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      JD Vance exploited a brawl to paint Cincinnati as crime-ridden. The fallout has divided the city

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      It took only a few days for footage of a violent brawl in downtown Cincinnati in July to catch the attention of some of the country’s most high-profile figures.The fight, which saw a white woman punched in the face from behind by an African American man, among other incidents, took place when about 150,000 people were attending events in the city’s urban core.Despite police responding within six minutes of being called and six alleged perpetrators in that brawl being quickly arrested, Vice-President JD Vance, who owns a home in the Ohio city, declared that those involved should be thrown in prison.Soon, the internet was ablaze with racist tropes and commentary about the alleged carnage plaguing Cincinnati and other American cities. Rightwing media from across the country published footage of the brawl, claiming it depicted “a white man and a woman appearing to be relentlessly targeted by a group of largely black assailants.” The woman in question was invited to appear on The Ingraham Angle on Fox News.Elon Musk posted a clip on X of the brawl from Libs of TikTok, a far-right social media account, that was viewed 4.8m times. The former Republican party presidential candidate and a leading contender to become Ohio’s next governor, Vivek Ramaswamy, felt it necessary to hold a town hall to discuss public safety.All the while, the national spotlight has led to Cincinnatians questioning just how safe their home town is or isn’t – and who is responsible for sparking the debate.Divisions are emerging between those who believe the city has become less safe and others who say Cincinnati has become a victim of national politics that also has seen it through a racial lens. That, in turn, has had a major knock-on effect on local businesses struggling for customers.The rightwing rhetoric fits into the Trump administration’s wider and unfounded claims that American cities, many of which are run by Democrats, have become hotbeds of unbridled violence. In recent months, the Trump administration has sent the national guard into Los Angeles, Washington DC, Chicago and other major US cities, fueling anger and fear among residents, a plurality of whom typically vote for Democratic party candidates at local and national levels.That’s despite violent crime in major cities across the US having fallen in recent years.In Cincinnati, the first nine months of this year saw recorded violent crime fall to 253 from 283 incidents compared with the same period last year.“We need to continue to invest in public safety, but there has been a false inflation of the perception of unsafety in Cincinnati,” said Ryan James, a newly elected member of the Cincinnati city council and resident of Over-the-Rhine.“The impacts on our communities from negative stigmas around safety is really damaging. There’s an economic impact of families being afraid to come downtown and to our more densely populated neighborhoods.”The national coverage of Cincinnati’s perceived crime crisis has put pressure on city leaders to solve an issue that has gained outsized attention.This month, Cincinnati’s police chief, Teresa Theetge, was placed on paid leave pending an investigation into her leadership, which is costing taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars. Across the city, supporters are putting up yard signs backing her.“When we have a conversation with people around the [downward] trajectory of crime, it’s always a shocker,” said James, “because people with these huge platforms, are perpetuating narratives that Cincinnati is an unsafe city. It is completely untrue.”Crime in Cincinnati became a centerpiece of an election campaign by Vance’s half-brother, Cory Bowman, in this year’s mayoral race. Bowman, a pastor whose only public backing from the vice-president came in the form of a post on X, failed in an attempt to unseat the incumbent mayor, Aftab Pureval, garnering just 21.8% of the vote on 4 November.That two of the people injured in the brawl were white and seven people who were charged by police for having a role in the July fight were Black has fueled anger among the city’s Black communities.“I think there is a lot of political motivation to disparage Democrats and the Democratic leadership in this city,” said James, who is the youngest African American man ever elected to Cincinnati’s city council.Still, while the numbers are down, violence is something that continues to be a significant challenge for Cincinnati and hundreds of other US cities attempting to bounce back after the pandemic.The killing of an FC Cincinnati soccer fan leaving a game in the Over-the-Rhine district in October 2023 shocked the city, while two recent shootings at Fountain Square, a popular public space that holds ice rinks and concerts, has drawn headlines from around the country.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSome business owners downtown say they believe the security situation has indeed worsened.James, who has run a family business on Main Street for almost 40 years and asked not to be fully identified so as not to deter customers from visiting the area, says the crime situation has worsened.“We had a customer get mugged right here on Seventh Street, I think in August. We had an employee who got hit on the back of their head. That’s never happened [in the past],” he says.“The number of car break-ins this year has gone up. It’s three heads [who are responsible for the crime] – the city manager, the mayor and the judges. The police have their hands tied; they are doing their best.” Vehicle thefts across the US have been increasing for years.The city’s annual Oktoberfest event, held in September, is thought to have seen a significant drop in attendance this year, something some business owners attribute to people staying away due to the perceived rising crime.Still James, the business owner, said he had not experienced a drop in the number of customers this year compared with previous years. What’s more, Cincinnati has more police officers than similar-sized cities such as Pittsburgh and nearly twice as many as Santa Ana, California.Ahead of city council elections held earlier this month and which officially are non-partisan, many residents thought the perceived crime wave would see longstanding Democrats on the council voted out. Instead, all nine seats up for election this month were won by Democratic-leaning candidates.For Mak Alemaye, who has run a convenience store a short walk from Fountain Square on Main Street for the past 15 years, context is important.“You see these windows – until about three years ago, I’d get a call from the police every two or three weeks, telling me they had been kicked in. I had to get them replaced six times,” he says.“But for the last three years, it’s been good; the last time was almost three years ago.”He believes Cincinnati is no better or worse than any other big city when it comes to crime.“When the economy is bad, there’s always break-ins, like any other city. Things happen anywhere – why is Cincinnati special?” More

