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      Democratic contender for Congress indicted over Chicago ICE protests

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      Kat Abughazaleh, a progressive candidate for Congress, has been indicted on federal charges related to her participation in protests outside an ICE processing facility near Chicago in September.The indictment, filed last week, alleges that the 26-year old Palestinian American candidate and five other individuals “physically hindered and impeded” a federal agent who was “forced to drive at an extremely slow rate of speed to avoid injuring any of the conspirators”.Abughazaleh, who is running for Illinois’s ninth congressional district to replace the outgoing Democrat Jan Schakowsky, was charged with conspiracy to forcibly impede or injure a federal agent, and assaulting or impeding the agent while they were performing official duties.According to the indictment, the group “conspired with one another and others, known and unknown, to prevent by force, intimidation, and threat, Agent A, a United States law enforcement officer, from discharging the duties of his office”.It alleged that Abughazaleh, along with the other individuals, “banged aggressively” on the agent’s vehicle, “crowded together in the front and side” of the vehicle and “pushed against the vehicle to hinder and impede its movement”.According to the indictment, the group etched the word “pig” on to the vehicle and broke a side mirror and a rear windshield wiper. It also alleged that Abughazaleh specifically “joined the crowd at the front of the government vehicle, and with her hands on the hood braced her body and hands against the vehicle while remaining directly in the path of the vehicle, hindering and impeding” the agent.Following the indictment, Abughazaleh, who is known for her large social media platform on which she frequently criticizes Donald Trump’s immigration crackdowns, called the indictment “political prosecution”.“This is a … gross attempt at silencing dissent, a right protected under the first amendment. This case is yet another attempt by the Trump administration to criminalize protest and punish those who dare to speak up. That’s why I’m going to fight these unjust charges,” she said.Abughazaleh added: “As I and others exercised our first amendment rights, ICE has hit, dragged, thrown, shot with pepper balls, and teargassed hundreds of protesters, myself included. Simply because we had the gall to say masked men abducting our neighbors and terrorizing our community cannot be the new normal.“This case targets our rights to protest, speak freely, and associate with anyone who disagrees with this government … I’ve spent my career fighting America’s backwards slide towards fascism and I’m not going to give up now,” she continued.The indictment comes as the Trump administration ramps up federal immigration raids across numerous progressive cities including Chicago – a move which has been harshly criticized by local and state leaders.The raids have drawn widespread opposition from the public, congressional Democratic lawmakers and civil rights groups, with the ACLU describing them as a “build out of a national paramilitary policing force that could be used to … consolidate President Donald Trump’s power”. More

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      From CBS to TikTok, US media are falling to Trump’s allies. This is how democracy crumbles | Owen Jones

