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      Trump news at a glance: Jerome Powell tackles inflation of White House figures on HQ upgrades

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      “It looks like it’s about $3.1bn – it went up a little bit or a lot,” said Donald Trump, handing Jerome Powell a piece of paper as they stood amid construction at the US Federal Reserve’s Washington HQ. The usually unflappable Fed chief looked irritated, closed his eyes and shook his head. “I am not aware of that,” said Powell.Powell scanned the paper and pointed out the figure wrongly included the cost of renovations for a different Fed building that was done five years ago. “It’s not new,” said Powell.Here’s more on this and the day’s other key Trump administration stories.Trump and Powell clash on camera over Fed renovation costDonald Trump sparred with the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, on Thursday during a rare presidential visit to the central bank’s headquarters.Trump was continuing his campaign to pressure the Fed to cut interest rates and was visiting its Washington headquarters to view costly renovations he has suggested are tantamount to fraud.Having called Powell a “numbskull” for the Fed’s recent decisions not to cut rates, Trump has turned up the pressure on Powell with criticism of the $2.5bn bill for renovating the Fed’s historical buildings.Read the full storyUS and Israel ditch ceasefire talks The US is withdrawing its negotiating team from Gaza ceasefire talks in Qatar after Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, pointed the finger at Hamas for a “lack of desire to reach a ceasefire”.“While the mediators have made a great effort, Hamas does not appear to be coordinated or acting in good faith,” Witkoff said on Thursday. “We will now consider alternative options to bring the hostages home and try to create a more stable environment for the people of Gaza.”Read the full storyTrump DoJ officials meet with Ghislaine Maxwell The Jeffrey Epstein files scandal swirling around Donald Trump and his administration continued to escalate on Thursday as officials from the Department of Justice met with the late sex offender’s longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell, whose lawyer said she “answered every question … honestly and to the best of her ability”.Read the full storyBill Clinton reportedly sent Jeffrey Epstein note for birthday albumFormer president Bill Clinton also sent a birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein, the Wall Street Journal reported. Last week, the Journal reported that Trump had authored a “bawdy” letter to Epstein as part of a birthday album compiled by Ghislaine Maxwell.Read the full storyMixed reaction to Columbia University deal with TrumpColumbia University’s long anticipated deal with the Trump administration after months of negotiations has drawn both condemnation and praise from faculty, students, and alumni – a sign that the end of negotiations will hardly restore harmony on a campus profoundly divided since the beginning of Israel’s war in Gaza.David Pozen, a professor at Columbia Law School, slammed the deal as giving “legal form to an extortion scheme”, he wrote.Read the full storyTrump’s DoJ to investigate Obama over 2016 electionThe US justice department has formed a “strike force” to investigate claims that the Obama administration carried out a “treasonous conspiracy” by using false intelligence to suggest Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election to help Donald Trump.Read the full storyVenezuelans deported by Trump to El Salvador describe ‘horror movie’ mega-prisonVenezuelan men who were deported by the US to a notorious prison in El Salvador without due process are speaking out about treatment they described as “hell” and like a “horror movie”, after arriving back home. A total of 252 Venezuelan nationals were repatriated in the last week in a deal between the US and Venezuelan governments, with many able to reunite with family after their ordeal in El Salvador.Read the full storyTrump cracks down on homelessnessThe federal government is seeking to crack down on homelessness in the US, with Donald Trump issuing an executive order to push local governments to remove unhoused people from the streets.Read the full storyTrump signs executive order to rein in ‘chaotic’ influence of money on college sportsDonald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order prohibiting “third-party, pay-for-play” payments to college athletes, a move the White House says is intended to curb the booster-funded bidding wars that have upended the landscape of college sports in recent years.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      South Park kicked off its 27th season with a blistering episode taking aim at Trump and its newly minted parent company, Paramount, just one day after signing a $1.5bn deal with the network.

      Thousands of employees at the US Department of Agriculture will be forced to take salary cutsand relocate out of the Washington DC area, as part of a major restructuring that experts warn will further weaken support for American farmers and complicate wildfire response.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 23 July 2025. More

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      US justice department officials interview Ghislaine Maxwell