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      The Comey and James dismissals are a reminder of Trump’s lawlessness | Austin Sarat

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      Monday brought good news for two of Donald Trump’s most hated enemies: the former FBI director James Comey, and the New York state attorney general, Letitia James. A federal judge dismissed the sham indictments the administration had obtained against them.Judge Cameron McGowan Currie reminded the president and his attorney general of the great lessons of a society governed by the rule of law: how things are done matters as much as what is done. Without fair procedures, no one can be safe from the arbitrary exercise of government power.This is never more apparent than when leaders target their political opponents and seek revenge against those who do not fall in line. The US is learning this lesson in real time as the Trump administration politicizes prosecution.Recall the president’s infamous 20 September direction to Pam Bondi, the US attorney general.“Pam,” Trump posted to Truth Social, “I have reviewed over 30 statements and posts saying that, essentially, ‘same old story as the last time, all talk, no action. Nothing is being done. What about Comey, Adam ‘Shifty’ Schiff, Leticia??? They’re all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done.’“Then,” he continued, “we almost put in a Democrat supported U.S. Attorney, in Virginia, with a really bad Republican past … I fired him, and there is a GREAT CASE, and many lawyers, and legal pundits, say so. Lindsey Halligan is a really good lawyer, and likes you, a lot.”The president ended by making it clear what he wanted and why he wanted it. “We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility. They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!”Two days later, Bondi installed Halligan as interim US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia with an apparent mandate to go after Comey, James and others. Several days after that, Comey was indicted in federal court, accused of lying to Congress; the next month, James was indicted in a mortgage case. Both denied wrongdoing and said the cases were intended to punish them for past clashes with him.On Monday, Currie delivered a decisive rebuke to Trump and Bondi when she threw out the Comey and James indictments. She found that Halligan’s appointment violated the clear language of the statute governing such appointments and of the constitution itself.As a result, all of the actions flowing from her appointment, including the indictments of Comey and James, were “unlawful exercises of executive power”. While Currie left the door open for the administration to refile indictments against Comey and James, in Comey’s case, the time allowed under the applicable statute of limitations has run out.As the Washington Post notes, Currie’s decision is just the latest in a series of judicial rulings “disqualifying Trump’s interim U.S. attorney picks in New Jersey, Nevada, and Los Angeles”. Like her colleagues, Currie made clear that Trump’s Department of Justice had again distinguished itself by its dangerous combination of lawlessness and incompetence.Her opinion is good news for defenders of the rule of law. It should also strengthen the hand of other judges who want to push back against the administration’s vindictive prosecutions.Judges, like Currie, are never eager to dismiss an indictment issued by a grand jury. They are inclined to trust the grand jury process and are reluctant to cast aside the investment of time and resources that a good prosecutor makes in securing an indictment.In 1988, the supreme court held that, in most cases, dismissal of an indictment is appropriate only if errors in the handling of the grand jury process prejudiced a defendant by “substantially” influencing the decision to indict or raising “grave doubt” about whether the decision was free from such influence.As the attorney James M Burnham has written, this high bar “plays a central role in the ever-expanding, vague nature of federal criminal law because it largely eliminates the possibility of purely legal judicial opinions construing criminal statutes”. Burnham wants judges to be more active in policing indictments and making sure they are legally justified.Currie did just that. She found that Halligan lacked the authority to seek indictments of Comey or James because the justice department had not followed the applicable law governing the appointment of interim US attorneys. That law is, in her words, “unambiguous”.It allows the attorney general to appoint an interim US attorney, who can serve for a period of 120 days. It falls to a federal district court, not the administration, to choose a successor or extend the term of the current interim appointee – as happened with Halligan’s predecessor.The purpose of the law, Currie noted, was to prevent the president from circumventing the constitutional requirement that US attorneys go through a Senate confirmation process by making a series of interim appointments back-to-back.But Senate confirmation takes time. Alas, how inconvenient when the president demands that his enemies must be brought to justice now.Bondi may have known what the law required when she appointed Halligan to do the president’s bidding. But she seems to interpret her role as serving Trump and pushing the outer boundaries of the law until a judge has the temerity to tell her she can’t.Like federal judges in other cases, that is what Currie did. Along the way, the judge noted that Halligan was a “White House aide with no prior prosecutorial experience”, who appeared alone before the grand jury after career prosecutors in her office concluded that neither had committed any crime.In the end, the judge, having pointed out the lawlessness and incompetence that accompanied Halligan’s appointment and the Comey and James indictments, reminded Bondi and the president that the legal requirements governing appointments, as the supreme court once said, are “more than a matter of etiquette or protocol”. No matter how much the president insists or how many all-caps messages he posts to Truth Social, those requirements cannot be discarded, she concluded, to suit the president, since they are “among the significant structural safeguards of the constitutional scheme”.

