US news

Subterms

    More stories

    • 163 Shares168 Views

      in US Politics

      Texas senate gives final approval to redrawn congressional map that heavily favours Republicans

      by

      The Texas senate has given final approval to a redrawn congressional map that gives Republicans a chance to pick up as many as five congressional seats, fulfilling a brazen political request from Donald Trump to shore up the GOP’s standing before next year’s midterm elections.It will now be sent to governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, who is expected to quickly sign it into law, however Democrats have vowed to challenge it in court. The Texas house of representatives approved the map on Wednesday on an 88-52 party-line vote, before the senate approved it early on Saturday.The effort by Trump and Texas’ Republican-majority Legislature prompted state Democrats to hold a two-week walkout and kicked off a wave of redistricting efforts across the country.Democrats had prepared for a final show of resistance, with plans to push the senate vote into the early morning hours in a last-ditch attempt to delay passage.Senator Carol Alvarado revealed her filibuster plans to delay its final passage, in a post on social media. “Republicans think they can walk all over us. Today I’m going to kick back,” Alvarado’s post read. “I’ve submitted my intention to filibuster the new congressional maps. Going to be a long night.”But the planned filibuster was thwarted by a procedural motion by Republicans. It now heads to the governor for final approval.Alvarado’s delay tactics were the latest chapter in a weeks-long showdown that has roiled the Texas Legislature, marked by a Democratic walkout and threats of arrest from Republicans.Democrats had already delayed the bill’s passage during hours of debate, pressing senator Phil King, the measure’s sponsor, on the proposal’s legality, with many alleging that the redrawn districts violated the Voting Rights Act by diluting voters’ influence based on race – an accusation King vehemently denied.“I had two goals in mind: that all maps would be legal and would be better for Republican congressional candidates in Texas,” said King, a Republican.“There is extreme risk the Republican majority will be lost” in the US House if the map does not pass, King said.The vote comes after California Democrats set a special election for November in which they will ask voters to approve a new congressional map in their state. That map would add up to five seats for Democrats, a move designed to offset the new map in Texas. California governor Gavin Newsom launched that effort after Texas began its push to redraw its maps.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionRepublicans currently hold 25 of Texas’s 38 congressional districts. Under the redrawn map, they would be favored in 30 districts. Abbott called a special session last month to draw new maps after Trump requested that he do so.The new map eliminates Democratic-held districts in Austin, Houston and the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex and replaces them with Republican ones. It also tweaks the lines of two districts currently held by Democrats in south Texas to make them more friendly to Republicans. Swift lawsuits are expected challenging the new districts under the Voting Rights Act amid allegations the new lines make it harder for voters of color to elect their preferred candidates.Lawmakers passed the maps after Democrats in the Texas house of representatives left the state for two weeks, denying Republicans the necessary quorum to conduct legislative business. The Democrats returned to the state on Monday after California Democrats began moving ahead with a plan to redraw their state’s congressional map.Even after Democrats returned to Austin, protests continued at the state capitol this week as Republicans pushed the new map through. The efforts were galvanized by Nicole Collier, a Democratic state representative from Fort Worth who refused to sign a “permission slip” necessary to leave the house floor. Collier refused and remained confined to the house floor and her office until Wednesday.The Texas push set off an unusual mid-decade redistricting battle before next year’s midterm elections, in which Republicans are expected to lose seats in the US House. Republicans currently have a three-seat majority and the president’s party typically performs poorly in a midterm election. Republicans are also expected to redraw the maps in Florida, Ohio, Missouri and potentially Indiana.With the Associated Press More

