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      Trump was planning to send troops to San Francisco. Now he’s not. Here’s why | Joe Eskenazi

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      This story was published in collaboration with Mission Local.The mayor of San Francisco said on Thursday that Donald Trump had simply called him – no go-betweens or consigliere required – and told him there would no longer be a deployment of federal agents or troops to the city.The president simply dialed Daniel Lurie up and talked at him. And, just like that, a daylong crisis and flood-the-zone news cycle across the Bay Area regarding the imminent deployment of border protection agents to the region was quelled. Or not: Oakland’s mayor, Barbara Lee, said the president didn’t call her. Lurie and other local leaders are taking the president’s words to mean that the rest of the Bay Area will be spared – but there was no overt pledge regarding that.It’s great for the people of San Francisco that the president has capriciously decided to unsend the troops he capriciously decided to send. But the real story here is, per the president’s summation on social media of his discussion with Lurie, that the commander-in-chief is overtly stating that he is basing a domestic military deployment upon what local “friends of mine” (the billionaire CEOs Jensen Huang of Nvidia and the local boy Marc Benioff of Salesforce) lobbied him to do. Trump also noted that Lurie asked him “very nicely” not to establish a military beachhead in San Francisco.All for the good. But what if Huang and Benioff had been in the mood for a military parade and called for sending in the troops? What if Lurie had been less polite?If things had gone even slightly differently, it stands to reason that federal immigration agents and/or armed troops could be rolling through the city by now.There are only so many turns of phrase you can employ: this is just a profoundly fucked-up way to lead a country. It’s like dealing with King George or a warlord out of the dark Ages.This city’s billionaires are very good at some things, and those things have made them a lot of money. But being good at those things doesn’t make your average billionaire an expert on military intervention, the local drug trade or, for that matter, immigration policy or crime in the city.Speaking of capricious, Benioff was for sending in the guard before he was against it.It figures: Salesforce veterans tell me they expect Benioff would do great schmoozing in a one-on-one with the president – because their personalities are so similar.For a guy who drinks so much coffee, Daniel Lurie is remarkably even-keeled. When asked about his discussion with Trump, Lurie told the press that he simply recited all of San Francisco’s heartening crime statistics over the telephone – and kept reciting them, sprinkling in a little real estate boosterism along the way.“Everything I told you is all I said to him,” the mayor said today. “I keep repeating, and I said to him, that we are at 70-year lows when it comes to violent crimes. Tent encampments are at record lows. I spoke about more office space being leased than vacated. For the first time, retail is back. Hotel bookings are up 50%. Convention bookings are also up 50%. This is a city on the rise. And that’s what I said to him. And that’s what I say to everybody.”The president, Lurie said, “asked nothing of me”. Nobody was made to purchase Trump’s 555 California St property at an exorbitant markup. No promises to build a Trump Tower on top of Salesforce Tower were required to call off the troops. It remains unclear whether Lurie finally referred to Trump by name when on the phone with Trump. Evidently, he wasn’t asked to.I’d like to think the mayor really did say “retail is back!” to the man presently tearing down the White House to install a ballroom fit for people who feel Versailles is too understated. If he did, it worked.But nobody is expecting peace in our time: “They want to give it a ‘shot’,” Trump wrote. “Therefore we will not surge San Francisco on Saturday.”All of the things Lurie told the president – and “everybody” – are true. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: subjectively, you may not feel safe in San Francisco. Objectively, you’ve rarely been safer. San Francisco’s reported crime totals are low, and that’s something you could say before this mayor or this president. We are on pace for our lowest homicide total since 1954, but last year’s total was the lowest since 1961. Car break-ins, which were long part of the San Francisco Condition and gave us the municipal nickname “bip city” are way down.But the fact that it was true does not matter: what Huang or Benioff or other billionaire pals tell the president is what matters.The problem, however, is that parts of San Francisco still look gnarly – gnarlier, arguably, than they did in the 1970s when teams of serial killers roamed the streets. There are swaths of the city in which people are living in overt filth and misery and are overtly buying, selling and using drugs. There are still unhoused people, drug addicts and unhoused drug addicts shambling about. They may be disinclined to give you the Zodiac killer treatment, but their presence makes people uncomfortable. This makes people – including terminally online tech CEOs and venture capitalists – feel unsafe. This makes ostensibly intelligent tech barons ping the president on social media and ask him to send in the national guard.If Lurie did indeed stave off an intervention of armed soldiers or rampaging immigration agents by telling the truth, then more power to him. To paraphrase the familiar quote, honesty is one of the better policies.But the “shot” Lurie has apparently been granted was to clean up a problem he has explained – quantitatively – that we don’t have. Lurie will purportedly meet with the attorney general, Pam Bondi. But it remains to be seen whether any federal assistance from the FBI or DEA to combat drug trafficking doesn’t come with serious – and capricious – strings attached. Every bargain with Trump and his gang is a Faustian bargain.San Francisco’s crime stats have been headed the right way for a while. But our gnarliness vibes have not – so we recalled our district attorney and dumped our prior mayor. It’s not enough for Lurie to point to numbers. He has to deliver the right vibes – the kind of vibes that can appease our billionaire class and the president they call up and lobby. That’s a hard job. Get that man a cup of coffee.Retail, they say, is back. It remains to be seen whether and when federal immigration agents will be, too.