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      Democracy may be dying in the US. Whether the patient receives emergency treatment in time will determine whether the condition becomes terminal. Before Donald Trump’s return to the presidency, I warned of “Orbánisation” – in reference to Hungary’s authoritarian leader Viktor Orbán. There, democracy was not extinguished by firing squads or the mass imprisonment of dissidents, but by slow attrition. The electoral system was warped, civil society was targeted and pro-Orbán moguls quietly absorbed the media.Nine months on, and Orbánisation is in full bloom across the Atlantic. Billionaire Larry Ellison, the Oracle co-founder, and his filmmaker son, David, have become blunt instruments in this process. Trump boasts they are “friends of mine – they’re big supporters of mine”. Larry Ellison, second only to Elon Musk as the world’s richest man, has poured tens of millions into Republican coffers. Shortly after the 2020 election, he joined a call that discussed challenging the legitimacy of the vote. His son, David, has a history of backing Democrats – but at one time, so did Trump, his daughter Ivanka and his son-in-law Jared Kushner.In August, David Ellison’s Skydance Media acquired Paramount Global with financial support from his father, leaving him as chair and CEO of the new entity. Beyond a vast slice of Hollywood, this acquisition brought control of CBS News – one of the US’s “big three” networks. During the last election, Trump demanded CBS lose its broadcasting licence over alleged political bias and even sued the network over what he called a flattering edit of Kamala Harris’s 60 Minutes interview. His mood has since improved. Ellison is “going to do the right thing” with the network, Trump crowed when its ownership shifted. His optimism was swiftly vindicated: a Trump appointee was installed as CBS’s ombudsman to monitor “bias”, and Bari Weiss – a former Democrat turned anti-woke crusader – was made editor-in-chief.Now, Trump officials are briefing that they are also in favour of Paramount Skydance buying Warner Bros Discovery, the parent company of HBO and CNN. “Who owns Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) is very important to the administration,” a senior Trump official told the conservative New York Post. The pro-Trump newspaper states that rival bidders will face “regulatory hurdles”, with WBD’s CEO forced to consider the Trump administration’s willingness to crack down on what it sees as rampant leftwing bias across the mainstream media.Larry Ellison, meanwhile, also leads a group of investors set to take over TikTok’s US operations, with other partners reportedly including Rupert Murdoch and Abu Dhabi’s government-owned investment company. Although much of Trump’s own criticism of TikTok has focused on China, key Maga figures such as Josh Hawley and Marco Rubio have called for the app to be banned over “anti-Israel” bias, and for shifting younger Americans’ sympathies towards Palestinians. Ellison is a fervent supporter of Israel, and has previously donated millions to its military through the non-profit Friends of the Israel Defense Forces. They will be pleased to have him in charge.In 2015, Safra Catz, Oracle’s Israeli-American executive chair, and former CEO, reportedly told former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak in an email that: “We believe that we have to embed the love and respect for Israel in the American culture.” Oracle will have oversight of the TikTok algorithm.But this goes much further than the Ellisons’ acquisitions. Trump threatened Meta owner Mark Zuckerberg would “spend the rest of his life in prison” if he crossed him. The social media mogul has little to worry about now, having done his best to ingratiate himself with the administration. He abandoned third-party factchecking in the US, dropped restrictions on topics such as immigration and gender, and appointed Trump supporters as head of global affairs and to the executive board. At the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post, columnist Karen Attiah says she was fired for “speaking out against political violence, racial double standards, and America’s apathy toward guns” after Charlie Kirk’s assassination.Liberal comedian Jimmy Kimmel had his ABC show suspended after the pro-Trump chair of the Federal Communications Commission demanded action. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting – long deemed hostile by Trump – has been defunded and shut down. The administration took control over which media organisations have access to the White House, ejecting the Associated Press. US media outlets were stripped of their Pentagon credentials after refusing to only report officially authorised information issued by the Department of Defense. Trump’s lawsuits against media organisations have further cowed them.It goes far beyond media control. Witness Trump deploying the national guard to Democratic strongholds and centralising control over elections. Republicans have launched new gerrymandering offensives, while demanding the denaturalisation and deportation of socialist New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, as Trump threatens to defund the city if he wins. In Hungary, too, Orbán slashed funding for opposition mayoralties. Opponents are threatened with arrest: the arch warmonger John Bolton may be politically loathsome, but the charges filed against him are the harbinger of worse to come. Trump’s former strategist Steve Bannon claims there is a plan to circumvent the constitution to allow his former boss to take a third term. We could go on.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionUS democracy has always been heavily flawed. It is so rigged in favour of wealthy elites that a detailed academic study back in 2014 found that the political system is rigged in favour of what the economic elites want. Yet because, unlike Hungary, the US has no history of dictatorship, with a system of supposed checks and balances, some felt it could never succumb to tyranny. Such complacency has collided with brutal reality. In just nine months, the US has been dragged towards an authoritarian abyss. A warning: Trump has 39 months left in office.

      Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist More

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      Court to reconsider ruling that allowed Trump to send troops to Portland

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      The Trump administration remains barred from deploying the national guard in Portland, Oregon, following a federal appeals court ruling.The ninth circuit court of appeals agreed on Tuesday that it would rehear a case over the president’s authority with a broader court of 11 judges. The appeals court also vacated a ruling from a three-judge panel last week that sided with the Trump administration.The order is the latest development in a long legal saga over whether Donald Trump has the authority and justification to deploy national guard forces in Portland. The Oregon city has had about 200 federalized guard members in limbo since late September when Trump attempted to mobilize in response to months of protests there.The federal government has argued that federal officials working at the ICE facility in south Portland were under attack, while city and state officials argue that local officers have control of the situation.In defiance of Trump’s characterization of Portland as “war ravaged”, locals have been sharing videos of the city’s lush hiking trails and thriving food scene, and drawing up plans for Emergency Naked Bike Ride against “the militarization of our city”.The appeals court decision on Tuesday came after US district judge Karin Immergut, a Trump appointee in Portland, issued two temporary restraining orders this month – one that blocked the president from federalizing the Oregon national guard, and another stopping him from deploying any national guard troops in Oregon, after Trump tried to evade the first order by calling up troops from California.On Monday, the ninth circuit panel put the first ruling on hold – allowing Trump to take command of 200 Oregon national guard – but the second ruling remained in place, blocking Trump from actually deploying the troops.The Tuesday decision means that the issue will be heard “en banc” – with both rulings under consideration together – by a panel of 11 judges.“This ruling shows the truth matters and that the courts are working to hold this administration accountable. The constitution limits the president’s power, and Oregon’s communities cannot be treated as a training ground for unchecked federal authority,” said Oregon attorney general Dan Rayfield wrote in a statement.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The court is sending a clear message: the president cannot send the military into US cities unnecessarily. We will continue defending Oregon’s laws, values, and sovereignty as this case moves forward and our fight continues in the courts.” More

