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      Mike Waltz grilled over Signal chat during confirmation hearing for UN role

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      Just over two months after being ousted as national security adviser, Mike Waltz faced lawmakers on Tuesday during a confirmation hearing to be US ambassador to the UN, telling them that he planned to make the world body “great again”.“We should have one place in the world where everyone can talk – where China, Russia, Europe and the developing world can come together and resolve conflicts,” Waltz told the Senate foreign relations committee about the UN. “But after 80 years, it’s drifted from its core mission of peacemaking.”On 1 May, Waltz was pushed out as national security adviser and replaced by Marco Rubio after it was revealed that Waltz mistakenly adding a journalist to a private Signal chat used to discuss planning for strikes on Houthi militants in Yemen. On Monday, the Associated press reported that he had spent the last few months on the White House payroll, earning an annual salary of $195,200.During Tuesday’s hearing, it took more than one hour for a lawmaker to bring up the Signal chat controversy.“I was hoping to hear from you that you had some sense of regret over sharing what was very sensitive, timely information about a military strike on a commercially available app,” said the Democratic senator Chris Coons of Delaware.“We both know Signal is not an appropriate and secure means of communicating highly sensitive information,” he added.Waltz responded that the chat met the administration’s cybersecurity standards, that “no classified information was shared”, and that the military was still conducting an ongoing investigation. He added that he and Coons “have a fundamental disagreement” about concerns over the situation.The New Jersey senator Cory Booker accused Waltz of lying about how a journalist was added to the chat.At the time, Waltz took responsibility even as criticism mounted against the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, who shared the sensitive plans in the chat that included several other high-level national security officials. Hegseth shared the same information in another Signal chat that included family, but Trump has made clear Hegseth has his support.The UN post is the last one to be filled in Trump’s cabinet following months of delay, including the withdrawal of the previous nominee. Waltz, a former Florida congressman, was introduced by Senators Mike Lee of Utah and Rick Scott of Florida as “a seasoned policy mind and skilled negotiator”.“With Waltz at the helm, the UN will have what I regard as what should be its last chance to demonstrate its actual value to the United States,” Lee said. “Instead of progressive political virtue signaling, the security council has the chance to prove its value, and settling disputes and brokering deals.”When nominating Waltz for the UN role, Trump praised him, saying he had “worked hard to put our Nation’s Interests first”.Trump’s first nominee, the New York congresswoman Elise Stefanik, had a confirmation hearing in January and was expected to be confirmed, but Trump abruptly withdrew her nomination in March, citing risks to the GOP’s historically slim House majority.If confirmed, Waltz would arrive at the UN at a moment of great change. The world body is reeling from Trump’s decision to slash foreign assistance – affecting its humanitarian aid agencies – and it anticipates US funding cuts to the UN annual budget.“It’s worth remembering, despite the cuts, the US is by far the most generous nation in the world,” said Waltz, responding to concerns that the administration’s cuts to global programs hurt US global influence.Waltz added that some UN-funded research and projects were anti-American and received input from some member states, which the administration considers adversaries. More

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      Arizona Democratic race for House seat highlights party’s internal debate – and previews the midterms

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      A gen Z influencer, a former state lawmaker and the daughter of a former representative are facing off in a special Democratic primary in Arizona on Tuesday that showcases the party’s internal debate in the run-up to the midterm elections.Longtime Arizona representative and progressive stalwart Raúl Grijalva died in office from complications of lung cancer treatment in March at age 77, leaving open a seat representing southern Arizona and its borderlands.His daughter, Adelita Grijalva, herself a longtime elected official in southern Arizona, is the frontrunner in the race and has a laundry list of endorsements. But Deja Foxx, a 25-year-old who’s made her name in viral moments standing up to politicians and who would become the youngest member of Congress, is surging in recent polls. Daniel Hernandez, a former state lawmaker who was at the 2011 shooting of then representative Gabby Giffords, is also pulling in significant support.“It’s a fascinating encapsulation of the different factions and factors that will define all Democratic primaries in 2026,” said Arizona progressive lobbyist Gaelle Esposito. “Adelita represents the progressive wing, Deja’s the blank-slate outsider, Daniel has that big donor lane locked down. Do people want a progressive leader, do they just want to shake up the system or do they want someone who knows how to navigate the DC backrooms?”The district is solidly blue, meaning that whoever wins the Democratic primary is the likely victor in the general election.National Democratic infighting has brought extra attention to the race, as the left wrangles over how to fight Donald Trump and win back voters while the Democratic party brand is flagging. It’s also the first time this seat has been open in more than two decades. Questions over seniority and age in the party have loomed over the race – three Democrats died in office this year, and Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” passed by only one vote. Grijalva’s opponents have attacked her “legacy” last name.“The thing that I need to push back on is this idea that the three members of Congress died because of age,” Grijalva, 54, said. “They died because of cancer. My dad lived in a Superfund site and drank poison water for two decades.”After Zohran Mamdani’s upset win in the Democratic primary for New York City mayor, Democrats are looking across the country at how candidates who buck the status quo, and who communicate well to voters and on social media, will fare.Leaders We Deserve, David Hogg’s Pac, endorsed Foxx in the race, saying “she has translated her story to represent a new vision of generational change that speaks truth to Trump’s cruel policies”. His group is spending in Democratic primaries in safe blue districts to support younger progressive candidates and drive out Democrats who are “asleep at the wheel”.The candidates say voters are concerned about immigration, deportations and detentions – the district contains three major ports of entry on the US-Mexico border. The economy looms large, especially with Trump’s new bill that could devastate rural areas in particular, as does the dismantling of democracy.But the race hasn’t dwelled much on the issues; instead it’s zoomed in on an old-versus-new, established-versus-insurgent dynamic that’s played out across the country and will mark the midterms.The candidatesFoxx, a gen Z Filipino American from Tucson, got her start fighting for better sex education in Tucson schools. She has nearly 400,000 followers on TikTok and more than 240,000 on Instagram and has created viral political moments since she was a teenager. When she was 16, she pointedly confronted then US senator Jeff Flake at a town hall over defunding Planned Parenthood, calling him a “middle-aged man” who “[came] from privilege”. In the decade since, she has worked on political advocacy, including on Kamala Harris’s 2020 campaign. She attended the Democratic national convention in 2024 as a content creator.Her personal story plays heavily into her campaign: her family relied on food stamps, Medicaid and section 8 housing, all targets for Republican budget-cutting. She experienced homelessness as a teenager. She has worked a “normal-person job” and cleaned toilets at a gas station for $10 an hour.“People are ready to question a political system that prioritizes legacy last names or big-dollar donors, and they’re looking for a candidate who reflects back their lived experiences,” Foxx said.When she filed paperwork to run in the special election in April, she was alone in her bedroom – and she said she did it wrong. She, like other young candidates jumping into primaries across the country, is showing her followers how you run for office in real time.“I am the only break from the status quo, the only change candidate that represents a difference in the tactics it’s going to take to stand up to this administration,” she said. “I would ask people to just imagine what we could do from the House floor. It’s going to take messengers like me who know how to reach the people we are losing.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHernandez, who served three terms in the state legislature, has touted his ability to work with Republicans to pass legislation. He ran in a nearby congressional district in 2022, losing in the Democratic primary.He said voters have told him they’ve been without a voice in Congress since early 2024, when Raúl Grijalva got sick. They’re worried about losing access to Medicare, Medicaid and social security, and they want representation.“I’m the only one that actually has experience delivering results in a Republican environment,” he said. “That’s something that is really important right now, given the very broken and very divided Congress that we’re in.”Adelita Grijalva boasts a stack of endorsements from across the Democratic spectrum, including Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Arizona’s two US senators, Ruben Gallego and Mark Kelly. She has a long résumé in local politics, serving on the Tucson unified school district governing board for 20 years and the Pima county board of supervisors since 2020.She hasn’t shied away from her father’s legacy. Her first campaign video leans into it. “When you grow up Grijalva, you learn how to fight and who you’re fighting for,” she says. “I know how to fight and win because I learned from the best.”She said she learned from her dad the importance of doing your homework and to not take politics personally – a lesson she admittedly has struggled with, especially in this race. “I anticipated low blows. I didn’t anticipate, like, six feet under,” she said.Foxx has called out Grijalva for having a “legacy last name” and inheriting her father’s donor and mailing lists. But, Grijalva notes, her dad was “not a prolific fundraiser”. He raised enough to hire staff and buy food, but wasn’t sending money back to the party. She said 94% of the people who donated to her primary campaign haven’t given to a Grijalva before.“I’m not using my dad’s last name,” she said. “It’s mine, too. I’ve worked in this community for a very long time – 26 years at a non-profit, 20 years on the school board, four years and four months on the board of supervisors. I’ve earned my last name, too.”While she’s been attacked as an establishment candidate, her record – and her father’s – are strongly progressive. If elected, she wants to push for Medicaid for all and the Green New Deal. But the race has focused mostly on identity, with attempts to discredit her contributions to the community. “Establishment” and “Grijalva” have previously not really been used in the same sentences, she said, until the last month.“I wonder if my dad were an older white man and I were a junior, if I would be getting the same kind of criticism that I’m getting now,” she said. “And I don’t think I would.” More

