US news

Subterms

    More stories

    • 163 Shares118 Views

      in US Politics

      Megyn Kelly puts Trump clash behind her to ride the Maga media wave

      by

      It was the night before a US presidential election that Donald Trump had called the most important in history. Who could close the deal at his campaign rally in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania? The answer was Megyn Kelly. Trump “will keep the boys out of girls’ sports where they don’t belong”, the rightwinger podcaster said to rapturous applause. “And you know what else? He will look out for our boys, too. Our forgotten boys and our forgotten men.”Turning around and pointing at Trump supporters wearing hard hats, Kelly eulogised guys “who’ve got the calluses on their hands, who work for a living, the beards and the tats, maybe have a beer after work, and don’t want to be judged by people like Oprah and Beyoncé, who will never have to face the consequences of her [Kamala Harris’s] disastrous economic policies. These guys will. He gets it. President Trump gets it. He will not look at our boys like they are second-class citizens.”It was a remarkable intervention by a former cable news anchor whom Trump branded “nasty” when they feuded bitterly during his bid for the White House in 2016. Now Kelly and the former president understood their value to one another. Both knew what it is to be at rock bottom but, 24 hours after the Pittsburgh rally, both were celebrating their own unlikely comebacks.Kelly, 54, has become one of the most influential figures in rightwing media. Her eponymous podcast moves with rare dexterity from heavyweight political interviews – such as the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard – to topics such as Joe Biden’s cognitive decline to celebrity gossip about the likes of Halle Berry, Sean “Diddy” Combs, Meghan Markle and the Kardashians.Clearly the formula works. The Megyn Kelly Show posted a record-breaking 176% year-over-year surge in subscribers in the first quarter of 2025, according to TheRighting, a media company that tracks rightwing outlets. She trails Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson but has pulled ahead of Bill O’Reilly, Mark Levin, Charlie Kirk, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and Steve Bannon.This makes her one of the most prominent cheerleaders for Trump and shapers of his Maga (Make America great again) agenda, most especially its hostility to immigrants and transgender rights. Kelly is even emerging as a rival to her former employer Fox News, which dominated the narratives of Trump’s first term in office.Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “Megyn Kelly’s various transformations can make you dizzy if you follow them. The days when she had credibility as a truth-seeker are over, and now she’s strictly in the business of following clicks.“Her campaigning with Trump, including on the last night, confirms what the business model is. She is trying to establish herself as the preferred media outlet for the Maga movement. She is demonstrating that even Fox is now vulnerable and is being picked apart by the podcasters who become the viewer choice.”Kelly started out as a lawyer and has described the environment at her early law firms as having a “kill or be killed” mentality. She transitioned to journalism after being inspired by reporters who were cool under pressure. Raised in a Democratic household, she has said she was “really wasn’t political” when she joined Rupert Murdoch’s conservative Fox News network in 2004.Kelly became a leading prime-time personality and star of the right’s culture wars. But a question to Trump during the 2016 primary debate about his past comments on women provoked him to unleash crude and misogynistic attacks, including: “There was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.”Meanwhile her accusations of unwanted sexual advances by Fox News’s chief executive, Roger Ailes, helped lead to his firing. The difficult environment led Kelly to leave for NBC in 2017. She admits her time there “ended disastrously” after just a year when she created a furore by suggesting that it was fine for white people to wear blackface on Halloween.But like Tucker Carlson and Piers Morgan, Kelly has reinvented herself for the new age of fragmented digital media where tie-wearing authority figures are out and smash-mouth influencers are in. In 2020 she launched a daily podcast then switched to a live radio format in a deal with SiriusXM. A video version streams on YouTube with clips shared on various platforms gaining hundreds of millions of views a month.Frank Luntz, a political and communications consultant and pollster, said: “She had an audience on Fox that was undeniable. She didn’t succeed on network television because that audience is too broad.