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      The Jeffrey Epstein files scandal swirling around Donald Trump and his administration continued to escalate on Thursday as officials from the Department of Justice met with the late sex offender’s longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell, whose lawyer said she “answered every question … honestly and to the best of her ability”.Todd Blanche, the US deputy attorney general, arrived on Thursday morning at the office of the US attorney in Tallahassee, Florida, ABC News reported. The state prosecutor’s office is based in the federal courthouse in the Florida capital and Maxwell’s lawyers were also seen entering the building.Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking and other crimes at a federal prison in Florida, after being convicted in New York in late 2021.On Thursday afternoon, Maxwell’s attorney David Markus said his team had a “very productive day”with Blanche, who will meet with Maxwell again Friday, Reuters reported.“[Blanche] took a full day and asked a lot of questions,” Markus said. “Miss Maxwell answered every single question. She never stopped. She never invoked a privilege. She never declined to answer. She answered all the questions truthfully, honestly and to the best of her ability.”The meeting comes amid growing political and public pressure on the Trump administration to release more details about the Epstein investigation – something that Trump and members of his administration had promised.Mark Epstein, the brother of the disgraced financier, told the Guardian in an interview that if he had the opportunity he would ask Maxwell “what she and Jeffrey might have known what the dirt was on Donald Trump”.View image in fullscreen“Because Jeffrey said, he said he had dirt on Trump,” Mark Epstein said. “I don’t know what it was, but years ago he said he had dirt on Trump.”He added that he wasn’t “particularly worried” for Maxwell, adding: “There’s a lot of people on this planet.”Maxwell’s brother Ian Maxwell, meanwhile, told the New York Post that his sister had been preparing “new evidence” before her meeting with justice department officials.“She will be putting before [a] court material new evidence that was not available to the defense at her 2021 trial, which would have had a significant impact on its outcome,” her brother told the outlet in an email.Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in his prison cell in New York in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges, which he denied, relating to accusations that he “sexually exploited and abused dozens of minor girls”. He had previously been officially declared a sex offender in Florida but re-emerged as a significant figure in US business and political circles in the years that followed, having struck a deal over the earlier criminal charges.The renewed focus on Trump’s past association with Epstein comes after the justice department announced earlier this month that it would not be releasing any more documents from the most recent Epstein investigation – despite earlier pledges by the US president and the US attorney general, Pam Bondi.The justice department’s announcement drew criticism and backlash from both sides of the party political aisle, including from some Trump supporters and conservative commentators, who accused the administration of engaging in a cover-up.For years, the Epstein case has been the subject of countless conspiracy theories, partly due to Epstein’s ties to high-profile figures. Epstein’s death, which was officially ruled a suicide, has also fueled many conspiracy theories.On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump was informed by Bondi in May that his name appears multiple times in the justice department files related to Epstein.The report also said that Trump was told that many other high-profile individuals were named in the files, and that the department did not plan to release any additional documents related to the investigation.Trump’s spokesperson, Steven Cheung, denied the claims in the Journal report and dismissed the story.In an emailed statement this week, Cheung said that “the fact is that the President kicked him [Epstein] out of his club for being a creep”.Meanwhile, the House oversight committee voted 8-2 on Wednesday to subpoena the justice department for the Epstein files, with three Republicans joining all Democrats in the vote.The committee also subpoenaed Maxwell to testify before committee officials on 11 August.Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, questioned whether Maxwell could be trusted.And Dan Goldman, a Democratic New York representative, said in a post on X on Tuesday: “Ghislaine is looking for a pardon, and who would be better to give it to her than a co-conspirator now in the Oval Office.”Edward Helmore contributed reporting More

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      Trump tussles with Jerome Powell on rare visit to Federal Reserve

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      Donald Trump sparred with the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, on Thursday during a rare presidential visit to the central bank’s headquarters.Trump was continuing his campaign to pressure the Fed to cut interest rates and was visiting its Washington headquarters to view costly renovations he has suggested are tantamount to fraud.Having branded Powell a “numbskull” for the Fed’s recent decisions not to cut rates, Trump has turned up the pressure on Powell with criticism of the $2.5bn bill for renovating the Fed’s historical buildings.Powell and Trump stood in hard hats inside the Fed’s construction site. Urging the Fed chair to stand closer to him, Trump alleged that the bill for the renovations would now cost $3.1bn.“It looks like it’s about $3.1bn – it went up a little bit or a lot,” said Trump. The usually unflappable Powell looked visibly irritated, closed his eyes and shook his head. “I am not aware of that,” said Powell.Handed a piece of paper by Trump, Powell scanned it and said the new figure included the cost of renovations for the Martin Building, a different Fed office that was renovated five years ago. “It’s not new,” said Powell.Asked by a reporter what he would do if a project manager went over budget, Trump said: “I’d fire him.“Look, I would love to see it completed,” Trump said. “I don’t want to put that in this category.”The president backed away from earlier statements in which he had suggested he would fire Powell, a suggestion that has rattled stock markets. Trump said: “To do that is a big move, and I just don’t think it’s necessary, and I believe he’s going to do the right thing.”The visit to the Fed comes less than a week before the central bank’s 19 policymakers gather for a two-day rate-setting meeting, where they are widely expected to leave the central bank’s benchmark interest rate in the 4.25%-4.50% range.Trump has demanded that the Fed lower rates by three percentage points. Trump has repeatedly demanded that Powell slash US interest rates and has frequently raised the possibility of firing him.Ahead of Trump’s visit, Fed staff escorted a small group of reporters around the construction sites. They wove around cement mixers and construction machines, and spoke over the sound of drills, banging and saws.Fed staff pointed out security features, including blast-resistant windows, that they said were a significant driver of costs, in addition to tariffs and escalations in material and labor costs.Reuters contributed to this story More

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      Trump and Powell clash on camera over Federal Reserve renovation cost – US politics live