    • 213 Shares187 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump news at a glance: president denies he was briefed about raid on aide-turned-critic John Bolton’s home

      by

      Donald Trump has said he did not know a raid by the FBI on the home of his former adviser turned critic, John Bolton, was planned and that he expected to be briefed by the justice department on it.“I tell the group I don’t want to know, but just you have to do what you have to do. I don’t want to know about it,” Trump said, adding “I’m not a fan of John Bolton. He’s a real sort of a lowlife. He’s not a smart guy. But he could be very unpatriotic. I’m going to find out.”JD Vance denied the raid was politically motivated. “We don’t think that we should throw people – even if they disagree with us politically, maybe especially if they disagree with us politically – you shouldn’t throw people willy-nilly in prison,” the vice-president told NBC. “You should let the law drive these determinations, and that’s what we’re doing.”Here are the key Trump administration news stories of the day:FBI raids home of Trump’s ex-national security adviserThe FBI raided Bolton’s home on Friday morning.The federal search of Bolton’s house in the Washington DC area was as part of an investigation involving the handling of classified documents, the Associated Press reported, citing a person familiar with the matter. A government source confirmed the raid to the Guardian, but did not disclose further details.Read the full storyDoJ releases Ghislaine Maxwell interview transcriptsThe US Department of Justice has released the transcript and audio recording of an interview conducted by Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, with the convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell.Read the full storyTrump targets Chicago and New York as Hegseth orders weapons for DC troopsDonald Trump has threatened to take his federal crackdown on crime and city cleanliness to New York and Chicago, as the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, ordered that national guard troops patrolling the streets of Washington DC under federal control will now be armed.Read the full storyHegseth fires top US general after Iran assessment angers TrumpPete Hegseth has fired a general whose agency’s initial intelligence assessment of damage to Iranian nuclear sites from US strikes angered Donald Trump, according to two people familiar with the decision and a White House official.Read the full storyUS man wrongly deported released to await trialKilmar Ábrego García has been freed from criminal custody in Tennessee so he can rejoin his family in Maryland while awaiting trial on human smuggling charges, after a court ordered his release.Read the full storyCanada to drop counter-tariffs on some US goods Canada will drop its counter-tariffs on some American goods in the coming days, Mark Carney has said, as the country’s prime minister looks to end a protracted trade war with the US.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      The US government has taken an unprecedented 10% stake in Intel under a deal with the struggling chipmaker and is planning more such moves, according to Donald Trump and the commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, in the latest extraordinary intervention by the White House in corporate America.

      Current and former Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) officials are concerned over a new agency rule requiring disaster victims to have an email address in order to apply for federal aid.

      The Trump administration has unilaterally stripped hundreds of thousands of federal workers of their union contracts after a federal appeals court overruled an injunction which halted the plans.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 21 August 2025. More

    • 163 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      US health department moves to strip thousands of employees of collective bargaining rights

      by

      The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has moved to strip thousands of federal health agency employees of their collective bargaining rights, according to a union that called the effort illegal.HHS officials confirmed Friday that the department is ending its recognition of unions for a number of employees and reclaiming office space and equipment that had been used for union activities.It’s the latest move by the Trump administration to put an end to collective bargaining with unions that represent federal employees. Previously affected agencies include the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).In May, an appeals court said the administration could move forward with Donald Trump’s executive order that the president aimed at ending collective bargaining rights for hundreds of thousands of federal employees while a lawsuit plays out.“This action ensures that HHS resources and personnel are fully focused on safeguarding the health and security of the American people,” department spokesperson Andrew Nixon said in a statement.Officials with the American Federation of Government Employees said strong union contracts do not hinder strong responses to public health emergencies. Rather, they help make agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have a stable, experienced and supported workforce, the union said.Some CDC employees said the union has been a source of information and advocacy for the agency’s employees during layoffs this year and in the wake of the 8 August shooting attack at the CDC’s main campus in Atlanta.Since then, the union has been trying to advocate for a better emergency alert system and better security.Other affected agencies include the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response and the Office of Refugee Resettlement within the Administration for Children and Families. More

    • 188 Shares93 Views

      in US Politics

      Ghislaine Maxwell transcripts: Epstein associate says she ‘never’ saw Trump receive a massage – live

      by

      The transcripts are more than 300 pages, but here it goes …

      Blanche said, on record, that their conversation wasn’t “promising to do anything” for Maxwell. But that anything she said couldn’t be used against her, unless she provided false statements or there was a retrial in her case.

      According to Maxwell, Epstein didn’t have any video or photographic evidence of any high-profile individuals committing sexual offences. And to that point, Maxwell said she didn’t hear or witness any instances of Epstein blackmailing powerful people.