“Now, once again, she’s gone back to what she’s particularly good at, which is appealing to a segment of the population that wants to hear her explanation for what’s going on in a more detailed and factual fashion than what you might get on cable. It’s the right medium at the right time and she’s the right host.”In a world where newspaper reporters can be frowned upon for expressing an opinion in a tweet, Kelly is unabashed about owning her own bias. “Yes, I’m still a journalist,” she told the New York Times newspaper in March, “but I’m in this new ecosystem where the old rules don’t apply. I’m in this world with, yes, Charlie Kirk and Dan Bongino and Ben Shapiro, but my world is also Joe Rogan and Theo Von.View image in fullscreen“It’s a very large world, and how the consumer receives it is by going on YouTube.com on their television screen, or going to the vertical integrations on Instagram or TikTok and just taking in content. What’s the content that you want to receive? I’m on the list of content creators, and so the fact that I’m also a journalist who breaks news and reports on news is an extra. But what’s most important in my business now is authenticity.”Kelly’s renaissance is impossible to divorce from “owning the libs” mentality of Trump and his Maga movement. She told the New York Times: “It’s one of my core missions in life to defeat wokeism.” Her podcasts have foregrounded anxieties over illegal immigration and transgender children taking part in school sports.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTransgender people are a particular obsession for Kelly. In a 2023 interview she forced Trump on the defensive when she grilled him over whether a man can become a woman. In a Republican primary debate, she caricatured the former New Jersey governor Chris Christie’s stance on gender-affirming care for minors and demanded: “Aren’t you way too out of step on this issue to be the Republican nominee?”And when another Republican candidate, Nikki Haley, said children should not be allowed to transition but those who are 18 and older should “live any way they want to live”, Kelly responded furiously on X: “This is utter bulls***. The WRONG ANSWER & an unnecessary weird pander to the rabid trans lobby. The answer is NO, A MAN CANNOT BECOME A WOMAN.”Ari Drennen, LGBTQ programme director at Media Matters for America, a non-profit watchdog, said: “Megyn Kelly is very good at understanding where her audience is and where they want her to be and that’s part of why she’s been able to be so successful in this new media environment. There’s no doubt that throughout the 2024 presidential campaign she was a voice who was pushing GOP candidates to move further to the right on trans issues.”But Kelly is far from a one-trick pony. She has gained particular traction this year with a topic far from Washington: the rancorous legal battle between the actors Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively stemming from the film It Ends With Us. Media Matters’ research found that between 1 January and 20 March, Kelly mentioned Baldoni or Lively 440 times, an average of more than five times a day.She also interviewed Baldoni’s lawyer in a video that has 10m views on TikTok. Drennan said: “She’s leading the way with this celebrity gossip type stuff that has proven to be fertile ground for a lot of these rightwing creators this year.”Other examples include the Daily Wire alumni Brett Cooper and Candace Owens, Drennan noted. “The right has figured that out much better than the left. I feel like on the left there tends to be more of a separation between the types of podcasts and shows that are covering celebrity gossip and the types of shows that are covering daily stuff that’s happening with the Trump administration.”The right is also cashing in. In February Fox Corp acquired Red Seat Ventures, a production company that manages Kelly and Carlson’s shows. In March Kelly announced plans for her own podcast network, MK Media, another sign of how she is riding the Maga wave and adapting to the evolving media landscape.Dan Cassino, author of Fox News and American Politics and a government and politics professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Madison, New Jersey, said: “The economics of cable TV or broadcast TV and the economics of podcasting are very different. Essentially this allows her to be her own boss. The fact that other people have decided she shouldn’t be on TV or can’t attract the audience that would allow her to be on TV any more is irrelevant because you can be profitable at a much lower scale.“Part of this is also a reflection of the realities of media. Nobody has huge audiences any more. The days when you’ve got a 20 share or 30 share are gone and are never going to happen again. Podcasting is not different in type; it’s different in extent.”Meanwhile, after all the years of their chequered relationship, Kelly would not describe herself as a Trump surrogate but is playing that role to great effect. As the president, who has spurned the neocon wing of the Republican party, toured the Gulf region this week, she remarked with bracing candour: “I feel like when I was on Fox News, all we did was cheerlead these wars – and kind of dismiss, or express disdain, for people who had serious questions about them … With the benefit of all this hindsight, that was wrong.”The unholy alliance reminds David Litt, an author and former speechwriter for President Barack Obama, of the old observation that in politics there are no permanent enemies, and no permanent friends, only permanent interests.Litt commented: “The crux of Trump’s argument was I’m a bad guy but you need me in the White House anyway. Nobody could speak to that argument – both Trump’s personal lack of character and, by endorsing him, say we need him anyway – better than Megyn Kelly. He knew that and she knew that. They saw a moment of symbiosis.” More

