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    Pentagon names new press corps from far-right outlets after reporter walkout

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    After the recent departure of Pentagon reporters due to their refusal to agree to a new set of restrictive policies, the defense department has announced a “next generation of the Pentagon press corps” featuring 60 journalists from far-right outlets, many of which have promoted conspiracy theories.Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell posted the news on X but did not provide any names.The Washington Post, however, obtained a draft of the announcement, which stated that the new reporters, who agreed to the department’s new policies, were from outlets such as Lindell TV, started by Trump ally Mike Lindell; the Gateway Pundit; the Post Millennial; Human Events; and the National Pulse.The list also includes Turning Point USA’s media brand Frontlines, influencer Tim Pool’s Timcast and a Substack-based newsletter called Washington Reporter, the Post reported.The Pentagon did not immediately respond to the Guardian’s request for the list of journalists.Parnell described the group as a “broad spectrum of new media outlets and independent journalists”.“New media outlets and independent journalists have created the formula to circumvent the lies of the mainstream media and get real news directly to the American people,” Parnell wrote. “Their reach and impact collectively are far more effective and balanced than the self-righteous media who chose to self-deport from the Pentagon.”The new press corps includes rightwing outlets that have promoted conspiracy theories. For example, the Gateway Pundit spread false information about the 2020 election and then settled a defamation lawsuit with two Georgia election workers it falsely accused of wrongdoing and admitted that there was no fraud in the election.Similarly, Lindell denied the results of the election and was ordered to pay $2.3m to an employee of a voting machine company who sued him for defamation.Pool, a conservative podcast host, was among the influencers who allegedly were associated with a US content creation company that was provided with nearly $10m from Russian state media employees to publish videos with messages in favor of Moscow’s interests and agenda.Pool said they were “deceived and are victims”.The journalists who turned in their press credentials earlier this month did so after the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, introduced a policy that required that they agree not to obtain unauthorized material and restricted access to certain areas unless accompanied by an official.Outlets including the Washington Post, the New York Times and the Atlantic, as well as reporters from rightwing outlets such as Fox News and Newsmax, all refused to sign on to the new rules.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“We believe the requirements are unnecessary and onerous and hope that the Pentagon will review the matter further,” Newsmax told Times journalist Erik Wemple.The Guardian also declined to sign the revised Pentagon press pass policy because it placed unacceptable restrictions on activities protected by the first amendment.During a White House press briefing, Pool, a member of the new Pentagon press corps, asked Karoline Leavitt to comment on the mainstream media and “their unprofessional behavior as well as elaborate [on] if there’s any plans to expand access to new companies?”In a segment on Wednesday on the rightwing television network Real America’s Voice, defense department spokesperson Kingsley Wilson thanked the show’s host, Jack Posobiec, for joining the press corps.Wilson misstated the policies that caused journalists to leave the Pentagon. She did not mention that it included a requirement that they not obtain unauthorized material.“They walked out because they refused to sign an agreement that was simple. It was common sense. It said, wear a visible press badge. Don’t go in classified spaces, stay in the correspondence corridor and follow the building’s rules,” Wilson said.“That was their right, but also their loss, because now we get to have incredible journalists like yourself who are going to be here in the Pentagon reporting on what the Department of War is doing every single day,” Wilson said. “It’s really the next generation of journalism at the Pentagon.” More

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      Protests erupt in New York City after Ice raids Chinatown over ‘counterfeit goods’