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      We’re becoming inured to Trump’s outbursts – but when he goes quiet, we need to be worried | Jonathan Freedland

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      In the global attention economy, one titan looms over all others. Donald Trump can command the gaze of the world at a click of those famously short fingers. When he stages a spectacular made-for-TV moment – say, that Oval Office showdown with Volodymyr Zelenskyy – the entire planet sits up and takes notice.But that dominance has a curious side-effect. When Trump does something awful and eye-catching, nations tremble and markets move. But when he does something awful but unflashy, it scarcely registers. So long as there’s no jaw-dropping video, no expletive-ridden soundbite, no gimmick or stunt, it can slip by as if it hadn’t happened. Especially now that our senses are dulled through over-stimulation. These days it requires ever more shocking behaviour by the US president to prompt a reaction; we are becoming inured to him. Yet the danger he poses is as sharp as ever.Consider the events of just the last week or so, few of them stark enough to lead global news bulletins, yet each one another step towards the erosion of democracy in and by the world’s most powerful country.On Wednesday, Trump threatened to impose 50% tariffs – yes, he’s climbed back on that dead horse – on Brazil, if the judicial authorities there do not drop the prosecution of the country’s Trump-like former president Jair Bolsonaro, charged with seeking to overturn his 2022 election defeat and leading a coup against the man who beat him, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. As concisely as he could manage, Lula explained, via social media, that Brazil is a sovereign country and that an independent judiciary cannot “accept interference or instruction from anyone … No one is above the law.”This is becoming a habit of Trump’s. He made the same move in defence of Benjamin Netanyahu last month, hinting that Israel could lose billions in US military aid if the prime minister continues to stand trial on corruption charges. In both cases, Trump was explicit in making the connection between the accused men and himself, decrying as a “witch-hunt” the efforts to hold them to account. “This is nothing more, or less, than an attack on a Political Opponent,” he posted, of Bolsonaro’s legal woes. “Something I know much about!”It’s easy to make light of the transparent effort by Trump to forge an international trade union of populist would-be autocrats, but he’s not solely moved by fraternal solidarity. He also wants to dismantle a norm that has long applied across the democratic world, which insists that even those at the top are subject to the law. That norm is an impediment to him, a check on his power. If he can discredit it, so that a new convention arises – one that agrees that leaders can act with impunity – that helps his animating project in the US: the amassing of ever more power to himself and the weakening or elimination of any rival source of authority that might act as a restraint.He is being quietly assisted in that goal by those US institutions that should regard themselves as co-equal branches of government – Congress and the supreme court – and whose constitutional duty is to stand up to an overmighty executive. Republicans in Congress have now approved a mega bill that they know will leave future generations of Americans drowning in debt and deprive millions of basic healthcare cover. Even so, they put aside their own judgment and bowed to the man who would be king.Less discussed was the bill’s extraordinary expansion of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or Ice. Its budget has been increased by a reported 308%, with an extra $45bn to spend on detention and $29.9bn for “enforcement and deportation”. It will soon have the capacity to detain nearly 120,000 people at any one time. And, remember, latest figures show that about half of all those detained by Ice have no criminal record at all.No wonder even conservative critics are sounding the alarm. The anti-Trump Republicans of the Bulwark warn that within months, the “national brute squad” that is Ice will have twice as many agents as the FBI and its own vast prison system, emerging as “the primary instrument of internal state power”. In this view, Trump has realised that corrupting the FBI is a tall order – though still worth trying – so he is supplanting it with a shadow force shaped in his own image. As the Bulwark puts it: “The American police state is here.”Those most directly threatened might share clips of masked Ice agents snatching suspected migrants off the streets and manhandling them violently, just as reports circulate of appalling conditions in Ice premises, with people held in “dungeon-like facilities”, more than 100 crammed into a small room, denied showers or a chance to change clothes, and sometimes given only one meal a day and forced to sleep on concrete benches or the floor. But it is hardly a matter of national focus. Because it is not accompanied by a neon-lit Trump performance, it is happening just out of view.The same could be said of a series of recent decisions by the supreme court. They may lack the instant, blockbuster impact of past rulings, but they accelerate the same Trump trend away from democracy and towards autocracy.On Tuesday, the judges gave Trump the green light to fire federal workers en masse and to dismantle entire government agencies without the approval of Congress. Earlier, the supreme court had ruled that Trump was allowed to remove Democrats from the leadership of government bodies that are meant to be under politically balanced supervision.More usefully still for Trump, last month the judges limited the power of the lower courts to block the executive branch, thereby lending a helping hand to one of the president’s most egregious executive orders: his ending of the principle that anyone born in the US is automatically a citizen of the US, a right so fundamental it is enshrined in the constitution. In ruling after ruling, the supreme court is removing restraints on Trump and handing him even more power. Small wonder that when one of the dissenting minority on the court, Ketanji Brown Jackson, was asked on Thursday what kept her up at night, she answered: “The state of our democracy.”Meanwhile, Trump is succeeding in his goal of cowing the press, extracting serious cash from major news organisations in return for dropping (usually flimsy) lawsuits against them, a move that is having the desired, chilling effect.It all adds up to the steady erosion of US democracy and of democratic norms whose reach once extended far beyond US shores. Even if it is happening quietly, by Trump’s standards, without the familiar sound and fury, it is still happening. The work of opposing it begins with noticing it.

      Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist More

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      Donald Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ is the ultimate betrayal of his base | Sidney Blumenthal

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      Donald Trump’s so-called “big, beautiful bill”, which will eviscerate the living standards, healthcare and aspirations of his white, working-class base, conclusively draws the curtain down on his Maga populist conceit, the most elaborate charade in recent American political history.The price will be staggering: $1tn in cuts to Medicaid; throwing 17 million people off health coverage closing rural hospitals and women’s health clinics; battering food assistance for families, children and veterans; the virtual destruction of US solar and wind energy manufacturing; limiting access to financial aid for college; and, according to the Yale Budget Lab, adding $3tn to the national debt over the next decade, inexorably leading to raised interest rates, which will depress the housing market. These are the harsh, brutal and undeniable realities of Trumpism in the glare of day as opposed to his carnival act about how he will never touch such benefits.The president’s Maga populism has been a collection of oddities reminiscent of PT Barnum’s museum on lower Broadway before the civil war that exhibited a 10ft tall fake petrified man, the original bearded lady and the Fiji mermaid, the tail of a large fish sewn on to a bewigged mannequin. Trump attached plutocracy to populism to construct the Maga beast. But after the passage of the bill, the Fiji mermaid that is Maga has come apart at the seams, the head separated from the tail.“I just want you to know,” Trump said as he signed the bill, “if you see anything negative put out by Democrats, it’s all a con job.” He claimed the law was the “single most popular bill ever signed”. It is, in fact, the most unpopular piece of legislation since George W Bush proposed partial privatization of social security, which he abandoned without a single congressional vote. A Quinnipiac poll showed 53% opposing Trump’s bill, with only 27% support – 26 points underwater.At a meeting where Trump lobbied Republican House members to vote for his bill, he told them it would not cut Medicaid because that would damage their electoral prospects. “But we’re touching Medicaid in this bill,” one Republican member complained to the publication Notus. In response to the obvious contradiction, a White House spokesperson issued a statement that the bill would “protect Medicaid”. Problem solved.Even if Trump didn’t actually know what was in his bill, too bored to pay attention to minute details or even if he was pulling a con, he coerced the Republicans into walking the plank. If he didn’t know, they certainly knew what was in the bill and they hated it. But they feared his retribution if they did not vote for it, even though it would severely harm their base and trample their own principles. The Freedom Caucus of far-right House members who boldly declared that the debt was the hill they would die on simply folded.The Republican senator Josh Hawley of Missouri strenuously objected to the Medicaid cuts he warned would devastate rural hospitals: “I am confident it will not be put on the floor as it is currently. Something will change.” Then, after some minor changes, he said: “I’m going to vote yes on this bill.”The Republican senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, up for re-election in 2026, decried the Medicaid cut to his constituents. Trump threatened to primary him. Tillis all but said: you can’t fire me, I quit. “Great News!” Trump wrote on Truth Social. Tillis’s seat would likely be lost to the Democrats, but the offender was dispatched; another problem solved.The final holdout, the Republican senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, teetered until the last minute as the decisive vote. “We are all afraid,” she said in April about the Republican senators’ fear of Trump’s retaliation. “Retribution is real … I’m going to use my voice to the best of my ability.” If she had voted against the bill, it would have failed. She used her exquisite position to gain some protection for rural hospitals and food assistance in Alaska, as well as tax credits to about 150 Alaskan whaling captains. Yet one-third of Alaskans receive healthcare under Medicaid and 35,000 would lose coverage, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Murkowski was willing to trade small pieces to lose the larger ones. “Did I get everything I wanted? Absolutely not,” she said. She voted in favor. “Do I like this bill? No,” she said, adding with a passive-voice euphemism that, “in many parts of the country, there are Americans that are not going to be advantaged by this bill.” She acted like an alderman, exclusively focused on her tiny district, the rest be damned. Even then, her vote helped strip tens of thousands of her constituents of basic necessities, food and healthcare above all.Murkowski’s capitulation affirmed Trump’s view of human nature, that in the end the narrowest selfishness will win out over everything else. At the signing ceremony, Trump singled her out for getting “something”: “Right, Lisa? … You are fantastic!” He had succeeded in getting her to betray her fundamental beliefs on his behalf. He harpooned her for a whaling crew.Trump lies constantly, but has never concealed his intentions. Since 12 January 2016, at a rally in Iowa, Trump has recited a song dozens of times called The Snake, about a kindly woman who nurses back to health a frozen snake, who responds by biting her. When she asks why the snake has poisoned her:
      Oh shut up, silly woman, said the reptile with a grin
      You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in.
      Trump explained that the song is part of his demonization of immigrants and Muslims, initially aimed at Syrians, whom he suggested on a talkshow a few months later might commit a terrorist attack on the scale of 9/11. “Bad things will happen – a lot of bad things will happen. There will be attacks that you wouldn’t believe. There will be attacks by the people that are right now that are coming into our country, because I have no doubt in my mind.”Trump apparently ignored a cease and desist letter from the children of the author of the song’s lyrics, an extraordinary artist, composer, music producer, playwright and civil rights activist, Oscar Brown Jr, who meant it as a parable for the danger of not recognizing evil for what it is. His poem was turned into a minor Motown hit by the soul singer Al Wilson.Time and again, rally after rally, Trump told his worshipful acolytes that he would betray them. You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in. When they heard him recite those words, they interpreted them to mean that he would be their protector. But the story is of deception in plain sight. The snake will betray the one who takes him in, who does not understand that the snake’s nature is to be a snake.Trump appears to believe everyone betrays everyone all the time. It is evidently his rule for living. If he didn’t betray, he would have to be trustworthy. For him to behave in a trustworthy way would undermine his apparent understanding of reality: everyone cheats, lies and steals. If they haven’t, it’s because they either would like to but are inhibited by foolish moral or ethical constraints, or they are too stupid or fearful to grasp that it is the only way to act in their interest. Those people are losers, chumps and marks.The wrong question is: whom has Trump betrayed? The right question is: whom hasn’t he betrayed?The story of Trump’s betrayals is an epic, covering his entire career, encompassing his private life and his public one. He betrayed the Polish immigrant construction workers who cleared the way for Trump Tower by underpaying them – or not paying them at all, just as workers have said he stiffed them on many other projects. He has betrayed his brother and nephew, cutting off the sick child’s health insurance. He appears to have betrayed his personal physician, after a bodyguard and Trump lawyer showed up at the doctor’s office to take Trump’s medical records, leaving the doctor feeling as if he had been “raped”. Trump University betrayed its students, who sued him for false advertising, resulting in a $25m settlement. The Trump Foundation was dissolved by court order amid accusations of self-dealing.Trump’s betrayals of the law and the constitution are innumerable. Now, he appears to betray the emoluments clause rapaciously using the presidential office for self-enrichment to the tune of untold billions.Who wouldn’t he betray? He cut off Roy Cohn, who taught him the tricks of intimidation, when he was dying of Aids. Trump, said Cohn “pisses ice water”. Once he betrayed Cohn, there was no one he would not and did not betray. It was inevitable that he would betray Elon Musk, the richest person in the world who thought he was also the cleverest.Trump’s compulsion is to compound his betrayals. He glories in the humiliation of others as the proof of his domination. His fervent fans bask in his acts of degradation against the weak, the powerless, the Other. They cheer his cruelty, his calls for violence, his insults. They think he’s doing it on their behalf. But Trump does nothing on anybody else’s behalf. He has no benevolent, philanthropic or idealistic motives. “I hate them, too,” he said at an Iowa rally on 3 July about Democrats after his bill passed. “I really do. I hate them.” His Maga devotees may love him for the objects of his hatefulness. They don’t register that someone whose nature is to betray everyone will surely betray them. They may not even grasp that their betrayal has already happened. You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in.

