Category Archives: Trump administration

‘America’s mortal enemy’: Pete Hegseth expressed extreme antipathy toward Iran for years

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Comments in books, speeches and videos shed new light on defense secretary’s personal commitment to war on Iran

The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has expressed a violent antipathy towards Iran for years in books, Fox News broadcasts, educational videos and a 2018 speech to an Israeli media conference in Jerusalem, a Guardian review has revealed.

In a 2020 book, for example, Hegseth wrote that Iran’s leaders were “actively seeking the military means – especially nuclear weapons – to bring the West to its knees”. And in a 2017 video for PragerU, the hard-right media platform, Hegseth described Iran as “America’s mortal enemy”.

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‘America’s mortal enemy’: Pete Hegseth expressed extreme antipathy toward Iran for years

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Comments in books, speeches and videos shed new light on defense secretary’s personal commitment to war on Iran

The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has expressed a violent antipathy towards Iran for years in books, Fox News broadcasts, educational videos and a 2018 speech to an Israeli media conference in Jerusalem, a Guardian review has revealed.

In a 2020 book, for example, Hegseth wrote that Iran’s leaders were “actively seeking the military means – especially nuclear weapons – to bring the West to its knees”. And in a 2017 video for PragerU, the hard-right media platform, Hegseth described Iran as “America’s mortal enemy”.

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Oil price tops $100 again as Iran strikes economic targets across Middle East

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Vast release of emergency crude reserves fails to quell mounting fears around energy supply crunch, rattling global markets

Oil prices again topped $100 a barrel on Thursday as widespread Iranian attacks on Middle Eastern energy facilities overshadowed a vast release of government reserves.

As Donald Trump vowed to “finish the job” and press ahead with the US-Israel war on Iran, the country’s regime stepped up retaliatory strikes on economic targets across the region.

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Oil price tops $100 again as Iran strikes economic targets across Middle East

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Vast release of emergency crude reserves fails to quell mounting fears around energy supply crunch, rattling global markets

Oil prices again topped $100 a barrel on Thursday as widespread Iranian attacks on Middle Eastern energy facilities overshadowed a vast release of government reserves.

As Donald Trump vowed to “finish the job” and press ahead with the US-Israel war on Iran, the country’s regime stepped up retaliatory strikes on economic targets across the region.

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Nearly 4,000 US meatpacking workers to strike at plant run by top Trump donor

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Workers at JBS USA to strike Monday in what will be the first labor strike in the meatpacking industry in decades

About 3,800 workers at JBS USA, the world’s largest meat producer, are set to strike on Monday in what will be the first labor strike in the industry in decades.

The walkout threatens to put further strain on US meat prices – ground beef prices soared 15% last year – and could prove a headache for the Trump administration as it struggles with poor polling on cost of living issues.

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Experts fear ‘unethical’ vaccine trial in Africa is ‘prototype’ for US studies under RFK Jr

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Danish researchers whose work on effects of vaccines has been called into question are at center of US vaccine policy

New details are leading experts to fear that an “unethical” vaccine trial in Guinea-Bissau is the “prototype” for studies under Robert F Kennedy Jr, secretary of the US department of health and human services (HHS) and longtime vaccine critic.

At the center of US vaccine policy is an unlikely set of Danish researchers whose work on the health effects of vaccines has been called into question. The study in Guinea-Bissau would have looked at the overall health effects of giving hepatitis B vaccines by only vaccinating half of the newborns in the study at birth despite an 18% prevalence rate in adults of the illness, which can lead to serious and sometimes fatal health consequences.

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Trump claims Iran or ‘somebody else’ could have carried out deadly school strike

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President makes evidence-free claim despite video showing US Tomahawk missile hit naval base next to school

As oil prices surged amid the widening war with Iran, Donald Trump suggested, without evidence, on Monday that the strike on an Iranian elementary school could have been carried out by Iran or “somebody else”.

