known as a discharge petition to force a vote on a bill that would make public documents from the federal investigation into Epstein, who was charged with sex trafficking and died while awaiting trial in 2019. The justice department this year said he died by suicide, but Donald Trump and his officials have previously restated conspiracy theories that Epstein was at the center of a larger plot.The president opposes the release of the documents and called the controversy over them a “Democrat hoax”, but all House Democrats along with three Republicans have signed the petition, bringing it one signature away from reaching the 218-member threshold to trigger a vote.“If it hits 218, it comes to the floor,” Johnson told Politico in an interview. “That’s how it works: If you get the signatures, it goes to a vote.”It was speculated that the speaker could look for ways to undermine the petition. Earlier this year, Johnson backed efforts to block a discharge petition on legislation allowing proxy voting for new parents in the House.The final signature on the petition is expected to be Adelita Grijalva, an Arizona Democrat elected last month to fill her late father’s seat representing a district along the state’s border with Mexico. However, Johnson has refused to swear her in until the House reconvenes, which he says he will not allow until the government reopens.Grijalva has told the Guardian she believes that Johnson, a close ally of Trump, is attempting to delay the vote on the legislation concerning the Epstein files. But even if the bill is approved by the House, it will have to clear the Republican-controlled Senate and be signed by Trump to take effect.At a press conference earlier in the day, Johnson argued that the discharge petition was unnecessary because a House committee is conducting its own investigation into Epstein.“The bipartisan House oversight committee is already accomplishing what the discharge petition, that gambit, sought, and much more,” he said. That investigation has resulted in the release of tens of thousands of pages related to the government’s handling of the case, including a salacious drawing Trump apparently sent Epstein for his birthday.In a statement, Democrat Ro Khanna, a co-sponsor of the discharge petition, called Johnson’s comments “a big deal”.“I appreciate Speaker Johnson making it clear we will get a vote on Rep. Thomas Massie and my bill to release the Epstein files. The advocacy of the survivors is working. Now let’s get Adelita Grijalva sworn in and Congress back to work,” Khanna said.The government shutdown entered its 21st day on Tuesday with no signs of ending. The Senate’s Republican leaders have held 11 votes on a continuing resolution (CR) that would approve federal funding through 21 November, but Democrats have refused to provide the support necessary for it to clear the 60-vote threshold to advance.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe minority party has countered by demanding an extension of subsidies for Affordable Care Act healthcare plans, which will otherwise expire at the end of the year. They also want curbs on Trump’s ability to slash congressionally approved funding through rescissions, and the undoing of cuts to Medicaid, which provides healthcare to poor and disabled Americans, that Republicans approved unilaterally early this year.The Republican Senate majority leader, John Thune, said he is willing to negotiate over the Affordable Care Act subsidies, but only once the government reopens.Trump held a lunch at the White House with Republican senators in the afternoon, during which he delivered a rambling speech thanking them for their cooperation in which the shutdown was mentioned only occasionally.“From the beginning, our message has been very simple: we will not be extorted on this crazy plot of theirs,” Trump said. “Chuck Schumer and the Senate Democrats need to vote for the clean, bipartisan CR and reopen our government. It’s got to be reopened right now.”In a speech on the Senate floor, Schumer, the Democratic minority leader, dismissed the White House event as a “a mini pep rally” and pressed Republicans to negotiate.“Democrats were ready to work with the other side to get it done. But Republicans continue to act like these ACA premiums are not their problem,” he said. More

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      Trump is threatening Venezuela. But his own country looks a lot like it | Daniel Mendiola

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      Here in the Americas, we have a peculiar tradition. Every time there is a major election, prominent figures on the right find themselves compelled to repeat some version of the vaguely menacing prediction: if the candidate for the left wins, we will become “the next Venezuela”.Whether Brazil, Peru, Mexico, Colombia or Ecuador, countries throughout the western hemisphere keep this tradition. Donald Trump has also participated in this ritual, proclaiming during the 2024 election cycle that if Kamala Harris won, our country would become “Venezuela on steroids”.Oddly spoken with disdain.Harris, of course, lost the election, so we will never know how Venezuela-esque her version of the US might have been. But we are seeing Trump’s America, and the reality is: it’s looking a lot like Venezuela.Since the 1998 election of Hugo Chávez – a charismatic yet polarizing leftwing figure – political discourses have shrouded Venezuela in conflicting layers of partisan caricature, often making it difficult to parse what is actually happening. At this point, however, there is no doubt that the country is in crisis.Migration statistics alone provide compelling evidence. Amnesty International and the UN refugee agency estimate that nearly 8 million Venezuelans have left the country since 2014 – as much as 25% of the population. Hyperinflation and food shortages have driven this exodus, compounded by authoritarianism and increasing repression under Chávez’s successor, Nicolás Maduro, who has held on to power since 2013 through elections with overwhelming evidence of fraud.Significantly, the US has hardly been an innocent bystander. Not only have we frequently doled out reprehensible treatment to Venezuelan asylum seekers, but we have also played a role in creating the conditions that are forcing people to migrate in the first place. The US has maintained a belligerent stance toward Venezuela for more than two decades – for example, supporting a short-lived coup to overthrow Chávez in 2002, as well as hitting the country with sanctions – and the Trump administration has recently escalated the conflict by ordering a series of deadly strikes on civilian boats suspected of smuggling drugs off the Venezuelan the coast. Reports also indicate that Trump is considering an intervention to depose Maduro, and the CIA may already be carrying out covert operations in the country.Journalists and legal analysts have done excellent work explaining how these strikes are illegal according to US and international law, in addition to being murderously cruel. There has also been great coverage of how the demonization of Venezuelan immigrants – including a steady stream of propaganda painting Venezuelan immigrants as gang members and terrorists – has long been a centerpiece of Trump’s platform.These actions are disgraceful on their own terms. But they are also bitterly ironic: even while terrorizing Venezuelans in the name of defending democracy, Trump has, in fact, been running a strikingly similar authoritarian playbook. Noteworthy parallels include dismantling constitutional limits on presidential authority, manipulating electoral districts to inflate his party’s representation in Congress, and using state power to repress political opponents.In Venezuela’s case, the story begins with a fraught referendum. Immediately upon taking office in 1999, Chávez decreed a new executive power: the ability to call for a referendum on writing a new constitution. The legality of the claim was dubious given that the Venezuelan legal system already had mechanisms for updating the constitution, and a simple majority popular vote was not one of them. Nonetheless, the Venezuelan supreme court relented, and when the referendum passed, Chávez asserted a heavy hand in creating the process for how a constitutional assembly would work. Moreover, he unilaterally gave this assembly outsized powers to govern, suspending Congress and the supreme court in the meantime. Unsurprisingly, the resulting constitution of 1999 expanded executive authority considerably, and the entire process established a precedent to continue using these largely hand-picked constitutional assemblies to overrule congress whenever the opposition gained ground.While there are, likewise, calls for a constitutional convention coming from Trump allies that could function in a similar way, this hasn’t actually been necessary in the US. Rather, the conservative supermajority on the supreme court has managed to effectively do the same thing on its own: repeatedly ignoring plain text as well as its own precedent in order to assign new powers to the presidency while at the same time eviscerating longstanding checks from other branches of government and independent agencies alike. In short, even without literally rewriting the constitution, the supreme court has in practice served as a comparable constitutional assembly, fundamentally reshaping constitutional norms to create a “unitary executive” with fewer checks on executive power than ever before.Taking this comparison even deeper, there are also important parallels in Trump’s efforts to stack Congress through “gerrymandering”: a trick that hinges on exploiting the mathematical quirks of single-member, winner-take-all districts. For example, in a system where every district has an isolated winner-take-all race, even if one party gets 49% of the vote across the country, that does not mean that it will end up having 49% of the representation in Congress. In fact, if each district is a perfect microcosm of society with 49% of voters supporting this party, it could actually end up with zero seats in congress, despite representing roughly half the population.In short, single-member, winner-take-all districts have the potential to massively inflate or deflate a party’s overall electoral showing, depending on how the voters are distributed among the districts. And if the party in power gets to redraw the districts, they can easily rig the game. Knowing full well the consequences, the US supreme court blessed this approach during Trump’s first term, and now at a time when Republicans have a clear advantage in controlling redistricting, the justices are poised to make it even easier. Within this context, Trump is pushing Republican-governed states to capitalize.Significantly, Chávez’s early efforts to consolidate power used a similar mechanism. Though under-appreciated now, Venezuela’s earlier election system under its 1961 constitution actually included a clause guaranteeing minority representation, and officials developed a clever method to allocate seats roughly proportional to a party’s overall support. This made gerrymandering impossible, limiting the ability of the ruling party to press their advantage by further manipulating districts. In 1999, however, Chávez’s constitutional assembly eliminated this system, changing the rules so that most congressional seats would instead come from winner-take-all districts. The effect – at least in the short term while Chávez consolidated power – was to considerably inflate his party’s congressional representation.Along with expanding executive power and manipulating congressional elections, a third commonality – repression of political opponents – needs little explanation. Even before Maduro apparently resorted to overt election fraud, the Chávez government faced accusations of intimidating judges and arresting opposition candidates. Vocal critics of the government have also reported heavy-handed tactics from formal military and paramilitary forces alike.As we now watch Trump deploy troops in Democratic-led cities across the country; turn federal agencies such as Ice and into personal secret police who operate with impunity; and push to systematically arrest political opponents, the parallels are obvious.Ultimately, while there is every reason to believe that Venezuela is in crisis, there is no reason to believe that Trump’s military aggression will have any benefit for the people of either country. The bottom line: the Trump administration has demonstrated time and time again that it has no qualms about wreaking havoc on Venezuelan civilians – nor on its own. Trump’s abuses of power at home and in the Caribbean are two sides of the same coin. We must condemn both.