      Joe Eskenazi is an editor and columnist for Mission Local. Io Yeh Gilman and Xueer Lu contributed reporting More

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      Federal workers squeezed as shutdown drags on: ‘I can’t believe we’re not going to get paid’

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      More furloughs, more anxiety and more economic stress are bearing down on federal employees as the shutdown of the federal government continues into its fourth week with Republicans and Democrats at a standstill on negotiating a budget deal.“There’s no sight of this ending and we’re starting to wonder if we’re going to be made whole and if this is going to continue into the next round of pay, which is what we’re headed into now. On Friday, we will be missing our first full paycheck,” Johnny Jones, council secretary treasurer for the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) TSA Council 100, and a TSA employee in Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, said.“Now people are really starting to get nervous. They’re starting to make preparations for liquidations or they’re making preparations in their lives of how we’re going to survive.”He cited cases of members crying and starting to get desperate, citing the previous shutdown in 2019 where he and other co-workers had to help a co-worker transport her children to Colorado to be with family because she could no longer afford childcare.“I just can’t believe we’re not going to get paid,” Jones added. “ It’s unbelievable. If you worked at McDonald’s and they did this, they could sue you, shut your business down, but you’re working for the government, they cannot pay you, and it’s OK. And this is a problem. People are now going to have to take home debt. People are going to have to take on new things, maybe even work their full shift, pick up their kids and do GrubHub or something, looking for other means of income on the side.”Meanwhile in Washington, the deadlock continues.“I don’t have a strategy,” Mike Johnson, the US House speaker, told reporters on 21 October, as the House of Representatives’ calendar for October remains empty. House members have been on paid vacation since 19 September, when it went on recess.The House speaker’s office said in a statement: “He has consistently said that the House will return to regular legislative session as soon as Chuck Schumer and the Democrats vote to end the shutdown and reopen the government.”Democrats have held firm on a budget that includes extending healthcare subsidies that would prevent health insurance premiums from soaring for millions of Americans, resulting in loss of health insurance for about 15 million Americans due to the subsidy expirations and cuts to Medicaid.Throughout and leading up to the shutdown, federal workers have been subjected to threats by the Trump administration, which have included threatening to withhold back pay to furloughed workers, conducting reductions in force (though a federal court has temporarily blocked the firings), and cutting federally funded infrastructure programs with threats to go after programs deemed priorities for Democrats.Trump referred to Russell Vought, the White House office of management and budget director, as “Darth Vader” on 21 October.“They call him Darth Vader, I call him a fine man. He’s cutting Democrat priorities, and they’re never going to get them back,” Trump said, in claiming the shutdown allows the administration to enact cuts to federal services and programs.“It’s played hell with our psyche, for sure,” said Ruark Hotopp, District 8 national vice-president of the AFGE in the midwest and an employee at the US Citizenship and Immigration Service, on the consistent attacks on federal workers since January 2025, from “department of government efficiency” (Doge) cuts, to rhetoric from Vought and other Trump administration officials criticizing federal civilian employees.Hotopp explained he was in Washington DC lobbying various members of Congress around these issues last week, and the threats were laughed off by Republican Senate staff.“This was a Republican senator’s office, and they reassured me that, while we understand what the president’s saying, that we don’t agree with the president’s position, and it is the full intention of the United States Congress to make sure these those folks get paid. So while that’s reassuring to me, to see this sort of public rhetoric to the folks on the frontlines, that’s not reassuring at all,” he said.“The president is one of the very first people to say this rhetoric needs to be toned down, while he then fans the flames,” added Hotopp. “If we’re going to get back to some sort of normalcy, it has to start with the president himself.”Nicole Cantello, president of the AFGE Union Local 704 and an attorney at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), explained the rollout of furloughs had been “chaotic” for federal employees at the agency, with the EPA using leftover funds to stave off furloughs in the beginning of the shutdown, only for mass furloughs to be issued earlier this week.“I’m located here in the Great Lakes, and we are the ones that do all the work to try to protect the Great Lakes. Drinking water for over 40 million people come from the Great Lakes. The people that check the health of the lake to those who find cases against polluters, all those inspectors, they were all just furloughed,” Cantello said. “The human health and environment will definitely be impacted. More pollution will go out.”She expressed concern for the prolonged shutdown and its impact on attrition. Since January 2025, the EPA said its workforce had been slashed from 16,155 employees to 12,448 employees through firings, retirements and buyouts. The Trump administration had attempted to cut dozens more workers at the agency through a reduction in force during the shutdown.“Given everything that’s happened here, who knows who will come back from the furlough?” Cantello said. “I don’t have a good handle on that, but I’m worried that we’re losing and more people and the agency will be rendered even more ineffective.”A spokesperson for the EPA would not comment on or provide numbers on how many workers were furloughed at the agency, but said: “Congressional Democrats are not only unwilling to vote for a clean funding bill, but their goal is to inflict as much pain on the American people as possible. The false narratives being peddled by union bosses and their Democratic allies are nothing more than deliberate fear-mongering designed to create chaos and deceive hardworking Americans.” More