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      Hundreds showed up to protests that broke out in New York City on Tuesday evening after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) raids related to “selling counterfeit goods” were conducted in the Chinatown neighborhood earlier in the day and resulted in an unknown number of people being detained.Hours after federal agents descended on lower Manhattan, demonstrators were seen assembling near the 26 Federal Plaza Immigration Building where they believed detainees were taken. Many shouted chants including “Ice out of New York” and “No Ice, no KKK, no fascist USA.”Videos of the raid show multiple masked and armed federal agents zip-tying and detaining a man, and shoving away onlookers. Throngs of New Yorkers followed the agents through the streets and down the sidewalks. An armored military vehicle was also seen rolling through the city streets.“Is this worth the paycheck? Selling your soul?” one woman can be heard shouting at agents.The raid, which onlookers say involved more than 50 federal agents, took place in a well-known area of Manhattan where counterfeit handbags, accessories, jewelry and other goods are sold daily en masse – often to tourists.It was unclear how many people were detained in the raid, but a witness told the New York Daily News that he saw at least seven individuals taken into custody.The Department of Homeland Security told the New York Times that the operation was “focused on criminal activity relating to selling counterfeit goods”. Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for DHS, said the operation was led by the Ice agency, the FBI, US border patrol and others.The Guardian has contacted the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for comment.Murad Awawdeh, vice-president of advocacy at the New York Immigration Coalition, condemned the raid to reporters on Tuesday night and said that between 15 and 40 vendors were arrested. Awawdeh also noted that least two locals were taken into custody for protesting and blocking Ice’s efforts.“You don’t see these scenes in democracy. You see them in fascist regimes,” Awawdeh told a crowd. “We need to continue to stand up and fight back.”Local city council member Christopher Marte told the City that he too was alarmed by the agents’ conduct.“The amount of weapons that they had on the street pointed at bystanders, something I’ve never seen in my life,” he said.The NYPD distanced itself from the raids, tweeting that it had “no involvement in the federal operation that took place on Canal street this afternoon”. However, onlookers noted that NYPD riot cops appeared to arrest several people protesting the Ice raid.Eric Adams, New York City’s mayor, quote-tweeted the NYPD’s missive and emphasized: “New York City does not cooperate with federal law enforcement on civil deportations, in accordance with our local laws.”“While we gather details about the situation, New Yorkers should know that we have no involvement. Our administration has been clear that undocumented New Yorkers trying to pursue their American Dreams should not be the target of law enforcement, and resources should instead be focused on violent criminals,” he wrote.New York City mayoral candidates Zohran Mamdani and Andrew Cuomo shared similar notes of criticism, with Mamdani calling the raid “aggressive and reckless” and Cuomo calling it “more about fear than justice, more about politics than safety”.Both men – and Kathy Hochul, New York governor – took aim at Donald Trump directly.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“[Donald Trump] claims he’s targeting the ‘worst of the worst.’ Today his agents used batons and pepper spray on street vendors and bystanders on Canal Street. You don’t make New York safer by attacking New Yorkers,” Hochul wrote.“Once again, the Trump administration chooses authoritarian theatrics that create fear, not safety. It must stop,” wrote Mamdani.“Today’s ICE raid in Chinatown was an abuse of federal power by the Trump administration,” wrote Cuomo.New York City councilmember Shahana Hanif also condemned the Ice raids in a press conference, saying that politicians across the city and the state were resolutely opposed to Ice raids.“We are against Ice’s blatantly violent tactics. Hordes of Ice agents showing up is unacceptable, immoral, unjust,” Hanif said.Ice raids with masked agents and have become commonplace in immigrant enclaves across the country as have protests against them. Protests against Ice have brought federal crackdowns to cities including Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland.Tuesday’s Chinatown raid is not the first in the New York City area in recent weeks. A 16 October raid in midtown Manhattan was the first known raid on a migrant shelter of the current Trump administration.Notably, many Ice raids have come with documented violence. Ice has used extreme force in Chicago including pepper balling a priest, pepper-balling the inside of a journalist’s car, and body-slamming a US congressional candidate.In New York, an Ice agent was “relieved of his duties” after body-slamming a woman to the ground in an immigration court house, but was reportedly back on the job shortly thereafter.Immigrants with no criminal record are now the largest group in Ice detention, and the agency has detained at least 170 US citizens in 2025. More

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      Troops on the streets, Ice thuggery – and prices still climbing: welcome to Trump’s ‘golden age’ | Steven Greenhouse