      Austin Sarat, William Nelson Cromwell professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College, is the author or editor of more than 100 books, including Gruesome Spectacles: Botched Executions and America’s Death Penalty More

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      What can we learn from RFK’s ‘erotic poetry’? That Americans need to get better at enjoying a scandal | Marina Hyde

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      Literally nothing on this earth takes itself as seriously as American journalism. There are rogue-state dictators it’s more permissible to laugh at than the endlessly hilarious pretensions of newsmen and newswomen in the United States. The crucial difference between the British press and US press is that at least we in the British press know we’re in the gutter. The Americans have always imagined – and so loudly – that they are involved in some kind of higher calling. Guys, I love you and stuff, but get over it, because you’re missing one of the great jokes of the century. Yourselves.I don’t deny that everything’s bigger in America. Our former health secretary had a knee-trembler up against his office door in the pandemic; their current one apparently wrote felching … poetry, is it … felching poetry? … to a superstar journalist who was worrying about his brainworm, yet the story is being written up like it’s Dante, instead of X-rated Italian brainrot.We are, by the way, talking about the tale of Olivia Nuzzi, Ryan Lizza and Robert F Kennedy. If you’ve missed this one, you have a great treat in store. Olivia and Ryan were hotshot political journalists (and a couple) covering presidential campaigns and writing a joint book about the 2020 one, when Ryan discovered last year that Olivia had had what is primly described as a “digital affair” with wingnut presidential candidate RFK. It all blew up, there was some legal hokey-cokey, they lost their jobs, she fled to LA, RFK became health secretary. He’s got bigger brainworms to fry; the other two are now “breaking their silence”.And everything – everything – about it is darkly hysterical. It should obviously be being written as comedy. Instead, the story is being chronicled with maximum portentousness by its own protagonists. First, in Nuzzi’s forthcoming memoir/state-of-the-nation something-or-other, which is actually entitled American Canto. And second in Lizza’s Substack, which is genuinely called Telos. I can’t.No, hang on – I can. Like so many of the self-regarding big-hitters of the US fourth estate, this sundered pair very much need you to know that serious prose is occurring. Both of them adore a sledgehammer metaphor. With Lizza, it’s bamboo. The bamboo in the couple’s apartment courtyard “had become a metaphor for our decade-long entanglement”. Righto. “If not tamed, [it] would march through the entire courtyard and kill everything.” Thanks for flagging, mate. “I spent hours hacking at the sprouts to keep the bamboo at bay, just as I had with all the secrets that Olivia and I shared.” Is there much more of this? Yes, would seem to be the answer. “I should have known that it was futile and that, at some point, the bamboo would take over the garden, and that’s all anyone would see.” Come on Ryan, batter me round the head with the bamboo analogy one more time – I’m so close to getting the point.With Nuzzi, it’s wildfires. She flees to LA after the RFK story breaks, staking down seemingly dozens of signposts to where we are going as the burning takes hold. “10:30 a.m., 10 acres burning. 10:50 a.m., 20 acres burning … 2 p.m., 700 acres burning. 3 p.m., 1,300 acres burning … 12:30 a.m., 3,000 acres burning. 9 a.m., 5,000 acres burning. 11:45 a.m., 12,000 acres burning. 1:30 p.m., 16,000 acres burning … 9 p.m., 20,000 acres burning. 8 a.m., 22,000 acres burning. 4 p.m., 24,000 acres burning.” OK GOT IT. Luckily, because we’re literary dumbos, Nuzzi has already explained: “You cannot outrun your life on fire.” Makes u think. Could we have some crossover metaphor event where the bamboo catches fire? Maybe for Black Friday.With heavy heart, apparently, the wider US media must cover the tale, yet not even America’s dainty journalese can rob the story of its full-spectrum trash merriment. In fact, in some cases it adds to it. Nuzzi’s lawyer told the New York Times his client would “not dignify efforts to impugn her character with any future response”. Dialling in from an Edith Wharton novel, there. I believe the felching poetry dropped a couple of days later.It’s so sad that, across American newsrooms, hankies must be overtly pressed to noses about all this, while refresh keys can only be covertly pressed to see if any more has dropped. Pretty much the only splashy thing Vanity Fair has done under its new editorship was hire Nuzzi as West Coast editor and run her book extract, so it should be absolutely zero surprise to learn that, as a result of something they read in Telos – again, “Telos”!!! – the magazine is reviewing the appointment. “We were taken by surprise,” intoned a Vanity Fair spokeswoman, “and we are looking at all the facts.” For heaven’s sake, buck up and stop being so absolutely wet. This sort of thing is why you hired her. Just own it and allow yourself a bit of fun.Alas, they seem bent on playing it like they’re in the midst of some boring ethics crisis, when you can’t help feeling that ship has sailed. May we humble outsiders offer a word of advice? Guys, you just need to stop being so American and serious about it all. And, indeed, about America. God knows we lesser countries have put some ghastly people in charge ourselves, but you do have to allow your international underlings the occasional cackle at the fact that in your great nation, Donald Trump has now become president, twice. When you lot shit the bed, the whole world has to lie in it – so do at least have the delicacy to realise that once dignity has gone, a good laugh is how the rest of us get by. Come along and join us: you’ll like it if you try it.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion

      Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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      Is the Democratic party embracing Bernie Sanders-style politics? | Dustin Guastella