      Maxwell recruited a number of masseuses for Epstein but “never checked their age or credentials”. She added that, throughout her time with Epstein, she never heard any examples of “sexually inappropriate contact” between Epstein’s guests and in-house masseuses.

      Despite her claims that Epstein didn’t extort anyone, Maxwell does not believe that Epstein died by suicide. She chalked that up to “mismanagement” at the bureau of prisons.

      In the interview Maxwell said she does believe that Epstein “did a lot of, not all, but some of what he’s accused of”. But she maintains that “he became that man over a period of time”.

      Maxwell said that she “never” saw Donald Trump receive a massage. She also said that she “never witnessed the president in any inappropriate setting in any way,” adding that he was “a gentleman in all respects” whenever she saw the president.

      Maxwell also didn’t recall former president Bill Clinton receiving a massage while travelling with Epstein.

      One notable point is that Maxwell denied ever recruiting masseuses from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club. “I’ve never recruited a masseuse from Mar-a-Lago for that, as far as I remember. I can’t ever recollect doing that,” she told Todd Blanche. A reminder that Trump claimed his falling out with Jeffrey Epstein stemmed from the convicted sex offender’s efforts to hire workers away from Trump’s Florida club.

      Maxwell did not remember whether Trump submitted a letter for Epstein’s 50th birthday album, as reported by the Wall Street Journal. She also couldn’t remember asking Trump to contribute.
      Donald Trump announced that he named Sergio Gor to be the next US ambassador to India and special envoy for South and Central Asian affairs, according to a post on Truth Social.Gor is currently the director of the White House presidential personnel office, and is slated to remain in that position until his confirmation.“For the most populous Region in the World, it is important that I have someone I can fully trust to deliver on my Agenda and help us, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN,” Trump wrote on Friday.Carol Alvarado, a Texas Democratic senator from Houston, says she intends to filibuster tonight in the Texas senate to delay Republicans from passing a redrawn congressional map.“Republicans think they can walk all over us. Today I’m going to kick back.I’ve submitted my intention to filibuster the new congressional maps. Going to be a long night,” she wrote in a post on X, accompanied by a picture of sneakers.Democrats have gone back and forth with Phil King, the bill’s GOP sponsor, since this morning, trying to get him to admit that he considered race in drawing the maps.The local television station KVUE has more on the rules Alvarado will have to follow as she filibusters the new congressional map.Alvarado will not be able to eat or drink and must stand at her desk the whole time without breaks for the bathroom, the outlet reported.The national guard personnel deployed on the streets of Washington DC will now be armed, a defense official confirmed to The Guardian.Defense secretary Pete Hegseth authorized the nearly 2,000 of the national guard members to carry “service-issued weapons,” the official said.“The Interim Commanding General of the D.C. National Guard retains the authority to make any necessary force posture adjustments in coordination with the D.C. Metropolitan Police and Federal law enforcement partners,” said the defense official.The Pentagon and the US army had said last week that troops would not carry weapons.In a Truth Social post, President Donald Trump announced that his administration is undergoing a “major tariff investigation” into imported furniture and is expected to release its findings within 50 days.Trump said the US will impose tariffs (at a rate still to be determined) on foreign-made furniture, in efforts to revive the industry in states including North Carolina, South Carolina, and Michigan.Defense secretary Pete Hegseth fired ​​Lt Gen Jeffrey A Kruse​, the military’s top intelligence officer. The Washington Post first reported the story.Kruse, who served as Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) director, is the second senior Air Force general in a week to be forced out or retire unexpectedly. On Monday, Air Force chief of staff Gen David Allvin announced he was stepping down after just two years in the role, a position typically held for four years.A spokesperson for the DIA told CBS News that deputy director Christine Bordine will assume the role of acting director “effective immediately.”“The firing of yet another senior national security official underscores the Trump administration’s dangerous habit of treating intelligence as a loyalty test rather than a safeguard for our country,” said senator Mark Warner, vice chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, in a statement.The firing comes a few months after details of the agency’s preliminary assessment of damage to Iranian nuclear sites from US strikes leaked to the media. It found that Iran’s nuclear program has been set back only a few months by the US strikes, contradicting assertions from Trump and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.The transcripts are more than 300 pages, but here it goes …

      Blanche said, on record, that their conversation wasn’t “promising to do anything” for Maxwell. But that anything she said couldn’t be used against her, unless she provided false statements or there was a retrial in her case.

