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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

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      Consent decrees force schools to desegregate. The Trump administration is striking them down

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      In late April, the Department of Justice announced that it was ending a decades-long consent decree in Plaquemines parish, Louisiana, in a school district that has been under a desegregation order since the Johnson administration in the 1960s.The Plaquemines parish desegregation order, one of more than 130 such orders nationwide, was in place to ensure that the school district, which initially refused to integrate, followed the law. Many consent decrees of the era are still in existence because school districts are not in compliance with the law.Some experts, including former justice department employees, say the change in direction for the department could be worrying.These orders “provide students with really important protections against discrimination”, said Shaheena Simons, who was the chief of the educational opportunities section of the civil rights division at the justice department for nearly a decade. “They require school districts to continue to actively work to eliminate all the remaining vestiges of the state-mandated segregation system. That means that students have protections in terms of what schools they’re assigned to, in terms of the facilities and equipment in the schools that they attend. They have protection from discrimination in terms of barriers to accessing advanced programs, gifted programs. And it means that a court is there to protect them and to enforce their rights when they’re violated and to ensure that school districts are continuing to actively desegregate.”The justice department ended the Plaquemines parish desegregation order in an unusual process, one that some fear will be replicated elsewhere. The case was dismissed through a “joint stipulated dismissal”. Previously, courts have followed a specific process for ending similar cases, one in which school districts prove that they are complying with the court orders. That did not happen this time. Instead, the Louisiana state attorney general’s office worked with the justice department in reaching the dismissal.“I’m not aware of anyone, any case, that has [ended] that way before,” said Deuel Ross, the deputy director of litigation of the Legal Defense Fund (LDF); the LDF was not specifically involved with the Plaquemines parish case. “The government as a plaintiff who represents the American people, the people of that parish, has an obligation to make sure that the district has done everything that it’s supposed to have done to comply with the federal court order in the case before it gets released, and the court itself has its own independent obligation to confirm that there’s no vestiges of discrimination left in the school district that are traceable to either present or past discrimination.”Despite the district not proving that it is compliant with the order, the justice department has celebrated the end of the consent decree.“No longer will the Plaquemines Parish School Board have to devote precious local resources over an integration issue that ended two generations ago,” Harmeet K Dhillon, assistant attorney general of the justice department’s civil rights division, said in a statement announcing the decision. “This is a prime example of neglect by past administrations, and we’re now getting America refocused on our bright future.”But focusing on the age of the case implies that it was obsolete, according to Simons, who is now the senior adviser of programs and strategist at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “The administration is trying to paint these cases as ancient history and no longer relevant.”In 1966, the Johnson administration sued school districts across the country, particularly in the south, that refused to comply with desegregation demands. At the time, Plaquemines parish was led by Leander Perez, a staunch segregationist and white supremacist.Perez had played a large role in trying to keep nearby New Orleans from desegregating, and once that effort failed, he invited 1,000 white students from the Ninth Ward to enroll in Plaquemines parish schools. By 1960, nearly 600 had accepted the offer. Perez was excommunicated by Archbishop Joseph Francis Rummel for ignoring his warning to stop trying to prevent schools run by the archdiocese of New Orleans from integrating.Perez attempted to close the public schools in Plaquemines parish, and instead open all-white private academies, or, segregation academies, which became a feature of the post-integration south. An estimated 300 segregation academies, which, as private schools, are not governed by the same rules and regulations as public schools, are still in operation and majority white.Students and teachers working in school districts today might be decades removed from the people who led the push for desegregation in their districts, but they still benefit from the protections that were long ago put in place. Without court oversight, school districts that were already begrudgingly complying might have no incentive to continue to do so.According to the Century Foundation, as of 2020, 185 districts and charters consider race and/or socioeconomic status in their student assignment or admissions policies, while 722 districts and charters are subject to a legal desegregation order or voluntary agreement. The justice department currently has about 135 desegregation cases on its docket, the majority of which are in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Separate but equal doesn’t work,” said Johnathan Smith, former deputy assistant attorney general in the civil rights division at the justice department. “The reality is that students of color do better when they are in integrated classrooms … We know that the amount of resources that are devoted to schools are greater when there are a higher number of white students. So to have students attend majority-minority school districts means that they’re going to be shut out, whether that’s from AP classes, whether that’s from extracurricular activities. All the activities that make it possible for students to fully achieve occur when you have more integrated classrooms.”“Public education isn’t just about education for the sake of education,” he added. “It’s about preparing people to be citizens of our democracy and to be fully engaged in our democratic institutions. When you have students that are being shut out from quality public education, the impact is not just on those communities. It’s on our democracy writ large.”Smith, the current chief of staff and general counsel for the National Center for Youth Law, said that the decision “signals utter contempt for communities of color by the administration, and a lack of awareness of the history of segregation that has plagued our nation’s schools”.“Even though we are 71 years after the Brown v Board [of Education] decision, schools of this country remain more segregated today than they were back in 1954,” he said. “The fact that the administration is kind of wholeheartedly ending these types of consent decrees is troubling, particularly when they’re not doing the research and investigation to determine whether or not these decrees really should be ended at this point.”Smith said that the decision in the Plaquemines parish case may be a “slippery slope” in which other school districts begin reaching out to the Trump administration.“The impact they can have across the country and particularly across the south is pretty huge,” he said. “I worry that we’re going to see more and more of these decrees falling and more and more of these districts remaining segregated without any real opportunity to address that.” More

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      Trump push to ban birthright citizenship unconstitutional, US court rules