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      Donald Trump just attempted to ambush Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, during his site visit to inspect the renovation of the central bank’s historic headquarters in Washington.When Trump paused before reporters to make a statement, he beckoned Powell over to stand next to him on camera. The president then claimed that the total cost of the renovations to the Federal Reserve buildings was $3.1bn, a higher figure than had previously been reported.As Trump made this claim, Powell nodded his head no, to signal his disagreement.“I’m not aware of that,” Powell said. “I haven’t heard that from anybody at the Fed.”Trump insisted that this new figure “just came out” and removed papers from his coat, as apparent proof, and handed them to Powell.“This came from us?” Powell asked.After Trump said that the new figures had come from his people, Powell discovered why the figure for the renovation was suddenly much larger. “You included a third building,” he said.Trump insisted that the third building was part of the total cost of the renovation he has accused Powell of mismanaging in an effort to find some cause to remove the independent Fed chairman who has refused to lower interest rates at the president’s request.The third building Trump suddenly claimed is part of the renovation, Powell explained, “was built five years ago. It’s not new.”Trump was flanked by his staunch ally, Republican senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, who also suggested that the renovations had gone too far over budget.Powell, asked if they expected any further cost overruns, replied, “Don’t expect them” but said that the independent central bank was “ready for them” if necessary.Trump then called on a friendly reporter, who asked him what, as a builder, he “would do with a project manager who is over budget”.“Generally speaking, ”Trump said, “I’d fire him.”As Trump, Powell and Scott stepped away from the media to continue the tour, Trump said that there is something that Powell could do to assuage his concerns about the cost of the renovations. “I’d love him to lower interest rates,” he said.Powell has asserted, repeatedly, that the president does not have the power to fire him, as the head of an independent agency, and that decisions on interest rates must be immune to political pressure.The supreme court on Thursday blocked a lower-court ruling in a redistricting dispute in North Dakota that would gut a landmark federal civil rights law for millions of people.The justices indicated in an unsigned order that they are likely to take up a federal appeals court ruling that would eliminate the most common path people and civil rights groups use to sue under a key provision of the 60-year-old Voting Rights Act.The case could be argued as early as 2026 and decided by next summer.Three conservative justices, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas, would have rejected the appeal.The lawsuit was filed on behalf of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, Spirit Lake Tribe and individual Native American voters challenging new North Dakota legislative districts drawn after the 2020 census.The complaint alleged that the redrawn districts would dilute the voting strength of Native Americans in the state in violation of section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, by giving them a chance to elect the candidate of their choice in just one district in northeastern North Dakota, instead of two.The Campaign Legal Center, which filed the suit with the Native American Rights Fund and other partners, welcomed the stay for “leaving in place fair maps for Native American voters while the cases progresses before the supreme court.”“To make this decision permanent, Campaign Legal Center will be filing a cert petition to formally request that the supreme court hear this case during their next term,” the nonpartisan, legal nonprofit wrote.Donald Trump, standing in a hard hat outside the headquarters of the Federal Reserve, just completed his tour of the renovations he has repeatedly claimed are too expensive, as he seeks an excuse to fire the head of the US central bank, Jerome Powell.Trump, accompanied by Tim Scott, a Republican senator from South Carolina, met assembled reporters by a podium set up for his remarks. Powell, who has repeatedly asserted his independence and resisted Trump’s demands to lower interest rates, was not present.During the tour, Powell took issue with Trump’s claim that the renovation cost $3.1bn, a higher figure than had previously been claimed, and pointed out that the president had added in the cost of another building that was not part of the renovation and had been completed five years ago.“I see a very luxurious situation taking place,” Trump said.“Too expensive,” Scott chimed in. The senator and the president then said that Powell’s refusal to lower interest rates was making it difficult for Americans to afford mortgages on their homes, and suggested that the central banker’s renovation of the bank’s headquarters at the same time was inappropriate.Pressed by a reporter on why Trump does not speed up the lowering of interest rates on mortgages by firing Powell, Trump said he was not inclined to take that unprecedented step. “Because to do that is a big move and I just don’t think it’s necessary,” Trump said.“And I believe that he’s going do the right thing. I believe that the chairman is going to do the right thing,” Trump said.He then repeated his apparently false claim that, on his recent visit to Saudi Arabia, “the king of Saudi Arabia” told him that the United States is now “the hottest country anywhere in the world, and I thought you were dead one year ago”. Trump met the crown prince of Saudi Arabia on his visit in May. There are no published accounts that he met with the 89-year-old king, Salman, who has withdrawn from public life since last year following health concerns.Donald Trump just attempted to ambush Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, during his site visit to inspect the renovation of the central bank’s historic headquarters in Washington.When Trump paused before reporters to make a statement, he beckoned Powell over to stand next to him on camera. The president then claimed that the total cost of the renovations to the Federal Reserve buildings was $3.1bn, a higher figure than had previously been reported.As Trump made this claim, Powell nodded his head no, to signal his disagreement.“I’m not aware of that,” Powell said. “I haven’t heard that from anybody at the Fed.”Trump insisted that this new figure “just came out” and removed papers from his coat, as apparent proof, and handed them to Powell.“This came from us?” Powell asked.After Trump said that the new figures had come from his people, Powell discovered why the figure for the renovation was suddenly much larger. “You included a third building,” he said.Trump insisted that the third building was part of the total cost of the renovation he has accused Powell of mismanaging in an effort to find some cause to remove the independent Fed chairman who has refused to lower interest rates at the president’s request.The third building Trump suddenly claimed is part of the renovation, Powell explained, “was built five years ago. It’s not new.”Trump was flanked by his staunch ally, Republican senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, who also suggested that the renovations had gone too far over budget.Powell, asked if they expected any further cost overruns, replied, “Don’t expect them” but said that the independent central bank was “ready for them” if necessary.Trump then called on a friendly reporter, who asked him what, as a builder, he “would do with a project manager who is over budget”.“Generally speaking, ”Trump said, “I’d fire him.”As Trump, Powell and Scott stepped away from the media to continue the tour, Trump said that there is something that Powell could do to assuage his concerns about the cost of the renovations. “I’d love him to lower interest rates,” he said.Powell has asserted, repeatedly, that the president does not have the power to fire him, as the head of an independent agency, and that decisions on interest rates must be immune to political pressure.Donald Trump has said that Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell will be present when he and other officials tour the Fed’s headquarters in Washington this afternoon.