      According to Maxwell, Epstein didn’t have any video or photographic evidence of any high-profile individuals committing sexual offences. And to that point, Maxwell said she didn’t hear or witness any instances of Epstein blackmailing powerful people.

      Maxwell recruited a number of masseuses for Epstein but “never checked their age or credentials”. She added that, throughout her time with Epstein, she never heard any examples of “sexually inappropriate contact” between Epstein’s guests and in-house masseuses.

      Despite her claims that Epstein didn’t extort anyone, Maxwell does not believe that Epstein died by suicide. She chalked that up to “mismanagement” at the bureau of prisons.

      In the interview Maxwell said she does believe that Epstein “did a lot of, not all, but some of what he’s accused of”. But she maintains that “he became that man over a period of time”.

      Maxwell said that she “never” saw Donald Trump receive a massage. She also said that she “never witnessed the president in any inappropriate setting in any way,” adding that he was “a gentleman in all respects” whenever she saw the president.

      Maxwell also didn’t recall former president Bill Clinton receiving a massage while travelling with Epstein.

      One notable point is that Maxwell denied ever recruiting masseuses from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club. “I’ve never recruited a masseuse from Mar-a-Lago for that, as far as I remember. I can’t ever recollect doing that,” she told Todd Blanche. A reminder that Trump claimed his falling out with Jeffrey Epstein stemmed from the convicted sex offender’s efforts to hire workers away from Trump’s Florida club.