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      Why is Trump, the self-proclaimed ‘president of peace’, aiming to topple the Venezuelan regime?

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      It was a solemn pledge at the heart of Donald Trump’s “America first” appeal.A “Make America great again” (Maga) foreign policy would mean the end of military commitments that had in the past sucked the US into draining and drawn-out wars far from its own shores.Now an intense military buildup targeting the authoritarian regime of Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela is stretching that commitment to the breaking point, as the White House strikes a bellicose posture that seems to mock Trump’s self-proclaimed “president of peace” image.In recent weeks, US forces have carried out at least eight strikes, killing at least 38 people, against boats in the Caribbean off Venezuela’s coast that Washington said were being used for drug trafficking. The latest strike, announced on Friday by Pete Hegseth, the defence secretary, reportedly killed six people on a boat allegedly being used to smuggle drugs on what was said to be “a known narco-trafficking route”.Two further strikes in the Pacific this week killed at least five people as tensions also rose between the US and Colombia over the Trump administration’s tactics against alleged traffickers.But the main focus has been Venezuela amid a buildup that has seen nuclear-capable B-52 bombers and elite special operations forces deployed off the South American country’s shores.Trump this month signaled a further escalation by authorising the CIA to conduct operations inside the country, fuelling fears that the US was trying to foment a military coup against Maduro – whom it has designated a “narco-terrorist” and for whose arrest it has offered a $50m bounty – or even prepare a ground invasion.“Action on the ground would be the least preferred option, and it certainly wouldn’t be GI Joe – it would be special ops people,” said Fulton Armstrong, a former CIA analyst and national intelligence officer for Latin America.“With technology, you don’t need to invade any more. The whole idea, I believe, is to get the Venezuelans to take him out.”Some Venezuelan analysts say local support for a coup is thin.The policy has been shaped by a Trump administration power struggle that has seen Marco Rubio, the secretary of state and acting national security adviser, triumph over Richard Grenell, Trump’s envoy to Venezuela, who was sidelined after arguing for a pragmatic approach that would help secure oil deals.Maduro and other senior regime figures are said to have offered extensive concessions in an effort to end the confrontation with Washington, including offering the US a dominant stake in Venezuela’s oil industry. The Trump administration has even eased some sanctions on Venezuelan oil, granting Chevron a licence to resume operating in the country and increase exports from Venezuela. But longstanding tensions have instead escalated further after Rubio pressed the case for a tough approach.“Trump had, in many conversations, meetings with different people emphasized that he really only cared about [Venezuela’s] oil,” said a US businessman with longstanding ties to Venezuela and close knowledge of the White House’s policy. “But Rubio was able to drum up this ‘narco-terrorist’ rhetoric and get Trump to pivot completely. The U-turn really reflects Rubio’s expanded influence in the administration.”Rubio, a longtime critic of Maduro’s socialist regime, won the support of Stephen Miller, the powerful White House deputy chief of staff, and Susie Wiles, the chief of staff, in persuading Trump.He did so partly by seizing on the administration’s designation of Tren de Aragua, a transnational gang of Venezuelan origin, as a “foreign terrorist organisation” that had infiltrated the US and allegedly fuelled the influx of undocumented migrants fleeing Maduro’s regime.A White House proclamation last March further identified the gang as being in cahoots with the Cartel de los Soles, a shadowy grouping of Venezuelan military figures which the administration insists is headed by Maduro and is responsible for trafficking drugs to the US. Other sources have questioned that characterisation of the cartel and Maduro’s connections to it.Experts also question Venezuela’s significance as a drugs supplier. Although the country is a conduit for trafficking, it is not a primary source for most illegal substances entering the US. Fentanyl, which is responsible for most US drug-related deaths, is mainly sourced from Mexico.There are doubts over the legality of the boat strikes – which Rubio has vociferously justified – and the military escalation in the name of combating drugs.The White House insists the actions, believed to be led by the CIA, are legal under the 2001 USA Patriot Act – passed after the 9/11 al-Qaida attacks – which affords scope for action against designated foreign terrorists, a category that now includes Maduro.William Brownfield, a former ambassador to Venezuela and ex-state department drugs and law enforcement czar, said the policy was unprecedented and vulnerable to legal challenge.“I never had anyone seriously suggest to me during my seven years as drugs and law enforcement chief that this issue could be addressed the way it is now,” he said. “I couldn’t even propose it because no one would even entertain the thought of using the military for a law enforcement mission.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionUnderlying Rubio’s drive may be a mixture of ideology and political ambition. The son of Cuban immigrants, he has long denounced Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chávez, for the financial and oil support they have provided to Cuba’s communist regime.Observers say Rubio is eyeing the Republican presidential nomination in 2028 – when Trump is constitutionally barred from seeking a third term and where adopting a hard line on Venezuela could help secure the Cuban ethnic vote in a close primary election.Tommy Pigott, a state department spokesman, played down Rubio’s role in shaping the policy, saying in a statement: “The president is the one who drives and determines our foreign policy. It is the job of the cabinet to implement. Secretary Rubio is honored to be a part of the president’s team.”He added: “Maduro is not the legitimate leader of Venezuela; he’s a fugitive of American justice who undermines regional security and poisons Americans and we want to see him brought to justice.”But there are also wider foreign policy considerations as the US tries to revive its historical habit of treating Latin America as its back yard.“Rubio’s position is that the United States was not paying sufficient attention to the Latin American region writ large and I actually agree with that,” said Brownfield. “The Trump administration is, in fact, being fairly clear when it says that the Maduro regime is a threat to basic democratic values throughout the western hemisphere.”Angelo Rivero Santos, a Latin American studies professor at Georgetown University and former diplomat in Venezuela’s embassy in Washington, said the Trump administration was reasserting the Monroe doctrine, devised in the 19th century and which saw the US claiming Latin America as its exclusive sphere of influence.“It’s not only Venezuela,” he said. “When you look at their statements on the Panama canal, at the impositions of tariffs on Brazil, the latest spat with the Colombian government, not to mention the military presence in the Caribbean, you see a return of the Monroe doctrine.”One aim, Santos argued, was to install more Trump-friendly governments in the region similar to those of Javier Milei, Argentina’s president; Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador; and Ecuador’s president, Daniel Noboa.Another, said Armstrong, the former CIA analyst, was an “ultra-nationalist” projection of strength.“The message is: ‘We’re tough guys,’” he said. “Maduro, like the Cubans, has given the United States the finger and told us to go fuck ourselves, and we have failed with all of the so-called maximum pressure policy that started in Trump 1.0 and has continued and increased in Trump 2.0.”The result, he warned, could be an unpredictable sequence of events as the US tries to goad Maduro into retaliation, which could be used to engineer his downfall.“They can hit a naval target, say a coastal civilian facility, and that might be the provocation that gets Maduro to hit back and maybe do something dumb,” he said. “Then you go for big targets in Caracas, and get a form of chaos. If that doesn’t do it, you put a couple of guys in, special forces or Navy Seals, to do a snatch. Of course he’s not going to go alive. I don’t see a pretty solution.”Aram Roston contributed additional reporting More

