Category Archives: Trump administration

Republican condemns Vance for ‘despicable’ comments on Venezuelan boat strike

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Rand Paul decries ‘thoughtless’ comment after vice-president defends strike against alleged drug traffickers

The Republican senator who heads the homeland security committee has criticized JD Vance for “despicable” comments apparently in support of extrajudicial military killings.

“Killing cartel members who poison our fellow citizens is the highest and best use of our military,” the vice-president said in an X post on Saturday, in defense of Tuesday’s US military strike against a Venezuelan boat in the Caribbean Sea, which killed 11 people the administration alleged were drug traffickers.

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Blackwater founder and Maga disciple Erik Prince pitching services in Ukraine

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Sources say Prince, whose firm’s contractors committed 2007 Iraq massacre, eager to get into valuable drone sector

Amid reports that Donald Trump’s administration is considering using US private military contractors in a postwar Ukraine, multiple sources tell the Guardian one high-profile and controversial American from the “war on terror” era is already circling for business.

In the streets of Kyiv, military hawks and defense privateers have described how Erik Prince, Maga disciple and founder of the now-defunct mercenary company Blackwater, has been aggressively pitching his services and looking to buy.

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LGBTQ+ Americans consider move to Canada to escape Trump: ‘I’m afraid of living here’

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LGBTQ+ people in the US contemplate heading north as they wrestle with the president’s assault on the community

The number of LGBTQ+ Americans inquiring about moving to Canada has soared since Donald Trump’s re-election, campaigners have said, as people across the US wrestle with the fallout of rising anti-gay rhetoric, anti-trans executive orders, and the more than 600 bills targeting LGBTQ+ rights.

“So much is happening in the US right now and a lot of it is terrifying,” said Latoya Nugent of Rainbow Railroad, a North American charity that helps LGBTQI+ individuals escape violence and persecution in their home countries.

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Trump administration begins new Ice operation in Massachusetts

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A Department of Homeland Security official confirmed the action in a statement, blaming mayor’s sanctuary policies

The Trump administration has targeted Massachusetts as its next location to begin arresting and deporting immigrants, a Department of Homeland Security official confirmed to NBC News on Saturday.

DHS and its US Immigration and Customs Enforcement arm are calling the operation Patriot 2.0, modifying the name of a May deportation surge that led to the arrest of 1,500 people in the state, according to the reports.

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Postal traffic into US plunges by more than 80% after Trump ends exemption

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Dozens of operators have suspended service to the US until a solution is implemented on parcels worth $800 or less

Postal traffic into the United States plunged by more than 80% after the Trump administration ended a tariff exemption for low-cost imports, the United Nations postal agency said Saturday.

The Universal Postal Union says it has started rolling out new measures that can help postal operators around the world calculate and collect duties, or taxes, after the US eliminated the so-called “de minimis exemption” for lower-value parcels.

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Trump’s former surgeon general urges president to fire RFK Jr

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Jerome Adams cites vaccine policy and chaos at CDC and joins other officials in saying Kennedy is risking US health

The surgeon general from the first Trump administration on Saturday said that the US president should “absolutely” fire health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr over his “dangerous” policies on vaccines and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Jerome Adams, who has become a pointed critic of the controversial public health decisions being swiftly rolled out in the second Trump administration, made his most fierce attack yet on what has been unfolding.

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Judge blocks ending of legal protections for 1m Venezuelans and Haitians in US

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Homeland security had tried to end temporary protected status granted by the Biden administration

A federal judge on Friday ruled against the Trump administration from ending temporary legal protections that have granted more than 1 million people from Haiti and Venezuela the right to live and work in the United States.

The ruling by US district judge Edward Chen of San Francisco for the plaintiffs means that 600,000 Venezuelans whose temporary protections expired in April or whose protections were about to expire on 10 September have status to stay and work in the United States.

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Trump sends 10 stealth fighter planes to Puerto Rico amid war on Caribbean drug cartels

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Move comes after accusing Venezuela of buzzing US warship and a deadly US missile strike in Caribbean Sea

Donald Trump is sending 10 F-35 fighter jets to Puerto Rico to bolster US military operations against drug cartels in the Caribbean region, it was reported on Friday.

If follows a deadly US missile strike on Tuesday on a boat in the Caribbean Sea that the Trump administration insisted was carrying 11 Venezuelan drug traffickers, and comments by the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, on Wednesday that such attacks “will happen again”.

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US Navy Seals killed North Korean civilians in botched 2019 mission, report says

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New York Times says Trump authorized mission to plant listening device; team killed fishers they encountered

US Navy Seals shot and killed a number of North Korean civilians during a botched covert mission to plant a listening device in the nuclear-armed country during high-stakes diplomatic negotiations in 2019, the New York Times reported on Friday.

Citing unidentified sources, including current and former military officials with knowledge of the still-classified details, the newspaper said Donald Trump approved the operation during his first administration, as he was involved in historic talks with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un.

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Trump’s LA national guard deployment cost taxpayers $120m, Newsom says

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California governor condemns decision to deploy troops in response to anti-Ice protests as ‘waste, fraud and abuse’

Donald Trump’s deployment of the national guard in Los Angeles in response to protests in the city over immigration raids cost taxpayers nearly $120m, the California governor’s office said on Thursday.

The US president sent 2,000 national guard troops into the city in June amid clashes between federal immigration agents and protesters. This week a judge ruled that dispatching the military to accompany authorities on immigration enforcement operations violated federal law.

