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      Trump news at a glance: Trump shocks EU and Mexico with tariffs as he gives Ice agents ‘total authorization’ to protect themselves

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      Donald Trump has said he will impose tariffs of 30% on the European Union and Mexico from 1 August, threatening Europe that it would pay a price if it retaliated and telling Mexico it had not done enough to stop North America from turning into a “Narco-Trafficking Playground”.“If for any reason you decide to raise your Tariffs and retaliate, then, whatever the number you choose to raise them by, will be added onto the 30% that we charge,” he wrote in a letter to the EU.EU trade ministers will meet on Monday for a pre-arranged summit and will be under pressure from some countries to show a tough reaction by implementing €21bn ($24.6bn) in retaliatory measures, which they had paused until midnight the same day.Here are the key US politics stories at a glance:Donald Trump announces 30% tariffs on goods from EU and MexicoDonald Trump announced on Saturday that goods imported from both the European Union and Mexico will face a 30% US tariff rate starting 1 August, in letters posted on his social media platform, Truth Social.The tariff assault on the EU came as a shock to European capitals as the European Commission and the US trade representative Jamieson Greer had spent months hammering out a deal they believed was acceptable to both sides.Read the full storyTrump authorizes Ice agents to protect themselves using ‘whatever means’ necessaryDonald Trump has given “total authorization” to federal immigration agents to protect themselves after a series of clashes with protesters, including during enforcement raids on two California cannabis farms.“I am giving Total Authorization for Ice to protect itself, just like they protect the Public,” Trump posted on Truth Social on Friday, adding that he was directing the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, and border czar, Tom Homan, to arrest anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) protesters who impede immigration enforcement operations.Read the full storyTrump cuts to Fema questioned as Texas flood cleanup continuesRecently departed officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) say the organization is dangerously underresourced and overstretched in the event of further natural catastrophes, as the cleanup continues from this month’s torrential rain storms and flooding in Texas that left more than 120 dead.Read the full storyKash Patel denies rumors he’s quitting the FBI over DoJ ruling on Epstein filesFBI director Kash Patel has denied swirling resignation rumors over reported unhappiness at a justice department decision to close the book on Jeffrey Epstein after administration officials teased a big reveal earlier in the year.In a Saturday social media post, the agency director said: “the conspiracy theories just aren’t true, never have been. It’s an honor to serve the President of the United States – and I’ll continue to do so for as long as he calls on me.”Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      David Gergen, a veteran of Washington politics and an adviser to four presidents, Republican and Democrat, has died aged 83.

      As US regulators restrict Covid mRNA vaccines and as independent vaccine advisers re-examine the shots, scientists fear that an unlikely target could be next: cancer research.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on Friday 11 July. More

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      Kash Patel denies rumors he’s quitting the FBI over DoJ ruling on Epstein files

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      FBI director Kash Patel has denied swirling resignation rumors over reported unhappiness at a justice department decision to close the book on Jeffrey Epstein after administration officials teased a big reveal earlier in the year.In a Saturday social media post, the agency director said: “the conspiracy theories just aren’t true, never have been. It’s an honor to serve the President of the United States – and I’ll continue to do so for as long as he calls on me.”Over the past week, Maga hardliners, including Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, former White House adviser Steve Bannon and – reportedly – FBI deputy director Dan Bongino, have been strongly critical of a joint decision by US attorney general Pam Bondi and the FBI to not release further information about Epstein held in government files, including a so-called client list.Critics have slammed the FBI-justice department conclusion about Epstein’s official autopsy that the disgraced financier had hung himself in his cell. Many have refused to accept that, repeating a conspiracy theory that Epstein, who died in August 2019 while awaiting trial, was in fact murdered to silence him.“This systematic review revealed no incriminating ‘client list’,” the memo stated. “There was also no credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions. We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.”Rumors of a rift between the FBI and the justice department over the memo have been denied by deputy attorney general Todd Blanche, who wrote on social media that there is “no daylight” between the FBI and the Department of Justice leadership on the issue.“I worked closely with [Kash and Bongino] on the joint FBI and DOJ memo regarding the Epstein Files. All of us signed off on the contents of the memo and the conclusions stated in the memo. The suggestion by anyone that there was any daylight between the FBI and DOJ leadership on this memo’s composition and release is patently false,” Blanche said.But on Friday, NBC News reported that Bongino is considering stepping down from his post at the FBI after a “heated confrontation” with Bondi over the issue.“Bongino is out-of-control furious,” the person who has spoken with the deputy FBI director said. “This destroyed his career. He’s threatening to quit and torch Pam unless she’s fired.”Donald Trump has also grown testy with repeated questions about Epstein, who was once a neighbor in Palm Beach. He erupted on Tuesday when he was pressed on an apparent one-minute gap in a 10-hour video recorded outside of Epstein’s cell.“Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?” he said. “This guy’s been talked about for years … Are people still talking about this guy, this creep? That is unbelievable.”Bondi has since explained that the missing minute of surveillance film was simply the recording equipment resetting itself, as it does every night.Still, it is not clear that Maga hardliners are willing to let the Epstein conspiracy theories go – they have provided a constant stream of material that supposedly supports their theories of a deep state.But no evidence has emerged that Epstein was engaged in a conspiracy to blackmail high-profile visitors, including Britain’s Prince Andrew, to his homes in New York, Florida, New Mexico and the US Virgin Islands.The FBI-DoJ memo stated that it had uncovered “a significant amount of material”, including more than 300GB of data and physical evidence that included “a large volume of images of Epstein, images and videos of victims who are either minors or appear to be minors, and over ten thousand downloaded videos and images of illegal child sex abuse material and other pornography”.“Through this review, we found no basis to revisit the disclosure of those materials and will not permit the release of child pornography,” the memo said. More