      Daniel Mendiola is a professor of Latin American history and migration studies at Vassar College More

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      Senate vote fails again as shutdown becomes one of the longest in US history

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      One of the longest government shutdowns in US history just got longer after the Senate again failed to pass a funding resolution after a majority of Democrats continued their pressure campaign after the No Kings nationwide weekend protests.The Senate vote fell for the 11th time with a vote of 50 to 43, with no new defectors from the Democratic side.Mike Johnson, the House speaker, has for weeks kept the House shuttered on an extended recess, and defended his strategy as necessary to push Senate Democrats into passing the House’s continuing resolution without policy additions. But Democrats have refused to support the measure without provisions addressing healthcare subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, which are set to expire at the end of the year.Johnson, in a Monday morning press conference flanked by other Republican congressional leaders including Andy Harris, the House freedom caucus chair, said the reason for the shutdown was to appease Democratic voters, particularly putting blame on the No Kings rallies.“It is exactly why Chuck Schumer is pandering, in this whole charade. We’ve explained from the very beginning, the shutdown is about one thing and one thing alone: Chuck Schumer’s political survival,” Johnson said.The stuffed vote also came after a prominent Republican lawmaker, representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, on Monday morning criticized Johnson’s strategy, calling on the House to return to session immediately.“The House should be in session working,” Greene wrote on X. “We should be finishing appropriations. Our committees should be working. We should be passing bills that make President Trump’s executive orders permanent. I have no respect for the decision to refuse to work.”The criticism from Greene, who is aligned with the right flank of her party, is a noticeable crack in support for Johnson’s hardline approach from the GOP over an extended congressional recess. Since 19 September, when members last cast votes, the chamber has not been conducting legislative business, although members have staged press conferences.The shutdown, which began on 1 October, has become the longest full government shutdown in US history, and the third-longest when including partial shutdowns. If it extends past Tuesday, it will surpass the 21-day shutdown of 1995-96 to claim second place. Only the 35-day partial shutdown during Donald Trump’s first term, from December 2018 to January 2019, has lasted longer.The shutdown’s impact grew more severe on Monday as the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration began furloughing approximately 1,400 federal employees responsible for maintaining and modernizing the US nuclear weapons arsenal. Chris Wright, the US energy secretary, is scheduled to address the furloughs at a press conference in Las Vegas later on Monday, a spokesperson told the Guardian.Kevin Hassett, the White House economic adviser, speculated on Monday, citing “friends in the Senate”, that the impasse might soon break.“I think the [Senate minority leader Chuck] Schumer shutdown is likely to end some time this week,” Hassett said in a CNBC interview. He reasoned that some Democrats had been reluctant to reopen the government ahead of last Saturday’s No Kings protests against Trump, which drew millions of demonstrators nationwide to rebuke corruption and authoritarianism. More

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      Trump says he has commuted sentence of George Santos in federal fraud case