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      In his inauguration speech last January, Donald Trump bombastically declared: “The golden age of America begins right now.” Our braggadocious president has stuck to that theme ever since, telling the United National general assembly in late September: “This is indeed the golden age of America.”With the federal government shut down for more than two weeks, the nation more polarized than at any time since the civil war, political violence growing and the job market slowing, it doesn’t feel remotely like a golden age, unless one focuses on Trump’s Louis XIV-like effort to gild as many things as possible in the Oval Office.Decoration spree aside, it in no way feels like a golden age when Trump sends the national guard into Los Angeles and Chicago to fight “the enemy within” or when he says the governor of Illinois and mayor of Chicago should be in jail for opposing his plans to deploy troops to Chicago. I doubt that the 27 Chicago police officers who were accidentally teargassed by Ice agents think it’s a golden age and ditto for the growing number of US citizens Ice has arrested.Nor does the US seem like the shining city upon a hill when Ice agents slam a 79-year-old US citizen to the ground in Los Angeles. Nor when Trump’s Department of Homeland Security posts thuggish videos of stormtrooper-like Ice agents – videos that seem more like Germany in the 1930s than any golden vision of the US as it approaches its 250th birthday.Only a huckster would boast of a golden age when his public approval ratings are deep underwater. According to a CBS/YouGov poll in early October, 58% of the US public disapproves of Trump’s performance, while 42% approve. Another poll found that 62% of Americans believe the country is heading in the wrong direction.As part of his golden vision, Trump promised good times for working-class Americans, but 74% of the US public says the economy is in poor or fair condition and nearly two-thirds oppose his signature policy of tariffs and more tariffs. In a big thumbs down for Trump, 53% of the public says his policies are making the economy worse.Candidate Trump promised that prices would begin falling on his first day back as president, but prices have continued to climb since he returned to office, partly because of the tariffs he’s imposed. What’s more, Trump’s tariff mania has created so much economic uncertainty that job growth has slowed hugely under Trump compared with under Joe Biden. According to Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, there was “essentially no job growth” in September.Trump promised blue-collar Americans he would increase manufacturing and the number of factory jobs, but factory activity has declined for seven straight months, and factory employment has fallen since April, too. There’s nothing golden about any of that.Showing Americans’ increased pessimism under Trump, a Wall Street Journal-Norc poll found in September that the share of Americans who say they have a good chance of improving their standard of living has fallen to just 25%, a record low in surveys taken since 1987.The 10 million Americans who will lose health coverage because of Trump’s One Big (Not So) Beautiful Bill Act probably don’t consider this a golden age. Likewise with the 22 million Americans whose health insurance premiums will double on average, often soaring by thousands of dollars, unless Trump and congressional Republicans extend subsidies for the Affordable Care Act.Scientists complain that Trump is singlehandedly ending America’s golden age of scientific research with his deep, myopic cuts – cuts that could end US leadership in medicine and other vital fields of research. At the same time, Robert F Kennedy Jr is undermining trust in vaccines, with the US seeing the highest number of measles cases since Bill Clinton was in office and signed a law establishing free universal vaccinations for children.It seems like anything but a golden age for justice when the Department of Justice indicts the former FBI director James Comey and the New York state attorney general Letitia James after Trump in effect ordered prosecutors to get them (or get fired). Nor does one feel golden about the attorney general Pam Bondi not only stonewalling a Senate hearing (especially when asked about Trump’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein), but insulting several senators – she called Adam Schiff of California a “failed lawyer”. In the same crude vein, a White House spokesperson slimed the Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, calling him “an incompetent slob”. It doesn’t look like transparency or civility are part of Trump’s golden age.Trump can’t possibly feel golden about an August poll that found that nearly two-thirds of Americans believe he is corrupt, with 45% viewing him as “very corrupt”.When Trump spoke at the UN in September, the assembled diplomats must have thought it was a dark age for US diplomacy, not a golden one, when Trump berated them by saying: “Your countries are going to hell.” The next day, Britain’s Daily Mirror ran a front-page photo of Trump with the headline: “DERANGED – World’s Most Powerful Man-Baby.”In his inauguration speech, Trump said: “From this day forward, our country will flourish and be respected again all over the world.” But people from many countries are giving low marks to second-term Trump. When Pew asked residents of various countries whether they have confidence that Trump will do the right thing in world affairs, in Canada 77% of respondents said they had no confidence, while 22% had confidence. In Mexico, 91% had no confidence. In Germany 81% had no confidence, while 18% had confidence. In the UK, 62% had no confidence to 37% who had confidence.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSince Trump returned to office, many countries’ views of the US have soured substantially and not just because they’re livid about Trump’s tariff war. It’s harder than ever to view the US as a bulwark of democracy and freedom, considering that Trump has embraced Vladimir Putin, deployed troops to major cities, declared war on leading universities, dispatched masked agents to make mass arrests, and pushed to indict his political enemies. In Mexico, the favorability rating of the US has plummeted 32 percentage points since 2024, to just 29%, while in Canada, it has fallen 20 points to just 34% favorable. In Sweden, the US’s favorability rating is down 28 points to 19%, and in Germany it’s down 16 points, to 33%.I’m sure that many rightwing, “don’t tread on me” Americans don’t see this as a golden age. I can’t imagine they like seeing masked agents snatching people off the streets or Black Hawk helicopters descending on apartment buildings or Ice agents bashing in doors and windows. That’s not what freedom looks like.Even the country music star Zach Bryan – a navy veteran who calls himself “confused” politically – is complaining, with a new song saying Ice “is going to come bust down your door” and “the middle finger’s rising, and it won’t stop showing/ Got some bad news / The fading of the red, white and blue.”Trump, the salesman and showman, always feels the need to boast – to brag that things are the best ever under him. But his high disapproval ratings at home and abroad suggest many people think he is ushering in a dark age – an age of disinformation and division, of suppressing critics and indicting enemies, of taking one authoritarian, anti-democratic action after another.For a lucky few, it is a golden age. For the craftsmen hired to gild Trump’s Oval Office and his humongous new ballroom, it’s certainly a golden payday. As they grow ever richer, the country’s billionaires are no doubt basking in this new gilded age as Trump slashes their taxes, strips away regulations and steers deals to his buddies (like Larry Ellison, the world’s second-richest person). And Trump no doubt thinks it is a golden age for himself as he grabs ever more power, dominates the headlines, enriches himself further and decorates the White House with ever more gold.But to millions of us it feels like the opposite of a golden age as Trump takes a wrecking ball to truth, democracy and the rule of law. In declaring that it is a golden age, Trump is like the fraudster who says: “I have some wonderful, shiny gold I’ll sell you for $4,000 an ounce.” But in truth it’s just worthless fool’s gold.No one should be fooled by Trump’s delusional boasts.