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      David Gergen, ex-adviser to Republican and Democratic presidents, dies aged 83

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      David Gergen, a veteran of Washington politics and an adviser to four presidents, Republican and Democrat, in a career spanning decades in government, academia and media, has died. He was 83.Gergen was perhaps best known for a line he summoned for then presidential candidate Ronald Reagan for a TV debate with Jimmy Carter: “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”The question hit a nerve in a nation wracked by inflation and a hostage crisis in Iran. The answer came back no, and Reagan won the White House.Gergen later reflected that “rhetorical questions have great power. It’s one of those things that you sometimes strike gold. When you’re out there panhandling in the river, occasionally you get a gold nugget.”Gergen served in the administrations of Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Reagan and Bill Clinton, racking up stints as speechwriter, communications director and counselor to the president, among other roles.He entered politics after serving in the US navy in the 1960s, taking a job as a speechwriting assistant for Nixon in 1971 and rising rapidly to become director of speechwriting two years later. He later served as director of communications for both Ford and Reagan, and as a senior adviser to Clinton and secretary of state Warren Christopher.Between stints in government, he managed a successful media career, working variously as an editor at US News & World Report, on the PBS show the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, and with CNN and CBS.In 2000, he published Eyewitness to Power: The Essence of Leadership: Nixon to Clinton, a memoir of his time in government. Reflecting on his time in the White House, he wrote of several essential elements a leader should possess.They included inner mastery; a central, compelling purpose rooted in moral values; a capacity to persuade; an ability to work within the system; a sure, quick start; strong, prudent advisers; and a passion that inspires others to carry on the mission.In a second book, Hearts Touched With Fire: How Great Leaders are Made, published two years later, he wrote: “Our greatest leaders have emerged from both good times and, more often, challenging ones. … The very finest among them make the difficult calls, that can ultimately alter the course of history.”Gergen, a North Carolina native, was a graduate of Yale and Harvard Law School, and returned there after his political career to establish the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School. He received 27 honorary degrees over the course of his career.After his passing was announced late Friday, former colleagues remarked on his capacity for bipartisanship and collaboration.Al Gore, who served as Clinton’s vice-president, posted on X: “Of the countless ways that David Gergen contributed to our great country, what I will remember him for most was his kindness to everyone he worked with, his sound judgment, and his devotion to doing good in the world.”Dean Jeremy Weinstein of the Harvard Kennedy School, said Gergen “devoted decades of his life to serving those who sought to serve”.Gergen reportedly told his daughter Katherine Gergen Barnett after the November 2024 election that “we are going through a period of fear. We have been tested, we are being tested now, but we must recognize that politics in our country is like a pendulum,” CNN said.A month later, when Gergen’s dementia diagnosis was disclosed, she penned his thoughts in a column for the Boston Globe.“‘As awful as life is currently in the public sphere, there is still reason to believe in our country and its leadership and to go into service,’” she quoted Gergen as saying. “‘Americans can endure any crisis, but they need to continue to take a sense of responsibility for their country.’” More

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      2024 book review: the what-ifs of an election that took US closer to autocracy