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      Wole Soyinka, Nigerian Nobel laureate and Trump critic, says US visa revoked

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      The Trump administration has revoked the visa for Wole Soyinka, the acclaimed Nigerian Nobel prize-winning writer who has been critical of Trump since his first presidency, Soyinka revealed on Tuesday.“I want to assure the consulate … that I’m very content with the revocation of my visa,” Soyinka, who won the 1986 Nobel prize for literature, told a news conference.Soyinka previously held permanent residency in the United States, though he destroyed his green card after Donald Trump’s first election in 2016.Soyinka speculated that his recent comments comparing Trump to the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin might have struck a nerve and contributed to the US consulate’s decision.Soyinka said earlier this year that the US consulate in Lagos had called him in for an interview to reassess his visa, which he said he would not attend.According to a letter from the consulate addressed to Soyinka, seen by Agence France-Presse, officials have cancelled his visa, citing US state department regulations that allow “a consular officer, the secretary, or a department official to whom the secretary has delegated this authority … to revoke a nonimmigrant visa at any time, in his or her discretion”.Reading the letter aloud to journalists in Lagos, Nigeria’s economic centre, he jokingly called it a “rather curious love letter from an embassy”, while telling any organisations hoping to invite him to the United States “not to waste their time”.“I have no visa. I am banned,” Soyinka said.The US embassy in Abuja, the capital, said it could not comment on individual cases, citing confidentiality rules.The Trump administration has made visa revocations a hallmark of its wider crackdown on immigration, notably targeting university students who were outspoken about Palestinian rights.Soyinka said he had recently compared Trump to Uganda’s Amin, something he said Trump “should be proud of”.“Idi Amin was a man of international stature, a statesman, so when I called Donald Trump Idi Amin, I thought I was paying him a compliment,” Soyinka said. “He’s been behaving like a dictator.”The 91-year-old playwright behind Death and the King’s Horseman has taught at and been awarded honours from top US universities including Harvard and Cornell.His latest novel, Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth, a satire about corruption in Nigeria, was published in 2021. Soyinka described the book as his “gift to Nigeria” in an interiview with the Guardian.In February, the Crucible theatre in Sheffield staged Death and the King’s Horseman.Soyinka left the door open to accepting an invitation to the United States should circumstances change, but added: “I wouldn’t take the initiative myself because there’s nothing I’m looking for there. Nothing.”He went on to criticise the ramped-up arrests of undocumented immigrants in the country.“This is not about me,” Soyinka said. “When we see people being picked off the street – people being hauled up and they disappear for a month … old women, children being separated. So that’s really what concerns me.”Trump’s crackdown has seen national guard troops deployed to US cities and citizens temporarily detained as part of aggressive raids, as well as the curtailing of legal means of entry. More

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      US military kills 14 in attacks on vessels in the Pacific, according to Hegseth