      Steven Greenhouse is a journalist and author, focusing on labor and the workplace, as well as economic and legal issues More

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      Trump calls Colombia president ‘illegal drug dealer’ as US says it hit another ship

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      Donald Trump on Sunday accused Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, of being an “illegal drug dealer” and threatened to immediately cut US funding to the country as the defense secretary confirmed in a social media post an attack on a vessel associated with a Colombian leftist rebel group.Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Sunday that US forces had attacked another vessel, this time associated with a Colombian leftist rebel group. Hegseth, in a post on X, said “three terrorists were killed” in the operation which was “conducted in international waters”.“These cartels are the Al Qaeda of the Western Hemisphere,” Hegseth said. “The United States military will treat these organizations like the terrorists they are – they will be hunted, and killed.”In a post on Truth Social just hours earlier, Trump blamed the South American leftwing leader for encouraging the mass production of illegal drugs, saying he “does nothing to stop it, despite large-scale payments and subsidies from the US”.“Petro, a low rated and very unpopular leader, with a fresh mouth toward America, better close up these killing fields immediately,” Trump wrote, “or the United States will close them up for him, and it won’t be done nicely”.The remarks come after Petro said the US committed “murder” following a strike on an alleged drug boat in Colombian territorial waters in September.Posting on X on Saturday, Petro said: “US government officials have committed a murder and violated our sovereignty in territorial waters,” adding “we await explanations from the US government.”The threat to cut off aid marks the latest point of tension between the two nations, despite historically, Colombia being one of the United States’s closest allies in Latin America.The victim of the strike was identified by Petro as Alejandro Carranza, a Colombian fisherman from the coastal town of Santa Marta. He was allegedly killed when US forces fired at his boat on 15 September.“Carranza had no ties to the drug trade and his daily activity was fishing,” Petro wrote. “The Colombian boat was adrift and had its distress signal up due to an engine failure.”But Trump has continued to justify the necessity for these ongoing boat attacks, despite his administration offering little information about the vessels or the identities of those on board.On Thursday, the US moved to send two survivors of the most recent strike – the sixth since early September – overseas instead of seeking long-term military detention for them.“The two surviving terrorists are being returned to their Countries of origin, Ecuador and Colombia, for detention and prosecution,” Trump said.The strike targeted a semi-submersible vessel which the president said “was loaded up with mostly Fentanyl, and other illegal narcotics.” Two crew members were killed and experts said the decision to repatriate the survivors meant the US military would avoid complex legal questions surrounding the detention of suspected drug traffickers. This was the first recorded instance of there being survivors, an official told NBC.“It was my great honor to destroy a very large DRUG-CARRYING SUBMARINE that was navigating towards the United States on a well known narcotrafficking transit route,” Trump posted in the aftermath of the attack.So far, at least 29 people have been killed in strikes the administration upholds are targeting drug traffickers, raising alarm among some legal experts and Democratic lawmakers, who question whether they adhere to the laws of war.Currently, the US is building up a prominent military presence in the Caribbean and bordering coastlines, one that includes guided missile destroyers, F-35 jets, and the authorization of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to conduct covert operations in Venezuela.Colombia is the recipient of the largest amount of US aid to any country in Latin America and former president Joe Biden designated the nation as a major non-Nato ally in 2022. While Congress allocated $377.5m for foreign assistance for the country in 2024 with similar projections for 2025, there were restrictions put in place out of concern for Petro’s policies and his efforts to counteract the drug trade.In September, the Trump administration asserted that Colombia was failing to cooperate in the drug war, adding them to a list of other nations for the first time in almost 30 years.More recently, they said they would revoke Petro’s visa while he was in New York for the UN general assembly after his “reckless” actions at a pro-Palestine protest. Petro had urged US soldiers to “disobey Trump’s order”, and “not point their rifles at humanity”.In reaction to Trump’s most recent accusations and funding cuts, Petro responded in a post on X saying: “I respect the history, culture, and people of the USA. They are not my enemies, nor do I feel them as such.”He added at the end: “The problem is with Trump, not with the USA.” More