      Sidney Blumenthal, a former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth. He is a Guardian US columnist and co-host of The Court of History podcast More

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      Mahmoud Khalil says he filed $20m claim against Trump officials ‘because they think they are untouchable’ – US politics live

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      Mahmoud Khalil said in a statement that he wanted to send a message that he won’t be intimidated into silence. In lieu of a settlement, Khalil suggested he would accept an official apology and changes to the administration’s deportation policies.He said of the Trump administration: “They are abusing their power because they think they are untouchable. Unless they feel there is some sort of accountability, it will continue to go unchecked.”Khalil is planning to share any settlement money with others targeted by officials over pro-Palestinian protests.The Senate Appropriations Committee narrowly voted to adopt an amendment on Thursday that blocks the Trump administration from changing the site of a new FBI headquarters building.Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, cast the deciding vote on the amendment introduced by Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, which bars the Trump administration from spending any of the previously appropriated $1.4 billion in funds to move the FBI anywhere but the site in Greenbelt, Maryland which was chosen in a competetive process.Last week the administration notified congress that it intended to permanently relocate the FBI to the Ronald Reagan building in Washignton, DC instead of proceeding with the planned building in suburban Maryland.Such an “unauthorized use of funds” Van Hollen said in a statement, would have been “directly at odds with what has been passed by the Congress on a bipartisan basis” and would have set “a dangerous precedent for executive overreach into Congress’s power of the purse.”The measure passed 15-14.In her comments before the vote, Murkowski said that she had no information on how the administration had determined that the Reagan building was a secure enough location.“I, for one, would like to know”, Murkowski said, “this is the right place and it’s the right place, not for a Trump administration, not for a Biden administration, not for a Jon Ossoff administration, but this is the right place for the FBI”.Murkowski paused after her reference to the possibility that the Democratic senator from Georgia could be the next president.“Sorry, I didn’t mean to start any rumors”, she added to laughter from her colleagues.Keir Starmer, the UK’s prime minister, has reportedly accepted an invitation to visit Donald Trump during the US president’s expected trip to Scotland this month, a source familiar with the plans told Reuters on Thursday.There is, as yet, no word on the details of the rumored visit to the homeland of Trump’s mother, but Severin Carrell, the Guardian’s Scotland editor, reports that police in Scotland are gearing up for a possible visit to his golf resort in Aberdeenshire.“It is thought Trump will officially open a new 18-hole golf course at his resort on the North Sea coast at Menie, north of Aberdeen, being named in honour of his mother, Mary Anne MacLeod Trump”, Severin reported on Wednesday.“Planning is under way for a potential visit to Scotland later this month by the president of the United States” , assistant chief constable Emma Bond said. Police are bracing for likely large-scale protests, given Trump’s deep unpopularity in his mother’s homeland. There were demonstrations in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen during Trump’s last official visit as president in 2018.That year, Trump was greeted at his Turnberry golf resort in Scotland by a Greenpeace activist who paraglided directly over his head trailing a banner that read: “Trump: Well Below Par.” The scene was captured on video by the activist group and journalists.Trump’s first visit to Scotland as a politician came the morning after the UK voted to leave the European Union. He hailed the result that morning, despite the fact that Brexit was opposed by nearly two-thirds of Scottish voters.Trump, whose mother was from a remote part of Scotland (the Western Isles, where 55 percent of voters opposed leaving the EU), seemed oblivious to nationalist sentiment there that day, telling reporters the vote meant, “Basically, they took back their country.”During his first official state visit to the UK as president in 2018, Trump started to claim, falsely, that his 2016 visit had been “the day before” the Brexit referendum, not the day after it, and took credit for having “predicted” the outcome. Trump’s obviously false claim about the date of a foreign visit baffled reporters who accompanied him on the trip.In an Oval Office meeting with Ireland’s leader in 2019, as Brexit negotiations stalled, in part over the issue of the Irish border with the North of Ireland, Trump again repeated his fictional account of having visited Scotland ahead of the Brexit vote, claiming that he had “predicted it” at a news conference at one of his golf courses in Scotland which actually took place the day after the vote.Oregon’s junior senator, Jeff Merkley, announced on Thursday that he is running for re-election next year, citing the threat posed by “Donald Trump and his Maga cronies”.Merkley, a liberal Democrat, will turn 70 before election day in 2026, and his decision to run for a fourth term will not please party activists who are concerned that there are too many older Democrats in Congress. He was first elected to the senate in 2008.Oregon’s senior senator, Democrat Ron Wyden, who is 76, was elected to a fifth term in 2022.In an interview with the Washington Post in 2023, Merkley said that while he did not support calls for a mandatory retirement age for senators: “I do say to my team, when I am at that point, that pivot in my life, where you start to see the changes in my abilities, don’t let me run for re-election.”The Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil filed a claim against the Trump administration seeking $20m in damages, alleging he was falsely imprisoned. The suit comes as Khalil, a lawful permanent resident who has not been charged with a crime, is out on bail and the administration continues to actively seek his removal from the US. The Thursday filing is a precusor to a lawsuit under the Federal Tort Claims Act. “They are abusing their power because they think they are untouchable. Unless they feel there is some sort of accountability, it will continue to go unchecked,” Khalil said in a statement.Here’s what’s also happened so far today:

      A US district judge issued an injunction blocking Donald Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship, certifying a nationwide class of plaintiffs

      Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, pushed back against new evidence from a whistleblower suggesting Department of Justice lawyers were instructed to ignore court orders.