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      Donald Trump’s effort to repeal birthright citizenship has hit another a stumbling block, with a federal appeals court in San Francisco declaring the president’s attempt unconstitutional.The three-judge ruling panel in the 9th US circuit court of appeals echoed a district court in New Hampshire that blocked the executive order earlier this month.“The district court correctly concluded that the executive order’s proposed interpretation, denying citizenship to many persons born in the United States, is unconstitutional. We fully agree,” the verdict said.The case is now one stop further on the long road to the US supreme court.Trump’s executive order banning birthright citizenship was signed just hours after the president took office on 20 January and was immediately challenged in a spread of courts across the country. It has faced a tumultuous legal battle ever since. Birthright citizenship is a legal principle that allows nearly everyone born on US soil to become a US citizen.In under a month since the executive order’s filing, multiple judges across the country have filed injunctions blocking the order.Trump’s administration then took to the supreme court to fight the injunctions. In a major decision, the US supreme court ruled that injunctions by the lower courts were exceeding their given authority, effectively transforming the mechanics of the US justice system. The verdict did not address the legality of the birthright citizenship ban itself.A loophole was left, however, for those looking to fight the executive order – class action lawsuits. In opposition to the executive order, New Hampshire judge Joseph LaPlante recognized babies across the US as a class that would be affected by the lawsuit and said depriving them of citizenship constituted irreparable harm.Birthright citizenship was embedded in the US constitution’s 14th amendment in 1868, overturning the infamous 1857 Dred Scott decision and giving citizenship to formerly enslaved Americans. It was strengthened in 1898 in the Wong Ark case, which upheld the citizenship of American-born Wong Kim Ark in the face of the Chinese Exclusion Act. Indigenous Americans were historically excluded from birthright citizenship, which changed with the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924.Long a fringe issue in rightwing circles, the effort to repeal birthright citizenship was brought back into Congress in 1991 and has appeared regularly since. Trump’s executive order, constitutional or not, marks its furthest foray into the mainstream.At time of writing the Trump administration was yet to comment on the ruling. More

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      Trump news at a glance: White House claims ‘fake news’ as president faces fresh Epstein claims

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      Donald Trump is facing a widening crisis amid a report claiming that his name appears in US justice department files about Jeffrey Epstein as Congress subpoenas testimony from Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell.The White House sought to downplay the relationship between the US president and the disgraced financier while Trump’s spokesperson denied an account in the Wall Street Journal that the president was told in May by attorney general Pam Bondi that he is named in the Epstein files. The report says the president was told that many other high profile figures were also named and states that being mentioned in the records isn’t a sign of wrongdoing.“The fact is that the president kicked him out of his club for being a creep,” spokesperson Steven Cheung said. “This is nothing more than a continuation of the fake news stories concocted by the Democrats and the liberal media.”A federal judge, meanwhile, denied a justice department request to unseal grand jury transcripts related to Epstein.Here’s more on these and the day’s other key Trump administration stories:Trump’s name reported to feature in Epstein filesAttorney general Pam Bondi has pushed back against a report claiming that Donald Trump’s name appears “multiple times” in US justice department files about Jeffrey Epstein, saying that “nothing in the files warranted further investigation or prosecution”.“As part of our routine briefing, we made the president aware of the findings,” Bondi and her deputy said in a statement.White House spokesperson Steven Cheung said in an emailed statement: “The fact is that the President kicked him out of his club for being a creep. This is nothing more than a continuation of the fake news stories concocted by the Democrats and the liberal media.”Read the full storyJudge rejects Trump bid to unseal Epstein jury transcriptsA US federal judge has denied a justice department request to unseal grand jury transcripts related to a criminal investigation of Epstein, the late sex offender and financier, in south Florida from the mid-2000s.The move on Wednesday is the first ruling in the Trump administration’s series of attempts to release more information after the justice department announced it would not be releasing any additional files related to the Epstein case, despite earlier promises from Trump and Bondi.Read the full storyEU and US near trade dealThe European Union and the US are close to a trade deal that would place 15% tariffs on most imports from the bloc, it has emerged.The tariff rate would apply to most goods, with some exceptions for products including aircraft and medical devices, according to diplomats with knowledge of the talks.Read the full storyTrump signs three executive orders targeting ‘woke’ AI modelsDonald Trump on Wednesday signed a trio of executive orders that he vowed would turn the United States into an “AI export powerhouse”, including a directive targeting what the White House described as “woke” artificial intelligence models.A second order Trump signed on Wednesday calls for deregulating AI development, increasing the building of datacentres and removing environmental protections that could hamper their construction.Read the full storyColumbia to pay Trump administration more than $220mColumbia University announced a much-anticipated deal with the Trump administration to pay a fine worth more than $220m, in an agreement meant to bring a resolution to the threat of massive funding cuts to the school, but certain to rankle critics given the extraordinary concessions made by the Ivy League university.Read the full storyTrump administration investigating Harvard’s visa programThe state department is opening an investigation into Harvard University’s eligibility as a sponsor for the exchange visitor program, the latest salvo in the Trump administration’s pressure campaign on the university over alleged failures to combat campus antisemitism and inadequate support of Israel.Read the full storyExclusive: Advisers abandon effort to find Hegseth new chief of staffDonald Trump’s advisers have abandoned an effort to find a new chief of staff to the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, allowing senior adviser Ricky Buria to continue performing the duties in an acting role despite once viewing him as a liability, according to people familiar with the matter.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      Robert F Kennedy Jr will formally require vaccine makers to remove thimerosal, an ingredient that has been the target of anti-vaccine campaigns, from vaccines.

      French president Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte Macron, are suing the rightwing commentator Candace Owens for defamation.

      The acting director of Fema defended his agency’s handling of recent deadly floods in Texas, claiming the response was a “model” for “how disasters should be handled”.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 22 July 2025. More