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      Donald Trump is on a roll. The “big, beautiful bill” is law. Ice, his paramilitary immigration force, rivals foreign armies for size and funding. Democrats stand demoralized and divided. 2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America, by Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager and Isaac Arnsdorf, is a book for these times: aptly named, deeply sourced.Kamala Harris declined to speak. Joe Biden criticized his successor in a brief phone call, then balked. Trump talked, of course.“If that didn’t happen … I think I would’ve won, but it might have been a little bit closer,” he says of the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, which set the race alight.Yet 2024 is about more than the horse race. It also chronicles how the elites unintentionally made Trump’s restoration possible, despite a torrent of criminal charges against him, 34 resulting in convictions, and civil lawsuits that saw him fined hundreds of millions of dollars.“Trump always drew his strength from decades of pent-up frustration with the American democratic system’s failures to address the hardships and problems the people experienced in their daily lives,” Dawsey, Pager and Arnsdorf write.“In 2024, [Trump’s] supporters saw institutions stacked against them … leading them to identify viscerally with his legal ordeal, even though they had not experienced anything like it before.”Dawsey is a Pulitzer prize winner, working political investigations and enterprise for the Wall Street Journal. Pager covers the White House for the New York Times. Arnsdorf was part of the Washington Post team that won a Pulitzer for coverage of the assassination attempt.Dawsey and Pager are Post alumni. With Arnsdorf, they capture the aspirations and delusions of Trump and the pretenders to his Republican throne, of Biden and Harris too.“In the weeks after the election, Biden repeatedly told allies that he could have won if he’d stayed in the race,” 2024 reports, “even as he publicly questioned whether he could have served another four years.”Really? Biden’s approval rating fell below 50% in August 2021 and never recovered. From October 2023, he trailed Trump. A year out, the authors reveal, Barack Obama warned his former vice-president’s staff: “Your campaign is a mess.”Biden’s aides privately derided Obama as “a prick”.“They thought he and his inner circle had constantly disrespected and mistreated Biden, despite his loyal service as vice-president.”As for Harris, Dawsey, Pager and Arnsdorf report that she “knew that the race would be close, but she really thought she would win”.Despite that, David Plouffe, a senior Harris adviser, admitted post-election that internal polls never showed her leading.“I think it surprised people because there were these public polls that came out in late September, early October, showing us with leads that we never saw,” he said. Harris’s debate win never moved the needle.Dawsey, Pager and Arnsdorf contend that the outcome was not foreordained. Rather, they raise a series of plausible-enough “what-ifs”. One is: “If the Democrats got clobbered, as expected, in the 2022 midterms, and Joe Biden never ran for re-election.”Except, by early 2022, according to This Shall Not Pass, a campaign book published that year, Biden saw himself as a cross between FDR and Obama.A telephone conversation between Biden and Abigail Spanberger, a moderate congresswoman now the Democratic candidate for governor in Virginia, captures Biden’s self-perception.“This is President Roosevelt,” Biden begins, before thanking Spanberger for her sense of humor.She replies: “I’m glad you have a sense of humor, Mr President.”Back to 2024. Biden bristled at being challenged. Pushback risked being equated with disloyalty. His closest advisers were either family members or dependent on him for their livelihoods. He lacked social peers with incomes and personages of their own.Mike Donilon, a longtime aide, tells the authors: “It was an act of insanity by the Democratic leadership to have forced Biden out.“Tell me why you walked away from a guy with 81m votes … A native of [swing-state] Pennsylvania. Why do that?”Because Biden’s debate performance was a gobsmacking disaster. He also found navigating the stairs of Air Force One difficult and needed prompts to find the podium. In May 2025, Biden announced that he had been diagnosed with stage-four prostate cancer – a disclosure that came after 2024 went to press.The authors of 2024 pose Republican hypotheticals too. One: “If Trump never got indicted, or if Republicans didn’t respond by rallying to him, or if the prosecutions were more successful.”Ron DeSantis, Florida’s governor, demonstrated a lack of nerve. Glaringly, he failed to use the initial E Jean Carroll trial, over the writer’s allegation that Trump sexually assaulted her, to bolster his presidential ambitions. DeSantis didn’t dispatch his wife, Casey DeSantis, to Manhattan to offer daily thoughts and prayers for the plaintiff, or for Melania Trump. If you want to be the man, first you’ve got to beat the man.Another hypothetical: “If Trump and Biden didn’t agree to an early debate …”That question hangs over everything.Trump’s pronouncements leave Dawsey, Pager and Arnsdorf anxious. After the 2022 midterms, he mused about terminating the constitution. Later, on the campaign trail, he spoke openly of being a “dictator for a day”. When he was back in the West Wing, reporters asked: “Are you a dictator on day one?” “No,” he replied. “I can’t imagine even being called that.”Dawsey, Pager and Arnsdorf then catalog Trump’s unilateral actions on that first day, including stripping political opponents of security clearances. Later that month, he commenced his vendetta against law firms he deemed to be enemies. In February, Trump barred the Associated Press from the White House press pool unless the news agency referred to the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America”.2024 contains no mention of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán. Perhaps it should have made space. Hungary’s leader is an autocrat in all but name, an elected leader who has removed freedoms regardless. Republicans adore him.