    • 213 Shares108 Views

      in US Politics

      Republicans are attacking childcare funding. Their goal? To push women out of the workforce | Moira Donegan

      by

      Last month, the White House issued a proposed budget to Congress that completely eliminated funding for Head Start, the six-decade-old early childhood education program for low-income families that serves as a source of childcare for large swaths of the American working class.The funding was restored in the proposed budget after an outcry, but large numbers of employees who oversee the program at the office of Head Start were laid off in a budget-slashing measure under Robert F Kennedy Jr, the head of the Department of Health and Human Services. On Thursday, Kennedy said funding for the program would not be axed, but more cuts to childcare funding are likely coming: some Republicans have pushed to repeal a five-decade-old tax credit for daycare. The White House is entertaining proposals on how to incentivize and structurally coerce American women into bearing more children, but it seems to be determined to make doing so as costly to those women’s careers as possible.That’s because the Republicans’ childcare policy, like their pro-natalist policy, is based on one goal: undoing the historic gains in women’s rights and status, and pushing American women out of the workforce, out of public life, out of full participation in society – and into a narrow domestic role of confinement, dependence and isolation.The New York Times reported this week that the White House is now not only looking for ways to make more women have children, but to encourage “parents” to stay home to raise them. “Parents” here is a euphemism. Roughly 80% of stay-at-home parents are mothers: cultural traditions that encourage women, and not men, to sacrifice their careers for caregiving, along with persistent wage inequalities that make women, on the whole, lower earners than their male partners, both incentivize women, and not men, to drop out of the workforce and stay home when they have children.This state of affairs has been worsened by the dramatic rise in the cost of childcare, which is prohibitively expensive for many parents. The average cost of childcare per child per year in the US is now well north of $11,000, according to Child Care Aware of America, an industry advocacy group. In major cities such as New York, that price is significantly higher: from $16,000 to $19,000 per year. Existing tax credits need to be expanded, not eliminated, to reduce this burden on mothers and their families and to enable women to join the workforce at rates comparable to men and commensurate with their dignity and capacities. Currently, 26% of mothers do not engage in paid work, a figure that has barely budged in 40 years. Largely because of the unequally distributed burdens of childcare, men participate in the paid labor force at a rate that is more than 10% higher than women.One might think that the solution would be to invest more in high-quality childcare, so that providers could open more slots, children could access more resources, and women could go to work and expend their talents in productive ways that earn them money, make use of their gifts and provide more dignity for women and more stability for families. This is not what the American right is proposing: Brad Wilcox, a sociologist who promotes traditional family and gender relations, has called such policy initiatives “work-ist”. Conservatives are proposing, instead, that women go back to the kitchen.The Trump administration, and the American right more broadly, wants the rate of women’s employment to be even lower, because it is advancing a lie that women are naturally, inevitably, uniformly and innately inclined to caregiving, child rearing and homemaking – and not to the positions of intellectual achievement, responsibility, leadership, ingenuity or independence that women may aspire to in the public world. “We cannot get away from the fact that a child is hardwired to bond with Mom,” says Janet Erickson, a fellow at the rightwing Institute for Family Studies, who once co-authored an op-ed with JD Vance calling on “parents” to drop out of the workforce to raise children. “I just think, why should we deny that?”This kind of vague, evidence-free gesturing toward evolutionary psychology – the notion that babies are “hardwired” to prefer mothers who are not employed – is a common conservative tick: a recourse to dishonest and debunked science to lend empiricism to bigotry. There is in fact no evolutionary reason, and no biological reason, for mothers, and not fathers, to abandon independence, ambition or life outside the home for the sake of a child. The only reason is a sexist one.Over the past decade, the left launched few vigorous defenses of a feminist politics that seeks to advance and secure women’s access to public life, paid work and fair remuneration. The American left has launched vigorous criticisms of the “girlboss”, a figure of malignant female ambition who seemed to make the exploitations of capitalism more offensive by virtue of her sex, and it has instead offered critiques of women’s ambition and romantic defenses of the labor of “care” that just happens to overlap with women’s traditional – and traditionally unpaid – roles in the home. This leftwing rhetoric has at times mirrored the similar romanticization of the unpaid housewife of yesteryear from the right, which has embraced tradwives, homesteading fantasies and an aestheticized rustic simplicity that aims to contrast feminist gains in the workforce with a fantasy of women’s rest. Together, these strains of rhetorical opposition to women in the workforce have made anti-feminism into a new kind of “socialism of fools” – a misguided misdirection of anger and resentment at the rapaciousness of capitalism towards a social justice movement for the rights of an oppressed class.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut what is on offer from the political right is not about the refashioning of work and life to be less extractive and exploitative for women, and particularly for mothers. It is instead about a sex segregation of human experience, an effort to make much of public life inaccessible to women. Combined with the right wing’s successful attack on the right to abortion, the Trump administration’s dramatic cuts to Title X programs that provide contraceptive access, and the rescinding of federal grants aimed at helping working women, what emerges from the rightwing policy agenda is an effort to force women out of education, out of decently paid work and into pregnancy, unemployment and dependence on men.Theirs is an effort to shelter men from women’s economic competition, to revert to the regressive cultural modes of an imagined past, and to impose an artificially narrow vision of the capacities, aspirations, talents and desires of half of the American people.Murray Rothbard, the paleoconservative 20th-century economist whose ideas have had a profound influence on the Trumpist worldview, once vowed: “We shall repeal the 20th century.” As far as the Republican right is concerned, it seems to want to repeal the gains of 20th-century feminism first.

