Category Archives: Trump administration

US justice department memo about boat strikes diverges from Trump narrative

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Exclusive: Officials frame strikes as self-defense against violence, without naming aggressor, while Trump claims they’re to stop US overdose deaths

The Trump administration is framing its boat strikes against drug cartels in the Caribbean in part as a collective self-defense effort on behalf of US allies in the region, according to three people directly familiar with the administration’s internal legal argument.

The legal analysis rests on a premise – for which there is no immediate public evidence – that the cartels are waging armed violence against the security forces of allies like Mexico, and that the violence is financed by cocaine shipments.

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Mark Kelly: call for troops to disobey illegal orders is ‘non-controversial’

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Senator hits back at Trump administration after Pentagon launches investigation for possible breaches of military law

US senator Mark Kelly said it was “non-controversial” for him and other Democrats to implore military personnel to disobey “illegal orders” from the Trump administration – hitting back at accusations of “serious allegations of misconduct” leveled against him by the Pentagon.

“I said something that was pretty simple and non-controversial – and that was that members of the military should follow the law,” the Arizona Democrat senator, a former US Navy officer and astronaut who flew on four separate space shuttle missions between 2001 and 2011, told MS Now on Monday night.

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Trump begins process of designating Muslim Brotherhood chapters as terrorist groups

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President signed executive order for Rubio and Bessent to submit report on chapters in Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan

Donald Trump on Monday 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 fact sheet. It orders the secretaries to move forward with any designations within 45 days of the report.

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Surprise envoy pushing Ukraine ‘peace’ plan belies Vance influence on US policy

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Army secretary Daniel Driscoll presented a Russian wishlist, highlighting differences with the administration

The US army secretary, Daniel Driscoll, was an unlikely envoy for the Trump administration’s newest proposal to end the Russian invasion of Ukraine – but his ties to JD Vance have put a close ally of the Eurosceptic vice-president on the frontlines of Donald Trump’s latest push to end the war.

Before his trip to Kyiv last week, Driscoll was not known for his role as a negotiator or statesman, and his early efforts at selling the deal to European policymakers were described as turbulent.

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Disarray over leaked US-Russia peace plan is ideal scenario for Putin

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Ukraine has been cornered into weighing terms it cannot accept and faces threat of losing its most important ally

The Kremlin has barely lifted a finger in recent days. It hasn’t needed to.

The 28-point US-Russia peace proposal, leaked to the media last week, has thrown Washington, Kyiv and European capitals into disarray, creating precisely the conditions Vladimir Putin has long sought: a negotiating table sharply tilted in the Russian president’s favour, with Ukraine cornered into weighing terms it cannot accept and the threat of losing its most important ally hanging over its head.

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Venezuela accuses US of using ‘narco-terrorism’ allegations to justify ‘regime change’

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Venezuelan group known as Cartel of the Suns designated as terrorist organization despite doubts over its existence

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”.

On Monday, 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.

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US senator slams Republicans’ silence on Trump’s violent threats to Democrats

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Mark Kelly, a veteran and Democrat targeted by Trump over military comments, says he is ‘not going to be intimidated’

Senator Mark Kelly on Sunday urged congressional Republicans to publicly reject Trump’s threats against him and five other Democratic lawmakers who stated that military personnel are not obligated to follow illegal commands.

“We’ve heard very little, basically crickets, from Republicans in the United States Congress about what the president has said about hanging members of Congress,” Kelly, of Arizona, said on CBS’s Face the Nation.

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Mamdani reiterates Trump is a ‘fascist’ just days after cordial meeting

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New York mayor-elect reaffirms past criticisms of president after agreeing to work with him on cost-of-living concerns

Zohran Mamdani has reiterated his view that Donald Trump is a “fascist” and a “despot” just days after the pair had a surprisingly cordial meeting at the White House.

Speaking to NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, the New York City mayor-elect was asked if he still considered Trump a threat to democracy. “Everything that I’ve said in the past I continue to believe,” Mamdani replied. “I think it is important in our politics that we don’t shy away from where we have disagreements.”

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ICE detained teenaged US citizen during school lunch break, family says

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Christian Jimenez, Oregon high school senior, faces possible obstruction charges after traffic stop by immigration agents

Immigration officers detained a student at a high school in Oregon during his lunch break on Friday, according to the student’s family.

Seventeen-year-old Christian Jimenez, a US citizen and senior at McMinnville high school, was driving his father’s vehicle around 12.30pm during lunch when agents from the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) stopped him, his older brother, Cesar Jimenez, told Oregon Live.

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Many prominent Maga personalities on X are based outside US, new tool reveals

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Users posing as rightwing Americans are operating internationally, per the platform’s transparency feature

Many of the most influential personalities in the “Make America great again” (Maga) movement on X are based outside of the US, including Russia, Nigeria and India, a new transparency feature on the social media site has revealed.

The new tool, called “about this account,” became available on Friday to users of the Elon Musk-owned platform. It allows anyone to see where an account is located, when it joined the platform, how often its username has been changed, and how the X app was downloaded.