      2024 is published in the US by Penguin Random House More

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      Donald Trump announces 30% tariffs on goods from the EU and Mexico

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      Donald Trump announced on Saturday that goods imported from both the European Union and Mexico will face a 30% US tariff rate starting 1 August, in letters posted on his social media platform, Truth Social.The tariff assault on the EU came as a shock to European capitals as the European Commission and the US trade representative Jamieson Greer had spent months hammering out a deal they believed was acceptable to both sides.The agreement in principle put on Trump’s table last Wednesday involved a 10% tariff, five times the pre-Trump tariff, which the bloc already described as “pain”.EU trade ministers will meet on Monday for a pre-arranged summit and will be under pressure from some countries to show a tough reaction by implementing €21bn ($24.6bn) in retaliatory measures, which they had paused until midnight the same day.In his letter to Mexico’s leader, Trump acknowledged that the country had been helpful in stemming the flow of undocumented immigrants and fentanyl into the United States.But, he said, the country had not done enough to stop North America from turning into a “Narco-Trafficking Playground”.“We have had years to discuss our Trading Relationship with The European Union, and we have concluded we must move away from these long-term, large, and persistent, Trade Deficits, engendered by your Tariff, and Non-Tariff, Policies, and Trade Barriers,” Trump wrote in the letter to the EU. “Our relationship has been, unfortunately, far from Reciprocal.”Claudia Sheinbaum said on Saturday she is sure an agreement can be reached before Trump’s threatened tariffs take effect on 1 August.Speaking during an event in the Mexican state of Sonora, the Mexican president added that Mexico’s sovereignty is never negotiable.The higher-than-expected rate has dealt a blow to the EU’s hopes of de-escalation and a trade deal and could risk a trade war with goods of low margins including Belgian chocolate, Irish butter and Italian olive oil.The EU was informed of the tariff hike before Trump’s declaration on social media.In a letter to the EU, Trump warned that the EU would pay a price if they retaliated: “If for any reason you decide to raise your Tariffs and retaliate, then, whatever the number you choose to raise them by, will be added onto the 30% that we charge.”The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said the 30% rate would “disrupt transatlantic supply chains, to the detriment of businesses, consumers and patients on both sides of the Atlantic”.She said the bloc was one of the more open trading places in the world, and still hoped to persuade Trump to climb down.“We remain ready to continue working towards an agreement by August 1. At the same time, we will take all necessary steps to safeguard EU interests, including the adoption of proportionate countermeasures if required,” she said.Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, called for “goodwill  … to reach a fair agreement that can strengthen the west as a whole. It would make no sense to trigger a trade war between the two sides of the Atlantic.” She added that both sides should avoid “polarisation”.The decision to hike the tariffs will also be another test of Trump’s ability to act in good faith in negotiations.Brussels will view the latest threat as a maneuver by Trump to extract more concessions from the EU, which he once described as “nastier” than China when it came to trade.Bernd Lange, head of the European Parliament’s trade committee, said on Saturday that Brussels should react immediately with countermeasures against Trump’s “outrageous” threat to hike tariffs on imports from the European Union.The EU had been negotiating intensively with Washington for more than three weeks and had made concessions, said Lange.“It is brazen and disrespectful to increase the tariffs on European goods announced on April 2 from 20% to 30%,” Lange told Reuters.“This is a slap in the face for the negotiations. This is no way to deal with a key trading partner.”While Trump indicated earlier this week that his new rates, also levelled against big economies including Japan, South Korea and Brazil, will not apply until 1 August, his latest tactic will create much distrust.Europe should make it clear that these “unfair trade practices” were unacceptable, Lange said.“We have postponed the first stage of our countermeasures for the time being, but I am firmly convinced that they must now be implemented immediately,” he said.“The first list of countermeasures must be activated on Monday as planned, and the second list should also follow quickly.”Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, downplayed the impact of the threatened 50% tariff. Trump and Lula have indicated a willingness to negotiate, though Lula also said: “Trump could’ve called, but instead posted the tariff news on his website – a complete lack of respect which is typical of his behavior towards everyone.”Even if Trump had agreed to the proposal put on his table on Wednesday, further negotiations would have been needed in any case to create a legal text that can be formally registered by the US government, a process that is itself laden with risk.The UK took seven weeks to get its agreement registered with a promise included to reduce tariffs on car exports from 27.5% to 10%, but the agreed zero tariff for the British steel industry was omitted.Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former congressional budget office director and president of the center-right American Action Forum, said the letters were evidence that serious trade talks had not been taking place over the past three months. He stressed that nations were instead talking among themselves about how to minimize their own exposure to the US economy and Trump.“They’re spending time talking to each other about what the future is going to look like, and we’re left out,” Holtz-Eakin said.He added that Trump was using the letters to demand attention, but, “in the end, these are letters to other countries about taxes he’s going to levy on his citizens”.The new tariff ends a turbulent week for the EU with Trump announcing an extension for talks until 1 August on Monday, then on Tuesday announcing the EU would “probably” receive a letter setting its new US tariff rate within 48 hours, claiming the bloc had shifted from being “very tough” to “very nice”.But diplomats viewed it as a mixed message as Trump stressed that he was still talking to negotiators from the bloc, but that he was displeased with European policies toward US tech firms. More