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      Since the Democrats’ sweeping victories on 4 November, a strange thing has happened among the party factions: a semblance of unity has emerged.At first, “affordability” became the slogan of rapprochement. Moderates, populists and socialists agreed Democrats must campaign around the cost-of-living crisis and hang the broken economy around Donald Trump’s neck.At the same time party grandees – left, right and center – quietly agreed to ditch wokeness and embrace common-sense appeals to American solidarity and equality. Ideologically, we see the same convergence. Last week, writing in the Atlantic, Rogé Karma argued that the left has pulled the moderates toward populism, while the centrists have won debates on a number of cultural issues.And this week, James Carville – the bête noire of every leftwing Democrat and Bernie Sanders voter, the architect of Clintonian centrism – writes in the New York Times that he is become a populist.Here is Carville (James Carville!) describing what Democrats should do:“I am now an 81-year-old man and I know that in the minds of many, I carry the torch from a so-called centrist political era. Yet it is abundantly clear even to me that the Democratic party must now run on the most populist economic platform since the Great Depression.”Carville advocates a program that includes raising the minimum wage to $20 an hour (blowing past the old progressive demand of $15 an hour), universal childcare, free university education, and major investments in utilities. But more important than the suite of policies itself, the editorial signals to Democratic bigwigs that populism has won. A decade after he announced his first campaign for president, it seems that Sanders has won his crusade for the soul of the Democratic party.Winning consensus on the need for a “seismic” economic program is no small feat and it will go a long way to helping Democrats win back their working-class base. Still, there is a lot of work to be done and many pitfalls along the way.First, progressives must resist the temptation, so attractive to scorned factions, to reject centrist overtures. There is a danger that if moderates fulsomely embrace a social populist program, figures on the left will attempt to differentiate themselves by reanimating the dead-end politics of fringe woke causes.But being lefter-than-thou serves no one and would only succeed in helping the right paint the left as a collection of sky-pilots, eggheads, and weirdos. This is, in part, the lesson of the old Socialist party of Norman Thomas. Franklin Delano Roosevelt adopted the political narrative, and much of the practical program, of the socialists of his day. However, instead of embracing FDR’s social-democratic turn, Thomas & co tried more and more to distinguish themselves and discredit Roosevelt claiming that he only “carried out the socialist program on a stretcher”.Some on the left attacked Roosevelt’s enormously popular New Deal and lambasted Democrats as cynics and opportunists. The result was to hasten the political irrelevance of the very figures most responsible for inspiring a great populist revival in the 1930s. If today’s left wants to avoid a similar fate, they should embrace the new populists of the center and work with them to craft visionary social policy. And they should have the humility to revise their own opinions when the centrists have a point.Second, the turn toward populism will remain incomplete until party leaders are willing to stridently declare war on the economic elite – the same elite who fill the campaign coffers of powerful Democrats. Not only is it essential for candidates to draw lines between themselves and the very rich to demonstrate their populist convictions, but without naming the “millionaires and billionaires” as the cause of so much economic misery, Democrats will be unable to mount a serious challenge to rule by the rich.Many moderates who have lately flirted with populism have as yet been unwilling to point the finger at Wall Street and Silicon Valley as the villains of the contemporary order. Yet, it is precisely because the ultra-wealthy have hijacked American society that so many working-class Americans struggle to pay their bills. The fact is we cannot win a society that is more equal and more prosperous without directly challenging the plutocrats at the top.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionFinally, policy matters. Becoming the party of “economic rage” is a good way to win elections but to fix the crisis (crises?), the new social populism must go beyond the standard welfare state toolbox. Carville and other newfound populists have made a huge political leap in embracing a suite of big, new public services and for that they should be commended. Yet it isn’t enough.No doubt, we urgently need bold redistributive programs to rebalance income and wealth and to address the persistent cost crunch. But these alone will not fix our broken economy. Nor are such programs popular enough to propel a populist takeover in Washington. To get a sense of just what is wrong, consider that since Bill Clinton was president, we have shed some 7m middle-income jobs in manufacturing, and in an exaggerated inverse-proportion we have gained some 700 billionaires.If a renewed leftwing populism is to succeed it needs to address this. We need to de-globalize the economy, to disentangle the home market from the increasingly dysfunctional world market. We need to bring manufacturing home and reindustrialize the rustbelt.We need to reign in and repatriate the hyper-global banking sector. We need to rebuild American infrastructure from coast to coast. And we need to strengthen the power of labor on the shop floor by leveling the legal playing field between workers and employers. All of this would amount to a democratic reorganization of the political economy away from the global rich and toward the domestic working class.This would be a populism worthy of the name and if moderate Democrats are embracing such a call, they ought to be welcomed with open arms. And if the hour isn’t too late, this kind of appeal might be the only chance Democrats have of winning back the working class and retaking Washington.

      Dustin Guastella is a research associate at the Center for Working Class Politics and the director of operations for Teamsters Local 623 More

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      Majority of Latino voters disapprove of Trump, Pew study finds