“Getting ready to head over to the Fed to look at their, now, $3.1 Billion Dollar (PLUS!) construction project,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.The US government has sued New York City, seeking to block enforcement of several local laws its says are designed to impede its ability to enforce federal immigration laws, Reuters reports.In a complaint filed in Brooklyn federal court, the Trump administration government said the city’s “sanctuary provisions” are unconstitutional, and preempted by laws giving it authority to regulate immigration.Donald Trump will today sign an executive order making it easier for cities and states to remove homeless people from the streets, USA Today reports.Under the executive order, the president will direct attorney general Pam Bondi to “reverse judicial precedents and end consent decrees” that limit local and state governments’ ability to move homeless people from streets and encampments into treatment centers, according to a White House summary of the order reviewed by USA Today.Trump’s order, dubbed “Ending Vagrancy and Restoring Order”, will redirect federal funds to ensure the homeless people impacted are transferred to rehabilitation, treatment and other facilities, the White House said, though it was not immediately clear how much money would be allocated.It will require Bondi to work with the secretaries of health and human services, housing and urban development and transportation to prioritize federal grants to states and cities that “enforce prohibitions on open illicit drug use, urban camping and loitering, and urban squatting, and track the location of sex offenders”.White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt in a statement that Trump is “delivering on his commitment to Make America Safe Again and end homelessness across America”.“By removing vagrant criminals from our streets and redirecting resources toward substance abuse programs, the Trump Administration will ensure that Americans feel safe in their own communities and that individuals suffering from addiction or mental health struggles are able to get the help they need,” she said.The White House does not support the request by Republican senators John Cornyn and Lindsey Graham for a special counsel to investigate what they call the “Russia collusion hoax,” NBC News is reporting, citing a source familiar with the matter.“While we appreciate the shared goal of transparency and accountability, the president is confident in the Department of Justice to handle the investigation,” the source told NBC.The Department of Justice announced last night that it was forming a “strike force” to to investigate (baseless) claims that the Obama administration carried out a “treasonous conspiracy” by using false intelligence to suggest Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election to help Donald Trump.A special counsel appointed during Trump’s first term already investigated the origins of the Russia probe.US district judge James Boasberg has said he may initiate disciplinary proceedings against justice department lawyers for their conduct in a lawsuit brought by Venezuelans challenging their removal to a Salvadoran prison in March.Boasberg, a prominent Washington DC, judge who has drawn Donald Trump’s ire, said during a court hearing that a recent whistleblower complaint had strengthened the argument that Trump administration officials engaged in criminal contempt of court by failing to turn around deportation flights.Boasberg also raised the prospect of referring DOJ lawyers to state bar associations, which have the authority to discipline unethical conduct by attorneys. He said:
      I will certainly be assessing whether government counsel’s conduct and veracity to the court warrant a referral to state bars or our grievance committee, which determines lawyers’ fitness to practice in our court.
      A justice department spokesperson declined to comment.Boasberg has been hearing an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit brought on behalf of alleged Venezuelan gang members removed from the US under the rarely invoked 18th-century Alien Enemies Act. The detainees in the case were returned to Venezuela last week as part of a prisoner exchange, after spending four months in El Salvador’s Cecot prison.The migrants’ lawyers have disputed the gang membership claims and said their clients were not given a chance to contest the government’s assertions.Boasberg said in April that the Trump administration appeared to have acted “in bad faith” when it hurriedly assembled three deportation flights on 15 March at the same time that he was conducting emergency court proceedings to assess the legality of the effort.In court filings, justice department lawyers have disputed that they disobeyed a court order, saying remarks Boasberg made from the bench were not legally binding.In a 2-1 order, a federal appeals court in April temporarily paused Boasberg’s effort to further investigate whether the Trump administration engaged in criminal contempt.Boasberg said during today’s hearing that the delay from the appeals court was frustrating for the plaintiffs, and that a whistleblower complaint from Erez Reuveni, a former DOJ attorney who was fired in April, strengthened the case for contempt.Reuveni described three separate incidents when justice department leaders defied court orders related to the deportation of immigrants living in the country illegally.Attorney general Pam Bondi, in a post on X, called Reuveni a “disgruntled employee” and a “leaker”.The United States will not attend an upcoming UN conference on an Israel-Palestine two-state solution, state department deputy spokesperson Tommy Pigott told reporters during a press briefing today.The conference, which has already been rescheduled once, is due to take place next week at the United Nations.The prospects for high-profile announcements on recognition of a Palestinian state had already been dealt a serious blow after it was reported that French president Emmanuel Macron was not expected to attend.Venezuelan men who were deported by the US to the notorious Cecot prison in El Salvador without due process are speaking out about treatment they described as “hell” and like a “horror movie”, after arriving back home.A total of 252 Venezuelan nationals were repatriated in the last week in a prisoner swap deal between the US and Venezuelan governments, with many able to reunite with family after their ordeal in El Salvador.Carlos Uzcátegui tightly hugged his sobbing wife and stepdaughter on Wednesday morning in western Venezuela after he had been away for a year.He was among the migrants being reunited with loved ones after spending four months imprisoned in El Salvador, where the US government had transferred them without due process, sparking uproar over Donald Trump’s harsh anti-immigration agenda. The US had accused all the men, on sometimes apparently flimsy evidence, of being members of a foreign gang living in the US illegally.“Every day, we asked God for the blessing of freeing us from there so that we could be here with family, with my loved ones,” Uzcátegui, 33, said. “Every day, I woke up looking at the bars, wishing I wasn’t there.“They beat us, they kicked us. I even have quite a few bruises on my stomach,” he added before later showing a bruised left abdomen.Arturo Suárez, whose reggaeton songs surfaced on social media after he was sent to El Salvador, arrived at his family’s home in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, on Tuesday. His sister hugged him after he emerged from a vehicle belonging to the country’s intelligence service.“It is hell. We met a lot of innocent people,” Suárez told reporters, referring to the prison he was held in. “To all those who mistreated us, to all those who negotiated with our lives and our freedom, I have one thing to say, and scripture says it well: vengeance and justice is mine, and you are going to give an account to God [the] Father.”Former national security adviser (of Signalgate infamy) Mike Waltz’s nomination as US ambassador to the United Nations is back on track after a Democrat cut a deal to advance him out of committee, Politico reports, marking just the latest development in a rollercoaster day for Donald Trump’s nominee.Despite Republican senator Rand Paul voting no (derailing plans for a committee vote yesterday), ranking member Jeanne Shaheen sided with the other Republicans on the foreign relations committee to vote to advance Waltz, narrowly by 12-10. Having cleared that key hurdle, Waltz now goes to the Senate, where he will likely be confirmed.There was no immediate indication of when the full Senate might consider the nomination. A spokesperson for the chamber’s majority leader John Thune, said there were no scheduling updates.Thune has indicated he might delay the Senate’s annual August recess if Democrats do not allow Republicans to confirm Trump nominees more quickly. In a recent post on his Truth Social platform, Trump urged the Senate to stay in Washington for votes on his nominees.Politico notes: “The partisan swap reflected ideological divides around isolationism: Paul objected to Waltz’s vote to keep troops in Afghanistan, while Shaheen said in a statement that despite some concerns (including the aforementioned Signalgate, which in part cost him his job as national security adviser), she saw Waltz as a potential ‘moderating force’ against the likes of vice-president JD Vance, defense secretary Pete Hegseth and Elbridge Colby. Some Democrats also worried about who might replace Waltz if his nomination failed.”Shaheen said she had worked out a deal with committee Republicans and the state department to unlock $75m in lifesaving foreign aid for Haiti and Nigeria, Axios reports.However, Shaheen said she may not necessarily vote for Waltz’s confirmation. More