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      Donald Trump announced on Friday he had commuted the sentence of George Santos, the disgraced former New York representative and serial fabulist who had been sentenced to more than seven years in prison after a short-lived political career marked by outlandish fabrications and fraudulent scheming.Santos left the Federal Correctional Institution Fairton in New Jersey just hours later and was “on his way home”, his attorney Joseph Murray told Agence France-Presse by phone late on Friday.In a Truth Social post, Trump called Santos “somewhat of a ‘rogue’” but expressed sympathy for the New York Republican. Santos was sentenced in April after pleading guilty last year to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft.“I just signed a Commutation, releasing George Santos from prison, IMMEDIATELY,” Trump said in the lengthy post. “Good luck George, have a great life!”The United States pardon attorney tweeted a photograph of the signed commutation shortly after Trump’s post, writing that he was “honored” to have “played a small role” Trump granting Santos clemency.“Thank you, Mr. President for making clemency great again,” he wrote.Murray also thanked Trump, posting on Santos’s X account: “God bless President Donald J Trump the greatest President in US history!”Santos reported to a federal prison in New Jersey in July and began serving an 87-month sentence for charges that ultimately led to his expulsion from Congress in 2023. Trump’s post suggested he was moved by a letter penned by Santos that was published in a local Long Island newspaper this week. Santos wrote about his life in solitary confinement and made direct plea to the president for a “chance to rebuild”.Trump issued the commutation after a push from key Republicans allies, most notably Marjorie Taylor Greene. Greene, a prominent former House colleague of Santos, had called his conviction a “grave injustice” and urged intervention after the sentence was handed down. She also sent a letter in August asking the justice department for a commutation.Asked at the time whether he might consider clemency for Santos, Trump, who has a history of rewarding supporters with pardons, did not rule it out, but said he had not been asked.“He lied like hell,” Trump told Newsmax, adding: “But he was 100% for Trump.”On Friday, Greene thanked the president for the commutation and said of Santos: “He was unfairly treated and put in solitary confinement, which is torture!!”Elsewhere in his post on Friday, Trump compared Santos with the Democratic senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut. He made reference to the decades-old claims that Blumenthal “made up” aspects of his military record. Blumenthal admitted in 2010 that he misrepresented his military service after saying he had been “in” Vietnam. Blumenthal served as a Marine Corps reservist during the Vietnam War, but was not deployed in Vietnam.Trump, who never served in the military, has repeatedly attacked Blumenthal. His account of the senator’s past misstatements have even become increasingly exaggerated in recent years.“This is far worse than what George Santos did, and at least Santos had the Courage, Conviction, and Intelligence to ALWAYS VOTE REPUBLICAN!” Trump wrote of Blumenthal on Friday.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBefore and after entering Congress, Santos lied prolifically about his biography. Despite making history as the first out LGBTQ+ Republican elected in Congress, his fabulist tendencies caught up with him with the release of a damning report from the House ethics committee. That report detailed how Santos used campaign funds for things like travel, cosmetic treatments and luxury goods and helped fuel his spectacular fall.But Santos, who catapulted from relative anonymity to pop culture sensation almost overnight, shared Trump’s love of the national spotlight – even when trained on his misdeeds.“Well, darlings … The curtain falls, the spotlight dims, and the rhinestones are packed,” Santos wrote in a tweet pinned to the top of his X account. “From the halls of Congress to the chaos of cable news what a ride it’s been! Was it messy? Always. Glamorous? Occasionally. Honest? I tried … most days.”The judge overseeing Santos’s case sided with federal prosecutors, who argued the former congressman ​had failed to show genuine remorse​ despite his legal team’s insistence to the contrary. That lack of contrition, they said, warranted a tougher sentence.​S​antos’s commutation marks the latest in a string of high-profile ​interventions ​by Trump, who has resumed the use of presidential clemency to reward political allies since returning to the White House in January.Trump, in May, issued a pardon to Michael Grimm, a former Republican congressman from New York who admitted to concealing income and wages related to a Manhattan restaurant he owned. Also pardoned was John Rowland, the former Connecticut governor whose political ascent collapsed under the weight of a federal corruption case and two prison terms.​At the same time, Trump has directed his justice department to bring criminal charges against his political enemies, including his former national security adviser turned prominent critic John Bolton, who was indicted this week and has pleaded not guilty.​Trump last year became the first former American president to be convicted of felony crimes, stemming from a hush money case in New York that he continues to dismiss as a witch hunt. More

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      John Bolton indicted on charges of mishandling and transmitting classified information – US politics live