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      A majority of Latinos disapprove of Donald Trump and his economic and immigration policies, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center.After receiving support from nearly half of Latino voters in the 2024 election, Trump had lost the backing of a majority surveyed in October. Pew found that 70% of Latinos “disapprove of the way Trump is handling his job as president”, while 65% disapprove of his administration’s approach to immigration and 61% believe his economic policies have worsened economic conditions.Trump won 48% of the Latino vote in 2024, up from 28% in 2016. Latinos, one of the fastest-growing demographics in the United States, account for one in five Americans.After the 2024 election, Latinos, particularly Latino men, credited Trump’s economic proposals and immigration policies – suggesting he was not serious about threats of mass deportations – for winning their vote.At the time, two-thirds of Latinos said they “do not feel like he is talking about me” when Trump discussed his immigration policies, and more than 40% approved of his proposal to build a border wall, according to an October 2024 Siena poll for the New York Times.But since Trump implemented sweeping tariffs and social safety net spending cuts, alongside aggressive immigration raids, that support has dwindled. In June, a co-founder of Latinas for Trump criticized widespread immigration arrests as “unacceptable and inhumane”.The results of the November elections showed that Democrats won back Latino voters in New Jersey and Virginia’s gubernatorial races.The shifts within the Latino electorate are still markedly divided by political party. According to the Pew report, while nearly all Latinos who voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 election disapprove of Trump, 81% of those who voted for Trump approve of the president’s job (down from 93% at the start of his term).A majority of Latinos worry that they, a family member or a close friend could be deported under the president’s heightened immigration enforcement – where 42% expressed such fear in March, 52% do now. Nearly 60% said they had witnessed or heard of immigration raids or arrests in their community in the past six months.For the first time in nearly two decades, Pew reported that “most Hispanics say their situation has worsened”. While 10% of Hispanics told Pew that Trump’s policies helped them, 78% said the president’s policies harmed their community. More

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      Trump news at a glance: James Comey, Letitia James welcome judge’s decision to toss criminal cases

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      A federal judge threw out the criminal cases against James Comey and Letitia James on Monday, concluding that the prosecutor handling the case was unlawfully appointed.Lindsey Halligan, who Trump named the interim US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia in September, had “no lawful authority to present the indictment” against the former FBI director and New York attorney general, Judge Cameron McGowan Currie, wrote in her opinion.She added that “all actions flowing from Ms Halligan’s defective appointment” were “unlawful exercises of executive power and must be set aside”.The decision is a major win for Comey, who was charged with lying to Congress five years ago, and James, who was charged with mortgage fraud. Both unequivocally denied wrongdoing and said the cases were a thinly veiled effort by the Trump administration to punish them for opposing the president.Currie dismissed both cases “without prejudice”, which means the government could theoretically try to bring the charges again under a properly appointed US attorney. But it is unclear if they could even do that in Comey’s case because the statute of limitations for the crime he is charged with passed on 30 September 2025.US judge throws out criminal cases against James Comey and Letitia James“I am heartened by today’s victory and grateful for the prayers and support I have received from around the country,” James said in a statement. “I remain fearless in the face of these baseless charges as I continue fighting for New Yorkers every single day.”Comey also praised the decision.