During back-to-back appearances in Florida, Trump was asked whether the US would accept responsibility for a strike that hit the school and killed scores of people, many of them children, after video evidence showed a US Tomahawk struck the naval base next to it.

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Ig Nobels to move awards to Europe due to concern over US travel visas

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Scientific awards – which honor research that makes people laugh and then think – to move away from ‘unsafe’ US

The annual Ig Nobels, a satirical award for scientific achievement, are shifting for the first time from the US to Europe due to concerns about attendees getting visas, organizers announced on Monday.

Organized by the Annals of Improbable Research, a digital magazine that highlights research that makes people laugh and then think, the 36th annual ceremony will be held in Zurich. It’s usually held in the US in September, a few weeks before the actual Nobel prizes are announced.

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Middle East crisis live: Mojtaba Khamenei chosen as Iran’s new supreme leader; oil prices soar past $100 a barrel

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Iran has named hardliner Mojtaba Khamenei as the country’s new supreme leader; Donald Trump says oil price spike ‘a small price to pay’ as markets tumble

Donald Trump has said a decision on when to end the war with Iran will be a “mutual” one he’ll make together with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Times of Israel has reported.

It said Trump also claimed in a brief telephone interview on Sunday that Iran would have destroyed Israel if he and Netanyahu had not been around. The US president said:

Iran was going to destroy Israel and everything else around it … We’ve worked together. We’ve destroyed a country that wanted to destroy Israel.

I think it’s mutual … a little bit. We’ve been talking. I’ll make a decision at the right time, but everything’s going to be taken into account.

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US energy chief says spike in gas prices will fall ‘before too long’ amid Iran war

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Chris Wright says price increase would last weeks, not months, and that US would not target Iran’s energy industry

Chris Wright, the US Department of Energy secretary, said on Sunday that the spike in energy prices would last weeks, at the worst, not months, and that the US would not target Iran’s energy industry.

His comments come amid rising anxiety that Iran’s response to the US-Israel strikes, which caused a reduction in shipping through the strait of Hormuz and production slowdowns in some oil and gas producing states in the Middle East, may cause broad economic turbulence and higher inflation.

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Judge rules Kari Lake unlawfully ran US media agency, voiding mass layoffs

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Lake, whom Trump appointed without Senate confirmation to run Voice of America parent agency, cut over 1,000 jobs

A federal judge ruled Saturday that Kari Lake unlawfully led the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) for several months last year and voided mass layoffs and other actions taken during that period to dismantle the agency.

The US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) is an independent federal agency that oversees the Voice of America (VOA), the US’s largest and oldest international broadcaster, and provides grants to Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe and other news agencies.

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How Trump’s EPA rollbacks give US states new tools in climate suits

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Vermont and New York face high stakes to protect climate superfund laws as it faces attacks from Trump’s DoJ

By rolling back a bedrock climate legal determination, the Trump administration has undercut its attacks on a groundbreaking state climate accountability law, green groups have argued in court.

Trump’s justice department has asked a judge to kill a first-of-its-kind 2024 Vermont “climate superfund” policy requiring major polluters to pay for damages caused by their past planet-heating pollution, partly on the grounds that that federal law, not state law, governs greenhouse gas emissions. But last month, Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) repealed the endangerment finding, the scientific determination giving federal officials the authority to control those very pollutants.

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White House worries as gas prices jump amid ongoing US-Israel war on Iran

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US drivers are largely insulated from higher oil prices caused by Middle East turmoil – but only to a point

Across the US, the average cost of a gallon of regular gasoline has jumped nearly 27 cents in a week, to $3.25, and American consumers are bracing for higher prices at the gas pump as the US-Israel conflict with Iran threatens to disrupt the global oil supply.

That fear has entered the White House too, where Donald Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, is reportedly hunting for ideas to lower gasoline prices and officials are getting “screamed at” to bring good news, according to Politico.