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      The US military killed 14 people and left one survivor in more strikes on alleged drug-trafficking boats in the eastern Pacific, the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, said on Monday, as the Trump administration continued to expand its campaign beyond the Caribbean.The latest strikes mean the US has now attacked at least 13 vessels and brought the officially acknowledged death toll to 51 people since the campaign began at the start of September.Hegseth did not provide geographic details beyond saying that the strikes took place in the eastern Pacific, in international waters. Last week, the administration started targeting boats on the western side of the Americas after initially focusing on boats off the coast of Venezuela.The four boats were hit on Sunday in three strikes, Hegseth said in a social media post announcing the matter. His said the boats were “known by our intelligence apparatus, transiting along known narco-trafficking routes, and carrying narcotics”. He also acknowledged there was a survivor.In perhaps an effort to avoid the legally thorny questions that could come with detaining that person, Hegseth said the US enlisted Mexico to take on search-and-rescue responsibilities – which Mexico accepted.Hegseth sought to justify the attacks by comparing the US strikes against alleged drug traffickers to conducting strikes on al-Qaida targets during the global “war on terror”.“The Department has spent over TWO DECADES defending other homelands. Now, we’re defending our own. These narco-terrorists have killed more Americans than Al-Qaeda, and they will be treated the same. We will track them, we will network them, and then, we will hunt and kill them,” Hegseth said.Even so, the justification for the strikes has been widely disputed by legal experts. For one, when the US killed al-Qaida members, Congress had authorized the use of force. In targeting drug cartel members, the administration has relied on Trump’s Article II powers to defend the US against an imminent threat.Republican senator Rand Paul, who has been at odds with Trump in recent weeks, on Tuesday expressed criticism with the unilateral strikes and the prospect of a wider escalation with the Venezuelan government.“I am disturbed by the actions with blowing up boats, with people whom we don’t know their name, we’ve been presented with no evidence of a crime,” Paul told reporters. “We don’t even know if they’re armed, frankly, and that’s more indicative of a war. It may be a prelude to war, but I hope it’s not.”Still, the latest boat strikes come as the US appears destined to start hitting land-based targets in the coming weeks, after the Pentagon sent its most advanced aircraft carrier and its strike group to the Caribbean – a major escalation in the Trump administration’s stated war against drug cartels.The move is expected to bring the USS Gerald Ford, with its dozens of fighter jets and its accompanying destroyers, to the coast of Venezuela by roughly the end of the week, according to a person familiar with the matter.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.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe supercarrier has dozens of F-18 Super Hornet jets that increase the offensive 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.Donald Trump confirmed to reporters at the White House on 23 October that the next stage of the campaign was to hit targets on the ground. “The land is going to be next,” the president 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 Hegseth, who was seated beside him at the White House event about curbing 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.” More

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      Agriculture secretary accused of unlawfully refusing to use emergency fund to prevent food stamp disruption – US politics live

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      Today brought more concern over food assistance for millions of Americans, as states filed an emergency lawsuit to prevent SNAP benefit cuts during the ongoing government shutdown.Donald Trump continued his Asia trip with stops in Japan and South Korea, while war secretary Pete Hegseth announced the killing of 14 people in strikes against alleged drug-trafficking vessels.Here’s what else happened today:

      More than two dozen states and Washington DC filed an emergency lawsuit against the Trump administration seeking to prevent food stamp benefits from being cut off for roughly 42 million Americans starting 1 November. State officials asked a federal judge to force the agriculture department to tap emergency reserve funds.

      The Pentagon announced US forces killed 14 people onboard alleged drug-trafficking vessels in three separate military operations on 27 October. Defense secretary Pete Hegseth vowed suspected narcotics smugglers will face the same treatment as terrorist organizations, saying: “We will track them, we will network them, and then, we will hunt and kill them.”

      Donald Trump appealed his criminal conviction in his hush money case, with lawyers arguing the trial was “fatally marred” by evidence that should have been protected under the supreme court’s presidential immunity ruling.

      The Trump administration plans to revamp ICE leadership as it seeks to intensify mass deportation efforts, potentially replacing multiple field office directors with border patrol officials after falling well short of arrest targets.

      House Republicans’ oversight chair James Comer asked the justice department to investigate whether Joe Biden’s aides improperly used an autopen to sign executive actions, claiming Biden’s inner circle concealed his cognitive decline while exercising presidential authority without authorization.

      Trump is expected to offer China tariff cuts in exchange for a fentanyl crackdown when he meets with Xi Jinping on Thursday, according to the Wall Street Journal. The US could halve the 20% levies on Chinese goods in return for Beijing restricting exports of chemicals used to manufacture fentanyl.

      Trump confirmed he would meet with Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang on Wednesday during his Asia trip, ahead of Huang’s attendance at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation CEO Summit in South Korea.