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      Elon Musk claims his America party will change US politics. Experts disagree

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      “You want a new political party and you shall have it!” Elon Musk declared in early July.The world’s richest man is never one to shy away from grandiose statements, and he continued: “When it comes to bankrupting our country with waste & graft, we live in a one-party system, not a democracy. Today, the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom.”The America party, Musk hopes, will be a viable alternative to the Democratic and Republican parties: a political organization that can influence the future of US politics. He has mooted running candidates for two to three Senate seats and up to 10 House districts. Given the tight divide between Republicans and Democrats in Congress, Musk believes capturing the small number of seats “would be enough to serve as the deciding vote on contentious laws”.Given there is consistently strong support for an alternative to the Big Two parties, it should be a good idea, right?Wrong, said Bernard Tamas, professor of political science at Valdosta State University and author of The Demise and Rebirth of American Third Parties.“At this moment in American politics, I see no evidence that you’re going to get another party winning seats in Congress and actually being able to have an impact in the government,” Tamas said.“It’s not just the money that Democrats and Republicans have. They have all the resources. They have the money. They have 150 years of structure. They have all the professional politicians, and they have all the consultants, and they have all the Madison Avenue ad companies working for them.”The whole concept of the America party seemingly came together in a matter of weeks, following the famous row between Musk and Donald Trump. And as with many ideas born out of spite and fury, certain elements appear to have not been fully thought through. Americaparty.com, for example, is already registered to someone else, who now appears to be trying to sell the domain name for $6.9m. On X, which Musk owns, @AmericaParty was already taken, so the new venture had to opt for @AmericaPartyX.It’s not yet clear what the party will stand for, beyond opposition to Republicans’ ballooning of the national debt. Musk has yet to elaborate on the “contentious laws” his politicians would challenge, and there is no party platform or manifesto.In any case, third parties have rarely, if ever, been successful in the way Musk envisages. But where they can make a difference is in highlighting issues and pressuring the main two parties to act.“In terms of the parties that really had a big impact, they didn’t win seats,” Tamas said. “The job of third parties is disruption. It’s to sting like a bee. It’s to cause pain.”Tamas pointed to the Progressive party in Wisconsin and the Minnesota Farmer-Labor party, which managed to win key victories over relief for unemployed constituents and banking reform in the state, as examples of political groups that have managed to inflict such a bee sting. That doesn’t appear to be what Musk is going for, however, despite there being an opportunity for a stinging insect.“Here you have the Republican party moving farther and farther to the right, and farther and farther in this kind of Maga direction, with nobody in the Republican party in Congress willing to stand up at all to Trump or this movement,” Tamas said.“It’s a perfect opening for a third party. This is what it looks like historically. But you’re not going to replace them. What you do is you attack them for this. You’re trying to pull them back towards the center.“This is how the third parties have always succeeded. The idea is you cause them pain, and what they do, if it works, is they shift back towards something that reflects more what the public wants, or deals with the issues that the third party is bringing up.”Parties that have pursued the getting-people-elected approach have fared less well than the pain-inflictors. Forward party was founded by Andrew Yang, who had previously run for the Democratic presidential nomination, in 2022, with the slightly call-to-arms style slogan of “Not left. Not right. Forward.” These days the party barely features on the national political landscape, although it does continue to bleat out social media content – a recent 4 July post on Instagram attracted almost 40 likes.At its inception, Forward party figures claimed both the Republican and Democratic parties had become too radical, and said their new venture “can’t be pegged to the traditional left-right spectrum because we aren’t built like the existing parties”.Somehow, a promise to not really have a firm ideological stance on anything isn’t a very sexy pitch to voters. Among the “elected affiliates” named on Forward’s website are the former mayor of Newberry, Florida, a town of 7,300 people, and a man who “is responsible for sanitation and utilities” in the Connecticut borough of Stonington – population 976 people.There is widespread support for a third party. Polls have repeatedly shown that people want a third party. But what that looks like remains to be seen. In Musk’s own survey on social media asking if people wanted him to start a new party, only 65% said yes, and 34% said no, although a poll in early July showed that 14% of voters said they would be very likely to support the party, with 26% somewhat likely.There are already issues with the America party becoming a viable third choice. Musk is approaching eccentric political advisers, including Curtis Yarvin, a rightwing tech blogger who has argued American democracy has run its course and the country should instead be run by a dictator-esque CEO.A more fundamental problem with the America party is unique to Musk: people really don’t like him. A poll last week found that 60% of Americans have an unfavorable view of Musk, compared with 32% in favor.America shall have a third party, Musk declared at the start of his new venture. But does America want this kind of third party, with these kind of aims, run by this kind of man? More