      US senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, said Kristi Noem was responsible for deaths related to flooding in Texas.
      Texas attorney general Ken Paxton and his wife, state senator Angela Paxton, announced on Thursday they were getting divorced.The Texas radio station KUT obtained the petition for divorce filed in Collin county. The petition accuses the attorney general of adultery and says the couple hasn’t lived together since June 2024.Ken Paxton, who is running for US Senate, said on X:
      After facing the pressures of countless political attacks and public scrutiny, Angela and I have decided to start a new chapter in our lives. I could not be any more proud or grateful for the incredible family that God has blessed us with, and I remain committed to supporting our amazing children and grandchildren. I ask for your prayers and privacy at this time.
      Angela Paxton said on X:
      Today, after 38 years of marriage, I filed for divorce on biblical grounds. I believe marriage is a sacred covenant and I have earnestly pursued reconciliation. But in light of recent discoveries, I do not believe that it honors God or is loving to myself, my children, or Ken to remain in the marriage. I move forward with complete confidence that God is always working everything together for the good of those who love Him and who are called according to His purpose.
      The fossil fuel industry poured more than $19m into Donald Trump’s inaugural fund, accounting for nearly 8% of all donations it raised, a new analysis shows, raising concerns about White House’s relationship with big oil.The president raised a stunning $239m for his inauguration – more than the previous three inaugural committees took in combined and more than double the previous record – according to data published by the US Federal Election Commission (FEC). The oil and gas sector made a significant contribution to that overall number, found the international environmental and human rights organization Global Witness.The group pulled itemized inaugural fund contribution data released by the FEC in April, and researched each contributor with the help of an in-house artificial intelligence tool. It located 47 contributions to the fund made by companies and individuals linked to the fossil fuel sector, to which Trump has voiced his fealty.Six Secret Service agents have been suspended without pay after the assassination attempt against Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania rally last July.The suspensions range from 10 to 42 days, with a loss of both salary and benefits during the absence, the agency’s deputy director, Matt Quinn, told CBS News.The disciplinary action comes nearly a year after the 13 July 2024 shooting at the Butler farm show grounds, where 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks fired multiple rounds from an unsecured rooftop, grazing Trump’s ear and killing firefighter Corey Comperatore.Quinn defended the agency’s decision not to dismiss the agents outright, telling CBS News the service would not “fire our way out of this” crisis.“We’re going to focus on the root cause and fix the deficiencies that put us in that situation,” he said, adding that suspended personnel would return to reduced operational roles.In an emailed statement, Tricia McLaughlin, a DHS spokesperson, called Khalil’s claim “absurd,” accusing him of “hateful behavior and rhetoric” that threatened Jewish students.The state department said its actions toward Khalil were fully supported by the law.Mahmoud Khalil said in a statement that he wanted to send a message that he won’t be intimidated into silence. In lieu of a settlement, Khalil suggested he would accept an official apology and changes to the administration’s deportation policies.He said of the Trump administration: “They are abusing their power because they think they are untouchable. Unless they feel there is some sort of accountability, it will continue to go unchecked.”Khalil is planning to share any settlement money with others targeted by officials over pro-Palestinian protests.The AP has more on the filing. It says the Trump administration smeared Mahmoud Khalil as an antisemite while it sought to deport him over his prominent role in campus protests.The filing — a precursor to a lawsuit under the Federal Tort Claims Act — names the Department of Homeland Security, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the state department.It comes as the deportation case against Khalil, a 30-year-old recent graduate student at Columbia University, continues to wind its way through the immigration court system.Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, whose role in college campus protests against Israel’s war on Gaza led to his detention for over three months in immigration jail, is now seeking $20m in damages from the Trump administration.His lawyers filed a claim Thursday, alleging false imprisonment and malicious prosecution after his March arrest by federal agents. Khalil, a legal US resident, said he suffered severe anguish in jail, and continues to fear for his safety. The government has accused him of leading protests aligned with Hamas, but has not provided any evidence of a link to the terror group.Citing the CNN report about bureaucratic hurdles at Fema, US senator Ron Wyden said homeland security secretary Kristi Noem was responsible for deaths related to the flooding.“Kids in Texas died as a direct result of Kristi Noem’s negligence. She should be removed from office before her incompetence gets Oregonians killed in a wildfire,” Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, posted on the social media network Bluesky.New cost-cutting measures at FEMA may have slowed the agency’s response to the Texas floods, CNN reported on Thursday.
      Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem — whose department oversees FEMA — recently enacted a sweeping rule aimed at cutting spending: Every contract and grant over $100,000 now requires her personal sign-off before any funds can be released.
      For FEMA, where disaster response costs routinely soar into the billions as the agency contracts with on-the-ground crews, officials say that threshold is essentially “pennies,” requiring sign-off for relatively small expenditures.
      In essence, they say the order has stripped the agency of much of its autonomy at the very moment its help is needed most.
      “We were operating under a clear set of guidance: lean forward, be prepared, anticipate what the state needs, and be ready to deliver it,” a longtime FEMA official told CNN. “That is not as clear of an intent for us at the moment.”
      For example, as central Texas towns were submerged in rising waters, FEMA officials realized they couldn’t pre-position Urban Search and Rescue crews from a network of teams stationed regionally across the country.
      In the past, FEMA would have swiftly staged these teams, which are specifically trained for situations including catastrophic floods, closer to a disaster zone in anticipation of urgent requests, multiple agency sources told CNN.
      But even as Texas rescue crews raced to save lives, FEMA officials realized they needed Noem’s approval before sending those additional assets. Noem didn’t authorize FEMA’s deployment of Urban Search and Rescue teams until Monday, more than 72 hours after the flooding began, multiple sources told CNN.
      Read the full story here.Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, is pushing back amid new disclosures from a fired DoJ lawyer suggesting justice department attorneys were instructed to defy court orders.“We support legitimate whistleblowers, but this disgruntled employee is not a whistleblower – he’s a leaker asserting false claims seeking five minutes of fame, conveniently timed just before a confirmation hearing and a committee vote,” she wrote in a post on X. “As Mr. Bove testified and as the Department has made clear, there was no court order to defy, as we successfully argued to the DC Circuit when seeking a stay, when they stayed Judge Boasberg’s lawless order.”“And no one was ever asked to defy a court order. This is another instance of misinformation being spread to serve a narrative that does not align with the facts. This “whistleblower” signed 3 briefs defending DOJ’s position in this matter and his subsequent revisionist account arose only after he was fired because he violated his ethical duties to the department.”As temperatures soared on a sweltering July day in New York City, shoppers at Queens’s largest mall said they were feeling the heat – of rising prices.“T-shirts, basic t-shirts, underwear, the basic necessities – the prices are going up,” said Clarence Johnson, 48, who was visiting the Macy’s at the Queen Center mall to pick up shirts he ordered online.As Donald Trump presses on with his trade wars, retailers have been passing price increases onto customers. Department stores – which rely on a variety of imported goods and materials, from shoes to t-shirts – have particularly been scrambling to deal with the flux in prices.At Macy’s, signs advertising sales of as much as 60% off original prices were sprinkled around the store – even next to diamond-encrusted necklaces locked inside display cases in the jewelry department. But for some customers, the prices are still too high.The future of the US government’s premier climate crisis report is perilously uncertain after the Trump administration deleted the website that housed the periodic, legally mandated assessments that have been produced by scientists over the past two decades.Five national climate assessments have been compiled since 2000 by researchers across a dozen US government agencies and outside scientists, providing a gold standard report to city and state officials, as well as the general public, of global heating and its impacts upon human health, agriculture, water supplies, air pollution and other aspects of American life.But although the assessments are mandated to occur every four years under legislation passed by Congress in 1990, the Trump administration has axed the online portal holding the reports, which went dark last week. A contract to support this work has also been torn up and researchers who were working on the next report, due around 2027, have been dismissed.A copy of the latest assessment, conducted in 2023, can be found deep on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s website. The Guardian replicated the report here in full in a more visible way for the public to access. More