      Maxwell did not remember whether Trump submitted a letter for Epstein’s 50th birthday album, as reported by the Wall Street Journal. She also couldn’t remember asking Trump to contribute.
      In Ghislaine Maxwell’s first interview with deputy attorney general Todd Blanche, on 24 July, she said that she “may have met” Donald Trump in 1990, before meeting Jeffrey Epstein.Maxwell went on to describe the relationship between the president and Epstein as “friendly”, although she didn’t know how the two men met or how they became friends.She added that she “never” saw the president receive a massage:
      I actually never saw the president in any type of massage setting. I never witnessed the president in any inappropriate setting in any way. The president was never inappropriate with anybody. In the times that I was with him, he was a gentleman in all respects.
      Maxwell also contested Trump’s claims she recruited masseuses from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. “I’ve never recruited a masseuse from Mar-a-Lago for that, as far as I remember. I can’t ever recollect doing that,” she said in the interview with Blanche.A reminder that the president said in July that his falling out with Jeffrey Epstein stemmed from the convicted sex offender’s efforts to hire workers away from Trump’s Florida club. “People were taken out of the spa, hired by him, in other words, gone,” the president said.The Department of Justice has released the transcripts and audio recordings of the interviews between Ghislaine Maxwell, the former girlfriend of child sex-offender Jefrrey Epstein, and the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche.The interviews between Blanche and Maxwell took place on 24 and 25 July 2025, with her legal representatives present. Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence for child sex trafficking.The justice department will also send the first tranche of records from the Jeffrey Epstein investigation to the House oversight committee, after receiving a subpoena for the files. Earlier this week, the committee chair, Representative James Comer, a Republican, said that his aim is to make the files public – while protecting the safety and identities of the victims.A court has ordered the release of Kilmar Ábrego García from criminal custody in Tennessee.On Friday, magistrate judge Barbara Holmes issued an order allowing the Maryland father of two to leave custody for the first time since his return to the US in June, after his wrongful deportation to El Salvador earlier this year.The 30-year-old was initially wrongfully deported by federal immigration officials in March. According to the Trump administration, Ábrego was affiliated with the MS-13 gang, a claim Ábrego and his family vehemently deny.During his detention at El Salvador’s so-called Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot), Ábrego was physically and psychologically tortured, according to court documents filed by his lawyers in July.Following Ábrego’s wrongful deportation, the Trump administration faced widespread pressure to return him back to the US, including from a supreme court order that directed federal officials to “facilitate” his return.In June, the Trump administration returned Ábrego from El Salvador, only to hit him with a slew of human smuggling charges, which his lawyers have rejected as “preposterous”. His criminal trial is expected to begin in January.An update from the Texas senate, where Molly Cook, a Democratic lawmaker from Houston, is now questioning Phil King about the new Texas map.Her line of questioning appears designed to highlight that the senator is not completely blind to race in Texas. She points out that he’s likely done polling in his own races that breaks down results by race and has analysed other statewide racial data as part of his job as a legislator.“I have not drilled into racial data with regard to redistricting,” King says.When asked about the ongoing discussions about a possible bilateral meeting between Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president said it will be “interesting to see” whether that goes ahead.Earlier he explained his decision to let the two leaders have a meeting together: “I could have been at the meeting, but a lot of people think that nothing’s going to come out of that meeting.”Trump went on to say that he’ll know “one way or the other” about his next steps in two weeks. “It’s going to be a very important decision. And that’s whether or not it’s massive sanctions or massive tariffs, or both, or do we do nothing and say ‘it’s your fight,’” he said.Earlier the president said he was “not happy” when asked about a US factory being hit during a Russian strike in Ukraine.The president just confirmed that he has spoken with the House speaker, Mike Johnson, and the Senate majority leader, John Thune, about a plan to raise $2bn from Congress to help fund his ‘beautification’ plans for DC.“I think it’s going to be very easy to get it’s going to be not a lot of money. I wouldn’t even know where to spend the number that you mentioned, but it’s going to be money to beautify the city,” he said in response to a reporter’s question in the Oval Office.“I’m not a fan of John Bolton. I thought it was a sleazebag, actually, and he suffers major Trump derangement syndrome,” the president said, speaking about the raid on his former national security adviser’s home.Trump repeated that he tries to “stay out of that stuff”, and that when it came to the search of Bolton’s home, he “purposefully” didn’t want to get involved. “I saw that just like everybody else,” he added.The president then spent time talking about how he too was subjected to a raid, referring to the FBI search of the his Mar-a-Lago estate in 2022 during an investigation into the handling of presidential and classified documents.“They went through everything you can imagine,” Trump said. More

    • 138 Shares149 Views

      in US Politics

      Ghislaine Maxwell never saw Trump in ‘any inappropriate setting’, transcript shows