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

    • 175 Shares158 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump to speak to Putin and Zelenskyy about Ukraine ceasefire – US politics live

      by

      The Kremlin said that Russian president Vladimir Putin will hold a call with US president Donald Trump at 5pm Moscow time (10am EDT) on Monday, state news agency RIA reported.RIA cited Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov as saying that the two leaders’ discussion of Ukraine would take into account the results of talks between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul last week.Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news throughout the next few hours.Donald Trump is due to speak to both Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy in an effort to stop what he called the “bloodbath” war in Ukraine.Trump, posting on his Truth Social account on Saturday, wrote that he will speak to Putin on Monday morning. “THE SUBJECTS OF THE CALL WILL BE, STOPPING THE ‘BLOODBATH’ THAT IS KILLING, ON AVERAGE, MORE THAN 5000 RUSSIAN AND UKRAINIAN SOLDIERS A WEEK, AND TRADE,” Trump wrote, in his customary all-capitalized prose. The president has repeatedly cited a death toll for the conflict that is much higher than any official figures, or estimates based on an open-source investigation, without explaining why.Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov confirmed to a state-run Russian news agency that preparations were under way for a call between the US and Russian presidents.Trump’s call with the Russian president will be followed by a separate conversation with Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s leader, and Nato leaders as part of the US effort to end the war that has raged since the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022. “HOPEFULLY IT WILL BE A PRODUCTIVE DAY, A CEASEFIRE WILL TAKE PLACE, AND THIS VERY VIOLENT WAR, A WAR THAT SHOULD HAVE NEVER HAPPENED, WILL END,” Trump wrote.It’s unclear what kind of progress Trump will be able to spur, if any, in the peace process. Russia and Ukraine have just concluded mostly fruitless talks, the first of their kind since the start of the war, in Istanbul. Ukraine said it was ready for a ceasefire but was faced by “unacceptable” demands from Russia.In other news:

      Donald Trump’s acceptance of a $400m Boeing jet from Qatar is the “definition of corruption”, a top Democrat said on Sunday, as several senior Republicans joined in a bipartisan fusillade of criticism and concern over the luxury gift. Chris Murphy, a Democratic senator for Connecticut, condemned the “flying grift” on NBC as he assailed the president’s trip to several Gulf states this week that included a stop in Qatar.

      As Trump wages a blunt attack on major law firms and the justice department, some lawyers are starting their own law firms and challenging the administration’s effort to cut funding and punish civil servants. The decision to start the firms come as the judiciary has emerged as a major bulwark against the Trump administration.

      The US retail company Walmart will “eat some of the tariffs” in line with Trump’s demands, the president’s treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, has insisted, claiming he received the assurance in a personal phone call with the company’s chief executive, Doug McMillon. Walmart said last week it had no alternative to raising prices for consumers beginning later this month because it could not absorb the cost of the president’s tariffs on international trade.

      A proposed rule change making it easier to fire civil servants deemed to be “intentionally subverting presidential directives” could pave the way for the White House to fire statisticians employed to produce objective data on the economy but whose figures prove politically inconvenient, experts warn. With Trump under pressure to explain shrinking gross domestic product (GDP) figures amid economists’ warnings that tariffs could trigger a recession, the administration could use new employment rules to pressure workers into “cooking the books”.

      Former US president Joe Biden has been diagnosed with an “aggressive form” of prostate cancer that has spread to his bones, his office announced on Sunday, and he and his family are considering options for treatment. Donald Trump expressed concern on behalf of himself and first lady Melania Trump.

      US government debt may come under more pressure this week after the credit rating agency Moody’s stripped the US of its top-notch triple-A rating. More

    • 163 Shares168 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump news at a glance: president faces intensifying criticism over Qatar plane gift