      Three US servicemembers connected to Wright-Patterson air force base in Ohio were found dead in a double-murder suicide over the weekend in what officials called a “tragic event” under investigation by state and military authorities.
      This blog has been paused for now, but may resume later today pending new developments.A federal judge in San Francisco has barred the Trump administration from continuing to terminate government employees during the shutdown, extending legal protections beyond a temporary order that was scheduled to expire this week.Judge Susan Illston’s preliminary injunction will remain in place throughout the legal challenge, indicating her belief the mass terminations across education, health and other departments will ultimately be proven unlawful.Three US servicemembers connected to Wright-Patterson air force base in Ohio were found dead in a double-murder suicide over the weekend that impacted multiple locations around Dayton, according to a statement from the Air Force materiel command’s deputy commander.Lieutenant general Linda Hurry said authorities are “committed to fully investigating this incident” but declined to share specific details as the Ohio bureau of criminal investigation, assisted by the Air Force office of special investigations, continues its probe into deaths occurring over a 12-hour period overnight between the 24 and 25 October.A government accountability organization has accused agriculture secretary Brooke Rollins of unlawfully refusing to tap a $5bn emergency fund that Congress specifically created to prevent food stamp disruptions during government shutdowns.The Democracy Defenders Fund sent a letter to Rollins arguing that the USDA is legally obliged to use the SNAP contingency fund to continue benefits for 42 million Americans, warning that the secretary’s failure to draw on available money represents “a deliberate decision to deny food” to vulnerable populations including the elderly, children and veterans.The halting of SNAP benefits will devastate merchants across the country who accept food stamps, including about 26,600 grocers and farmers’ markets in California alone, 17,000 in New York, and 10,600 in Pennsylvania, according to the states’ legal filing.And with Thanksgiving a few weeks away, the filing argues that many retailers have already purchased increased inventory to meet expected demand, but without SNAP funds flowing to recipients, businesses face significant revenue losses and food waste just as families would ordinarily be preparing for the holiday.The sudden loss of food assistance for 42 million Americans is expected to trigger a cascade of healthcare costs as food insecurity drives increased emergency room visits and hospitalizations, according to the lawsuit.One example state officials point to is Connecticut, which anticipates that the abrupt termination of SNAP benefits will create downstream effects on safety net programs like Medicaid, which partially depend on state funding to cover healthcare costs for vulnerable populations.About one in eight people in the United States are on food stamps, which average around $187 a month and cost the federal government about $8bn monthly, making the potential November cutoff a crisis affecting tens of millions of households.The Trump administration declined to extend a reprieve for Snap benefits, despite the agriculture department acknowledging weeks ago that it could reprogram emergency reserve money to prevent benefit cuts – a move supported by both congressional democrats and republicans.More than two dozen states and Washington DC have filed an emergency lawsuit against the Trump administration seeking to prevent food stamp benefits from being cut off for roughly 42 million Americans during the ongoing government shutdown.State officials from Arizona, California, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Colorado, Michigan and other states asked a federal judge to force Washington to tap emergency reserve funds so that families receiving assistance under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program would not see their benefits interrupted starting 1 November.Donald Trump and Xi Jinping will likely discuss a trade framework that would see the US slash tariffs on Chinese goods in return for Beijing’s commitment to restrict exports of chemicals used to manufacture fentanyl, according to reporting in the Wall Street Journal.The report said the US could halve the 20% levies imposed on Chinese products as retaliation for fentanyl precursor exports, with details to be negotiated following Thursday’s meeting between the two leaders during Trump’s Asia trip.Every morning, Alicia Mercado makes the 50-minute drive from her home in Columbus to Springfield, where she runs the Adasa Latin Market store. She opened the business next to a Haitian restaurant in 2023, having spotted a gap in the market for Caribbean and Latin foods – the neighborhood’s Haitian population was booming at the time.But over the past year, she says her business, which includes an international money transfer kiosk, has taken a major hit.“About 80 to 90% of our customers were Haitians; now that’s down to about 60% over the past six months,” she says. “No more people are moving to Springfield.”Mercado’s experiences are being echoed around the city of 58,000 people that garnered international attention last year when Donald Trump falsely claimed during a presidential debate that immigrants were eating people’s pets.Until the end of last year, Springfield was something of a surprise economic juggernaut. A report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland found that it ranked second among all Ohio cities for job growth since the pandemic. New housing projects, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, are among the biggest investments the city has ever made.That growth was partly fueled by the availability of manufacturing and blue-collar jobs that were eagerly filled by the more than 15,000 Haitian immigrants who had moved to the city over the past eight years, fueling businesses such as Mercado’s.Local companies got cheap, reliable labor, while Haitian workers received stable income, health insurance and a safe place to live. Many bought homes and invested their hard-earned income into improving the city’s housing stock that, in turn, padded the city’s tax coffers. For the most part, it was a win for all involved.But since then, the city’s economic fortunes have spiraled.For the full story, click here:Donald Trump has appealed his criminal conviction in his hush money case, with his lawyers arguing that the trial was “fatally marred” by evidence that should have been protected under the supreme court’s 2024 ruling on presidential immunity.In a court filing on Monday night, his lawyers accused Manhattan’s district attorney Alvin Bragg of being politically motivated to prosecute Trump.