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      A federal grand jury has indicted John Bolton, the former national security adviser in Donald Trump’s first term, on charges of mishandling and transmitting classified information.The indictment, filed in Maryland, appears to ultimately have had sign off from career prosecutors in the US attorney’s office there despite initial reluctance to bring a case before the end of the year.The 18-count indictment against Bolton involves 8 counts of unlawfully transmitting national defense information and ten counts of retaining classified information under the Espionage Act, according to the 26-page indictment.A federal appeals court on Thursday rejected the Trump administration’s request to lift a lower court’s order that temporarily blocks the deployment of National Guard troops in Illinois during its appeal.The ruling allows a temporary restraining order against the deployment issued by US District judge April Perry in Chicago last week to remain in place.A three-judge panel of the Chicago-based 7th US Circuit Court of Appeals, made up of judges nominated by George HW Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump, concluded that that “the facts do not justify the President’s actions.”Trump had asserted the power to deploy National Guard troops in Illinois after claiming federal immigration enforcement officer had faced violent protests as they attempted to arrest people.“Immigration arrests and deportations have proceeded apace in Illinois over the past year, and the administration has been proclaiming the success of its current efforts to enforce immigration laws in the Chicago area,” the court said.The court said there had likely been a violation of Illinois’ constitutional right to sovereignty, made worse by the fact that Texas National Guard troops were sent into the state.The court did pause a portion of Perry’s order that had barred the federalization of Illinois National Guard troops, allowing the troops to remain under federal control.The Trump administration announced Thursday that it is urging US employers to create new fertility benefit options to cover in vitro fertilization and other infertility treatments.In an announcement from the Oval Office, Donald Trump also said his administration had cut a deal with the drug manufacturer EMD Serono to lower the cost of one of its fertility drugs and list the drug on the government website TrumpRx.The justice department says that Donald Trump’s former national security advisor, John Bolton, has been charged with 10 counts of unlawful retention of national defense information and eight counts of transmission of that information.The indictment alleges that Bolton used personal email and messaging app accounts to send documents classified as high as Top Secret.The documents contained intelligence about what the government terms “future attacks, foreign adversaries, and foreign-policy relations.”The indictment also alleges that Bolton, like Trump after he left office in 2021, kept secret documents in his home. The documents Bolton kept included “intelligence on an adversary’s leaders as well as information revealing sources and collections used to obtain statements on a foreign adversary,” the government alleges.“Anyone who abuses a position of power and jeopardizes our national security will be held accountable,” Trump’s attorney general, Pam Bondi, said. “No one is above the law.”When Donald Trump was indicted for the same crime by special counsel Jack Smith in 2023, in an indictment that cited evidence that Trump showed a ghostwriter working for his former chief of staff Mark Meadows “a four-page report” detailing US plans for striking Iran.According to audio of the conversation obtained by CNN, Trump even acknowledged that the document he showed the writer was “highly confidential, secret information” he could not make public because it was “still a secret”.A federal grand jury has indicted John Bolton, the former national security adviser in Donald Trump’s first term, on charges of mishandling and transmitting classified information.The indictment, filed in Maryland, appears to ultimately have had sign off from career prosecutors in the US attorney’s office there despite initial reluctance to bring a case before the end of the year.The 18-count indictment against Bolton involves 8 counts of unlawfully transmitting national defense information and ten counts of retaining classified information under the Espionage Act, according to the 26-page indictment.John Bolton, who served as Donald Trump’s national security advisor during his first term, but turned into a fierce Trump critic, has reportedly been indicted on federal charges by a grand jury in Maryland, officials tell MSNBC and CNN.At the White House a reporter asked Trump for his reaction to the news that Bolton was just indicted by a grand jury in Maryland.The president said: “I didn’t know that. You’re telling me for the first time, but I think he’s a bad person. I think he’s a bad guy.”“That’s the way it goes, right? That’s the way it goes,” said the president who vowed retribution on his political enemies while campaigning to be restored to office last year.Bolton becomes the third Trump critic to be indicted by his justice department in the past month, along with James Comey, the former FBI director, and Letitia James, the New York attorney general.Bolton has reportedly been under investigation for retaining classified information after leaving office, and showing it to associates.The United States is “on a trajectory” toward authoritarian rule, according to a stark new intelligence-style assessment by former US intelligence and national security officials, who warn that democratic backsliding is accelerating under the Trump administration – and may soon become entrenched without organized resistance.The report, titled Accelerating Authoritarian Dynamics: Assessment of Democratic Decline, was released on Thursday by the Steady State, a network of more than 340 former officers of the CIA, NSA, state department, and other national-security agencies.“These are people who have seen these indicators develop in countries that shifted dramatically away from democracy towards authoritarianism,” Larry Pfeiffer, a former senior intelligence official who spent two decades at the NSA, told reporters on Thursday. “And we’re seeing those things happening in our country today.”The analysts conclude with “moderate to high confidence” that the US is moving toward what scholars call “competitive authoritarianism”, a system in which elections and courts continue to function, but are “systematically manipulated” to consolidate executive power and weaken checks and balances. According to the assessment, these trends are increasingly visible in the US, as part of a broader effort by Donald Trump in his second term to “ensure loyalty and ideological conformity” across the federal government.Amid escalating tensions with Venezuela, and US military strikes on suspected drug smugglers in the Caribbean, the US admiral who commands military forces in Latin America will step down at the end of this year, the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth announced on social media.The admiral, Alvin Holsey, just took over the US military’s Southern Command late last year for a position that normally lasts three years.A source told Reuters that there had been tension between him and Hegseth and questions about whether he would be fired in the days leading up to the announcement.The New York Times reports that an unnamed US official said that Holsey “had raised concerns about the mission and the attacks on the alleged drug boats.”Hegseth, in his social media post, did not disclose the reason for Holsey’s plan “to retire at year’s end.”Hegseth’s post noted that Holsey began his career “through the NROTC program at Morehouse College in 1988.” Morehouse is a private, historically black college in Atlanta.In February, Donald Trump abruptly fired the air force general CQ Brown Jr as chair of the joint chiefs of staff, sidelining a history-making Black fighter pilot and respected officer as part of a campaign to purge the military of leaders who support diversity and equity in the ranks.In 2021, Holsey recorded a public service announcement urging Black Americans to take the covid-19 vaccine.Trump on his social media site said he’s “outraged” by a vote planned on Friday by the International Maritime Organization to impose a global fee on the carbon emissions produced by container ships.“The United States will NOT stand for this Global Green New Scam Tax on Shipping, and will not adhere to it in any way, shape, or form,” the president wrote on Truth Social.He added: “We will not tolerate increased prices on American Consumers OR, the creation of a Green New Scam Bureaucracy to spend YOUR money on their Green dreams. Stand with the United States, and vote NO in London tomorrow!”The US Chamber of Commerce is suing the Trump administration over the $100,000 fee imposed on H-1B visa petitions.The country’s biggest business lobbying group argues that the new fee is unlawful because it overrides provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act that govern the H-1B program, including the requirement that fees be based on the costs incurred by the government in processing visas.Neil Bradley, the Chamber’s chief policy officer, said in a statement:“The new $100,000 visa fee will make it cost-prohibitive for US employers, especially start-ups and small and midsize businesses, to utilize the H-1B program, which was created by Congress expressly to ensure that American businesses of all sizes can access the global talent they need to grow their operations here in the U.S.”The University of Pennsylvania has become the latest educational institution to reject the White House’s proposed preferential funding compact, according to an email to the University community.“Earlier today, I informed the US Department of Education that Penn respectfully declines to sign the proposed Compact,” President J Larry Jameson wrote in a message to the Penn community Thursday, adding that his university did provide feedback to the department on the proposal.The “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” is a proposed agreement from the Trump administration that would impose restrictions on diversity, equity and inclusion programs and limits on international student enrolment.Penn’s refusal makes it the third of the nine institutions that had initially been offered the deal to publicly turn it down. No institution has agreed to sign the compact so far.Brown University announced it had rejected the offer Wednesday, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) did the same last Friday. After MIT’s rejection, the Trump administration said the compact was open to all colleges and universities that want to sign it.Senate Democrats blocked debate on a defense appropriations bill on the floor earlier this afternoon, which was seen as a test for whether regular individual bipartisan funding bills can gain any traction despite the shutdown, now dragging into its third week.The bill, which passed out of committee with strong bipartisan support earlier this year, needed 60 votes to advance, but the final vote was 50 to 44. Several Democrats including Jeanne Shaheen voted to advance the bill.Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer objected to considering the bill without also voting on the annual labor, health and human services appropriations bill.“Right now, the only thing that is on the floor is just the defense bill. [John] Thune needs unanimous consent to add anything else to it. We don’t even know if he’ll get that,” Schumer told reporters earlier ahead of the vote.
      It’s always been unacceptable to Democrats to do the defense bill without other bills that have so many things that are important to the American people, in terms of healthcare, in terms of housing, in terms of safety.
      Senate majority leader John Thune expressed frustration that they couldn’t take that first step and said the optics were bad for the Democrats.
      If they want to stop the defense bill, I don’t think it’s very good optics for them. Particularly since this is just getting on it, and they would have multiple opportunities after this to block it if they want to.
      “I believe it is critical that the Senate and Congress return to a bipartisan appropriations approach and try to begin rebuilding trust,” Shaheen said in a statement after voting. “This vote would allow us to consider Senate appropriations bills which were passed out of committee with overwhelming bipartisan support.”The other Democratic senators who voted with Republicans were Catherine Cortez Masto and John Fetterman. Majority leader John Thune changed his vote to “no” so that procedurally he can bring the bill up for consideration again.Cortez Masto and Fetterman have previously voted for the GOP’s House-passed bill to reopen the government while Shaheen has been at the heart of talks with GOP colleagues about finding a way to end the shutdown.Vladimir Putin told Donald Trump in their phone call today that supplying US Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine would harm the peace process and damage US-Russia ties, Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters.As I said earlier, this comes a day before Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s meeting with Trump at the White House tomorrow in which he is set to push for more US military support, including the crucial long-range offensive missiles.Ushakov said the planned new summit between the two presidents will be preceded by a phone call between US secretary of state Marco Rubio and Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov in the coming days.The Putin-Trump call took place at Russia’s initiative, Ushakov added.In a post on Truth Social, Donald Trump has just said:
      If Hamas continues to kill people in Gaza, which was not the Deal, we will have no choice but to go in and kill them.
      It comes after Hamas fighters have been captured on video in recent days ramping up their presence and reasserting the group’s authority by executing members of rival groups on the streets of Gaza.This is Trump’s clearest indication on the matter yet, after giving mixed messages in recent days, initially saying the violence “didn’t bother me much” as Hamas was clearing up “gangs”. Yesterday he appeared to concede that it could be “gangs plus” when asked if there was a possibility that Hamas was killing innocent civilians.“They will disarm, and if they don’t do so, we will disarm them, and it’ll happen quickly and perhaps violently,” Trump also said yesterday, though, as with the statement today, he hasn’t specified how he would follow through on his threat.A reminder that Volodymyr Zelenskyy is heading to the White House tomorrow to push for more US military support, including potential long-range offensive missiles. He will no doubt be nervous by Trump’s positive tone following his call with Putin.Trump has said he could supply the long-range weapons to Ukraine if Putin fails to come to the negotiating table. In its latest barrage, Russia launched more than 300 drones and 37 missiles to target infrastructure across Ukraine in overnight attacks, Zelenskyy said. Kyiv has ramped up its own attacks on Russian targets, including an oil refinery in the Saratov region today.Russia has been hitting Ukraine’s energy and power facilities for consecutive winters as the war drags into its fourth year.In the latest warnings to Russia, Trump said yesterday that Indian PM Narendra Modi had pledged to stop buying oil from Russia, and that the administration would push China to do the same. India has not confirmed any such commitment, though Reuters reported some Indian refiners are preparing to cut Russian oil imports, with expectations of a gradual reduction.US defense secretary Pete Hegseth said yesterday that Washington would “impose costs on Russia for its continued aggression” unless the war ends. More