      by

      The US Department of Justice has released the transcript and audio recording of an interview conducted by Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, with the convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell.In a post on X, Blanche said the materials were being released “in the interest of transparency”, providing links to the transcript and to audio files.The release includes documentation from a two-day interview conducted on 24 and 25 July. The materials comprise redacted transcripts for both days, along with multiple audio recordings – seven separate parts plus test recordings for day one, and four parts plus test recordings for day two.The department of justice gave Maxwell limited immunity to allow her to talk about her criminal case, but did not promise anything in exchange for her testimony, according to the transcript that was released.“The most important part of this agreement is that this isn’t a cooperation agreement, meaning that by you meeting with us today, we’re really just meeting,” Blanche told Maxwell. He added: “I’m not promising to do anything.”Maxwell, 63, was Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime associate and was convicted on five counts, including sex trafficking of minors, and sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2022 for helping Epstein sexually abuse teenage girls.Epstein died by suicide in federal custody in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.Maxwell, in the released transcript, said she never saw Trump do anything inappropriate and she repeatedly showered Trump with praise. That sort of comment would have been welcomed by Trump and his circle who have been keen to dismiss concerns about this relationship with Epstein which have roiled his support base.“I actually never saw the president in any type of massage setting. I never witnessed the president in any inappropriate setting in any way. The president was never inappropriate with anybody,” Maxwell said.But she did detail the social relationship between Trump and Epstein, who cultivated a wide and powerful social circle for many years.“I don’t know how they met, and I don’t know how they became friends. I certainly saw them together and I remember the few times I observed them together, but they were friendly. I mean, they seemed friendly,” she said.She added: “I think they were friendly like people are in social settings. I don’t … I don’t think they were close friends or I certainly never witnessed the president in any of … I don’t recall ever seeing him in his house, for instance,” she said.The justice department lawyers also quizzed Maxwell extensively about Epstein’s relationship with former president Bill Clinton, who travelled multiple times on Epstein’s plane and – like Trump – has denied any wrongdoing or knowledge of wrongdoing.“President Clinton liked me, and we got along terribly well. But I never saw that warmth or that … that warmth, or however you want to characterize it, with Mr Epstein,” she said of Clinton’s contacts with Epstein.Maxwell also said she did not remember Trump having been in Epstein’s 50th birthday book, which she assembled.The Wall Street Journal reported in July that the book’s collection of letters included one with Trump’s name on it. The president has repeatedly denied writing the note and filed a lawsuit accusing the Journal of libel.Maxwell said she saw some parts of the birthday book before her trial, during its discovery phase.“There was nothing from President Trump,” Maxwell said.She also denied remembering any picture of a naked woman, a detail the Journal previously reported.Maxwell said Epstein did not know what to do to celebrate his 50th, and she suggested a birthday book like “my mom did … for my dad”.She added: “He said, I love that idea.”After her interview with justice department lawyers, Maxwell was moved from the low-security federal prison in Florida, where she had been serving a 20-year sentence, to a minimum-security prison camp in Texas.Neither her lawyer nor the federal Bureau of Prisons have explained the reason for the move which caused a storm of criticism and raised eyebrows as to whether Maxwell get some sort of deal for her cooperation.One legal expert said that the release of the transcript was Trump “getting what he wants” from the interview in the latest effort to calm the political storms around his links to Epstein that have dogged him for weeks.“From what we see from this transcript, Trump is getting what he wants. She is saying that Trump didn’t do anything untoward, nothing criminal. That’s what Trump wants. Ideally, he’d also like names of Democrats who did do something wrong, because that’s what the Maga base has been promised,” Dave Aronberg, former Democratic state attorney for Palm Beach county, told CNN.The House oversight committee has received the first round of Epstein documents from the justice department, which includes 33,000 pages of documents, according to panel staff.“The committee intends to make these records public after thorough review to ensure any victims’ identification and child sexual abuse material are redacted,” a spokesperson for committee chair James Comer said. “The committee will also consult with the [justice department] to ensure any documents released do not negatively impact ongoing criminal cases and investigations.”The committee subpoenaed files related to Epstein following a public outcry over the administration’s handling of its promises to release more information related to Epstein’s conduct and death.House Democrats seized on the issue and helped push Comer to subpoena the justice department for documents.“The Trump DoJ is providing records at a far quicker pace than anything” than it did during Joe Biden’s presidency, the committee spokesperson continued. More

    • 138 Shares178 Views

      in US Politics

      Hegseth fires top US general after Iran assessment that angered Trump

      by

      The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has fired a general whose agency’s initial intelligence assessment of damage to Iranian nuclear sites from US strikes angered Donald Trump, according to two people familiar with the decision and a White House official.Lt Gen Jeffrey Kruse will no longer serve as head of the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), according to the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly.The firing is the latest upheaval in the US military and intelligence agencies, and comes a few months after details of the preliminary assessment leaked to the media. It found that Iran’s nuclear program has been set back only a few months by the US strikes, contradicting assertions from Trump and the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.The Republican US president, who had pronounced the Iranian program “completely and fully obliterated”, rejected the report.In a news conference following the June strikes, Hegseth lambasted the press for focusing on the preliminary assessment but did not offer any direct evidence of the destruction of Iranian nuclear production facilities.“You want to call it destroyed, you want to call it defeated, you want to call it obliterated – choose your word. This was an historically successful attack,” Hegseth said then.Kruse’s exit was reported earlier by the Washington Post.Trump has a history of removing government officials whose data and analysis he disagrees with. Earlier in August, after a disappointing jobs report, he fired the official in charge of the data. His administration has also stopped posting reports on climate change, canceled studies on vaccine access and removed data on gender identity from government sites.The firing of the DIA chief culminates a week of broad Trump administration changes to the intelligence community and shakeups to the military leadership. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence – which is responsible for coordinating the work of 18 intelligence agencies, including the DIA – announced that it would slash its staff and budget.The Pentagon announced this week that the air force’s top uniformed officer, Gen David Allvin, planned to retire two years early.Hegseth and Trump have been aggressive in dismissing top military officials, often without formal explanation.The administration has fired Air Force Gen CQ Brown Jr as the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, as well as the navy’s top officer, the air force’s second highest-ranking officer, and the top lawyers for three military service branches.In April, Hegseth fired Gen Tim Haugh as head of the National Security Agency and Vice Adm Shoshana Chatfield, who was a senior official at Nato.No public explanations have been offered by the Pentagon for any of these firings, though some of the officers were believed by the administration to endorse diversity, equity and inclusion programs. More