“I’m grateful that the court ended the case against me which was a prosecution based on malevolence and incompetence,” he said in a recorded video. “This case mattered to me personally, obviously, but it matters most because a message has to be sent that the president of the United States cannot use the Department of Justice to target his political enemies.”Read the full storyUkraine makes significant changes to US ‘peace plan’, sources sayUkraine has significantly amended the US “peace plan” to end the conflict, removing some of Russia’s maximalist demands, people familiar with the negotiations said, as European leaders warned that no deal could be reached quickly.Volodymyr Zelenskyy may meet Donald Trump in the White House later this week, sources indicated, amid a flurry of calls between Kyiv and Washington. Ukraine is pressing for Europe to be involved in the talks.Read the full storyPentagon investigating US senator over call for troops to refuse illegal ordersThe Pentagon says it is investigating the Arizona senator Mark Kelly for possible breaches of military law after the federal lawmaker joined a handful of other Democrats in a video calling for US troops to refuse unlawful orders.It is extraordinary for the Pentagon to directly threaten a sitting member of Congress with investigation. Until Donald Trump’s second presidency, the institution in charge of the US military had usually strived to appear apolitical.Read the full storyTrump begins process of designating Muslim Brotherhood chapters as terrorist groupsTrump began the process of designating certain Muslim Brotherhood chapters as foreign terrorist organizations and specially designated global terrorists, a move would bring sanctions against one of the Arab world’s oldest and most influential Islamist movements.Trump signed an executive order directing secretary of state Marco Rubio and treasury secretary Scott Bessent to submit a report on whether to designate any Muslim Brotherhood chapters, such as those in Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan, according to a White House factsheet. It orders the secretaries to move forward with any designations within 45 days of the report.Read the full storyVenezuela accuses US of using ‘narco-terrorism’ allegations to justify ‘regime change’Venezuela’s government has accused the US of peddling “ridiculous hogwash” about its supposed role in sponsoring “narco-terrorism” as Washington continued to turn up the heat on Nicolás Maduro’s regime and leftwing European politicians warned South America faced being plunged into “a torrent of bloodshed”.The Trump administration officially designated a Venezuelan group known as the “Cartel de los Soles” (the Cartel of the Suns) a terrorist organization – despite widespread doubts over its actual existence.Read the full storyFox Corp chief told Sean Hannity that Trump could not go on air in 2020 if he attacked network
      New revelations about the tense relationship between Fox News and Donald Trump in the fall of 2020 have emerged in a trove of thousands of court documents released Sunday as part of a massive defamation lawsuit filed against the network by voting technology company Smartmatic.One exchange showed that Lachlan Murdoch, the chief executive of Fox News parent company Fox Corp, told star anchor Sean Hannity in a 1 October 2020 text chain that Trump could not appear on Fox again if he attacked the network.Read the full storyTrump hints support for fringe theory that Venezuela rigged 2020 electionDonald Trump on Sunday appeared to endorse the discredited conspiracy theory that Venezuela’s leadership controls electronic voting software worldwide and caused his 2020 election defeat to Joe Biden.White House officials have previously said that Trump’s increasingly bellicose policy toward Venezuela is driven by concerns about migration and the drug trade. But the president’s new comment, made on Truth Social, hints that his hostility to Venezuela may also be based on an outlandish, implausible theory ruled to be false by a judge in 2023.Read the full storyTrump DoJ’s focus on Maga goals harms other investigations, experts warnDonald Trump’s weaponization of the US department of justice to focus on retribution against political foes, on fulfilling Maga goals and on granting pardons for allies has seen thousands of lawyers depart or be fired and weakened investigations in civil rights, national security and other areas, say ex-prosecutors and legal experts.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      A church employee is under arrest in Houston, Texas, after being accused of posing as an ICE agent to extort money from a woman he had booked to give him a massage.