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      Outcry as US agriculture department to cut salaries and relocate staff

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      Thousands of employees at the US Department of Agriculture will be forced to take salary cuts and relocate out of the Washington DC area, as part of a major restructuring that experts warn will further weaken support for American farmers and complicate wildfire response.In a memorandum issued on Thursday, the agriculture secretary, Brooke Rollins, outlined the “key pillars” behind the department’s reorganization, focused on reducing its financial footprint, removing resources from the capital, eliminating management and consolidating workforces responsible for a range of functions, including freedom of information requests, tribal relations, grants and human resources.More than half of employees working in the Washington DC area will be relocated to five locations – Raleigh, North Carolina; Kansas City, Missouri; Indianapolis, Indiana; Fort Collins, Colorado; and Salt Lake City, Utah. Several key USDA offices will be shuttered in the capital region.The move follows wide-ranging and often chaotic cuts to staff and services being implemented under Trump 2.0, as the administration seeks to dismantle the federal government and fund tax cuts for the wealthy including the president’s billionaire donors.“President Trump was elected to make real change in Washington, and we are doing just that by moving our key services outside the Beltway and into great American cities across the country,” Rollins said in the statement. “We will do so through a transparent and commonsense process that preserves USDA’s critical health and public safety services the American public relies on.”In a video call, Rollins informed USDA staff that they would be advised about new assignments – and homes – over the next few months.View image in fullscreenMore than 90% of the department’s almost 100,000 employees are already based in county and regional offices, including at regional research institutions, farm loan offices and conservation facilities. The reorganization will leave only 2,000 of the current 4,600 USDA staff in the Beltway.The department will also eliminate or scale down regional offices, combining them into “hub locations to the greatest extent possible”, according to the memo.Rollins said that the changes would help the USDA better serve its “core constituents” of farmers, ranchers and US producers, focus on the administration’s priorities and eliminate management layers and bureaucracy.But experts warned that the latest cuts and consolidation of key departments focused on civil rights and small and disadvantaged businesses will further hamstring the agency, which is already reelingThe latest upheaval follows widespread cuts to Biden era agricultural programs, research grants and staff across the country, which along with Trump’s tariff chaos and deepening climate chaos has caused panic among many farmers.In a written statement, Amy Klobuchar, the Democratic ranking member of the Senate agriculture, nutrition and forestry committee, condemned the plan as a “half-baked proposal” and called for USDA officials to appear before Congress.“A reorganization of this scale will impact USDA’s ability to provide critical services to Americans and undermine the agency’s trusted expertise that farmers and families count on … we must have an immediate hearing before more damage is done.”“Today’s move further guts the government’s ability to protect public health, the environment and food safety. The real-world consequences will be severe, directly affecting people’s lives,” said Rebecca Wolf, senior policy analyst at Food & Water Watch Senior Food, a non-profit research and advocacy group.The reorganization is at least partly a cost-cutting measure, according to Rollins, and the relocated staff could see significant salary reductions due to lower rates paid outside the capital due to difference in the cost of living.But details were scant on how the plan will unfold, especially when it comes to management and administration of firefighters at the US Forest Service, an agency housed within the USDA. The USFS, which employs the bulk of the nation’s largest firefighting force, is facing severe staffing shortages, a Guardian investigation found this week, as wildfires rage across the country.Rollins emphasized that the plan will ensure continued support for fire operations and other activities critical to the department’s mission, but there are concerns that further workforce cuts and administrative focus lost to the reorganization during the peak of fire season could have disastrous effects.As fire risks sharply rise, crews have already begun to feel the impacts from previous cuts to budgets and workers at the agency that support wildfire mitigation and response. The programs incentivized by the Trump administration to sharply shrink the federal government rely on voluntary resignations and early retirements, which undercut the agency’s potential to make strategic decisions about its workforce.Roughly 1,400 workers with fire qualifications signed on for the programs, leaving holes on teams that play crucial roles in emergency response, especially during the busiest times of the season. Acknowledging the need to backfill these positions, Rollins called for some to return to active duty through the end of the season – only 65 have been reinstated, according to a department spokesperson.The Forest Service will also see its nine regional offices phased out over the next year and all research stations will be consolidated into one, housed in Fort Collins, Colorado.Experts were struggling to make sense of the announcement, and shared concerns about how another layer of change could cause more chaos and disorganization as fire risks continue to surge.“Until we know more specifically about the fire program it’s hard to determine what some of the outcomes of this could be,” said Riva Duncan, a retired USFS fire officer and vice-president of the Grassroots Wildland Firefighters advocacy group. Duncan added that the consolidation of USFS research stations could be problematic because each does fire research and has a focus specific to the landscapes where the station is housed.“This is another example of decisions being made by people who haven’t bothered to learn or understand the work,” she said.It is also unclear if the reorganization is designed to align with plans from the Trump administration to combine federal firefighters into a single agency, under the Department of the Interior. Those plans were left in limbo on Tuesday, after the House appropriations committee determined “changes in budgetary and management structure spark concerns about impacted agencies’ abilities to consistently meet critical performance benchmarks”.A Government Accountability Office (GAO) study was ordered to evaluate the feasibility of the plan, and the House of Representatives adjourned for its August recess on Wednesday, delaying any budget votes until at least September.More than 15,300 employees have already left the USDA since Trump took office, opting for buyouts and early retirement through the administration’s deferred resignation plan. Similar staff-cutting measures have been implemented across the federal government, overseen by the so-called department of government efficiency, the quasi-government agency created by the billionaire Trump donor Elon Musk.“This is less a reorganization and more a dismantling. This mass relocation will be costly. It will also result in the mass resignation of staff, which means a major loss of capacity at USDA,” said Ben Lilliston, director of rural strategies and climate change at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP).“Contrary to the secretary’s statement, the USDA is already understaffed. There was no effort to get input from Congress, the public or farmers about this reorganization.”A similar USDA relocation program during the first Trump term led to a smaller, less efficient, less experienced and less diverse workforce, according to the GAO, the bipartisan federal government watchdog.The USDA workforce grew 8% during the Biden administration, while salaries rose 15%, largely on temporary funding, the department said on Thursday, as Rollins confirmed that the cuts would continue.“This reorganization is another step of the department’s process of reducing its workforce,” Rollins wrote in the memo, noting that programs to incentivize early retirements and voluntary resignations will continue to reduce the staff numbers further. More