“Targeting alleged conduct that has never been found to violate any New York law, the DA concocted a purported felony by stacking time-barred misdemeanors under a convoluted legal theory, which the DA then improperly obscured until the charge conference. This case should never have seen the inside of a courtroom, let alone resulted in a conviction,” his lawyers said.The appeal comes 17 months after Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to payments he made to his former lawyer, Michael Cohen. Those payments reimbursed Cohen for a $130,000 payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels, intended to keep her from speaking publicly about an alleged sexual affair with Trump.The Trump administration is planning to revamp the leadership of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), according to reports, as the government seeks to intensify its mass deportation efforts.Multiple news outlets have reported that the government intends to reassign multiple directors of ICE field offices in the coming days, potentially replacing them with border patrol officials.It comes as the government is falling well short of its targets on immigration. Earlier this year, Stephen Miller – Donald Trump’s deputy chief of staff – set ICE a target of arresting 3,000 people every day. But as of late September, the agency on average was arresting 1,178 daily, NBC reported.The New York Times reported that the proposed changes stem from the White House becoming frustrated at the pace of deportations, which now lags behind Trump’s goal of removing 1 million immigrants in his first year in office.For the full story, click here:Donald Trump will reportedly meet the presidents of five Central Asian nations next week in what marks a rare high-level gathering focused on the resource-rich former Soviet republics, a source familiar with the plans tells Reuters.Should the 6 November meeting happen, it will bring together the leaders of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.The justification for the strikes has been widely disputed by legal experts. For one, when the US killed al-Qaida members, Congress had authorized the use of force. In targeting drug cartel members, the administration has relied on Trump’s article II powers to defend the US against an imminent threat.The latest boat strikes come as the US appears destined to start hitting land-based targets in the coming weeks, after the Pentagon sent its most advanced aircraft carrier and its strike group to the Caribbean – a major escalation in the Trump administration’s stated war against drug cartels.The move is expected bring the USS Gerald Ford, with its dozens of fighter jets, and its accompanying destroyers, to the coast of Venezuela by roughly the end of the week, according to a person familiar with the matter.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.Read more from my colleague Hugo Lowell here.A far-right Republican legislator has urged federal authorities to investigate whether Zohran Mamdani, the New York City mayoral candidate, committed naturalization fraud by allegedly failing to disclose his Democratic Socialists of America affiliation and political views when becoming a US citizen.The latest freak-out over Mamdani’s possible ascension to mayoralty comes from Andy Ogles, the Tennessee congressperson who claims in a letter to attorney general Pam Bondi that Mamdani “praised terrorists” and held views that “openly despised the US constitution” in 2017, and argues such positions should have been revealed during the citizenship process.“If we deport Mamdani for breaking REAL laws, we can save NYC and take back our country from the Marxists who want to reduce America to a third-world wasteland,” he wrote on X.Mike Johnson, while talking to reporters, said the pardons made by Joe Biden are “invalid on their face”.“I used to be a constitutional lawyer,” the House speaker added. “I would love to take this case, go into the court and make that law to set the precedent”.The Monday strikes hit four boats in three waves in the eastern Pacific ocean, Hegseth said. There were 14 confirmed killed, and one survivor, who was taken by Mexican search and rescue teams.Prior to the missiles on Monday, US forces have carried out at least eight strikes against boats off the Caribbean over the last few weeks, killing 40 people.Pete Hegseth, the Trump administration’s defence secretary, announced on social media that US forces killed 14 people onboard alleged drug-trafficking vessels in three separate military operations on 27 October, and vowed that suspected narcotics smugglers will face the same treatment as terrorist organizations.“These narco-terrorists have killed more Americans than Al-Qaeda, and they will be treated the same,” Hegseth wrote Tuesday morning, adding: “We will track them, we will network them, and then, we will hunt and kill them.”There was one survivor. Hegseth said the strikes came at the direction of the Donald Trump.The GOP-led committee also released a staff report based on a 14-witness deposition alleging Biden’s advisors orchestrated a cover-up involving scripted appearances and restricted media access.It claims that senior strategist Mike Donilon and other key advisors “stood to gain financially and politically” from maintaining Biden’s candidacy while suppressing evidence of his decline.Three aides, including Biden’s physician Kevin O’Connor, invoked fifth amendment protections during the probe. More