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      Trump announces 50% tariff on Brazil, citing what he claims is a ‘witch-hunt’ against Bolsonaro – live updates

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      Donald Trump announced a 50% tariff on imports from Brazil in a letter posted on social media in which he began by complaining about the the prosecution of his ally, the former president Jair Bolsonaro.Until now, Trump’s tariff letters have been nearly identical, changing little more than the names of countries and leaders and the tariff rates, but the intemperate letter addressed to Brazil’s current president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, was markedly different, beginning with a diatribe about the supposed “international disgrace” of the “Witch Hunt” against Bolsonaro, who is now standing trial before the country’s supreme court for his role in an alleged coup attempt on 8 January 2023, following his election defeat.The pro-Bolsonaro riots at the seat of Brazil’s federal government in Brasília that day closely echoed the pro-Trump riot at the US capitol on January 6 2021.“The way that Brazil has treated former President Bolsonaro, a Highly Respected Leader during his Term , including by the United States, is an international disgrace. This Trial should not be taking place. It is a Witch Hunt THAT should end IMMEDIATELY!”, Trump wrote, employing the idiosyncratic writing style of his social media posts in a formal letter.“Due in part to Brazil’s insidious attacks on Free Elections, and the fundamental Free Speech Rights of Americans (as lately illustrated by the Brazilian Supreme Court, which has issued hundreds of SECRET and UNLAWFUL Censorship Orders to U.S. Social Media platforms, threatening them with Millions of Dollars in Fines and Eviction from Brazilian Social Media market),” Trump added, “starting on August 1, 2025, we will charge Brazil a Tariff of 50% on any and all Brazilian products sent into the United States, separate from all Sectoral Tariffs.”In addition to his outrage over the prosecution of Bolsonaro, over the failed coup attempt, Trump’s letter referred to the country’s decision to ban the former president from running in the next election, and to a dispute over a Brazilian supreme court judge ordering Truth Social, Trump’s social media platform, and Rumble, a video-sharing platform JD Vance invested in, to remove the US-based accounts of a leading supporter of Bolsonaro.As the Guardian reported in February, Trump’s company and Rumble, which is backed by the far-right tech billionaire Peter Thiel, sued the Brazilian supreme court justice Alexandre de Moraes over the orders in federal court in Florida.Donald Trump’s enraged letter to his Brazilian counterpart, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, announcing that the US would impose a 50% tariff on imports from Brazil, said that the move was motivated in part by the treatment of former president Jair Bolsonaro, who was barred from running for office until 2030 and is on trial for allegedly plotting to remain in office after losing his bid for re-election in 2022.The culmination of Bolsonaro’s efforts to hold on to power was a riot by his supporters in the nation’s capital who tried to prevent the transfer of power to the election’s winner, Lula, on 8 January 2023.Given that Trump still maintains that he was within his rights to plot to remain in office himself, after losing his bid for re-election in 2020, and the efforts culminated in a riot by his supporters on January 6 2021, it is not hard to see why Trump seems to be so dedicated to the idea that Bolsonaro did nothing wrong.As our colleague Tiago Rogero reported last month, Bolsonaro denied masterminding a far-right coup plot during testimony in his trial before Brazil’s supreme court, but did admit to taking part in meetings to discuss “alternative ways” of staying in power after his defeat in the 2022 election.In just over two hours of questioning, the 70-year-old said that after the electoral court confirmed Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s election victory, “we studied other alternatives within the constitution.”Those options included the deployment of military forces and suspension of some civil liberties, Bolsonaro said, but he argued that such discussions could not be considered an attempted coup.During his first term in office, it was obvious that Trump saw then president Bolsonaro – a far-right, climate-change denier – as a kindred spirit, and Bolsonaro’s son, Eduardo, cultivated close ties to Trump’s inner circle, and family, during visits to the US.Eduardo Bolsonaro took leave from his post as a congressman in Brazil and has been living in the US since March, lobbying Trump and Republican politicians to impose sanctions on Brazil.Brazil’s currency, the real, fell over 2% against the dollar late on Wednesday after Trump posted a letter online imposing a 50% tariff on imports and scolding the nation for its supposed mistreatment of its former leader, Jair Bolsonaro, who stands accused of trying to overturn his 2022 election loss through a coup.Trump’s letter said his administration will start collecting the 50% tariff on products imported to the US from Brazil, “separate from all sectoral tariffs”, starting on 1 August.Donald Trump announced a 50% tariff on imports from Brazil in a letter posted on social media in which he began by complaining about the the prosecution of his ally, the former president Jair Bolsonaro.Until now, Trump’s tariff letters have been nearly identical, changing little more than the names of countries and leaders and the tariff rates, but the intemperate letter addressed to Brazil’s current president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, was markedly different, beginning with a diatribe about the supposed “international disgrace” of the “Witch Hunt” against Bolsonaro, who is now standing trial before the country’s supreme court for his role in an alleged coup attempt on 8 January 2023, following his election defeat.The pro-Bolsonaro riots at the seat of Brazil’s federal government in Brasília that day closely echoed the pro-Trump riot at the US capitol on January 6 2021.“The way that Brazil has treated former President Bolsonaro, a Highly Respected Leader during his Term , including by the United States, is an international disgrace. This Trial should not be taking place. It is a Witch Hunt THAT should end IMMEDIATELY!”, Trump wrote, employing the idiosyncratic writing style of his social media posts in a formal letter.“Due in part to Brazil’s insidious attacks on Free Elections, and the fundamental Free Speech Rights of Americans (as lately illustrated by the Brazilian Supreme Court, which has issued hundreds of SECRET and UNLAWFUL Censorship Orders to U.S. Social Media platforms, threatening them with Millions of Dollars in Fines and Eviction from Brazilian Social Media market),” Trump added, “starting on August 1, 2025, we will charge Brazil a Tariff of 50% on any and all Brazilian products sent into the United States, separate from all Sectoral Tariffs.”In addition to his outrage over the prosecution of Bolsonaro, over the failed coup attempt, Trump’s letter referred to the country’s decision to ban the former president from running in the next election, and to a dispute over a Brazilian supreme court judge ordering Truth Social, Trump’s social media platform, and Rumble, a video-sharing platform JD Vance invested in, to remove the US-based accounts of a leading supporter of Bolsonaro.As the Guardian reported in February, Trump’s company and Rumble, which is backed by the far-right tech billionaire Peter Thiel, sued the Brazilian supreme court justice Alexandre de Moraes over the orders in federal court in Florida.In brief remarks to the press earlier, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that following his second meeting with Donald Trump in two days: “President Trump and I have a common goal: we want to achieve the release of our hostages, we want to end Hamas rule in Gaza, and we want to make sure that Gaza does not pose a threat to Israel any more.”On the ceasefire negotiations, the Israeli leader, who was at the US Capitol for meetings with lawmakers, went on:
      President Trump wants a deal, but not at any price. I want a deal, but not at any price.
      Israel has security requirements and other requirements, and we’re working together to try to achieve them.
      Donald Trump earlier told reporters there is a “very good chance” of a ceasefire in Gaza this week or next. He said
      There’s a very good chance of a settlement this week on Gaza. We have a chance this week or next week.
      Trump made it clear several times that his priority was achieving “peace” and getting the hostages back, but – like Netanyahu – he made no mention of other urgent matters like the desperate need to safely get aid to starving Palestinians in the strip.Asked by a reporter whether pushing out Palestinians to third countries they have no connection to will make Israel safer in the long run, Netanyahu said:
      We’re not pushing out anyone, and I don’t think that’s President Trump’s suggestion. His suggestion was giving them a choice.