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      The US supreme court appears ready to nullify the Voting Rights Act | Moira Donegan

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      The last remaining piece of the 1965 Voting Rights Act – section 2, which empowers the federal government to protect voters from racial gerrymandering meant to dilute Black political power – appears headed for an untimely end. At oral arguments in Louisiana v Callais on Wednesday, the US supreme court appeared ready to strike down section 2, effectively completing the gradual nullification of the Voting Rights Act that it has pursued for over a decade.The case stems from new congressional districting maps that were drawn in Louisiana after the 2020 census, which found both that the state was eligible for six seats in the House of Representatives and that its population was about one-third Black. The state initially drew maps that featured only one majority-Black congressional district, rejecting seven more racially fair maps; voters sued, and federal courts ordered Louisiana to comply with the Voting Rights Act by drawing new maps in which Black voters would be a majority in a second district, thereby reflecting their share of the population and giving Black Louisianans an equal opportunity to elect representatives of their choice.But now, a group of people identifying themselves as “non-African-American voters” have sued to get those racially proportionate maps thrown out, arguing that enforcement of the VRA violates their own rights under the 14th and 15th amendments. They claim the maps drawn to remedy racial discrimination against Black people in fact constitute racial discrimination against non-Black (read: white) people. The court seems likely to side with them.If they do, it will mark the end of the Voting Rights Act, widely considered the crowning achievement of the civil right movement, which the supreme court, under John Roberts, has been dismantling for years. In 2013’s Shelby county v Holder, the court struck down much of section 5, which had required jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination in voting to get federal preclearance for changes to its voting laws.In subsequent cases, the court has repeatedly narrowed the conditions under which litigants can bring voting rights claims and expanded states’ leeway to make voting laws that would have previously been deemed discriminatory. Writing for the majority in Shelby, Chief Justice Roberts claimed that racial animus and inequality had diminished enough that such a regime was not necessary, and indeed violated the rights of states. As states imposed a slew of new voting restrictions in the aftermath, the gap between Black and white voter participation rates grew dramatically. It expanded twice as much in districts that had previously been subjected to the section 5 preclearance regime.On Wednesday, the court seemed determined to apply the same logic that it used in Shelby county to section 2, demanding that Janai Nelson, the head of the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund, justify why section 2 should still be efficacious and should not be considered to have somehow expired. Justices Kavanaugh and Alito asserted that the racial gerrymander was justified if it was intended as a partisan gerrymander – that is, that the lawmakers’ stated or professed intentions was what mattered, and not the racially discriminatory impact of the gerrymander.Previous supreme court precedent, as well as ample evidence from the congressional record, has said that discriminatory impact, rather than intent, is sufficient to constitute illegal racial discrimination – but at oral argument, the Republicans on the court, along with those representing the litigants, did not seem to think that this should matter. As she rebutted these arguments in the guise of asking questions from the bench, one could hear the exhaustion in Ketanji Brown Jackson’s voice. The remedies, she sputtered, “are so tied up with race, because race is the initial problem!” Jackson has been the court’s most passionate and articulate advocate for the Reconstruction amendments and for the legacy of the civil rights movement, but she seemed to know that her colleagues were not listening to her.The case reflects two major trends of the Roberts court: hostility to racial justice claims brought by minorities, and a willingness to invert civil rights law and the Reconstruction amendments alike to create interpretations in which these legal traditions function to entrench, rather than challenge, historical hierarchies of race and gender. Louisiana’s attorney general – who has switched sides in the case since it was initially argued last year, joining an opposition to the Voting Rights Act – claimed that to assume that Black voters would vote differently than white voters – which in Louisiana, they overwhelmingly do – would be to unconstitutionally impose a racial stereotype. This facile fiction elicited exasperation from Justice Kagan.But the attorney general knew his audience. Roberts has long been an enemy of practices that attempt to remedy historical and ongoing racial discrimination, claiming that the law mandates that state and private actors alike take no interest in such projects and attempt facially race-blind policies in everything from voting rights enforcement to college admissions – no matter how racially discriminatory against Black Americans such practices prove to be in reality. “The way to stop discriminating on the basis of race,” he once memorably said, “is to stop discriminating on the basis of race” – that is, to stop trying to account for or combat racism with official policy. The result will be that if the court rules in Louisiana’s favor, it will no longer be illegal, in practice, to racially gerrymander congressional districts to minimize and dilute Black voter power. But it will be illegal to use race to redistrict in such a way that restores Black voter power.It is apparently through this fanciful and motivated reasoning that Roberts and his colleagues have decided that any move to secure Black Americans’ voting rights and equality in fact violates the very constitutional amendments that were meant to secure their voting rights and equality. The Voting Rights Act does not violate the 15th amendment; it enforces it, and gave the United States, during the 60 years or so of its enactment, its only plausible claim to being a real democracy. To say that the VRA contradicts the 15th amendment is more than just bad reasoning. It is bad faith. But bad faith, increasingly, is what the supreme court operates under.If the supreme court rules in favor of the “non-African-American” voters and vacates what is left of the Voting Rights Act, as they are expected to, then a decision will probably come down sometime in June, just a few months before the November 2026 midterms. The resulting racial gerrymanders are expected to net Republicans 19 House seats.