      by

      Donald Trump is coming under increasing pressure for accepting a $400m luxury plane from Qatar as several senior Republicans join the chorus of criticism.Leading Democratic Chris Murphy on Sunday called it the “definition of corruption”, while even some of Trump’s close allies have been enraged, with some saying it was the opposite of Trump’s promise to drain the swamp and was “a stain on the administration”.Trump lashed out at the critics on Saturday, claiming the gift was to the US and not for him personally. Murphy later told NBC that was not true.Meanwhile, some lawyers are starting their own law firms and challenging the Trump administration’s effort to cut funding and punish civil servants as the president wages a broad attack on the justice department and major law firms.Here are the key stories at a glance:Trump’s acceptance of Qatar jet is ‘definition of corruption’, senator saysDonald Trump’s acceptance of a $400m Boeing jet from Qatar is the “definition of corruption”, a top Democrat said on Sunday, as several senior Republicans joined in a bipartisan fusillade of criticism and concern over the luxury gift.Chris Murphy, a Democratic senator for Connecticut, condemned the “flying grift” on NBC as he assailed the president’s trip to several Gulf states this week that included a stop in Qatar.Rand Paul, a Republican US senator for Kentucky and chair of his chamber’s homeland security committee, told the ABC that the gift of the jet “at least gives the appearance of a conflict of interest”.Read the full storyUS lawyers set up own firms to fight Trump onslaughtAs Trump wages a blunt attack on major law firms and the justice department, some lawyers are starting their own law firms and challenging the administration’s effort to cut funding and punish civil servants.The decision to start the firms come as the judiciary has emerged as a major bulwark against the Trump administration. More than 200 lawsuits have been filed challenging various Trump administration policies and there have been more than 70 rulings blocking the administration from executing various policies.Read the full storyBessent says Walmart will ‘eat’ some tariffs after Trump demandThe US retail company Walmart will “eat some of the tariffs” in line with Trump’s demands, the president’s treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, has insisted, claiming he received the assurance in a personal phone call with the company’s chief executive, Doug McMillon.Walmart said last week it had no alternative to raising prices for consumers beginning later this month because it could not absorb the cost of the president’s tariffs on international trade. The statement provoked an angry response from Trump, who said on Saturday the company should “eat the tariffs and not charge valued customers anything”.According to Bessent, speaking on Sunday to NBC’s Meet the Press, Walmart is now promising exactly that.Read the full storyFears Trump could target statisticians if data disappointsA proposed rule change making it easier to fire civil servants deemed to be “intentionally subverting presidential directives” could pave the way for the White House to fire statisticians employed to produce objective data on the economy but whose figures prove politically inconvenient, experts warn.With Trump under pressure to explain shrinking gross domestic product (GDP) figures amid economists’ warnings that tariffs could trigger a recession, the administration could use new employment rules to pressure workers into “cooking the books”.Read the full storyTrump losing patience with Putin, says Finnish leaderDonald Trump is becoming impatient with Vladimir Putin, Finland’s president has said after a lengthy conversation with his US counterpart.Alexander Stubb said Trump and Putin, who are scheduled to speak by phone on Monday, must not decide the fate of Ukraine over the head of its president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.Stubb said: “If we were to pull it together, we could say that Zelenskyy is patient and President Trump is starting to be impatient, but in the right direction, that is, towards Russia.”Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      Former US president Joe Biden has been diagnosed with an “aggressive form” of prostate cancer that has spread to his bones, his office announced on Sunday, and he and his family are considering options for treatment. Donald Trump expressed concern on behalf of himself and first lady Melania Trump.

      US government debt may come under more pressure this week after the credit rating agency Moody’s stripped the US of its top-notch triple-A rating.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened 17 May 2025. More

    • 150 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Joe Biden diagnosed with ‘aggressive form’ of prostate cancer, his office says

      by

      Joe Biden has been diagnosed with prostate cancer, which has spread to the bone, and the former president and his family are reviewing treatment options, his office said in a statement on Sunday.“While this represents a more aggressive form of the disease, the cancer appears to be hormone-sensitive which allows for effective management,” his office said. “The President and his family are reviewing treatment options with his physicians.”Prostate cancers are given a score called a Gleason score that measures, on a scale of one to 10, how the cancerous cells look compared with normal cells. Biden’s office said his score was nine, suggesting his cancer is among the most aggressive.When prostate cancer spreads to other parts of the body, it often spreads to the bones. Metastasized cancer is much harder to treat than localized cancer because it can be hard for drugs to reach all the tumors and completely root out the disease.However, when prostate cancers need hormones to grow, as in Biden’s case, they can be susceptible to treatment that deprives the tumors of hormones.Biden, 82, beat an incumbent Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election and initially sought a rematch with him last year. But, amid questions about his age and mental acuity, he dropped out of the race and endorsed his vice-president, Kamala Harris, to succeed him.Trump, who is just three years younger than Biden, subsequently defeated Harris in November’s election and returned to the White House in January.Biden has dealt with cancer before. Prior to starting his presidency, he had several non-melanoma skin cancers surgically removed, and he had a cancerous lesion removed from his chest in February 2023.In the US, prostate cancer is the most common cancer and the second leading cause of cancer death among men, according to the American Cancer Society.In 2022, Biden made a “cancer moonshot” one of his administration’s priorities, with the goal of halving the cancer death rate over the next 25 years. The initiative was a continuation of his work as vice-president to address a disease that had killed his older son, Beau.Reuters and the Associated Press contributed reporting. More