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      Trump’s third term? Don’t laugh. He’s never let the rules stop him before | Arwa Mahdawi

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      Let me tell you a secret about the US constitution: it’s just a piece of paper. It’s not immutable law created by a higher being. It was made by men, it’s been amended by men, and it can be destroyed by men. It’s only as strong as the institutions that uphold it – institutions which Donald Trump has been systematically weakening as he expands his executive power.I say this because there are still lots of people who have faith that the constitution can stop the US from gradually turning into an electoral autocracy like Hungary. There are still people so drunk on American exceptionalism that they think it’s ludicrous to believe Trump might seek a third term, because such a move is explicitly outlawed by the 22nd amendment of the constitution.But the president and his cronies don’t think the idea is ludicrous. Trump has refused to rule out the idea of a third term on multiple occasions – most recently on Monday when he told reporters he “would love to do it”. And last week Trump’s former White House chief strategist, Steve Bannon, told the Economist that “there’s a plan” to get Trump a third term.Don’t dismiss this as trolling or an attempt to shake off the “lame duck” label second-term presidents are landed with. The golden rule of Trumpism is this: no matter how illegal or unusual something may be, if Trump can figure out a way to do it, then he will. And while I think it’s extremely unlikely, there is a path to Trump 3.0. Here’s a very simplified version of how it might pan out.Step one, obviously, is to figure out a plausible legal basis for a third term. Repealing the 22nd amendment, ratified in 1951 in response to Franklin D Roosevelt bucking tradition and serving a third term, requires approval from two-thirds of the House and Senate. Not easy. Another possibility is a constitutional convention; two-thirds of state legislatures (34 states) would need to call for a convention and any amendment would need ratification by three-quarters of state legislatures. This would also be incredibly difficult but it’s worth noting that the Heritage Foundation, which is responsible for Project 2025, are keen on holding a constitutional convention. And where there’s a will, and a lot of cash from ultra-wealthy donors, there is often a way.Another possibility is that Trump could declare a state of emergency and postpone the 2028 election. Trump loves a good fake emergency: he’s already used at least 10 emergency declarations to justify everything from his tariffs to dispatching the National Guard to Los Angeles. Again: while this seems far-fetched, we live in extraordinary times; it shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand.Once you’ve conjured up a legal basis (no matter how flimsy) for a third term or extended second term, you’ve got to manipulate public opinion to make it seem above board as opposed to autocratic shenanigans. Trump has already proved himself adept at chipping away at press freedom and turning elements of the US media from watchdogs to lapdogs.Social media, as we all know, is also easily manipulated; some studies suggest one-third of the internet is now bots. Reports show that Russia and Israel have poured huge amounts of money into bot-based programs to push propaganda to US audiences. And they’re spending that money because it works: fake accounts can cause very real shifts in views. Remember the hoo-ha over the recent Cracker Barrel rebrand? Researchers think it was largely driven by bots. Now that Elon Musk owns X and TikTok is on its way to being owned by a consortium of Trump’s pals (with Barron Trump potentially sitting on the board), much of social media has been Maga-fied. It’s gone from being a place to find alternative views to a consent-manufacturing machine.Finally, you’ve got to neutralise your opposition. Unlike the previous two steps, this is easy, since there’s no opposition. The Democrats are still floundering and trying to figure out what they stand for. Meanwhile, Kamala Harris, who appears to surround herself exclusively with sycophants, is threatening to run again in 2028. Doing so would be a gift to Trump. Gavin Newsom, a likely 2028 contender, is a more serious threat to Maga but there’s still plenty of time to do what Democrats do best and self-sabotage.Look, I hope my fears are unfounded. I hope the Democrats seize the moment. I hope Trumpism is a temporary nightmare. But while we should hope for the best, we should be prepared for the worst. I don’t want to have to say “I told you so” from an ICE detention centre. Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist and the author of Strong Female Lead More

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      Forget diplomatic niceties: it’s beyond time Europe denounced Trump’s trashing of democracy in the US | Paul Taylor