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Trump says US looking at land attacks in Venezuela after lethal strikes on boats – live

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      Asked in the Oval Office if the US is considering strikes on suspected drug cartels inside Venezuela, after lethal strikes on suspected drug smugglers at sea, Donald Trump just said that the administration is “looking at land”.The president also claimed, without citing evidence, that every strike on a suspected drug smuggling speedboat saves thousands of lives in the US. “Every boat that we knock out, we save 25,000 lives,” Trump said.Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor of California, on Wednesday urged the Republican-led House oversight committee to launch an investigation into the “vile and offensive” text messages exchanged between leaders of Young Republican groups.The request follows a report in Politico that revealed more than 28,000 Telegram messages sent between Young Republican leaders over the course of seven months, in which they refer to Black people as monkeys, praise Hitler, and repeatedly make glib remarks about gas chambers, slavery and rape.“Calling for gas chambers. Expressing love for Hitler. Endorsing rape. Using racist slurs. This is not a ‘joke’, and it is not fringe,” Newsom said in a statement. “If Congress can investigate universities for failing to stop antisemitism, it must also investigate politicians’ own allies who are openly celebrating it.”With Republicans in control of the House, the oversight committee is unlikely to act.In the letter addressed to James Comer, the Republican committee chair and an ally of the president, Newsom notes that while House Republicans have made combating antisemitism a priority, few party leaders have publicly condemned the messages revealed in the report.Democrats such as the New York governor, Kathy Hochul, expressed outrage over the messages, and some GOP groups, like the Young Republican National Federation, have called for resignations.But the vice-president, JD Vance, said that he refused to “join the pearl clutching” over what he inaccurately described as “a college group chat”.Vance recently expressed support for the effort to track down, intimidate and harass people who voiced criticism of Charlie Kirk after his assassination.Donald Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday that he might go to the supreme court next month when it hears his administration’s appeal of two prior court rulings against his imposition of sweeping tariffs under an economic emergency that appears to exist only in his mind.A trade court and an appeals court have both found that Trump exceeded his authority by imposing global tariffs citing provisions of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.On Wednesday, Trump also claimed that he had used the threat of tariffs to stop the escalation of fighting this year between India and Pakistan, two nuclear-armed nations.Indian officials have said that Trump’s intervention had nothing to do with the end of hostilities.Donald Trump has finished speaking in the Oval Office. After he recited a long series of previously aired grievances, he confirmed, for the first time, that he authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations in Venezuela, marking a sharp escalation in the administration’s apparent effort to drive the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, from power.Donald Trump just claimed that the number of Hamas fighters killed by Israel, with US support, exceeds the entire estimated death toll in the Gaza Strip in the past two years.“We, meaning Israel, but I knew everything they were doing, pretty much, I knew most of the things they were doing,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, “they’ve killed probably 70,000 of these people, Hamas.”As the United Nations reported last week, there have been 67,183 fatalities and 169,841 injuries reported to the Gaza ministry of health since 7 October 2023.The dead included 20,179 children, 10,427 women, 4,813 elderly people and 31,754 adult men.In May of this year, a joint investigation by the Guardian, the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call found that Israel’s military intelligence database of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters had 47,653 names. Of them, 8,900 were marked as killed or probably killed.Trump went on to claim that Hamas had agreed to surrender its weapons, but, while Hamas leaders said earlier this year that they would consider giving up the group’s heavy weapons, such as rockets and missiles, on Saturday a senior Hamas official told Agence France-Presse that disarmament was “out of the question”, adding: “The demand that we hand over our weapons is not up for negotiation.”Nevertheless, Trump said on Wednesday: “We want the weapons to be given up, sacrificed, and they’ve agreed to do it. Now they have to do it, and if they don’t do it, we’ll do it.”Asked by a reporter if that meant the US military might be directly involved in disarming the Palestinian militants, Trump replied, again apparently referring to US support for Israel’s military: “We won’t need the US military … because we’re very much involved.”To defend lethal US military strikes on suspected drug smugglers, Donald Trump just repeated his familiar but baseless claim that Venezuela “emptied” its prisons and “insane asylums” by sending incarcerated people into the United States as undocumented immigrants during the Biden administration.“Many countries have done it,” Trump claimed.As the Marshall Project reported a year ago, before the 2024 election, Trump had already made this claim more than 500 times without a shred of evidence.Asked in the Oval Office if the US is considering strikes on suspected drug cartels inside Venezuela, after lethal strikes on suspected drug smugglers at sea, Donald Trump just said that the administration is “looking at land”.The president also claimed, without citing evidence, that every strike on a suspected drug smuggling speedboat saves thousands of lives in the US. “Every boat that we knock out, we save 25,000 lives,” Trump said.Kash Patel, the FBI director, is speaking to members of the press now.“In just a three-month span, you had 8,700 arrests of violent criminals. You had 2,200 firearms seized off the streets permanently, to safeguard our communities. You had 421kg of fentanyl seized. Just to put that in perspective, that’s enough to kill 55 million Americans alone,” Patel said.He then compared the number of arrests since Trump returned to the White House with the yearly arrests of violent criminals during the Biden administration.“You have 28,600 arrests of violent criminals in just seven months alone, because of your leadership,” Patel said, praising the president in the process.“It’s a mess, and we have great support in San Francisco,” Trump said of the city and California governor Gavin Newsom’s home town.“Every American deserves to live in a community where they’re not afraid of being mugged, murdered, robbed, raped, assaulted or shot, and that’s exactly what our administration is working to deliver.”Trump touted the success of federal law enforcement in Washington DC.“It’s been so nice because so many people, they’re going out to dinner, and they’re having dinners they wouldn’t, they didn’t go out for four years, and now they’re going out three times a week,” he said.He went on to complain that the only thing in his way in other major cities is “radical left governors”.The president begins his press conference saying that he’s here to talk about “Operation Summer Heat”. He’s flanked by the FBI director, Kash Patel.“Over the past few months, FBI offices in all 50 states made crushing violent crime a top enforcement priority. That’s what they did, rounding up and arresting thousands of the most violent and dangerous criminals,” Trump said.Brown University is the latest institution to reject the White House’s offer to join a “Compact of Academic Excellence” – the controversial agreement which would provide preferential treatment to colleges that carry out several of the administration’s education policies, including ending diversity initiatives and capping international student enrollment.In a letter to the education secretary, Linda McMahon, Brown’s president. Christina H Paxson, said she’s concerned the compact would “restrict academic freedom and undermine the autonomy of Brown’s governance”.She added:
      A fundamental part of academic excellence is awarding research funding on the merits of the research being proposed. The cover letter describing the compact contemplates funding research on criteria other than the soundness and likely impact of research, which would ultimately damage the health and prosperity of Americans.
      The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) became the first university to reject the invitation to join the compact, before the White House extended the option to all higher education institutes across the country.The Senate has rejected a House-passed funding bill to reopen the federal government, as the shutdown enters its 15th day.With a vote of 51-44, this is the ninth time that the funding extension has failed to meet the 60-member threshold needed to advance in the upper chamber.According to Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell, the plane carrying the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, back from a meeting of Nato ministers in the UK had to make an unscheduled landing “due to a crack in the aircraft windshield”.Parnell added: “The plane landed based on standard procedures and everyone onboard, including Secretary Hegseth, is safe.”