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      What is the White House East Wing and why has it been torn down in Trump’s renovation plans?

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      It was confirmed on Friday that the East Wing of the White House has now been completely destroyed, days after construction started on the planned $300m (£225m) ballroom that Donald Trump is adding to the historic building.The demolition marked a reversal of Trump’s earlier promise in July that none of the White House’s existing infrastructure would be torn down during construction of the ballroom.The rapid pace of the project, coupled with images of rubble at the president’s residence has elicited a chorus of disgust among White House alumni and presidential historians, while the Trump administration has dismissed the criticism as “manufactured outrage”.What is the East Wing?The East Wing was first known as the East Terrace and was built during the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt in 1902. Franklin Roosevelt created the East Wing in its current form in 1942 to add working space during the war, but also to conceal an underground bunker that had been constructed for the president and staff.Over time it became the home base for the first lady and her staff. It was also the home of the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden.View image in fullscreenSitting across East Executive Avenue from the Treasury Department, it represented the social side of the White House and was where tourists and other guests entered for events.In the original plan for the ballroom, it would have remained untouched and, in Trump’s telling, become a space where guests would mingle, sip cocktails and eat hors d’oeuvres until they were called into the ballroom for dinner. However, days after ground was broken on the new project, the White House confirmed the entire wing would be torn down and that process appeared to be completed by Friday.What can we expect from the new ballroom?Trump has complained that the White House needs a large entertaining space and that the East Room is too small, with capacity for only about 200 people.The 90,000-square-foot (27,400sqm) ballroom will dwarf the main White House, at nearly double the size, and Trump says it will accommodate 999 people.Renderings released by the White House suggest a strong resemblance to the gilded ballroom at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private club and home in Palm Beach, Florida. The White House has said the ballroom will be ready for use well before Trump’s term ends in January 2029, an ambitious timeline.View image in fullscreenThe president has been adamant that the ballroom will not come at a cost to taxpayers, because it is being privately funded by “many generous Patriots, Great American Companies, and, yours truly”.Donors for the proposed ballroom include a slew of major tech companies, including Apple, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Google. Defense contractors and communications companies have also pitched in, including Lockheed Martin, Palantir, T-Mobile and Comcast.The president began construction despite the lack of signoff from the National Capital Planning Commission, the executive branch agency that has jurisdiction over construction and major renovations to government buildings in the region.What has been the reaction to the bulldozing of the East Wing?The image of broken masonry, rubble and steel wires at America’s most famous address appeared to strike a chord even with people who have become accustomed to shrugging off Trump’s outrageous antics.David Frum, a former speechwriter for President George W Bush, tweeted: “Something profoundly symbolic about Trump taking a wrecking ball to the White House … paying for the demolition with money from cronies and insiders seeking government favors … and the Republicans in Congress acquiescing as Trump treats public assets as private property.”View image in fullscreenThe National Trust for Historic Preservation on Tuesday asked the Trump administration to pause the demolition until the planning commission review was completed. Its letter expressed concern that the proposed ballroom would “overwhelm the White House itself”.Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian, was quoted by WTOP News as saying: “Maybe it’s just the dislike of change on my part, but it seemed painful, almost like slashing a Rembrandt painting. Or defacing a Michelangelo sculpture.”In an appearance on Fox News on Friday, Trump adviser Stephen Miller defended the unannounced demolition of the entire East Wing, arguing that the extension was not really part of the White House.“It was a cheaply built add-on structure … [it] is badly in need of refurbishment, repair and renovation,” he said.What have other presidents done to change the White House?Presidents have added to the White House since construction began in 1792 for a host of reasons, and Trump aides say his decision to build a ballroom follows that long tradition.Thomas Jefferson added the east and west colonnades.Andrew Jackson built the North Portico on the Pennsylvania Avenue side of the White House, aligning with the South Portico that James Monroe added after the original mansion was rebuilt after the British burned it during the war of 1812.Theodore Roosevelt added the West Wing to provide dedicated space for the president and senior staff, while Franklin D Roosevelt added the East Wing.One of the most significant White House renovations happened under Harry Truman, when the mansion was found to be so structurally unsound that he ordered a complete gutting of the interior that lasted from 1948 to 1952. The project, including Truman’s addition of a balcony to the second floor of the South Portico, was highly controversial.Other changes include the creation of the Rose Garden during John F Kennedy’s administration and Richard Nixon’s decision to convert an indoor swimming pool that was built for FDR’s physical therapy into a workspace for the growing White House press corps.With Reuters and the Associated Press More

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      Trump news at a glance: Pentagon announces it is deploying US aircraft carrier to the Caribbean