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      Major highway in California to shut down as US marines fire live artillery over it

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      A celebration marking the US marines’ 250th anniversary will shut down a major freeway artery through southern California on Saturday as the military plans to fire live 155mm artillery shells over the site.The California highway patrol announced the closure at 6am Saturday, saying it would shut down an approximately 17-mile (27km) stretch of Interstate 5 for four hours near Camp Pendleton, a 125,000-acre (50,585-hectare) base in Oceanside in north-western San Diego county. The closure will remain in effect from 11am to 3pm.The event in question will include a live-fire amphibious capabilities demonstration at Red Beach, according to a statement from the US marine corps. JD Vance, a former enlisted marine who served in Iraq, is scheduled to speak to at least 15,000 marines, sailors, veterans and families expected to attend. Defense secretary Pete Hegseth will also deliver remarks.“The capabilities demonstration will feature integrated Navy and Marine Corps operations across air, land and sea,” the Marines’ statement said.The US Marine Corps insisted that the event will comply with established safety protocols, and “no public highways or transportation routes will be closed”.The CHP said in a statement that the military event will involve “live ammunition being discharged by the federal government over the freeway” and made the call to temporarily close a portion of the freeway due to the safety risk and distractions to drivers.Earlier in the week, California governor Gavin Newsom had decried the plans to fire live rounds over Interstate 5, calling it an “absurd show of force” and “totally uncalled for ”.On Saturday morning, Newsom was concerned that the stunt could put Californians in harm’s way. “Flying live rounds over a busy highway without coordination between state, federal, and local partners isn’t just wrong – it’s dangerous,” Newsom posted on social media.The criticism underscored the growing tensions between Donald Trump and the California governor, who has frequently called out decisions by the president’s administration.This celebration was granted no exception from Newsom’s ire. “Using our military to intimidate people you disagree with politically doesn’t make you look strong,” Newsom said. “It makes you look weak. It’s reckless, it’s disrespectful, and yet another action beneath the office of the presidency.”Earlier in October, the navy hosted the president aboard an aircraft carrier off the coast of Virginia to celebrate the same military anniversary. Trump turned that event into a political rally.This show of force coincides with No Kings rallies and marches being held across the US, including several locations in California, aligning behind a message that the nation’s slide into authoritarian rule under Trump needs to stop.Newsom cautioned those participating in the rallies: “I urge our nation to use this weekend’s No Kings marches as a declaration of independence against the tyranny and lawlessness currently running this country. Use your voice. ACT PEACEFULLY. Protect yourself and your community. THERE ARE NO KINGS IN THE UNITED STATES.”In a statement to the New York Times, a spokesperson for Vance, William Martin, said Newsom was misleading the public about the safety risk for the event on Saturday. He said it was routine training.“If Gavin Newsom wants to oppose the training exercises that ensure our Armed Forces are the deadliest and most lethal fighting force in the world, then he can go right ahead,” Martin said.Matt Rocco, the California department of transportation spokesperson, said: “This is all because of the White House-directed military event, that for the safety of the public, we need to shut down the freeway since they’re sending live ordnances over the freeway.”Rocco said the I5 closure could cost up to another two hours of trip time for those commuting between San Diego and Los Angeles. The freeway carries 80,000 travelers and $94m in freight through the corridor daily, according to the governor’s office. Passenger rail services running parallel to the I5 have also been canceled for the afternoon. More