      He claimed Palestinians should have “freedom of choice” to leave Gaza, “no coercion, no forcible dislocation. If people want to leave Gaza they should be able to do so,” he said of the besieged territory, much of which his military has flattened to rubble.Israel stands accused of committing genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza, and has made clear its intention to seize parts of the territory and remain there indefinitely.The US supreme court has maintained a judicial block on a Republican-crafted Florida law that makes it a crime for immigrants in the US illegally to enter the state.The justices denied a request by state officials to lift an order by Florida-based US district judge Kathleen Williams that barred them from carrying out arrests and prosecutions under the law while a legal challenge plays out in lower courts. Williams ruled that Florida’s law conflicted with the federal government’s authority over immigration policy.Florida’s attorney general James Uthmeier and other state officials filed the emergency request on 17 June asking the supreme court to halt the judge’s order. Williams found that the Florida law was likely unconstitutional for encroaching on the federal government’s exclusive authority over US immigration policy.The state’s request to the justices was backed by America First Legal, a conservative group co-founded by Stephen Miller, a senior aide to Donald Trump and a key architect of the administration’s hardline immigration policies.Florida’s immigration measure was passed by the state’s Republican-controlled legislature and signed into law in February by governor Ron DeSantis. It made Florida one of at least seven states to pass such laws in recent years, according to court filings.The American Civil Liberties Union in April sued in federal court to challenge the law. Bacardi Jackson, executive director of the ACLU of Florida, in a statement issued after the challenge was filed said that Florida’s law “is not just unconstitutional – it’s cruel and dangerous”.Williams issued a preliminary injunction in April that barred Florida officials from enforcing the measure.The Atlanta-based 11th US circuit court of appeals in June upheld the judge’s ruling, prompting the Florida officials to make an emergency request to the supreme court.On the same day that Florida’s attorney general filed the state’s supreme court request, Williams found him in civil contempt of court for failing to follow her order to direct all state law enforcement officers not to enforce the immigration measure while it remained blocked by the judge.Williams ordered Uthmeier to provide an update to the court every two weeks on any enforcement of the law.The Senate has voted 53 to 43 approve Republic Airways CEO Bryan Bedford to head the Federal Aviation Administration.Bedford, the head of the regional air carrier nominated by Donald Trump and approved for a five-year-term, will oversee $12.5bn in funding over five years to remake the aging US air traffic control system passed by Congress last week.Bedford has also pledged to maintain tough oversight of Boeing, which came under harsh criticism from the National Transportation Safety Board last month for a mid-air emergency involving a new Alaska Airlines 737 MAX 9 missing four key bolts.The Federal Emergency Management Agency should be eliminated in its current form and reformed so it responds more effectively to disasters, homeland security secretary Kristi Noem said at a meeting on reforming Fema on Wednesday.Speaking at a review council discussing reforms of Fema, Noem said the “entire agency needs to be eliminated as it exists today, and remade into a responsive agency”.Noem’s comments were a restatement of her thinking on Fema’s future but notable given that Fema personnel have been deployed to Texas to help in search and rescue efforts following flash floods on 4 July that have killed at least 119 people, with scores more still unaccounted for.Noem, who chairs the Fema Review Council, noted that the agency had provided resources and supported the search and recovery efforts in Texas, but criticized the agency for what she called past failures to respond to disasters effectively.“It has been slow to respond at the federal level,” Noem said. “That is why this entire agency needs to be eliminated as it exists today, and remade into a responsive agency.”Defenders of the agency have said the Trump administration is seeking to politicize a vital agency that helps states both prepare for natural disasters like hurricanes and floods and clean up in the aftermath.Further to my earlier post on this, Donald Trump said that five west African nations are going to lower their tariffs and that the United States treats the continent better than China does.At a meeting with the leaders of Gabon, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mauritania and Senegal at the White House, Trump added that he did not think those countries at the gathering were likely to see any US tariffs.Donald Trump also said that his administration will reach a deal with Harvard University.“Harvard’s been very bad – totally antisemitic. And, yeah, they’ll absolutely reach a deal,” he told reporters at the White House.Earlier we reported that his administration had escalated its feud with Harvard, declaring the Ivy League school may no longer meet the standards for accreditation and that it would subpoena it for records about its international students.Donald Trump said there is a “very good chance” of a ceasefire in Gaza this week or next, after meeting Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday for the second time in two days to discuss the situation.“There’s a very good chance of a settlement this week on Gaza,” Trump told reporters. “We have a chance this week or next week.”He made it clear several times that his priority was achieving “peace” and getting the hostages back, but made no mention of other matters like the desperate need to safely get aid to starving Palestinian people in the strip.Donald Trump said he would release more letters to countries notifying them of higher US tariff rates today and tomorrow, including Brazil.“Brazil, as an example, has not been good to us, not good at all,” Trump told reporters at the event with west African leaders at the White House. “We’re going to be releasing a Brazil number, I think, later on this afternoon or tomorrow morning.”Trump said the tariff rates announced this week were based on “very, very substantial facts” and past history.Donald Trump earlier told a table of west African leaders that he would like to travel to Africa “at some point”.Trump has never visited the continent in an official capacity, and his signaling that he’s open to doing so is no doubt tied to his view of the many commercial opportunities for the US in African countries.Trump’s guests today include the leaders of Gabon, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mauritania and Senegal, and has so far concentrated on his “trade, not aid” policy.With all of these countries facing 10% tariffs on goods exported to the US, they seem keen to try to negotiate this rate down. Indeed several leaders have sought to flatter Trump as a “peace-maker” and said they want him to get a Nobel Peace Prize, while also touting their countries’ wealth in assets such as critical minerals and rare earths and their strategic importance in terms of migration and maritime security.War-torn South Sudan has said it is holding a group of eight men controversially deported from the United States.Only one of them is from South Sudan. The rest comprise two people from Myanmar, two from Cuba, and one each from Vietnam, Laos and Mexico.The Trump administration is trying to move unwanted migrants to third countries as some nations refuse to accept returnees. Administration officials said the men had been convicted of violent crimes in the US. The decision has been fought in US courts.“They are currently in Juba under the care of the relevant authorities, who are screening them and ensuring their safety and wellbeing,” the South Sudanese foreign ministry said in a statement late on Tuesday.It did not give details, but said the “careful and well-studied decision” was part of “ongoing bilateral engagement”.“South Sudan responded positively to a request from the US authorities as a gesture of goodwill, humanitarian cooperation and commitment to mutual interests,” it added.The deportations have raised safety and other concerns among some in South Sudan.“South Sudan is not a dumping ground for criminals,” said Edmund Yakani, a prominent civic leader.United Nations experts, appointed by the UN Human Rights Council but who do not speak on behalf of the UN, have criticised the move.“International law is clear that no one shall be sent anywhere where there are substantial grounds for believing that the person would be in danger of being subjected to … torture, enforced disappearance or arbitrary deprivation of life,” 11 independent UN rights experts said in a statement.As Donald Trump approaches six months in office as president, his administration’s agenda has shaken every corner of US life.According to research from Harris Poll, Americans are reconsidering major life events including marriage, having children and buying a home amid economic anxiety under the Trump administration.Six in 10 Americans said the economy had affected at least one of their major life goals, citing either lack of affordability or anxiety around the current economy.We want to hear from you. Have you been delaying major life decisions amid economic and political anxieties? When did things begin to feel destabilized? What effect in particular has delaying life decisions had on your household?Find the link to take part here:EU trade commissioner Maroš Šefčovič has not had his scheduled call with US trade representative Jamieson Greer yet, so those on standby for a possible announcement by Donald Trump today on a deal with the bloc may have some time to wait. More