      A controversial and secretive private company backed by the US and Israel that distributed food in Gaza has announced the end of its operations in the devastated territory.

      The Trump administration announced it will cancel temporary asylum for about 10,000 Myanmar nationals living in the US, despite the country being ruled by a military dictatorship that has a record of executing dissidents.

      The North Dakota supreme court revived the state’s abortion ban on Friday, once again making it a felony for doctors to perform the procedure except in medical emergencies or in some cases of rape or incest.

      A flurry of social media posts from Maga influencers have laid bare the disorientation felt by members of Trump’s base at the spectacle of Friday’s cordial Oval Office meeting with Mamdani, who the president previously painted as a “communist lunatic”.

      Viola Ford Fletcher, one of the last survivors of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre in Oklahoma, has died at 111. She spent her later years seeking justice for the deadly attack by a white mob on the thriving Black community where she lived as a child.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 23 November 2025. More

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      Trump begins process of designating Muslim Brotherhood chapters as terrorist groups

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      Donald Trump on Monday began the process of designating certain Muslim Brotherhood chapters as foreign terrorist organizations and specially designated global terrorists, a move that would bring sanctions against one of the Arab world’s oldest and most influential Islamist movements.Trump signed an executive order directing Secretary of State Marco Rubio and treasury secretary Scott Bessent to submit a report on whether to designate any Muslim Brotherhood chapters, such as those in Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan, according to a White House fact sheet. It orders the secretaries to move forward with any designations within 45 days of the report.The Trump administration has accused Muslim Brotherhood factions in those countries of supporting or encouraging violent attacks against Israel and US partners, or of providing material support to Palestinian militant group Hamas.“President Trump is confronting the Muslim Brotherhood’s transnational network, which fuels terrorism and destabilization campaigns against US interests and allies in the Middle East,” according to a White House fact sheet.The Brotherhood was founded in Egypt in the 1920s as an Islamic political movement to counter the spread of secular and nationalist ideas. It swiftly spread through Muslim countries, becoming a major player but often operating in secret.Republicans and right-wing voices have long advocated for and considered terrorist designations for the Muslim Brotherhood.Trump mounted a similar effort during his first term. Months after his second term began, Rubio said the Trump administration was working to designate the movement as a terrorist organization.Texas Governor Greg Abbott, also a Republican, last week imposed the same designation on the Muslim Brotherhood at a state level. More