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      Trump claims Maduro willing to give ‘everything’ to ease US tensions

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      Donald Trump used an expletive to threaten the Venezuelan leader, Nicolás Maduro, on Friday, claiming that the leftist autocrat had offered major concessions to appease the US.The US president was speaking to reporters at the White House on Friday during a meeting with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.Asked about reports that Maduro offered “everything in his country, all the natural resources” to ease tensions, Trump agreed: “He’s offered everything; you’re right. You know why? Because he doesn’t want to fuck around with the United States.”Maduro, who came to power in 2013, has recently shored up his security powers and deployed tens of thousands of troops around the country. He also accused Trump of seeking regime change, an allegation the US president has downplayed.Last week the New York Times reported that Maduro offered a stake in Venezuela’s oil and other mineral wealth in recent months to stave off mounting pressure from the US.Meanwhile, Venezuelan government officials are said to have floated a plan in which Maduro would eventually leave office. The Miami Herald newspaper reported that Vice-President Delcy Rodríguez and her brother Jorge, who is president of the national assembly, had funneled proposals through intermediaries in Qatar to present themselves to Washington as a “more acceptable” alternative.The US has acknowledged carrying out at least five strikes on vessels near Venezuela that it says were transporting drugs, killing at least 27 people.A sixth strike targeted a suspected drug vessel in the Caribbean on Thursday, and in what is believed to be the first such case, there were survivors among the crew, who were reportedly rescued and are being held on a navy ship.One source told Reuters that the vessel struck on Thursday moved below the water and was possibly a semi-submersible, which is a submarine-like vessel used by drug traffickers to avoid detection.Trump confirmed to reporters: “We attacked a submarine. That was a drug-carrying submarine built specifically for the transportation of massive amounts of drugs – just so you understand.”He added: “This was not an innocent group of people. I don’t know too many people that have submarines and that was an attack on a drug-carrying loaded-up submarine.”The secretary of state, Marco Rubio, who was also present, did not dispute that there were survivors and repeatedly said details would be forthcoming.The US has described some of the victims in the first five strikes as Venezuelans, while the Colombian president, Gustavo Petro, has suggested some were from his country. In Trinidad, family members of one man believed killed in a strike this week have demanded proof he was a drug trafficker.Venezuela’s government has said the strikes are illegal, amount to murder and are an aggression against the country.Trump has justified the strikes by asserting that the US is engaged in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels, relying on the same legal authority used by the George W Bush administration when it declared a war on terror after the September 11 attacks.But legal scholars have warned that the president’s use of overwhelming military force to combat the cartels, along with his authorisation of covert action inside Venezuela, possibly to oust Maduro, stretches the bounds of international law.Juanita Goebertus Estrada, Americas director at Human Rights Watch, said the attacks violated international human rights law and amounted to extrajudicial executions.“The US is not engaged in an armed conflict with Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago, or with alleged criminal groups involved. Under human rights law standards, officials engaging in law enforcement must seek to minimize injury and preserve human life. They may use lethal force only when strictly unavoidable to protect against an imminent threat of death or serious injury,” she said.The strikes have caused unease among Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill, with some Republicans saying they had not received sufficient information on how the strikes were being conducted.Friday’s outburst was not the first that Trump has peppered the language of diplomacy with profanities. In June, frustrated with Israel and Iran attacking each other after a ceasefire, he told a group of reporters that the countries had “been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing”. More

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      Donald Trump claims to be the president of peace, but at home he is fomenting civil war | Jonathan Freedland