    • 175 Shares187 Views

      in US Politics

      Federal Reserve set to cut interest rates – but still Trump won’t be happy

      by

      Stocks soared on Friday following the strongest signal yet that US the Federal Reserve is gearing up to start cutting interest rates again this fall. But how long can this celebration last?While Wall Street cheered the biggest headline from the speech by the Fed chair, Jerome Powell, at the annual Jackson Hole symposium in Wyoming, Powell also delivered a reality check on where interest rates could settle in the longer term.“We cannot say for certain where rates will settle out over the longer run, but their neutral level may now be higher than during the 2010s,” said Powell.In other words: even if the Fed does start cutting interest rates again this year, they may not fall back to their pre-pandemic levels. It’s a signal, despite the short-term optimism on potential rate cuts, that the Fed’s long-term outlook is more unstable.“Markets might be ahead of their skis on how aggressive the Fed is going to be in reducing interest rates, because the neutral rate might be higher than some believe,” Ryan Sweet, an economist at Oxford Economics, said.Higher rates means borrowing money for loans, such as mortgages, will be more expensive. The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate was just under 3% in 2021, when interest rates were near zero.Now the average mortgage rate is closer to 6.7%. Paired with home prices at near-record highs, elevated mortgages mean many Americans will continue to struggle to purchase a home.Although Trump has been pushing the Fed for months to decrease rates to 1%, claiming that Powell is “hurting the housing industry very badly”, it seems unlikely that rates will return to such a level any time soon.The Fed is trying to achieve a Goldilocks balance. Rates that are too high risk unemployment, while rates that are too low could mean higher inflation. Policymakers are searching for a “neutral” level, where everything is just right.Many economists believed the central bank was close to achieving this balance before Trump started his second term. In summer 2022, as inflation scaled its highest levels in a generation, the Fed started raising rates, at the risk of hurting the labor market, in an attempt to get inflation down to 2%.Rates rose to about 5.3% in less than two years, but the jobs market remained strong. Unemployment was still at historically low even as inflation came down. Although some economists had feared rapidly increasing rates would throw the US economy into a recession, instead the Fed appeared to achieve what is known as a “soft landing”.But things were thrown into a tailspin when Trump returned to office, armed with campaign promises to enact a full-blown trade war against the US’s key trading partners.The president has long argued that tariffs would boost American manufacturing and set the stage for better trade deals. “Tariffs don’t cause inflation. They cause success,” Trump declared back in January, acknowledging that there might be “some temporary, short-term disruption”.But so far, success has been limited. Economists doubt the policies will generate a manufacturing renaissance, and Trump’s trade war has inspired new commercial alliances that exclude the US.All the while, US consumers are starting to see higher prices due to Trump’s tariffs.At Jackson Hole on Friday, Powell said tariffs had started to push some prices up. In June and July, inflation was 2.7% – up 0.4 percentage points since April, when Trump first announced the bulk of his tariffs.This is still only a modest increase in price growth, but the bulk of the White House’s highest tariffs only went into effect in early August. Fed policymakers are waiting to see whether Trump’s aggressive trade strategy will cause a one-time shift in price levels – or if the effects will continue.The once strong labor market has grown sluggish. Though there are fewer job openings, there are also fewer people looking for jobs. Powell called it “a curious kind of balance” where “both the supply of and demand for workers” have slowed. He noted that the balance was unstable and could eventually tip over, prompting more layoffs and a rise in unemployment.This instability in the labor market has made Fed officials more open to a rate cut. Powell pointed to a slacking in consumer spending and weaker gross domestic product (GDP), which suggests an overall slowdown in economic activity.Although it set the stage for a rate cut as soon as next month, Powell’s speech was far from optimistic.“In this environment, distinguishing cyclical developments from trends, or structural developments is difficult,” he said. “Monetary policy can work to stabilise cyclical fluctuations but can do little to alter structural changes.”From Powell, who is typically diplomatic and reserved in his public statements, this seemed to be a careful warning: when executive policies destabilise the economy, the Fed can only do so much to limit the damage. More