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      Trump cracks down on homelessness with executive order enabling local governments

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      The federal government is seeking to crack down on homelessness in the US, with Donald Trump issuing an executive order to push local governments to remove unhoused people from the streets.The order the US president signed on Thursday will seek the “reversal of federal or state judicial precedents and the termination of consent decrees” that restrict local governments’ ability to respond to the crisis, and redirect funds to support rehabilitation and treatment. The order aims to “restore public order”, saying “endemic vagrancy, disorderly behavior, sudden confrontations, and violent attacks have made our cities unsafe”, according to the order.The action comes as the homelessness crisis in the US has significantly worsened in recent years driven by a widespread shortage of affordable housing. Last year, a single-day count, which is a rough estimate, recorded more than 770,000 people experiencing homelessness across the country, the highest figure ever documented.Cities and states have adopted an increasingly punitive approach to homelessness, seeking to push people out of parks and city streets, even when there is no shelter available. The supreme court ruled last year that cities can impose fines and even jail time for unhoused people for sleeping outside after local governments argued some protections for unhoused people prevented them from taking action to reduce homelessness.Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, told USA Today, which first reported on the executive order, that the president was “delivering on his commitment to Make America Safe Again” and end homelessness.“By removing vagrant criminals from our streets and redirecting resources toward substance abuse programs, the Trump Administration will ensure that Americans feel safe in their own communities and that individuals suffering from addiction or mental health struggles are able to get the help they need,” she said.The president’s order comes after last year’s US supreme court ruling, which was one of the most consequential legal decisions on homelessness in decades in the US.That ruling held that it is not “cruel and unusual punishment” to criminalize camping when there is no shelter available. The case originated in Grants Pass, Oregon, a city that was defending its efforts to prosecute people for sleeping in public.Unhoused people in the US have long faced crackdowns and sweeps, with policies and police practices that result in law enforcement harassment, tickets or jail time. But the ruling supercharged those kinds of aggressive responses, emboldening cities and states to punish encampment residents who have no other options for shelter.In a report last month, the American Civil Liberties Union found that cities across the US have introduced more than 320 bills criminalizing unhoused people, the majority of which have passed. The crackdowns have taken place in Democratic- and Republican-run states alike.Advocates for unhoused people’s rights have long argued that criminalization only exacerbates the housing crisis, shuffling people in and out of jail or from one neighborhood to the next, as they lose their belongings and connections to providers, fall further into debt and wind up in increasingly unsafe conditions.During his campaign last year, Trump used dark rhetoric to talk about the humanitarian crisis, threatening to force people into “tent cities”, raising fears that some of the poorest, most vulnerable Americans could end up in remote locations in settings that resemble concentration camps. More