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      Donald Trump had better hope the members of the Nobel committee are not paying attention to what’s happening inside the United States. If they did take a look, they’d notice a jarring pattern. While the US president likes to play the peacemaker abroad, at home he is Trump, bringer of war.It’s easy for the first fact to conceal, or divert our attention away from, the second. This week was a case in point. It began with Trump travelling to Israel, where he was hailed as a latter-day Cyrus, a mighty ruler whose name would be spoken of for millennia to come, the man who had brokered what he himself boasts is an “everlasting” peace.Never mind that Trump’s success, for which he certainly deserves some credit, was in pushing Hamas and Israel to agree a ceasefire and release of hostages and prisoners, a fragile arrangement that does not address, let alone solve, the underlying Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He presented it as a triumph of the ages and one more notch on his peacemaker’s bedpost, taking the tally of wars he claims to have ended to eight.Indeed, buoyed up by his success, he is having another go at the one he thought would be easy but which, to his irritation, has proved as complex as all the hated experts and deep state naysayers warned it would be: Russia’s war on Ukraine. On Thursday he announced his plan to meet yet again with Vladimir Putin, this time hosted by Viktor Orbán in Budapest (which has the happy side-benefit of trolling the EU).Unfazed by the failure of their last meeting in Alaska, and by his own failure ever to stand up to Putin, Trump clearly believes he has pacific momentum and that the healing magic his touch brought to Gaza will similarly unite Moscow and Kyiv.But what undermines this new, Nobel-ready look of Trump’s is not only the absurd braggadocio, or even the confusion of the style and optics of peacemaking for the substance and hard graft it requires. It is the fact that he is fomenting war at home on his own citizens. I am not speaking metaphorically. Increasingly, serious analysts not prone to hyperbole are warning that Trump seems bent on provoking a second American civil war. The evidence is piling up.The most obvious is Trump’s deployment of US troops on the streets of America’s cities. He claims that his original decisions to send in the National Guard to Los Angeles, Washington DC, Chicago, Portland and Memphis were motivated solely by concern over crime. In his telling, these places were “overrun” by violence and local police needed his help. But that doesn’t stack up.The data shows that most of the cities Trump has targeted have lower rates of violent crime than other large cities that have remained untouched. (Of the 10 major US cities with the biggest crime problems, Trump has hit only one: Memphis.) So why would Trump be sending in the troops?One explanation is that he lives in such a closed filter bubble, his sources of information so narrow, that he is not in possession of the actual facts. Earlier this month, he described Portland, Oregon as a “burning hellhole”, adding that “You see fires all over the place. You see fights, and I mean just violence. It’s just so crazy.” The people of Portland – cycling or taking their kids to the park, as normal – were bemused. It seemed Trump had been watching Fox News, confusing footage from the riots of 2020 with today.But none of this is a mistake. For what the likes of Chicago, LA and Portland have in common is not imagined rates of runaway crime but something that angers Trump much more: they are Democrat-run cities in Democrat-led states. (The giveaway is that Cleveland, Ohio and Kansas City, Missouri have higher rates of violent crime but are under Republican governors. So they have been left alone.)This is a political act by Trump, designed to intimidate potential strongholds of opposition. Some critics suspect the administration hopes to provoke violence from those whose cities now feel like occupied territory. Perhaps a riot or an attack on the military that can be instantly spun, as the assassination of Charlie Kirk was, as an act of leftist terrorism that merits a further crackdown, seizure of emergency powers or suspension of liberties.Others believe this is about normalising the presence of troops on the streets before next year’s midterm elections, a crucial contest that could see Republicans lose the House of Representatives, handing Democrats a serious check on Trump’s power. In this view, troops will be in place either to scare away minorities and others who might usually vote for the Democratic party, or for the battle after polling day, to enforce an attempt by the White House to void results that don’t go their way. Think of a re-run of 6 January 2021 – except this time with the armed forces on hand to ensure Trump’s will is done.The obvious objection to this scenario is that the US military would surely refuse to let itself be used as a partisan political instrument. But that is to miss what Trump and Pete Hegseth – now rebranded not as secretary of defence, but as secretary of war – are doing to the US military. Witness last month’s jawdropping meeting of hundreds of top US admirals and generals, gathered from across the globe. Trump could not have been clearer, instructing them that they now faced an “enemy from within”, that their job was to deal with “civil disturbances” and that they should regard America’s “dangerous cities as training grounds”. At one point, Hegseth said that any officer who disagreed with the new, Trumpian conception of the US military should “do the honorable thing and resign”.All of this comes in the context of a president who is nakedly using the justice system to punish his critics – note the indictment issued on Thursday against his former national security adviser John Bolton – whose chief adviser called the Democratic party a “domestic extremist organisation” even before the Kirk killing; that sends masked agents to snatch people, including US citizens, off the streets; that is using the government shutdown to eliminate “Democrat agencies”, meaning those pockets of the independent civil service that might act as a restraint on presidential whim, while cutting funds to institutions, from the universities to public broadcasting, that might do the same; and that is imposing ideological orthodoxy on the entire federal bureaucracy, with the FBI’s firing of an employee who had displayed the pride flag only the latest example.Trump likes talking the peace talk when it comes to Palestinians and Israelis or Russians and Ukrainians. But inside the US, where red meets blue, he does not see a contest between rivals but rather a conflict with an enemy he admits he hates – one that has to be fought by any means necessary, even to the very end.

      Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

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      US admiral to retire amid military strikes in Caribbean and tensions with Venezuela

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      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, 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 as well as 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”.The 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.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn 2021, Holsey recorded a public service announcement urging Black Americans to get the Covid-19 vaccine. More

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      Trump ‘looking at all options’ amid threats to invoke Insurrection Act, Vance says

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      The White House is talking about invoking the Insurrection Act that would allow the deployment of military troops on US soil to quell domestic unrest amid legal challenges over the moves, JD Vance confirmed on Sunday.Vance was asked on NBC News’s Meet the Press whether Donald Trump was seriously considering invoking the emergency power to deploy national guard forces and even the US military in domestic settings.“The president’s looking at all of his options,” he said, adding that “we are talking about this because crime has gotten out of control in our cities”.Trump’s attempts to use federal national guard forces in Democratic-run cities has faced challenges in the courts, most notably in Chicago in recent days.The vice-president’s ominous remarks came days after Trump referred to the Insurrection Act from the Oval Office, bluntly stating: “If I had to enact it, I would do that.” Military forces are forbidden from engaging in law enforcement duties on home soil.But under the Insurrection Act, which was signed in 1807, the president can deploy them domestically in cases of insurrection or rebellion, violence that is preventing the functioning of federal laws.The power was used during the 1960s civil rights movement during clashes over desegregation of the south but since then has been very rarely activated. The last time a president called on it was in 1992 when the governor of California requested military aid from George HW Bush in response to civil unrest in Los Angeles.In Sunday’s Meet the Press interview, Vance said Trump “hasn’t felt he needed to” invoke the Insurrection Act up to this point. But he confirmed that it was among the tactics being considered as the administration continues to be stymied in federal courts from deploying federalised national guard forces in Democratic-run cities.Federal courts have blocked the White House from using troops in Oregon and Illinois. On Thursday a federal judge prohibited the deployment of federalised national guard personnel in Chicago, admonishing the administration that she had “seen no credible evidence that there is a danger of a rebellion in the state of Illinois”.National guard troops have been sent into Illinois by the Trump administration from both Texas and California but under the temporary court order cannot be put out into the streets.Vance told NBC News that options such as the Insurrection Act were being considered because “there are places in Chicago where people are afraid to take their children … for fear of gun violence, for fear of gang drive-by shootings”.In a separate interview with This Week on ABC News, Vance said that Chicago had been given over to “lawlessness and gangs” and had a murder rate “that rivals the worst places in the third world”.In fact, violent crime has been falling at unprecedented rates in America’s biggest cities including Chicago over the past two years. Chicago is not in the top four large US cities with the highest murder rates – all of whom are in states controlled by Republicans.As Vance did the rounds of Sunday’s political talkshows, tension between the Trump administration and the Democratic states it is targeting exploded across TV screens. The vice-president was repeatedly asked by George Stephanopoulos on ABC News whether the Democratic governor of Illinois, JB Pritzker, had committed a crime that could see him being prosecuted by the Department of Justice as have several other of Trump’s “political enemies”.Vance skirted the question until he was pressed into saying: “He should suffer consequences. Whether he has violated a crime I would leave to the courts, but he has certainly violated his oath of office and that seems pretty criminal to me.”Pritzker responded to the veiled threat by accusing Vance of coming out with a “tidal wave of lies”. The governor told This Week that he was not intimidated by the prospect of prosecution as has befallen the former FBI director James Comey and the New York attorney general Letitia James, who have both been indicted in recent days.Pritzker said: “I am not afraid. Do I think he could do it? He might. But as I have said before, come and get me. I mean, you’re dead wrong, Mr President and Mr Vice-President, and I will stand up for the law and the constitution.”Raw emotions were widely on display across the TV studios as the federal government shutdown entered day 12. The Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, told Fox News Sunday that the crisis had been orchestrated by Democratic leaders in Congress as a partisan move “so that they can prove to their Marxist base that they are willing to fight Trump”.He said that after eight attempts to reopen the government had all failed in votes in the Senate, the shutdown was causing “real pain for real people – and the Democrats don’t seem to care”.On the same program, the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, denied that the Democratic stance was partisan. “We will sit down with anyone, any time, any place, go back to the White House, to have a bipartisan discussion about reopening the government,” he said.The Democrats’ aim, Jeffries added, was to “improve the quality of life of the American people and address the healthcare crisis that threatens tens of millions of people across the country”. More