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      The Pentagon said on Friday that it was deploying the United States’ most advanced aircraft carrier to the Caribbean, a serious escalation in the Trump administration’s war against drug cartels that provides the resources to start conducting strikes against targets on the ground.The move will bring the USS Gerald Ford carrier, with dozens of stealth fighter jets and surveillance aircraft, in addition to other warships that accompany the carrier, to the coast of Venezuela as the carrier nears the end of its deployment in the Mediterranean.Sending the carrier strike group to the Caribbean is the clearest sign to date that the administration intends to dramatically expand the scope of its lethal military campaign from hitting small boats alleged to be carrying drugs bound for the US to targets on land.Pentagon deploys top aircraft carrier as Trump militarisation of Caribbean ratchets upThe carrier strike group has dozens of F35 fighter jets, increasing the firepower and ability of the US to hit air-defense systems in Venezuela. That would clear the way for US special operations or drones to destroy land-based targets, current and former officials said.The expanded naval presence “will bolster US capacity to detect, monitor, and disrupt illicit actors and activities that compromise the safety and prosperity of the United States homeland and our security in the western hemisphere,” Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a statement.Read the full storyUS and Canada spar over ad of Reagan denouncing tariffs that led to derailed trade talksThe latest breakdown in relations between the US and Canada appears to stem from a one-minute television advertisement featuring former US president Ronald Reagan declaring “trade barriers hurt every American worker”.Canadian prime minister Mark Carney says he is ready to resume trade talks with the US. However, Ontario premier Doug Ford – whose provincial government ran the ad earlier in the week – says it will run again during the first game of the World Series Friday night. Ford added that the campaign would end Monday.Read the full storyUS court rejects Trump officials’ effort to delay rulings on veterans benefitsA panel of US judges rejected an effort by the Trump administration to delay court rulings on claims by veterans who say they have been unfairly denied disability benefits and other compensation. The 9-0 ruling, handed down on Wednesday by the court of appeals for veterans claims, is the latest example of the growing number of federal judges pushing back against Trump administration moves.Read the full storyEast Wing of White House reduced to rubble as part of Trump’s ballroom constructionThe East Wing of the White House has now been completely destroyed to pave the way for Donald Trump’s $300m (£225m) planned gilded ballroom, just days after the administration announced it would happen and contradicting Trump’s earlier promise that the building would not be touched.Satellite images on Friday showed the historic building’s eastern section reduced to rubble, to the outrage of historians, former White House officials and much of the public.Read the full storyUkraine wants US to stay involved, says Zelenskyy after meeting western alliesVolodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine wants the US to stay involved in efforts to end the war after a meeting of western allies in London that took place without Donald Trump.The Ukrainian leader chose not to overtly lobby for the supply of US Tomahawk cruise missiles at a meeting of more than 20 mainly European leaders from the “coalition of the willing” but instead emphasised the need for the west to work together.Read the full storyVirginia Democrats aim to redraw maps to help party gain seats in CongressVirginia has entered the national mid-cycle redistricting battle, with Democratic state lawmakers intent on redrawing the state’s congressional maps to deliver two or three additional Democrats to Washington.Read the full storyTrump officials to send election observers to California and New JerseyThe Department of Justice plans to send federal election observers to California and New Jersey next month, targeting two Democratic states holding off-year elections after requests from state Republican parties. Election monitoring is routine but this move comes as both states are set to hold closely watched elections with national consequences on 4 November. Democrats fear the new administration will attempt to gain an upper hand in next year’s midterms with unfounded allegations of fraud.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      Steve Bannon, one of Trump’s top advisers during his first administration, said that the president will seek and likely win a third term in office, despite the fact that this would violate the 22nd amendment of the US constitution.

      The New York state attorney general, Letitia James, pleaded not guilty on Friday to charges of bank fraud and false statements brought after Donald Trump publicly called for her to be prosecuted in a move widely seen as political retribution.

      The US will expand the use of facial recognition technology to track non-citizens entering and leaving the country to combat visa overstays and passport fraud, according to a government document published on Friday.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened Thursday 23 October. More

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      Trump officials to send election observers to California and New Jersey

