Category Archives: Trump administration

Roger Stone makes statement outside court after being arrested in Trump-Russia inquiry – live

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Longtime Trump ally appeared in federal court on Friday after being arrested in Florida on seven charges including obstruction

Roger Stone has apparently called into InfoWars, the website-cum-radio show of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

The InfoWars website seems to be having some problems, so I couldn’t listen in. But Paul Joseph Watson, InfoWars editor-at-large and noted crank, says Stone told the website:

Stone says just before 6am 29 agents burst into home w weapons, allowed him to dress, scared death out of his wife, taken to FBI Miami Dade, where he says agents treated him very well, then did bond hearing - shackled hands and feet - Special Counsel and US atty there, $250k bail https://t.co/HyKA5Fmmlt

Of course, Roger Stone wasn’t the only Trump ally appearing in federal court this morning.

Around the same time Stone was shuffling into Fort Lauderdale court in chains, Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, was in the US District Court for the District of Columbia in Washington DC.

His eyes tired and his hair streaked with grey, Paul Manafort looked morose and walked gingerly, with a limp, during his first court appearance in months on Friday.

The former Donald Trump campaign chairman, imprisoned in Virginia as he awaits sentencing, wore a suit and was not handcuffed during the hour-long hearing at the US District Court for the District of Columbia in Washington, which focused mainly on procedure.

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Colorado senator castigates Ted Cruz’s ‘crocodile tears’ – video

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Senator Michael Bennet, a Colorado Democrat, delivers a powerful speech on the impact of the US government shutdown, having been provoked by the Republican Ted Cruz's apparent concerns for emergency workers

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Doomsday clock stays at two minutes to midnight as crisis now ‘new abnormal’

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Warning that ‘We are like passengers on the Titanic, ignoring the iceberg ahead’ in face of nuclear arms and climate change threats

The risk to global civilisation from nuclear weapons and climate change remains at an all-time high, according to a group of prominent US scientists and former officials, who said the world’s predicament had become the “new abnormal”.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced that its symbolic “doomsday clock”, unveiled every year, was stuck at two minutes to midnight, the same as last January. The only other time the Bulletin has judged the world as being this close to catastrophe was 1953, in the early volatile stages of the cold war.

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Mike Pence backs Venezuelan protesters seeking to oust President Nicolás Maduro – video

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Mike Pence, the US vice-president, has issued a video message offering the country's ’unwavering support’ to Venezuelans protesting against President Nicolás Maduro. 

‘We stand with you, and we will stay with you until democracy is restored,’ Pence said on the eve of demonstrations expected to take place across the country. Maduro has accused Washington of trying to force a coup

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‘Onslaught of outrage’: resistance and activism reawaken in Trump era

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Two years since his inauguration, millions of Americans have built on recent movements such as Black Lives Matter to rally, march and strike against the president

For 125 days last year, Ashley Weitz stood with her four-year-old son on a quiet corner near their home in Salt Lake City for one hour daily to protest Donald Trump.

This was unusual for a woman who had mostly ignored the wall-to-wall coverage of Trump’s unprecedented behavior in the White House, occupied instead by the full-time task of being a disabled, single mother. But when his administration separated thousands of migrant children from their parents at the border last summer as part of its immigration crackdown, Weitz erupted – a line had been crossed and she felt acutely the privilege in her life.

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US-Kurdish patrol attacked in Syria as Erdoğan offers to step in

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Turkish president tells Donald Trump he is ready to send troops into US-overseen areas

The threat of a growing security vacuum in Syria as a result of Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw US troops has been underlined by an attack on a joint US-Kurdish patrol, which reportedly killed five people and injured at least two American soldiers.

The attack on Monday, in which a suicide bomber drove a car into a checkpoint, emphasised the vulnerability of American troops since the US president declared he was withdrawing 2,000 soldiers from northern Syria on the grounds that Islamic State has been defeated.

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The ‘exhausting’ work of factcheckers who track Trump’s barrage of lies

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Since taking office, Trump has made 7,645 ‘false or misleading claims’. In the month of October he said 1,200 things that were false or misleading, according to Fact Checker database

Donald Trump’s tumultuous presidency has presented problems for journalists the world over. But spare a thought for the people whose job it is to keep track of his lies: the Trump factcheckers.

Since taking office, the president has lied about everything from immigration figures to the number of burgers he served to the Clemson football team at the White House last week.

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Shutdown: Trump ‘amnesty’ hint angers right and fails to draw Democrats

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Donald Trump raised the possibility of one day granting amnesty to migrants living in the US illegally, after Democrats rejected his latest plan to fund a wall along the southern border and reopen the US government.

Related: Trump whisperers: are Stephen Miller and Fox keeping the shutdown alive?

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Forget the ‘border crisis’ – it is Trump’s shutdown that’s made us less safe

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With thousands of FBI and TSA staff furloughed and critical functions hit, the shutdown is a disaster for national security

President Trump closed the US government over a fabricated border crisis, and in doing so has sparked a real national security emergency. By shutting down the government, Trump has disabled America’s defenses against threats to national security.