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      Obama’s former press secretary recalls ‘emotional’ mood in White House after Trump win

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      The hardest day on the job for the White House press secretary for most of Barack Obama’s second term was right after Donald Trump was first elected president, he recently revealed during a fireside chat at a journalism convention.Speaking at the 2025 National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ) conference in Chicago, Josh Earnest said it was grueling for the Obama administration to realize it would have to follow through on promises of a peaceful transfer of power despite spending the 2016 election cycle offering dire warnings “about what could or would happen if Donald Trump were given the keys to the Oval Office”.Those warnings stemmed in part from intelligence assessments that the US’s longtime geopolitical adversary Russia had interfered in the race in which Trump defeated former secretary of state Hillary Clinton. Earnest said the Obama administration suddenly found itself needing to defend the validity of those assessments while saying it would peacefully transfer over the nuclear launch codes – and other levers of power – to Trump.“Did [Obama] not mean how dangerous [Trump] could be?” Earnest asked rhetorically, referring to some of the questions he and fellow administration officials faced while briefing journalists at the time. “It was a tough message.”The remarks on Wednesday from Earnest – who was Obama’s press secretary from 2014 to 2017 – also offered a first-hand peek into the somber mood at the White House after Trump defeated Clinton. Like many, Earnest “was very surprised”. “I did not think he was going to win,” he said.Many Obama communications staffers were visibly demoralized, and Earnest said he and his aides decided to convene them, talk about Trump’s victory and try to refocus them for the final two months in office.During that conversation, Obama summoned Earnest to go over the logistics of a nationally televised speech he was planning to give in the White House’s Rose Garden. Earnest recalled Obama asking how it was going with the staff that morning – to which he replied that they were “emotional”.Obama then asked an assistant to call the staff into the Oval Office. He stood in front of the Resolute Desk near his vice-president, Joe Biden, who would later succeed Trump in the White House – and gave them an early version of the speech he ultimately delivered that day.“We have to remember that we’re actually all on one team,” part of that speech read. “We are Americans first. We’re patriots first. We all want what’s best for this country.”As Earnest noted, Obama’s official White House photographer, Pete Souza, captured the scene with his camera. He recalled how it was the first time many people in the room that day had been in the Oval Office.“It was very poignant,” Earnest told the chat’s host, the ABC7 Chicago news anchor Tanja Babich.One of Earnest’s most vocal critics in the aftermath of Trump’s victory was the president-elect himself. Trump called Earnest a “foolish guy” at a December 2016 rally.“He is so bad – the way he delivers a message,” Trump said of Earnest after the latter defended the US intelligence community’s assessment of Russia’s interference.Earnest has been a top spokesperson for United Airlines at the company’s Chicago headquarters since 2018. He spent some time being a media pundit early during the first of Trump’s two presidencies. But Earnest told Babich he did not find it “particularly fulfilling” given the way Trump’s unpredictable, chaotic style of governing can often disorient news outlets.“The questions could all be boiled down to, ‘Isn’t this outrageous what Trump is doing?” Earnest said. “And it became about finding different ways to say, ‘Yes.’“I wasn’t doing journalism. I was doing commentary. And it was pretty close to entertainment.” More