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      The Department of Justice is preparing to send federal election observers to California and New Jersey next month, targeting two Democratic states holding off-year elections following requests from state Republican parties.The department announced it was planning to monitor polling sites in Passaic county, New Jersey, and five counties in southern and central California: Los Angeles, Orange, Kern, Riverside and Fresno. The goal, according to the department, is “to ensure transparency, ballot security, and compliance with federal law”.“Transparency at the polls translates into faith in the electoral process, and this Department of Justice is committed to upholding the highest standards of election integrity,” Pam Bondi, the attorney general, said in a statement to the Associated Press.Election monitoring is a routine function of the justice department, but the focus on California and New Jersey comes as both states are set to hold closely-watched elections with national consequences on 4 November. New Jersey has an open seat for governor that has attracted major spending by both parties and California is holding a special election aimed at redrawing the state’s congressional map to counter Republican gerrymandering efforts elsewhere ahead of the 2026 midterms.The justice department’s efforts are also the latest salvo in the Republican party’s preoccupation with election integrity after Donald Trump spent years refusing to accept the results of the 2020 election and falsely railing against mail-in voting as rife with fraud. Democrats fear the new administration will attempt to gain an upper hand in next year’s midterms with similarly unfounded allegations of fraud.The announcement comes days after the Republican parties in both states wrote letters to the department requesting their assistance. Some leading Democrats in the states condemned the decision.New Jersey attorney general Matt Platkin called the move “highly inappropriate” and said the DoJ “has not even attempted to identify a legitimate basis for its actions”.Rusty Hicks, chair of the California Democratic party, said: “No amount of election interference by the California Republican party is going to silence the voices of California voters.”The letter from the California GOP, sent Monday and obtained by the AP, asked Harmeet Dhillon, who leads the DOJ’s civil rights division, to provide monitors to observe the election in the five counties.“In recent elections, we have received reports of irregularities in these counties that we fear will undermine either the willingness of voters to participate in the election or their confidence in the announced results of the election,” wrote GOP chair Corrin Rankin.The state is set to vote 4 November on a redistricting proposition that would dramatically redraw California’s congressional lines to add as many as five additional Democratic seats to its US House delegation.Each of the counties named, they alleged, has experienced recent voting issues, such as sending incorrect or duplicate ballots to voters. They also take issue with how Los Angeles and Orange counties maintain their voter rolls.California is one of at least eight states the department has sued as part of a wide-ranging request for detailed voter roll information involving at least half the states. The department has not said why it wants the data.Brandon Richards, a spokesman for Governor Gavin Newsom, said the department has no standing to “interfere” with California’s election because the ballot contains only a state-specific initiative and has no federal races.“Deploying these federal forces appears to be an intimidation tactic meant for one thing: suppress the vote,” he said.Orange county registrar of voters Bob Page described his county’s elections as “accessible, accurate, fair, secure, and transparent.”Los Angeles county clerk Dean Logan said election observers are standard practice across the country and that the county, with 5.8 million registered voters, is continuously updating and verifying its voter records.“Voters can have confidence their ballot is handled securely and counted accurately,” he said.Most Californians vote using mail ballots returned through the postal service, drop-boxes or at local voting centers. But in pursuit of accuracy and counting every vote, California has gained a reputation for tallies that can drag on for weeks – and sometimes longer.California’s request echoed a similar letter sent by New Jersey Republicans asking the DOJ to dispatch election monitors to “oversee the receipt and processing of vote-by-mail ballots” and “monitor access to the board of elections around the clock” in suburban Passaic county ahead of the state’s governor’s race.The New Jersey Republican state committee told Dhillon federal intervention was necessary to ensure an accurate vote count in the heavily Latino county that was once a Democratic stronghold, but shifted to Trump in last year’s presidential race.David Becker, a former DoJ attorney who has served as an election monitor and trained them, said the work is typically done by department lawyers who are prohibited from interfering at polling places.But Becker, now executive director of the Center for Election Integrity & Research, said local jurisdictions normally agree to the monitors’ presence.If the administration tried to send monitors without a clear legal rationale to a place where local officials did not want them, “that could result in chaos,” he said. 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      Portland judge rejects Trump request to allow national guard deployment