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      Colorado clerks voice alarm at murky ‘official’ push to access voting machines

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      Steve Schleiker, the Republican county clerk in El Paso county, Colorado, got home from work on 16 July when he got a text message from a number he didn’t recognize with a pressing request.The person sending the message introduced himself to Schleiker as Jeff Small, a political consultant with the 76 Group who had formerly served as Representative Lauren Boebert’s chief of staff. He said he was working with the White House and was looking for Republican clerks in Democratic states they could partner with on election integrity. Small wanted to speak soon, Schleiker said, because there was going to be a meeting the next morning between the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Justice.Schleiker spoke with Small that evening, and says Small connected him with an official at the DHS for a follow-up conversation. The official asked if Schleiker would be willing to allow the federal government to access the county’s election equipment and see if there were any gaps in the county’s network, Schleiker said.Schleiker was shocked by the request.“I was an absolute no,” he said. “That is absolutely against the law, it’s a felony. And two, it also violates the constitution with states’ rights.”At least 10 clerks in Colorado received similar queries from Small, which come as the justice department has shifted its focus from protecting voting rights to investigating voter fraud and election irregularities, and has ramped up requests for information to states about how they keep ineligible voters off the rolls.Justin Grantham, the clerk and recorder in Fremont county, said he also received a phone call from Small asking about the possibility of a third party coming in to access voting equipment.Small had mentioned he was working with the White House on implementing Donald Trump’s 25 March executive order on elections. A provision in the measure instructs the homeland security secretary to assess the security of voting equipment “to the extent they are connected to, or integrated into, the Internet and report on the risk of such systems being compromised through malicious software and unauthorized intrusions into the system”.View image in fullscreen“This is the first time ever I’ve received a request of that nature,” Grantham said, adding that he told Small he didn’t believe the president could issue an executive order dealing with elections. “I’m not willing to let anybody come into my office like that.”Matt Crane, the executive director of the Colorado county clerks association, said Small’s requests set off alarm bells. Allowing unauthorized access to voting equipment is a felony in the state. Several clerks and experts said they had never received such a request before. The requests were first reported by the Washington Post.Crane, who consulted for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (Cisa), the part of the DHS that handled election security from 2019 until 2025, said he had never heard of the federal government trying to access voting machines.“At no point would anybody from Cisa ever even ask to get hands on voting systems,” he said. “The optics are bad. If something goes wrong, people could say it was Cisa.”Crane, who held an emergency conference call with clerks last week to discuss the outreach, said all of the officials who were contacted were Republicans using voting equipment from Dominion Voting Systems.Bobbie Gross, the Mesa county clerk and recorder, said someone identifying themselves as Small called her office not asking about access to the machines, but with an even more unusual request. They wanted to know who the county’s project manager at Dominion was in 2020 and 2021. “This is not public information and the request was denied,” she said.Small referred a request for comment to a lawyer, Suzanne Taheri. Taheri said Small had not contacted the Mesa county clerk’s office.“The person that identified themself to Clerk Gross’ office as Jeff Small was definitely an impersonator as Jeff never reached out to anyone from Mesa County on this matter and the call log confirms that,” she said in a statement.The interest in Dominion is significant. Tina Peters, the former Mesa county clerk who espoused unfounded conspiracy theory claims about Dominion, was sentenced to nine years in prison last year for tampering with election equipment after the 2020 election. Trump has called for Peters to be freed and the justice department has tried to assist with getting her case overturned. The justice department also sent Colorado a broad request for election records dating back to the 2020 election last month that some speculated is related to the Peters case. Earlier this month, a Colorado man was also arrested after allegedly throwing a molotov cocktail-type device through the window of a room that houses voting equipment at the county clerk’s office.The request also comes as the justice department reportedly asked officials to explore whether election officials who fail to secure election equipment can be criminally charged.Small had reached out to counties on a volunteer basis while on paternity leave from his job at the 76 Group to assist with implementing the executive order, Taheri said in a statement.“Jeff supported efforts by allies in the administration to encourage Colorado election officials to participate in President Trump’s election security executive order,” she said. “The notion that local clerks supporting the implementation of the president’s executive order is somehow inappropriate is preposterous.”“Colorado audits voting machines all the time, under explicit procedures outlined under state and federal law. The executive order that Jeff reached out on would comply with these same laws and to suggest otherwise is dishonest.”The Colorado secretary of state, Jena Griswold, the state’s top election official, said that defense was “completely misleading and dishonest”.“Of course election equipment is certified, both to state and federal standards. The federal standard certification of election systems is done in a secure environment by experts. It’s not done by consultants or representatives of the federal government accessing voting equipment on the ground,” said Griswold, a Democrat. “That’s not how any of this works.”The Department of Homeland Security distanced itself from Small.“Jeff Small does not speak for the Department of Homeland Security. He does not have any role with DHS and has never been formally authorized to do any official business for the department,” a spokesperson for the agency said in a statement.Crane said he had reached out to local election officials in other states, but no one else had received similar requests.“You start to wonder: ‘Is this more than verifying our systems are secure?’” More