      A federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from carrying out layoffs during the ongoing government shutdown. In a lawsuit brought by the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) challenging the reductions in force that the Trump administration enacted last week, Judge Susan Illston said that the mass firings across agencies, which amounted to more than 4,000 layoffs, are an example of the administration taking “advantage of the lapse in government spending, in government functioning, to assume that that all bets are off, that the laws don’t apply to them any more”. Illston blocked the administration from laying off any federal employees because of, or during, the shutdown, and has stopped them from taking action on the already issued reductions in force for at least two weeks.

      While that hearing was under way, the White House budget director maintained that the firings are far from over. Russell Vought, the director of the office of management and budget – has said that the current reductions in force are just a “snapshot”. He added that the total amount could end up being about 10,000.

      The supreme court heard two and a half hours of oral arguments today in a case that could thwart a key provision of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). The conservative majority on the bench seemed sympathetic to the case, made by lawyers for Louisiana, a group of “non-African American voters” and the Trump administration. They all argue that a 2024 congressional map, which created a second majority-Black district in Louisiana, violates the constitution. If the court rules in their favor, it could ultimately diminish section 2 of the VRA, which prohibits electoral practices that dilute the voting power of minority groups. It would also limit the ability of legislatures from drawing maps with racial demographics in mind, and could cost Democrats several House seats in Republican-led states.

      Also in Washington, the government shutdown enters day 15, with no end in sight. Republicans and Democrats in Congress held press conferences at the US Capitol, and continued to exchange barbs – blaming the other party for the lapse in funding. The House speaker, Mike Johnson, said that he spoke with Donald Trump on Tuesday, adding that Republicans are “forlorn” and not taking “any pleasure” in the length of the shutdown and the mass layoffs implemented by the White House budget office. Meanwhile, Hakeem Jeffries slammed the administration for offering a $20bn cash bailout to Argentina, but not “spending a dime on affordable healthcare for Americans”. CSPAN also reported that Johnson and Jeffries have both accepted an invitation to debate on the network. The date has yet to be announced.

      Today, Johnson also accused a group of Democrats of “storming” his office, showing “disdain for law enforcement” and playing “political games”. On Tuesday evening, a group of Democrats including Adelita Grijalva, the Democratic representative-elect for Arizona, marched to Johnson’s office, chanting “swear her in” and demanding that she be seated after she won a special election in her state over three weeks ago. Arizona’s attorney general, Kris Mayes, has threatened legal action against Johnson for failing to seat Grijalva, and Grijalva said she has also been exploring her legal options for officially claiming her seat.
      In her order, Judge Illston has temporarily blocked the administration from laying off any federal employees because of or during the shutdown, and has stopped them from taking action on the already issued reductions in force for at least two weeks.She’ll lay out further details in her written ruling later today, but said that the administration will need to provide a plan outlining how they have complied with her order within two business days. Illston said that she will schedule a preliminary injunction hearing in roughly two weeks’ time. “It would be wonderful to know what the government’s position is on the merits of this case,” Illston added. “My breath is bated until we find that.”Judge Susan Illston has issued a temporary restraining order, blocking the firing of federal workers during the ongoing government shutdown. More

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      Trump calls Charlie Kirk a martyr and boasts about 2024 election at posthumous medal ceremony – live