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      A federal judge in Portland, Oregon, on Friday rejected the Trump administration’s request to immediately lift her order blocking the deployment of federalized national guard troops to the city, saying that she would decide the matter by Monday.The hearing in Portland and one in Washington DC are the latest in a head-spinning array of lawsuits and overlapping rulings prompted by Trump’s push to send the military into Democratic-run cities despite fierce resistance from mayors and governors. Troop deployment remains blocked in the Chicago area, where all sides are waiting to see whether the US supreme court intervenes to allow it.The Portland district court judge, Karin Immergut, who is based in the city, had previously issued two temporary restraining orders blocking the deployment of national guards troops there, in response to a persistent but small protest outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office.Her first order, blocking the deployment of 200 troops from the Oregon national guard, said that Donald Trump had exceeded his authority by taking federal control of the troops based on his claim that the city was in a state of war-like rebellion. Trump’s assessment, Immergut ruled, was “simply untethered to the facts”.When Trump responded to that order by sending 200 troops from California’s national guard to Oregon, and threatened to send 400 more from Texas, Immergut determined it was an attempt to evade her order, and issued a second order barring the deployment of troops from anywhere in the country to Portland.Immergut’s first order was lifted on Monday by a three-judge panel of the ninth circuit court of appeals, over the strong dissent of the only judge on the panel who lives in Portland. But because the government never appealed Immergut’s second order, it remains in effect and the deployment of troops remains blocked until she decides whether or not to lift or modify it in response to the appeals court ruling.At a virtual hearing on Friday, Immergut cited two reasons for her to delay lifting the second injunction. The first was that the appeals court did not address a central fact in her second order: that she had issued it in part because the government responded to her first order by attempting to evade it. The second was that the ninth circuit appeals court is currently considering a call from one of its judges to rehear the appeal of her first order before a larger panel of 11 judges.At the end of the hearing, Immergut said that she would decide by Monday, if not earlier.The US district judge, Jia Cobb, an appointee of Joe Biden, was hearing arguments Friday on a request from Brian Schwalb, the District of Columbia attorney general, for an order that would remove more than 2,000 guard members from Washington streets.In August, Trump issued an executive order declaring a crime emergency in the district – though the Department of Justice itself says violent crime there is at a 30-year low.Within a month, more than 2,300 guard troops from eight states and the district were patrolling under the army secretary’s command. Trump also deployed hundreds of federal agents to assist them.It is unclear how long the deployments will last, but attorneys from Schwalb’s office said troops were likely to remain in Washington through at least next summer.“Our constitutional democracy will never be the same if these occupations are permitted to stand,” they wrote.Government lawyers said Congress empowered the president to control the DC national guard’s operation. They argued that Schwalb’s lawsuit is a frivolous “political stunt” threatening to undermine a successful campaign to reduce violent crime in Washington.Although the emergency period ended in September, more than 2,200 troops remain. Several states told the Associated Press they would bring their units home by 30 November, unless their deployment is extended.Among the states that sent troops to the district was West Virginia. A civic organization called the West Virginia Citizen Action Group says the governor, Patrick Morrisey, exceeded his authority by deploying 300 to 400 guard members to support Trump’s efforts there.Morrisey has said West Virginia “is proud to stand with President Trump”, and his office has said the deployment was authorized under federal law. The state attorney general’s office has asked Richard D Lindsay, a Kanawha county circuit court judge, to reject the case, saying the group has not been harmed and lacks standing to challenge Morrisey’s decision.Lindsay heard some arguments Friday before continuing the hearing to 3 November to give the state time to focus more on whether Morrisey had the authority to deploy the cuard members.“I want that issue addressed,” Lindsay said.April Perry, a district judge, on Wednesday blocked guard deployment to the Chicago area until a case in her court is decided or the US supreme court intervenes. Perry previously blocked the deployment for two weeks through a temporary restraining order.Attorneys representing the federal government said they would agree to extend the order, but would also continue pressing for an emergency order from the supreme court that would allow for the deployment.Lawyers representing Chicago and Illinois have asked the supreme court to continue to block the deployment, calling it a “dramatic step”. More