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‘How is he going to have the time?’ NIH staff voice concern as Bhattacharya takes on CDC role

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Scientists fear NIH director will be even more absent and leave key issues unresolved as he takes interim CDC lead

As Jay Bhattacharya temporarily takes the lead at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), employees at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), where Bhattacharya is the permanent director, fear his attention will falter even more as critical issues at the research agency go unaddressed.

Bhattacharya first rose to prominence as a fierce opponent to Covid mitigations and has become a close ally of Robert F Kennedy Jr, the health secretary. Under their oversight, NIH has sharply curtailed the funds it awards to researchers, especially studies involving race and gender, while some employees faced hiring freezes and increased health expenses at the agency.

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Will UN plans to transform the way it works ‘throw equality under the bus’?

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Many of those attending the world’s largest meeting on women’s rights in New York this week are primed to defend the two key UN agencies that protect women and girls around the world

Thousands of international delegates are gathering in New York this week for the world’s largest meeting on women’s rights. The United Nation’s annual Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) is an opportunity for government ministers, UN officials, NGO representatives and activists to discuss the global state of gender equality and women’s empowerment. This year, there will be a strong focus on “ensuring and strengthening access to justice”.

But as senior UN figures urge countries to intensify their efforts to achieve gender equality, many of the delegates will be asking whether the UN is at risk of diluting its own commitment to women and girls.

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Trump convenes ‘Shield of Americas’ summit with 12 Latin American leaders

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In Miami, president calls for regional cooperation to counter Chinese economic and political interests

Donald Trump changed the channel from Iran to the western hemisphere on Saturday, convening a gathering of Latin American leaders at his Miami-area golf club to discuss regional interests and establishing what he called a “counter-cartel coalition”.

“Just as we formed a coalition to eradicate Isis, we now need a coalition to eradicate the cartels,” he told 12 regional leaders gathered at what the White House called the “Shield of the Americas” summit.

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US agency did not perform safety checks of more than 100 food ingredients, analysis finds

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Review of FDA records by the Environmental Working Group reveals firms are exploiting rule to send new chemicals in food system

More than 100 substances widely used in common US foods, supplements and beverages underwent no health and safety review by the US Food and Drug Administration, a new analysis of federal records finds.

The review of FDA records by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) non-profit reveals that diverse products across the food pyramid, such as Capri Sun drinks, Kettle and Fire organic broth, Acme smoked fish, and Quaker Oats snack bars, use a range of substances that have not undergone review by regulators.

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‘Operation Epstein Distraction’: Trump’s bloody Iran ‘hype videos’ seem to target niche audience

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White House wages online propaganda campaign with aggressive and tasteless videos seemingly designed for young rightwing American men

Rap and EDM. Clips from action movies. Heads-up displays from video games.

As the war with Iran approaches its second week, the White House has leaned into an online propaganda campaign that seems less about intimidating Iran or projecting US strength abroad than it is about reaching a rather niche domestic audience: young rightwing American men who spend a lot of time online.

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Pakistani man convicted of plotting to kill Trump over death of Iranian commander

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Asif Merchant accused of trying to recruit people in 2024 plan to target Trump, Biden and other politicians in retaliation for killing of Qassem Suleimani

A Pakistani man has been convicted of planning to kill Donald Trump and other prominent US politicians two years ago at the behest of Iran.

Asif Merchant was accused of trying to recruit people in the US in a plan targeting Trump and others in retaliation for the killing of Iranian military commander Qassem Suleimani in 2020, during Trump’s first term as president.

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Trump administration’s embattled FDA vaccine chief ousted for the second time

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Vinay Prasad to leave in April after decisions involving vaccine reviews and specialty drugs for rare diseases

The top vaccine official at the Food and Drug Administration, Dr Vinay Prasad, is once again leaving the agency – the second time in less than a year that he’s departed after decisions involving the review of vaccinations and specialty drugs for rare diseases.

FDA commissioner Marty Makary announced the news to FDA staff in an email late Friday, saying Prasad would depart at the end of April. Makary said Prasad would return to his academic job at the University of California, San Francisco.

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