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      Netanyahu vows to combat what he calls ‘vilification against Israel’ online

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      Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday that he’s vowed to combat an orchestrated social media campaign of “vilification and demonization” that he says is responsible for a drop in support for Israel among US voters, especially Democrats.“I think there’s been a concerted effort to spread vilification and demonization against Israel on social media,” the Israeli prime minister told journalists on Capitol Hill after being asked to respond to opinion polls showing a move away from the historic trend of strong backing for Israel.“It’s directed, it’s funded. It is malignant. We intend to fight it, because nothing defeats lies like the truth, and we shall spread the truth for everyone to see once people are exposed to the facts, we win hands down. That’s what we intend to do in the coming months and years.”Netanyahu’s comments came during a visit to Congress, where he met the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson.They also followed the recent victory of Zohran Mamdani in the Democratic primary race for the mayor of New York, which commentators believe was partly fueled by the candidate’s vocal support for Palestinian rights and criticism of Israel’s military offensive in Gaza.A range of surveys have shows a marked decline in support for Israel among Democratic-leaning voters amid rising disquiet about the impact of the war in the now devastated coastal territory. The ongoing war has killed about 60,000 people – most of them Palestinians – and has seen much of the population threatened with starvation.A Gallup poll in March showed less than half of the US public sympathized with Israel’s position, the lowest figure recorded since the organization started taking surveys on the issue. Among Democrat voters, 38% sympathize with the Palestinians over the Israelis, a reversal of a 2013 Gallup survey, which saw Democrats sympathizing with Israelis by a margin of 36%.Other polls have shown similar trends, raising concerns for the future of the traditional strong bipartisan US support for Israel.The Israeli leader said his government had accepted a proposal from Qatari mediators for a fresh ceasefire with Hamas, saying it matched what had been proposed by Steve Witkoff, Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWitkoff, speaking at a cabinet meeting earlier on Tuesday, had spelled out the terms of a proposed deal to broker a 60-day ceasefire he hoped would be in place by the end of the week, saying it would involve the release of Israeli hostages.“Ten live hostages will be released, nine deceased will be released,” Witkoff said. “We’re meeting at the president’s direction with all the hostage families to let them know, and we think that this will lead to a lasting peace.”Netanyahu said: “We accepted a proposal that came from the mediators. It’s a good proposal. It matches Steve Witkoff’s original idea and we think that we’ve gotten closer to it, and I hope we can cross the line.”He also said he expected to meet the US president again during his current visit, his third to Washington since Trump was inaugurated in January. The two met at the White House on Monday evening, when Netanyahu presented Trump with a letter nominating him for a Nobel peace prize.Netanyahu said the the military coordination with Washington during Israel’s recent 12-day war with Iran, which resulted in repeated strikes on Tehran’s nuclear facilities, was unprecedented.“In the entire 77 years of Israeli history, there has never been the degree of coordination of cooperation and trust between America and Israel as we have today,” he said. “And I credit President Trump with this extraordinary achievement.” More