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      Pentagon deploys top aircraft carrier as Trump militarisation of Caribbean ratchets up

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      The Pentagon said on Friday that it was deploying the United States’s most advanced aircraft carrier to the Caribbean, a major escalation in the Trump administration’s war against drug cartels that provides the resources to start conducting strikes against targets on the ground.The move will bring the USS Gerald Ford carrier, with dozens of stealth fighter jets and surveillance aircraft, in addition to other warships that accompany the carrier, to the coast of Venezuela as it nears the end of its current deployment in the Mediterranean.Sending the carrier strike group to the Caribbean is the clearest sign to date that the administration intends to dramatically expand the scope of its lethal military campaign from hitting small boats alleged to be carrying drugs bound for the US to targets on land.The carrier strike group has dozens of F-35 fighter jets that increases the firepower and ability for the US to hit air-defense systems in Venezuela. That would clear the way for US special operations or drones to destroy land-based targets, current and former officials said.The expanded naval presence “will bolster US capacity to detect, monitor, and disrupt illicit actors and activities that compromise the safety and prosperity of the United States homeland and our security in the western hemisphere”, a Pentagon spokesperson, Sean Parnell, said in a statement.For weeks, the Trump administration has been eyeing escalating its campaign against the drug cartels – as well its effort to destabilize the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro’s government – after an initial campaign of strikes on at least nine alleged drug-trafficking boats.Donald Trump also confirmed to reporters at the White House on Thursday that the next stage of his military campaign was to hit targets on the ground. “The land is going to be next,” Trump said. “The land drugs are much more dangerous for them. It’s going to be much more dangerous. You’ll be seeing that soon.”Trump did not discuss which targets in which countries the US intended to strike. But he directed the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, who was seated beside him at the White House event to curb the flow of illegal drugs into the US, to notify Congress about the administration’s plans.Asked whether he would declare war against the cartels, Trump suggested he would continue with individual strikes. “I think we’re just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country, OK?” he said. “We’re going to kill them, you know they’re going to be, like, dead.”Trump announced what appears to have been the first strike on a boat on 3 September, releasing a brief video of the attack. In the weeks that followed, the administration announced more strikes without disclosing details other than the number of people killed and the claim that the boats carried drugs.Since the start of the military campaign, the administration has provided a dubious legal justification for the strikes, claiming the boats are affiliated with “designated terrorist organisations”, or DTOs, with which the US was now in a “non-international armed conflict”, the Guardian has reported.The administration has nevertheless provided no concrete evidence to date that those killed in the boat strikes were smuggling drugs to the US. In briefings to Congress, Pentagon officials in essence said the boats were legitimate targets because Trump had designated them as assets of cartels seen to be DTOs, people familiar with the matter said.The military campaign has also drawn in the Central Intelligence Agency. Trump confirmed on 15 October that he had authorized so-called “covert action” by the CIA in Venezuela. The Guardian has reported that the CIA has been providing a bulk of the intelligence used in the airstrikes. More