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Trump says Ukraine deal is not ‘final offer’ as officials gather for Geneva summit

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US president signals potential room for adjustments after Zelenskyy says proposals force Ukraine to choose between national dignity and losing the US

Donald Trump said on Saturday that his “peace plan” was “not my final offer”, after a furious backlash from Ukrainians who described it as reminiscent of Neville Chamberlain’s 1938 Munich agreement with Adolf Hitler.

The US president told reporters during brief remarks at the White House: “We’d like to get to peace. It should’ve happened a long time ago … we’re trying to get it ended, one way or the other we have to get it ended.”

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Trump to end temporary protected status for Somali immigrants in Minnesota

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Move could affect hundreds of Somalis who fled civil war in their home country

Donald Trump said on Friday night that he’s “immediately” terminating temporary legal protections for Somali migrants living in Minnesota, further targeting a program seeking to limit deportations that his administration has already repeatedly sought to weaken.

Minnesota has the nation’s largest Somali community. Many fled the long civil war in the east African country and were drawn to the state’s welcoming social programs.

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Trump may yet impose a Ukraine deal – but it threatens to be a disaster for Kyiv

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Ukraine could be forced into an agreement but plan as it stands seems too bizarre for Zelenskyy to sell to his public

We’ve been here before: the Trump administration announces a roadmap towards peace in Ukraine that seems to be dramatically skewed towards Moscow’s demands; Volodymyr Zelenskyy gets on the phone to alarmed European allies; they quickly call Trump to message him that the whole idea is unworkable; the plan quietly dies. Rinse and repeat.

This time it feels a bit different, however. Reports on Friday suggested the US has threatened that if Ukraine does not sign a hastily concocted peace plan, Washington could withdraw intelligence-sharing and other support critical to the Ukrainian war effort.

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Nigeria reels after 215 children taken in second mass school abduction in a week

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Twelve teachers also kidnapped from Catholic school amid threats from Trump to intervene over ‘Christian genocide’

Unknown gunmen have abducted 215 schoolchildren and 12 teachers from a Catholic school in central Nigeria, the second mass abduction in the country in a week.

The latest kidnapping, in Papiri community in Niger state, came against the backdrop of Donald Trump’s threat to intervene militarily to end a “Christian genocide”, which the Nigerian government has denied is happening.

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Trump has assembled least diverse US government this century, study shows

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President has chosen white men for key posts at expense of women and people of colour, Brookings Institution finds

Donald Trump has assembled the least diverse US government of the 21st century, filling the corridors of power with white men at the expense of women and people of colour, research shows.

Nine in 10 individuals confirmed by the Senate in the first 300 days of the second Trump administration were white, according to the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington.

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Workers inside Department of Education say Trump’s latest bid to dismantle agency ‘makes no sense’

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‘Morale is completely lost,’ say workers as Trump administration strips some programs and transfers others

Donald Trump’s bid to gut the US Department of Education “makes no sense”, according to workers inside the federal agency, who accuse the administration of trying to make their lives “as difficult and traumatic as possible”.

Three employees inside the department spoke to the Guardian, with one warning that morale has been “completely lost”, 10 months after Trump returned to the White House. All requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation.

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Documents reveal Gerald Ford’s effort to block report on CIA assassination plots

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Release of documents comes amid conjecture Trump may have authorized the agency to assassinate Venezuelan president

The White House under Gerald Ford tried to block a landmark Senate report that disclosed the CIA’s role in assassination attempts against foreign leaders and ultimately led to a radical overhaul in how the agency was held to account, documents released to mark the 50th anniversary of the report’s publication reveal.

The documents, dating from 1975, were posted on Thursday by the National Security Archive, an independent research group, as it sought to highlight the report’s significance amid conjecture that Donald Trump may have authorized the agency to assassinate Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, amid a massive US military build-up against the country.

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US in talks to attend G20 summit after initial boycott, South Africa says

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Cyril Ramaphosa says US has had ‘change of mind’ but does not confirm Trump’s attendance in Johannesburg

The US has changed its mind about attending the G20 summit in Johannesburg, South Africa’s president has said, without confirming whether Donald Trump, who had said the US would boycott the event, now wanted to come.

Trump has claimed that South Africa racially discriminates against the minority white Afrikaner community, which led the country during the apartheid regime that ended in 1994.

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Top judge resumes contempt inquiry into Trump El Salvador deportations

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James Boasberg demands sworn testimony to determine whether US officials defied March court order

A federal judge on Wednesday said he was resuming his long-stalled court proceeding to determine whether Trump administration officials willfully violated a court order by deporting hundreds of men to El Salvador in March.

US district judge James Boasberg said he would demand sworn testimony from administration officials to determine whether they defied his March court order to turn around aircraft that were removing the men from US territory.

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Pope Leo condemns US’s ‘extremely disrespectful’ treatment of immigrants

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Pontiff backs statement by US bishops condemning raids and mass deportations under Trump administration

Pope Leo has reiterated his disapproval of Donald Trump’s immigration policies, saying foreigners in the US are being treated in an “extremely disrespectful way”.

Leo, the first US pontiff in the history of the Catholic church, made the remarks in response to questions about a statement adopted last week during a special assembly of US bishops that criticised the Trump administration’s mass deportations and lamented the fear and anxiety caused by immigration raids.

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