    • 150 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump’s acceptance of Qatar jet gift is ‘definition of corruption’, senator says

      by

      Donald Trump’s acceptance of a $400m Boeing jet from Qatar is the “definition of corruption”, a leading Democrat said on Sunday, as several senior Republicans joined in a bipartisan fusillade of criticism and concern over the luxury gift.Chris Murphy, a Democratic senator for Connecticut, condemned the “flying grift” on NBC’s Meet the Press as he assailed the president’s trip to several Gulf states this week that included a stop in Qatar.“Why did he choose these three countries for his first major foreign trip? It’s not because these are our most important allies or the most important countries in the world,” he said of Trump’s visit to the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.“It’s because these are the three countries willing to pay him off. Every single one of these countries is giving Trump money, the plane from Qatar, an investment in his cryptocurrency scam from the UAE, and they are asking for national security concessions in return.“This is the definition of corruption. Foreign governments putting money in the president’s pocket and then the US giving them national security concessions that hurt our own security.”Rand Paul, a Republican US senator for Kentucky, and chair of his chamber’s homeland security committee, told ABC’s This Week that the gift of the jet “at least gives the appearance of a conflict of interest”.And Mike Pence, Trump’s vice-president during his first Oval Office term, said it was “inconsistent with our security” during an appearance on Meet the Press in which he pointed out Qatar had been previously accused of financing international terrorism.Trump has insisted he would be “stupid” to refuse Qatar’s offer of the jet, which would serve as the new Air Force One before being donated to his presidential library upon his retirement.But the proposal enraged even close allies of the president, some calling it the opposite of Trump’s promise to drain the swamp – and “a stain on the administration”.Trump lashed out at critics on his Truth Social network on Saturday, claiming the gift was to the US and not personally for him.Murphy told NBC that was not true. “The plane is not a gift to the American people,” he said. “It is going directly to Donald Trump.“That library will take a decade to build, and so once he leaves the White House, until the library is built, he gets to use that plane to fly around all of his billionaire friends while his policies result in millions of Americans losing their healthcare and having to pay higher costs.”Pence said Trump should turn down the offer.“Qatar has a long history of playing both sides. They support Hamas,” he said. “They supported Al-Qaida. Qatar has actually financed pro-Hamas protests on American campuses across the US, so the very idea that we would accept an Air Force One from Qatar I think is inconsistent with our security, with our intelligence needs.“There are profound issues, the potential for intelligence gathering, the need to ensure the president is safe and secure as he travels around the world, and of course there are very real constitutional issues. The constitution prohibits public officials from accepting a present from a foreign state.“It’s just a bad idea and my hope is the president will think better of it.”Paul said he could see a way in which the gift would be acceptable – but that Trump had handled the offer poorly.“My fear is that it detracts from a largely successful trip where the president is talking about opening up and doing more trade with the Middle East,” he said.“I’ve been part of vetoing or trying to veto arms [sales] to Qatar, as well as to Saudi Arabia, over human rights abuses. So could it color the perception of the administration if they have a $400m plane to be more in favor of these things. It at least gives the appearance of a conflict of interest. I don’t think it’s worth the headache.” More

    • 175 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      US treasury secretary says Walmart will ‘eat some of the tariffs’ after Trump demand

      by

      The US retail giant Walmart will “eat some of the tariffs” in line with Donald Trump’s demands, the president’s treasury secretary Scott Bessent insisted on Sunday, claiming he received the assurance in a personal phone call with the company’s chief executive, Doug McMillon.A spokesperson for Walmart said the company would not comment on conversations between its executives and administration officials. However, a source familiar with the conversation said the phone call between Bessent and McMillon was arranged many days prior to Trump’s post – and that the company’s position had not changed.Walmart said this week it had no alternative to raising prices for consumers beginning later this month because it could not absorb the cost of the president’s tariffs on international trade, which have caused turmoil in international markets.The statement provoked an angry response from Trump, who posted a rant to his Truth Social network on Saturday saying the company should “eat the tariffs and not charge valued customers anything”.According to Bessent, speaking on Sunday to NBC’s Meet the Press, Walmart is now promising exactly that.“I was on the phone with Doug McMillon, the CEO of Walmart, yesterday. And Walmart is, in fact, going to, as you describe it, eat some of the tariffs, just as they did in ‘18, ‘19, and ‘20,” Bessent said after host Kristen Welker asked if the president was asking American companies to be less profitable.“What you’re describing was Walmart’s earnings call. The other thing the companies have to do – they have to give the worst case scenario so that they’re not sued.”On Thursday, McMillon said in the earnings call that his company, a bellwether of US consumer health, was moving to protect itself against the impacts of Trump’s tariffs, despite the president’s administration announcing a pause in its trade war with China that analysts called “capitulation day”.“We will do our best to keep our prices as low as possible but given the magnitude of the tariffs, even at the reduced levels announced this week, we aren’t able to absorb all the pressure given the reality of narrow retail margins,” he said.Walmart’s chief financial officer, John Rainey, told CNBC that the company, which has thousands of stores across the US, was “wired for everyday low prices”. But he said the tariffs were “more than any retailer can absorb” – and that consumers would begin to see higher prices towards the end of May and “certainly much more in June”.Trump announced plans for an unprecedented barrage of tariffs against numerous countries on 2 April, a date he called “liberation day”.For too long, he said, the US had been “looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far”, and he presented a list of countries and territories that would receive tariffs, ranging from numerous US allies and longtime trade partners to barren, remote islands near Antarctica occupied only by penguins.The president’s strategy, which he insisted would lead to negotiations and trade deals with at least 150 countries, was variously ridiculed and condemned as flawed and unworkable. And it created an ongoing six weeks of chaos with higher prices, crashing stock markets and slowing economic growth.He has since attempted to walk back many of the excesses of the policy, including this week’s announcement that, for an initial 90-day period, tariffs on China – a dominant supplier to Walmart and myriad other US companies – would be cut from 145% to 30%.The White House called it a “total reset” in trade relations and followed up on Friday by announcing that it would not, after all, negotiate with many of the countries, but instead unilaterally impose new tariff rates.“[It is] not possible to meet the number of people that want to see us,” Trump told a meeting of business leaders in the United Arab Emirates during his tour of Gulf states.“We have 150 countries that want to make a deal, but you’re not able to see that many countries.”Bessent told CNN’s State of the Union in a later appearance on Sunday that the US was focused on its “18 most important trading relationships” – and that he expected trade talks to continue with a number of countries leading to a series of regional deals. More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Could a British Fox News personality fix Republicans’ losing streak in California?