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      Donald Trump just presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Charlie Kirk’s distraught, tearful widow, Erika Kirk.Erika Kirk then made remarks from the podium, telling Turning Point USA members that her husband’s mission lives on through them.Erika Kirk delivered an emotional speech, at times dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief, as Trump stood to her right.She said: “I have spent seven and a half years trying to find the perfect birthday gift for Charlie… But now I can say with confidence, Mr President, that you have given him the best birthday gift he could ever have.”The pair then spoke quietly for some moments as a band began to play Amazing Grace.The White House ceremony in honor of Charlie Kirk has now concluded.At a campaign event last year, Donald Trump said that the Presidential Medal of Freedom for civilians, which he bestowed on Kirk on Tuesday, was “much better” than the top military award for those killed or wounded in action: the Medal of Honor.Trump was widely criticized for that comment, made as he addressed Miriam Adelson, the widow of the Republican mega-donor Sheldon Adelson. Trump had awarded Miriam Adelson the Medal of Freedom in 2018.The civilian medal, Trump told supporters then, is “actually much better because everyone [who] gets the congressional Medal of Honor, they’re soldiers.”“They’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets or they’re dead. She gets it, and she’s a healthy, beautiful woman. And they’re rated equal.”Charlie Kirk is not the first to receive the medal from Trump posthumously. During his first term, he gave it to Babe Ruth, Elvis Presley and Antonin Scalia.In 2020, Trump also presented the medal to the rightwing radio host Rush Limbaugh during a State of the Union address.In his speech at the memorial for Kirk in Arizona last month, Trump revealed that Limbaugh was one of Kirk’s role models. “He was an Eagle scout who spent his school lunch breaks listening to another champion for liberty, somebody that he greatly admired, Rush Limbaugh,” Trump said.“Charlie Kirk was one of a kind. He was unstoppable… He’s irreplaceable. Nobody can replace him,” Donald Trump said in his remarks.“In Charlie’s honour we will continue to fight, fight, fight and win, win, win.”A military officer then read Kirk’s citation for the presidential medal of freedom.Kirk’s widow Erika thanked Trump and said: “Charlie always admired your commitment to freedom.”In remarks at the White House, Charlie Kirk’s widow praised her late husband in explicitly Christian terms and said that he would likely have run for president one day had he not been killed before his 32nd birthday.“If the moment had come, he probably would’ve run for president, but not out of ambition,” Erika Kirk said.In paying tribute to Kirk, Trump railed against “radical left extremism, violence and terror.”He asserted: “They have the devil’s ideology… They seem to become very violent on the left.”Trump claimed these attacks included the attempt on his own life at a campaign rally last year, even though the would-be assassin had no apparent political motive.The president went on tout his law and order crackdown on US cities. “We’ve done a great job.”He said of Washington: “We’re done with the angry mobs.” He claimed the city is now safe.But then police car sirens wailed near the White House. Trump, however, insisted: “That’s a beautiful sound. They’re stopping crime. That’s what they’re doing.”Donald Trump just presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Charlie Kirk’s distraught, tearful widow, Erika Kirk.Erika Kirk then made remarks from the podium, telling Turning Point USA members that her husband’s mission lives on through them.As Donald Trump boasted about the impact of his federal takeover of policing in the District of Columbia, blaring sirens could be heard in the distance, undermining his claim that there is no longer any crime in the capital city.Trump then claimed, falsely, that sirens were previously not heard in Washington DC because the city’s police force did not respond to crime.“You hear those sirens going off? That’s good, that’s a good sound,” the president said. “That means they either got the bad guy, or are gonna stop the bad guy. You didn’t hear that sound, because nobody wanted to do anything.”“Charlie Kirk was a martyr for truth and freedom,” Donald Trump just said in the Rose Garden. “From Socrates and St Peter, from Abraham Lincoln to Martin Luther King, those who change history the most, and he really did, have always risked their lives for causes they were put on earth to defend.”In the course of praising Charlie Kirk for his efforts to turn out conservative voters, Donald Trump boasted at length about his victory in the 2024 presidential election, repeating his familiar exaggerated claims that his popular vote victory “was massive”.Trump in fact got about 77.3 million votes, or 49.81%, to Kamala Harris’ 75 million votes, or 48.33% — a 1.48-point margin.From my vantage point at the back, I saw Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity greet each other warmly. Laura Ingraham, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Spicer and Jesse Watters are also present.Reflecting on Kirk’s death, Trump said: “It’s a horrible, heinous, demonic act of murder.”The president, who just returned from the Middle East, noted the inconvenient timing of today’s event but insisted: “I would not have missed this moment for anything in the world.”Guests are sitting or standing in warm sunshine and a gentle breeze as Trump speaks from a lectern with four US flags behind him.Recent additions to the rose garden and surrounding area include a statue of George Washington, bust of Abraham Lincoln and gold framed portraits of every president except Joe Biden, replaced by an auto pen.Trump referred to the government shutdown and commented: “We’re dealing with some radical left lunatics.”He suggested that Kirk would have responded by organising a young people’s march on the US Capitol.Trump said: “Charles James Kirk was a visionary and one of the greatest leaders of his generation.”The president seemed to be telling Kirk’s life story but veered off into talking about his past election campaigns. “Too big to rig.”Donald Trump has arrived for Charlie Kirk’s posthumous presidential medal of freedom ceremony, which is taking place in the Rose Garden at the White House.Trump walked out of the Oval Office with Charlie Kirk’s widow Erica.The guests here include JD Vance, treasury secretary Scott Bessent, commerce secretary Howard Lutnick, attorney general Pam Bondi and defense secretary Pete Hegseth.Also here are top Trumpworld operatives who were close to Kirk, including lobbyist Arthur Schwartz, former Trump deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich and Alex Bruesewitz.Donald Trump just began his remarks by praising his own renovation of what he called “the new and improved Rose Garden, and people are loving it”. He also drew attention to the new “presidential walk of fame”, which is a gallery of portraits of 44 of the 45 men to have served as president, with an image of an automatic pen in place of Joe Biden.Trump said that they were gathered to honor “the late, great Charlie Kirk”, the founder of the conservative advocacy group Turning Point USA he is awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian honor.The president took issue with the characterization of Kirk at his memorial in Arizona as someone who loved his enemies. “He didn’t necessarily love those enemies”, Trump said.Trump also suggested that he would have asked to push back the ceremony so that he could stay longer in the Middle East with the wealthy leaders of Gulf nations, but “October 14 is Charlie’s birthday, and he should have been turning 32 years old”.The president went on to give a largely familiar political speech, attacking Democrats as “radical left lunatics” and making jokes about the ABC host George Stephanopoulos, whose name he intentionally mispronounced.Trump also suggested that the current government shutdown would have been ended by Kirk, had he not been killed last month in Utah, who would have led “a march on the Capitol.”Guests have assembled in the new Mar-a-Lago style patio in the White House Rose Garden for the Medal of Freedom ceremony to honor Charlie Kirk, the murdered conservative activist and podcaster.The guests include Kirk’s widow, Erika, and current or former Fox hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Bill O’Reilly and Jesse Watters.Also there is Jack Posobiec, a conspiracy theorist who hosts a show on the far-right Real America’s Voice network sponsored by Turning Point USA, the advocacy group founded by Kirk.The are currently listening to a rendition of Ave Maria as they await the president, Donald Trump.

      Donald Trump said that a list of ‘Democrat programs’ that White House plans to cut will be released on Friday. He noted that he plans to cut “egregious, semi-communist” programs that, he claims, Democrats hold dear, but doesn’t plan to touch Republican programs, “because we think they work”. While hosting Javier Milei, president of Argentina, Trump took questions from reporters, in what became a far-ranging, impromptu press conference.

      Trump warned that Hamas must disarm ‘or we will disarm them’. Trump added that could happen “quickly and perhaps violently”. When he was asked about a timeline for disarmament, the president said that it would be “a reasonable period of time … pretty quickly”. So far, Trump has been taking a victory lap, complete with bipartisan praise, for brokering the hostage-prisoner exchange on Monday, and the ceasefire deal in Gaza.

      Earlier, Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that the United States has struck another small boat that he accuses of carrying drugs in waters off the coast of Venezuala, killing six people aboard. “The strike was conducted in International Waters, and six male narcoterrorists aboard the vessel were killed in the strike,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social. “No U.S. Forces were harmed.”

      Back in Washington, the government shutdown enters its 14th day, with no end in sight. House Republicans continued to criticize the Senate’s top Democrat, Chuck Schumer, who they accuse of holding out on the House-passed funding bill to appease the left-wing base of his party. “We’re certainly not going to allow the American people to be taken hostage for his political gain,” House speaker Mike Johnson said today. Meanwhile Democrats, claim their colleagues across the aisle have abandoned good faith negotiations. House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries said that Republicans have gone “radio silent” since congressional leadership met with Trump at the White House days before the shutdown began. The Senate will hold its eighth vote, in the hopes of passing a funding bill to reopen the government. Spoiler alert: it’s unlikely to happen.

      The supreme court declined to hear Alex Jones’s challenge to a $1.4bn judgment awarded to families of the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting in 2012. Jones, a noted conspiracy theorist and founder of Infowars, made several false statements that the shooting – which killed 20 children – was a hoax.

      On the campaign trail, Maine’s Democratic governor, Janet Mills, has officially announced that she’s running for US Senate, challenging the incumbent, Republican Susan Collins. Mills, 77, will face a primary challenge from Graham Platner, the progressive oyster farmer entering politics for the first time and backed by Independent senator Bernie Sanders, of Vermont.
      Speaking to reporters while hosting Argentina’s president, Donald Trump said that he plans to cut “egregious, semi-communist” programs that, he claims, Democrats hold dear.“They’re never going to come back,” Trump said. “The Democrats are getting killed, and we’re going to have a list of them on Friday.”“We’re not closing up Republican programs because we think they work. So the Democrats are getting killed, but they’re not telling the people about that,” he added.Donald Trump floated taking away Boston’s ability to host several 2026 World Cup matches, calling out mayor Michelle Wu. “She’s intelligent, but she’s radical left,” Trump said, while offering to send federal law enforcement to the city. “All she has to do is call us. We’ll go in and take them back. But she’s afraid to, because she thinks it’s bad politically.”Trump added that if he feels that the city is “unsafe” he will “call up Gianni” and tell him to move the games to another location. Gianni Infantino, the head of Fifa, has emerged as an ally of the president as the games inch closer.“Boston better clean up their act, that’s all I can say,” Trump said. More