Trump decided to shut down the government over the claim that America needs a wall to deal with a crisis at the border with Mexico. But there is no crisis on the border other than the humanitarian crisis of his own making, best illustrated by the thousands of children separated from their parents and the two children who died in Customs and Border Protection custody. Trump’s claims of more terrorists and crime flowing across the border are lies and the vast majority of hard drugs coming across the border come through official ports of entry, not between ports of entry where a wall might stand.

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Pelosi rejects Trump shutdown deal before president announces it

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  • President offers temporary concessions and demands wall
  • Little chance of progress as House speaker says no

Donald Trump forged ahead on Saturday and proposed a deal to end the US government shutdown, despite Democrats having rejected it before he began to speak.

Related: Republicans’ lack of alarm over the shutdown reveals a disturbing truth | Ross Barkan

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Trump stamp: how have his first two years marked five key policy areas?

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Guardian reporters chart the president’s impact on foreign policy, the economy, the judiciary, the environment and immigration

If there has been one defining trait in the foreign policy of the Trump era, it is confusion – not only in the frequent gaps between the paths taken by the president and his own administration, but also in the morass of contradictions and U-turns in his own impulses.

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Thousands more migrant children separated under Trump than previously known

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Damning government report says ‘thousands of separated children’ put in care up to a year before policy became public

The Trump administration may have separated thousands of migrant children from their parents at the border for up to a year before family separation was a publicly known practice, according to a stunning government review of the health department’s role in family separation.

Related: The US detention center where sick children receive ‘the bare minimum'

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Latest migrant caravan marches on as Trump again demands border wall

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The latest group set off from the notoriously violent Honduran city of San Pedro Sula at the start of this week

Hundreds of Central American migrants have continued their march towards the United States, crossing from Honduras into Guatemala, as Donald Trump again demanded the construction of a border wall he claims would keep such groups out.

Related: ‘No way to live here’: new Honduran caravan sets off north as Trump blasts warnings

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Top Democrat claims the State of the Union ‘is off’ – live

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Steny Hoyer, the Democratic majority leader in the House, State of the Union address is off in an interview with CNN

Steny Hoyer, the Democratic majority leader in the House, makes plain “the State of the Union is off” in an interview with CNN.

.@KateBolduan: "The letter sounds like she’s asking, but isn’t she just telling him?"
Rep. Hoyer: "The speaker is the one who invites the president…”
Kate: "So, the State of the Union is off?"
Hoyer: "The State of the Union is off."

It’s worth looking at this time capsule at the shock felt in Washington in 1913 when Woodrow Wilson became the first president to deliver the State of the Union in person since John Adams.

WASHINGTON IS AMAZED. Pelosi proposal to delay the SOTU gives me a chance to once again tweet my favorite WaPo story ever, about how the city was "agape" when a pressident (Wilson) showed up to give a speech at the Capitol: https://t.co/8A1qsRYbsl

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Chris Christie accuses Jared Kushner of political ‘hit job’ in explosive new book

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Exclusive: ex-New Jersey governor, who had prosecuted Kushner’s father, was sacked as head of Trump’s transition team

Chris Christie, who was ousted as chairman of Donald Trump’s White House transition team in 2016, has written a blistering attack on Jared Kushner, whom he accuses of having carried out a political “hit job” on him as an act of revenge for prosecuting his father, Charles Kushner, a decade ago.

Related: Mueller inquiry is no witch-hunt, William Barr tells confirmation hearing – live updates

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Turkey will not be intimidated by Trump, says foreign minister

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Ankara hits back after Trump threatened to ‘economically devastate’ it over Syria

Turkey’s foreign minister has hit back at Donald Trump over his threat to economically devastate the country if it follows through on a planned operation against Kurdish forces in northern Syria, saying Ankara will not be intimidated by its Nato ally.

“We have said repeatedly we are not scared of and will not be intimidated by any threats,” said Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu in televised remarks from Ankara on Monday, before rebuking the US president for using Twitter for sensitive diplomatic matters.

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White House asked the Pentagon for plans to strike Iran – report

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The ‘mind-boggling’ request came after two incidents in Iraq last September when militia mortar and rockets exploded near US diplomatic facilities

The White House asked the Pentagon to draw up options for military strikes against Iran in the wake of two incidents in Iraq last September when mortar shells and rockets fired by militias exploded near US diplomatic facilities, it was reported on Sunday.

Related: US will expel every last Iranian boot from Syria, says Mike Pompeo

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Out of dough? Canada air traffic controllers buy pizzas for unpaid US colleagues

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Ten thousand US staff have not received paychecks since late December because of government shutdown

Canadian air traffic controllers have bought hundreds of pizzas for their American counterparts over the past few days in what has become an industry-wide show of support during the US government’s partial shutdown.

Peter Duffey, the head of the Canadian Air Traffic Control Association, said the initiative began on Thursday when employees at Edmonton’s control centre took up a collection to buy pies for controllers in Anchorage, Alaska.

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