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      Why Trump’s political playbook is failing in the Epstein case | Jan-Werner Müller

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      The problem with a successful playbook is that you eventually keep doing the same thing mechanically. Fresh from intimidating ABC and CBS with meritless lawsuits, Donald Trump is suing Rupert Murdoch and the Wall Street Journal reporters who broke the story of a lewd birthday message for Jeffrey Epstein. But, unlike with the frivolous allegations against the big broadcasters, there’s clearly a fact of the matter here: an authentic letter either exists or it does not; and there is plenty to be revealed in the process of finding out. Trump’s time-proven move – whatever happens, just counter-attack – is likely to keep the very story he wants to kill alive. Meanwhile, the other elements of his playbook – deny, deflect, distract – only work if journalists and Democrats play along. They, not the seemingly all-important Trump base, are the actors to watch.We still debate whether Trumpism is a substantial ideology or not; what we are missing is that Trumpism, for sure, is a set of tactics for exploiting weaknesses in the US political, legal and media systems. Some of these tactics were inherited from his mentor Roy Cohn and many are now being adopted by Trump’s followers – one must never admit guilt; one must always swing back; and one must reject, or ideally entirely bury, defeats (such as Trump’s case against Bob Woodward and Woodward’s publisher being dismissed recently).But there is also a less obvious element, and it has to do with managing political time (a challenge for all politicians, come to think of it). The point is not just seizing opportunities or exploiting opponents’ weaknesses in a timely manner; rather, it is about the art of speeding things up or slowing them down to one’s advantage. Think of how we appear to have become inured to Trump doing and saying things that would have ended previous presidencies (OK, previous presidents did not have AI-generated images of themselves as kings or popes available, but still).One reason is this: an administration that faces one or two big scandals in a four-year period may well be damaged beyond repair; one that produces three very big scandals a day seems to have nothing to worry about since no one can keep up. It is difficult to stick with one story, as the newest outrage already appears so much bigger (the Qatar plane scandal can feel like it happened years ago). To be sure, not all scandals are consciously produced, but there is little doubt that Trump’s posting an AI-generated clip of Barack Obama being arrested in the White House and identifying Obama as a “ringleader” of election fraud are meant to distract – which is not to deny that they would justify impeachment.While the frequency of scandals is maximized to game the news cycle, the legal system is used to slow things down. Releasing the grand jury testimonies in the Epstein case will take time, if the request is not rejected altogether by courts (as has already happened in Florida). Even if they are released, they are unlikely to contain anything relevant about Trump. The calculation is that, a few weeks from now, the files will be forgotten.None of this is to suggest Trump is a master Machiavellian who can manipulate Americans (or even just his base) at will. His approach partly works because institutional and cultural contexts have changed: news cycles are shorter, as are attention spans. His behavior has become progressively normalized – and generalized: shamelessness once unique to him is now in the manual of required GOP conduct (just think of blatant lies about Medicaid). Most important, a free press sticking relentlessly with scandals and ignoring intimidation can no longer be taken for granted; broadcasters in particular have become vulnerable to parent companies putting profits before everything else. Democrats, understandably not wanting to look like they mainly focus on the sordid details of the Epstein story, are tempted to move on and deal with the vaunted “kitchen-table issues”. But it should give them pause that the story is apparently so scary for the other side that Republicans would rather shut down the House than deal with it in any shape or form.Are they right to panic? For sure, Trump made a mistake with his social media post urging followers to move on, which was the equivalent of “don’t think of an elephant” (while also providing further evidence for the Streisand effect: censorship generates the very attention meant to be avoided). Trump lobbying Murdoch to kill the story will give pause to all still naive enough to think of Republicans as free speech defenders. By now, the fact that releasing only the grand jury testimony is relatively meaningless has sunk in and – never mind the base – what political scientists call “low-information voters” will be left with a lasting impression of a Trump-Epstein connection or at least a chaotic administration. In the lawsuit, Trump has to prove “actual malice” on the part of the newspaper – a difficult hurdle to jump. Unlike with the Russia investigation, Trump himself is the instigator of a lengthy process overshadowing his presidency; unlike with the many investigations between his presidential terms, when his lawyers outran the clock, time is not really on his side. In fact, he might be lucky if the case is dismissed on a technicality – he apparently failed to comply with a Florida law that requires giving defendants five days’ notice.

      Jan-Werner Müller is a Guardian US columnist and a professor of politics at Princeton University More