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      ‘Tremendous uncertainty’ for cancer research as US officials target mRNA vaccines

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      As US regulators restrict Covid mRNA vaccines and as independent vaccine advisers re-examine the shots, scientists fear that an unlikely target could be next: cancer research.Messenger RNA, or mRNA, vaccines have shown promise in treating and preventing cancers that have often been difficult to address, such as pancreatic cancer, brain tumors and others.But groundbreaking research could stall as federal and state officials target mRNA shots, including ending federal funding for bird flu mRNA vaccines, restricting who may receive existing mRNA vaccines and, in some places, proposing laws against the vaccines.The Trump administration has also implemented unprecedented cuts to cancer research, among other research cuts and widespread layoffs at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).At least 16 grants involving the word “mRNA” have been terminated or frozen, according to the crowdsourced project Grant Watch, and scientists have been told to remove mentions of mRNA vaccines from their research applications, KFF Health News reported in March.Researchers fear that therapeutic cancer vaccines will get “swept up in that tidal wave” against mRNA vaccines, Aaron Sasson, chief of surgical oncology at Stony Brook University, said in April.When it comes to mRNA breakthroughs, “the next couple of years are the most critical”, Elias Sayour, a professor for pediatric oncology research at the University of Florida, said.“If the progress we’ve made to date – which has been prodigious – if that is just stopped or stymied, it can absolutely affect the trajectory and the arc,” he said.The uncertainty around mRNA specifically, and research broadly, could also discourage researchers and institutions from beginning new projects, he said.“If we continue to seize on these gains in the next 10, 20 years, I do see a scenario where we’ve completely transformed how we take care of a large swath of human disease,” he said.Research on mRNA cancer vaccines has been under way for more than a decade, with more than 120 clinical trials on treating and preventing cancers. mRNA shots have shown promise for preventing the return of head and neck cancer; lymphoma; breast cancer, which accounts for 11.6% of all cancer deaths in the US; colorectal cancer; lung cancer; and kidney cancer, among others.Pancreatic cancer has a 10% survival rate and is the second leading cause of cancer deaths in the US, but in a small study, about half of the patients who received an mRNA vaccine did not see their cancer return, and they still had strong immune responses three years later.Early mRNA vaccine trials also indicated the recurrence of melanoma could be cut in half. And a small study co-authored by Sayour on glioblastoma showed the vaccines started affecting the tumors within 48 hours.Like any vaccine, mRNA cancer vaccines train the body to recognize and destroy harmful cells.Unlike foreign pathogens, such as infectious diseases, cancer is caused by the growth of the patient’s own cells.Some cancer vaccines are highly personalized, using a patient’s own cancer cells to treat their tumors or train their immune system to kill off those dangerous cells if they recur.“The ability to create specific vaccines for patients has tremendous, tremendous promise, but that was technology not possible five or 10 years ago,” said Sasson. “It really is a shift in the paradigm of how we treat cancers.”Researchers are also investigating vaccines that would target cancer cells more broadly by identifying “fingerprints” of certain cancers, said Sayour.Additionally, the vaccines could be created for other conditions, such as type 1 diabetes and multiple sclerosis, he said.“It has potential to get rid of a lot of the chronic morbidity we see from disease, to cure diseases that are degenerative, to overcome cancer evolution and cure patients,” Sayour said. “mRNA could be the healthcare that the movable-type printing press was for human knowledge.”Yet federal and state decision-makers have targeted mRNA vaccines in recent months.Vinay Prasad, director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), reportedly overrode scientists at the agency to limit some Covid vaccines, including a new mRNA shot from Moderna, to children older than 12. Prasad also introduced similar limitations on the Covid shot from Novavax, which does not use mRNA.On Thursday, the FDA approved the original Covid mRNA vaccine from Moderna for children between the ages of six months and 11 years – but they narrowed its use to children with at least one underlying condition. (The vaccine for people older than 12 was approved in 2022.)Prasad argued, in two memos recently released by the FDA, that the risks of Covid had dropped, while “known and unknown” side-effects could outweigh the benefits of getting vaccinated.Covid remains a leading cause of death in the US, with 178 deaths in the week ending 7 June, the last week for which the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) offers complete data.At the meeting of the CDC’s advisory committee on immunization practices (ACIP) in June, two of the new vaccine advisers – appointed by the health and human services (HHS) secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, after he fired the previous 17 advisers – broached the safety of Covid mRNA vaccines, indicating future scrutiny of these shots.Vicky Pebsworth, a registered nurse who has volunteered for years with the National Vaccine Information Center, said she was “very concerned” about side-effects from the Covid mRNA shots and asked for more data on safety, including “reproductive toxicity”.Shortly before being appointed to the ACIP, Pebsworth and the founder of the National Vaccine Information Center argued that the FDA should not recommend mRNA Covid-19 shots for anyone “until adequate scientific evidence demonstrates safety and effectiveness for both the healthy and those who are elderly or chronically ill”.At the June ACIP meeting, Retsef Levi, a professor of operations management at the MIT Sloan School of Management, said he believed mRNA side-effects were “being reported at rates that are far exceeding other vaccines even when you normalize to the number of doses, which does suggest something, I think”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionPreviously, Levi argued: “The evidence is mounting and indisputable that mRNA vaccines cause serious harm including death, especially among young people. We have to stop giving them immediately!”Another new ACIP adviser, Robert Malone, has also repeatedly argued against mRNA vaccines.In 2021, Kennedy, then chair of the anti-vaccine organization Children’s Health Defense, petitioned the FDA to revoke all approvals, and ban future approvals, of all Covid vaccines. He has called Covid shots the “deadliest vaccine ever made”.In May, Kennedy changed Covid vaccine recommendations from “should” to “may” for children, and eliminated the recommendation for pregnant women entirely.Also in May, the US canceled $766m in contracts for research on mRNA vaccines against H5N1 bird flu. Investment in the mRNA vaccine was not “scientifically or ethically justifiable”, Andrew Nixon, the HHS communications director, said in statements to the media, adding that the “mRNA technology remains under-tested”.Millions of mRNA vaccines have been given around the world, and the vaccines have been shown to be safe and effective in multiple studies.Bans or limitations on mRNA vaccinations have been introduced in seven states. One such bill in Idaho sought to pause “gene therapy immunizations” for 10 years – a category in which they incorrectly place Covid vaccines, and which could affect other therapeutics.Similarly, in Washington state, commissioners in Franklin county passed a resolution urging the local health facility to stop providing and promoting gene-therapy vaccines; they also incorrectly included Covid mRNA shots in this category.“There’s this scorched-earth mentality now, but I’m hopeful that once the dust settles, we’ll be able to reinstate or allow vaccine work for cancer purposes to proceed,” Sasson said.Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the US, and two in five people will be diagnosed with some form of cancer in their lifetime.There are currently only two FDA-approved vaccines that prevent cancer – hepatitis B and human papillomavirus (HPV) – and both have been targeted by anti-vaccine activists.In January, Trump hosted the launch of Stargate AI at the White House. The project could eventually identify cancers and develop mRNA vaccines in days, Larry Ellison, the chair of the tech company Oracle who is involved with the project, said at the launch.The project will be funded by private, not federal, dollars, but the work on cancer would draw upon research on cancer and mRNA, among other fields.Yet the Trump administration has slashed other critical funding for cancer research, prevention and treatment.The administration canceled more than $180m in grants through the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in the first three months of its term, and proposed cutting $2.7bn from the cancer center in the next NIH budget.The administration has cut back funding for some family planning providers, which frequently offer screenings for HPV and other cancer markers.Lawmakers have also made enormous cuts to Medicaid and insurance through the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which could mean uninsured and underinsured people wait longer for cancer treatment – or forgo it entirely.“There’s the potential for great harm, for massive public health issues to be set aside during this really broad approach of canceling research,” said Sasson. “There’s significant harm that’s going to happen by these sweeping changes.”For scientists who still have funding or those who are entering the field, “there’s tremendous uncertainty as to what the future will look like”, Sasson said.But he is optimistic that mRNA vaccines for cancer and other illnesses will be able to move forward.Scientists are often portrayed as “just trying to survive” funding cuts, but that’s not entirely accurate, said Sayour, before adding: “I don’t think many people in my field do this because they’re just trying to survive. I would want nothing more, honest to God, than to put myself out of business. We do this because we want to make a difference.”Sayour echoed concerns about both indirect and direct forces shaping progress on mRNA vaccines.“But I also want to be optimistic that our best days are ahead of us,” he said. More