      by

      California is usually regarded as a political graveyard for ambitious Republicans, but Steve Hilton, the smiling, bald-headed former British political consultant turned Fox News personality, has a few theories of how to turn that around.Theory number one is that the Democrats, who have not lost a statewide election in almost 20 years and enjoy a supermajority in the California legislature, make the argument for change more or less by themselves, because the state has become too expensive for many of its residents and is mired in a steep budgetary crisis.Even the current governor, Gavin Newsom, argues that his party’s brand has become toxic, that Democrats across the country have lost their way, and “people don’t think we make any damn sense”. The leading Democratic candidates to succeed him have been similarly blunt.“Everything costs too much!” the former congresswoman Katie Porter says on her campaign website. “Homes and rent are too expensive,” the former state attorney general Xavier Becerra concurs on his. “Folks can barely cover their grocery bills. Healthcare costs are incredibly high.”To which Hilton responds gleefully: “We know! You did it to us!”Given the depth of the malaise – “Califailure”, the title of his campaign book calls it – Hilton believes that next year’s governor’s race offers Republicans a unique opportunity. If even Democrats think it’s time for change, he argues, wouldn’t it make sense for voters to look elsewhere for a solution?And that leads him to theory number two: that an engaging, energetic, unorthodox-sounding candidate like himself might just be the man for a job.In the four weeks since he announced his run for governor, Hilton and a skeleton staff have crisscrossed the state in a distinctive white pickup truck emblazoned with the Trump-like slogan “Make California Golden Again”. He has spoken at universities and presidential libraries, made common cause with hardcore Trump Republicans, and struck up conversations with voters in some of the most liberal corners of the state.His style has been casual – he dresses most commonly in a T-shirt and sneakers as he sits down in coffee shops or addresses so-called “policy forums” for supporters – and he keeps a video crew close to post updates on social media and underline how little he looks or talks like a regular Republican candidate.Back in Britain, where he was an adviser to the Conservative prime minister David Cameron from 2010 to 2012 and, later, a champion of Brexit, Hilton worked largely behind the scenes. He has been much more visible since as a Fox News host and contributor, and has honed a public persona that remains unabashedly rightwing but is also adept at presenting complex political viewpoints in easily relatable terms.So far, at least, Hilton’s British origins have proven more of an asset than a liability. (“He just sounds smarter because of his accent,” the moderator at a Republican gathering in Santa Barbara said. “It’s almost not fair.”) Even his bare scalp has contrasted favorably in some quarters with Newsom’s famously coiffed full head of hair.Hilton’s core message is simple: that Californians want good jobs, good homes and good schools for their kids. And the reason too many feel these goals are eluding them, he says, is because of “one-party rule and really bad ideas” from the Democrats.That diagnosis certainly has the potential to resonate widely, particularly among working-class voters who, according to Hilton, are ‘being completely screwed” by high living costs, high taxes and a public school system whose test scores in English and math consistently lag behind the national average.“It doesn’t have to be like this,” Hilton told the Santa Barbara crowd. “We don’t have to put up with this.”The question, though, is whether Hilton is the alternative voters are craving– and that’s where observers believe he may be on shakier ground, particularly since his strongest political connections are with the Trump end of the Republican party.View image in fullscreenEven Hilton’s more moderate ideas reflect a standard Republican playbook of cuts to taxes, public spending and business regulations – a platform Californians have rejected time and again. Dan Schnur, a former Republican campaign consultant who teaches political communications at Berkeley and the University of Southern California, thinks that behind the moderate facade Hilton is in fact “running pretty hard as a Maga candidate” on a range of issues from immigration to homelessness.Hilton has a slightly different theory of the case. He sees parallels between California in 2025 and Britain in the late 1970s, when it was known as the “sick man of Europe”, and envisions himself as a version of Margaret Thatcher providing a much-needed rightward course correction. He drew laughter and applause in Santa Barbara when he complained about California’s “nanny state bossy bureaucracy” – a