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      What do you do when you discover your best friend is abusive to their partner at home? That question, or something similar, should be addressed to European leaders – and indeed to all of us in the European public space, who are watching, often speechless, as Donald Trump takes a cudgel to the institutions of American democracy.For the last nine months, European leaders have bitten their tongues, looked the other way and engaged in flattery, appeasement and wild promises to keep the US president sweet and engaged in European security. The overwhelming imperative for Trump to stand with Europe against Russia over its war on Ukraine – or at least not against us and alongside Vladimir Putin – has led them to swallow unrealistic defence spending targets and unbalanced trade terms. For what gain?No European leader has publicly contradicted Trump’s inflated claims to have ended eight wars in eight months, nor criticised his demolition of the multilateral rules-based free trade order, his assault on the United Nations, or his selective use of tariffs to pursue political vendettas around the world.The only time European leaders briefly found their voices was when JD Vance used the stage of the Munich security conference to launch a fierce attack on European democracy. Vance accused US allies of suppressing free speech and said he was more worried by “the threat from within … the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values” than by any threat from Russia or China to the continent’s freedom. To underline his support for freedom of anti-immigrant hate speech, he chose to meet the leader of the far-right German AfD Alice Weidel in Munich in the midst of an election campaign, and to snub Berlin’s then-chancellor, Olaf Scholz of the Social Democrats.With millions of Americans now taking to the streets to protest against Trump’s authoritarian drift at home, isn’t it time for European leaders to speak up and assert their moral autonomy by signalling Europe’s support for democracy in the US, and for those who are trying to defend it?This is not to suggest that an expression of European dismay would have any practical effect on the dismantling of checks and balances in the US political system, the abolition of the USAID foreign aid agency, the crackdowns on universities, law firms and science, the abuse of the justice system against political enemies, or the purging of the armed forces and, most alarmingly, the deployment of the military in American cities to combat the “enemy from within”.While the US can protect security in Europe and deserves our undying gratitude for having done so for the last 80 years, Europeans cannot protect democracy in the US. They can and must, however, protect liberal democracy in Europe, which risks becoming a collateral victim of Trump’s domestic and foreign policy agenda.What happens in America doesn’t stay in America. It is often a precursor for trends in Europe. Just as the #MeToo and “woke” movements spilled over from Hollywood studios and US campuses to European film sets and universities, so the tide of illiberalism and repression rising in Washington is already washing up on European shores in countries such as Hungary and Serbia. By speaking up about Trump’s assaults on the independence of the US civil service, judiciary, legal profession, media and armed forces, and his moves to criminalise dissent, European leaders would be asserting the values of the rule of law, the separation of powers and liberal democracy that they have a duty to preserve at home.If Elon Musk can use his social media platform and the world’s biggest fortune to intervene in German elections in favour of Weidel’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) – or in British politics in support of convicted anti-Islam extremist Tommy Robinson – then surely we, too, can make our voices heard in US politics. We can offer support and practical cooperation to states, cities and courts that share our values, and moral support to US freedom campaigners. Our governments and regions can build partnerships on climate action, civil rights and development assistance with like-minded US states and local authorities. We can offer jobs, visas and scholarships to US scientists and academics hit by Trump’s cuts to research funding. Europe stands only to gain from a self-inflicted American brain drain.The massive No Kings protests in towns and cities across the US were fortunately peaceful, despite Trump’s deployment of armed forces in Washington DC, Los Angeles, Memphis, Portland and other cities, and the attempted mobilisation of the National Guard across 19 states. But having branded his leftwing opponents “domestic terrorists”, the risk is growing that Trump will make good on his threat to invokethe 1807 Insurrection Act and claim sweeping powers to use the military against American protesters.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe last time the US military was used for domestic policing against demonstrations was under Richard Nixon in 1970, when the National Guard shot dead four students protesting, at Kent State University in Ohio, against the draft and the US military intervention in Cambodia. An earlier precedent for the deadly use of force against peaceful protesters was in Selma, Alabama in 1965, when state and local police violently broke up civil rights marches by black Americans demanding the unhindered right to vote. On both those historic occasions, European media criticised the use of force against peaceful demonstrators, but governments on this side of the Atlantic kept their mouths shut, motivated by the principle of non-interference in the affairs of an allied state.With the administration and its billionaire buddies intervening at will in support of hate speech and its proponents in Europe and against EU digital regulation, there is no longer any justification for staying silent. On the contrary, the defence of European liberal democracy starts by recognising when it is under threat in our closest ally.

      Paul Taylor is a senior visiting fellow at the European Policy Centre More