    • 138 Shares149 Views

      in US Politics

      John Bolton raid shows weaponization of FBI against Patel’s ‘gangsters’ list

      by

      When Kash Patel, the FBI director, faced senators during his confirmation hearings on 30 January, he bristled at suggestions that his 2023 book contained an “enemies list”. The appendix to Government Gangsters, which included a list of names for 60 people, was simply documentation of those who had “weaponized” the government, he insisted.Seven months later, that denial appears increasingly hollow. Friday’s FBI search of the former national security adviser John Bolton’s home and office, reportedly to find classified documents, marks the fifth investigation targeting people from Patel’s book.Bolton now joins a growing list of Trump critics from Patel’s roll the administration has targeted with what appear to be retaliatory federal investigations: James Comey, the former FBI director, John Brennan, the former CIA director, Miles Taylor, the ex-homeland security official and Lt Col Alexander Vindman. All five people, investigated in just seven months, were on Patel’s 60-name list.Typically, federal prosecutors open cases based on tips, evidence or ongoing criminal activity. They don’t work their way through the index of a political book. While there is no public evidence that the book itself or any outside group is directing investigations, the overlap appears more than coincidence. The Biden justice department definitively closed both civil and criminal proceedings against Bolton in 2021 over his memoir about his time in the Trump White House. Bringing that investigation back to life requires a deliberate decision to re-litigate an already settled matter.Bolton’s investigation, like those into the other four on Patel’s list, is unprecedented in how it is calculated to target a critic. The justice department acknowledged opening criminal investigations into Comey and Brennan over their 2016-2017 Russia investigation roles. Taylor faced presidential orders revoking his security clearance and demanding investigations into his anonymous anti-Trump writings. The DC interim US attorney pressed representative Eugene Vindman for business records tied to Ukraine aid, targeting the twin brother of Alexander Vindman, who testified against Trump during his first impeachment.When asked for details about the raids and the reasoning behind them, a spokesperson for the FBI did not answer directly.“The FBI is conducting court authorized activity in the area,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “There is no threat to public safety. We have no further comment.”The systematic nature of these investigations exposes the fundamental contradiction in the administration’s approach. Officials claim to be combating the “weaponization” of justice while at the same time weaponizing it against a pre-compiled list of critics.Notably, Patel’s targets are both “deep state” bureaucrats and former Trump allies. Along with Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton, they include Trump’s own former officials like the former defense secretary Mark Esper and Stephanie Grisham, the press secretary, a suggestion that the list features anyone who crossed or flipped on the president, regardless of their previous loyalty. Patel on Friday morning posted on social media that “NO ONE is above the law”.Trump’s reaction to the Bolton investigation undermines claims of prosecutorial independence. Asked about the raids, the president claimed ignorance while launching familiar attacks: Bolton was “sort of a lowlife” and “could be a very unpatriotic guy – we’re going to find out”, he told reporters on Friday.By systematically investigating critics while claiming to restore justice department integrity, the administration is creating an environment in which political opposition becomes presumed as evidence of criminal behavior.This marks another example of evolution from Trump’s first term, when efforts to weaponize federal law enforcement were often chaotic and ultimately unsuccessful. The current approach appears more disciplined, with Patel’s book providing targets and Bondi’s working group providing bureaucratic cover. More