Thatcher-inspired turn of phrase – and when he borrowed from a celebrated 1979 Conservative campaign slogan to say “California isn’t working”.Whether that message can work with independents and Democrats – constituencies he has to sway in large numbers to win – is far from clear. However much Hilton talks about “commonsense” solutions, his early champions include Charlie Kirk, who runs the Trump-supporting youth group Turning Point, and Vivek Ramaswamy, the tech entrepreneur turned politician who is old friends with Vice-President JD Vance and is now running for governor of Ohio – both of whom would suggest he has hitched his wagon to a more radical agenda.Even when forging connections in working-class, heavily Latino East Los Angeles, Hilton has relied on a local Trump activist, now in charge of the White House faith office, who in turn introduced him to Maga-friendly grassroots groups with names like the Conservative Comadres and Lexit (for Latinos Exiting the Democratic Party).The problem is not that Hilton’s new friends in East LA – many of them small business owners – do not reflect broader frustrations when they talk about working hard and having far too little to show for it. They almost certainly do.The problem is that Trump’s brand of working-class populism is toxic in California – vastly more so than the Democrats – and growing only more so as Trump’s chaotic second term in the White House unfolds.An LA Times opinion poll earlier this month showed 68% of Californians disapproved of the president’s job performance and thought the country was on the wrong track – numbers that many political analysts expect to worsen as the effects of Trump’s trade war kick in.Hilton himself makes light of this problem, arguing that if he runs an energetic, attractive enough campaign it will cut across the political spectrum and create its own momentum. “We’ve just learned that California is the fourth biggest economy in the world, and that’s great,” he said in an interview, “but it isn’t an economy that works for the people who live here … We are building a movement and a coalition for change.”Soon, though, he is likely to be pulled in different directions, because the logic of California’s primary system requires him to beat every other Republican before he can even think about the Democrats. And, in the age of Trump, there’s no competition between Republicans that does not require showing obeisance to the president. “The association’s going to be there, whether it results in a formal endorsement or not,” Schnur said. “Trump’s coat-tails are much longer in a primary than in a general election, which is good news for Hilton in the spring but a bigger obstacle in the fall.”Hilton’s stiffest Republican competitor so far, the Riverside county sheriff, Todd Bianco, has already run into trouble with the Trump faithful because he took a knee in solidarity with Black Lives Matter protesters in the wake of the George Floyd killing in 2020. (Bianco, who generally talks and acts like a Trump-aligned Republican, insists he was tricked into kneeling when he thought he was being asked to pray – a version at variance with video footage from the time.)At the Santa Barbara event, Hilton looked almost bashful when asked what Trump thought of his decision to run and gave only the vaguest of answers. It is unlikely to be the last time he will field such a question, though, or risk alienating some part of his target electorate with his response.Hilton describes the task ahead as “possible, but difficult”. His chances most likely rest on another theory of his – that the rightward swing the country experienced last November was not a one-off, but a trend still gathering momentum. Hilton points to all the ways California was part of that national trend in 2024 – the 10 counties that flipped from blue to red, the rejection of liberal district attorneys and mayors up and down the state, the call for a stiffer approach to law and order in a key statewide ballot initiative – and concludes that “Californians voted Republican without realising it.”The last time Trump was president, though, the midterm elections produced a major swing in the other direction, in California and across the country, and most political analysts expect the same thing next year. If office-holders can justifiably point the finger at Washington – for shortages on the shelves, or higher prices incurred by tariffs, or immigrant laborers vanishing from key industries – voters are likely to be more forgiving of their leaders’ own shortcomings.“It would be much easier to make the case against the Democratic establishment if there weren’t a Republican president,” Schnur said. “An entire generation of Californians has come of voting age automatically dismissing the possibility of supporting a Republican candidate … That doesn’t mean a Republican can’t get elected governor, but it’s a very steep uphill fight.” More