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US imposes sanctions on Palestinians for requesting war crimes inquiry

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Rights groups in Gaza and Ramallah had asked international criminal court to investigate Israel over genocide claims

The US has imposed sanctions against three Palestinian human rights groups that asked the international criminal court (ICC) to investigate Israel over allegations of genocide in Gaza, according to a notice posted to the US treasury department’s website.

The three groups – the Gaza-based Palestinian Centre for Human Rights and Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, and the Ramallah-based Al-Haq – were listed under what the treasury department said were ICC-related designations.

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Trump hosts US tech leaders at White House dinner – minus Elon Musk

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Tesla CEO’s absence is marked departure from his constant presence at the White House in early days of Trump 2.0

As Donald Trump hosted leaders from the biggest US tech companies at a lavish White House state dining room dinner on Thursday night, there was one notable absence. Elon Musk, once inseparable from Trump and a constant, contentious presence in the White House, was not in attendance.

The dinner, which included Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Apple’s Tim Cook and OpenAI’s Sam Altman, was exactly the type of event where Musk would have sat at Trump’s right hand only a few months ago. Instead, the Tesla CEO stated on his social media platform X that he had been invited but could not make it. He said he planned to send a representative and spent the day on X posting a familiar stream of attacks on immigration and trans people.

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US justice department opens criminal inquiry into Fed governor Lisa Cook

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Officials to investigate claims of mortgage fraud against Cook, who has refused to accept firing by Donald Trump

The US justice department has initiated a criminal investigation into mortgage fraud claims against Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook as a lawsuit she filed against Donald Trump over her firing makes its way through court.

Lawyers with the justice department have issued subpoenas for the investigation, according to the Wall Street Journal, who first reported the investigation, which has since been confirmed by multiple news publications.

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Macron says 26 nations ready to provide postwar military backing to Ukraine

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French president says allies would either deploy ‘reassurance force’ troops to Ukraine, or be present in the area on land, sea or in the air

Twenty-six nations have pledged to provide postwar security guarantees to Ukraine, including an international force on land and sea and in the air, Emmanuel Macron said after a summit at which European leaders sought to pin down Donald Trump on the level of support he is willing to give Kyiv.

“The day the conflict stops, the security guarantees will be deployed,” the French president told a press conference at the Élysée Palace in Paris, standing alongside Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

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Trump asks US supreme court to overturn trade tariffs ruling

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Move follows federal appeals court decision that sweeping ‘liberation day’ levies on imports had overstepped presidential powers

Donald Trump has asked the US supreme court to overturn a lower court decision that most of his sweeping trade tariffs were illegal.

The US president filed a petition late on Wednesday to ask for a review of last week’s federal appeals court ruling in Washington DC, which centred on his “liberation day” border taxes introduced on 2 April, which imposed levies of between 10% and 50% on most US imports, sending shock waves through global trade and markets.

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Louisiana prison chosen for immigration detainees due to its notoriety, says Noem

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Department of Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem said she hoped it would encourage people in the US illegally to self-deport

The Trump administration purposefully chose a notorious Louisiana prison to hold immigration detainees as a way to encourage people in the US illegally to self-deport, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) secretary Kristi Noem said Wednesday.

A complex inside the Louisiana state penitentiary, an immense rural prison better known as Angola, will be used to detain those whom Noem described as the “worst of the worst” Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detainees. Noem was speaking to reporters as she stood on the grounds of the facility near a new sign reading, “Louisiana Lockup.”

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Only two more Republicans needed to force vote on Epstein files release, bill co-sponsor says – live

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Donald Trump calls clamor over Jeffrey Epstein files a ‘Democrat hoax that never ends’ as bipartisan group of lawmakers try to force vote on legislation

As part of the Trump administration’s campaign of mass deportations, the defense department will soon have hundreds of military judges work on immigration cases, the Associated Press reports:

The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has approved sending up to 600 military lawyers to the federal justice department to serve as temporary immigration judges, according to a memo reviewed by the Associated Press.

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Top Obama-era Latin American expert warns of ‘disastrous’ US intervention in Venezuela

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US military buildup and attack on alleged narco boat spark fears of protracted guerrilla war in South America

The White House’s former top Latin America official has said he fears the US could stumble into a protracted guerrilla war in Venezuela after Donald Trump ordered a military strike on a boat in the Caribbean Sea, killing 11 alleged drug traffickers.

Tuesday’s controversial strike off the Venezuelan coast – which was reportedly carried out by an attack helicopter or Reaper drone – came after the US president ordered a major naval deployment to the region, ostensibly to combat South American drug traffickers.

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Democrats call for firing of January 6 defendant who works at justice department

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Jared Wise, a DoJ senior adviser, urged fellow rioters to kill police officers during the 2021 Capitol attack

A January 6 defendant who urged fellow rioters to kill police officers should be fired from his job at the justice department, three senate Democrats wrote in a letter to US attorney general Pam Bondi on Wednesday.

Earlier this year, the defendant, Jared Wise, was hired as a counselor to Ed Martin, a prominent January 6 defense lawyer who is leading a so-called weaponization working group inside the justice department that is targeting Trump’s political rivals. The scope of Wise’s role remains unclear.

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Democrats blast state department for lack of ‘basic oversight’ of controversial Gaza food organization

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Letter by senior Democrats asks state department to reveal details behind financing of Gaza Humanitarian Foundation

Senior Democratic senators have called on the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, to reveal details behind the financing and oversight of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) amid concerns over rising death tolls near aid sites, the group’s apparent coordination with the Israeli army and its reported use of private military contractors linked to intelligence operations.

The letter, co-signed by senators Elizabeth Warren, Chris Van Hollen and Peter Welch, accuses the state department of an “inability to answer basic questions about GHF in a timely manner” and said that the department’s “overriding of internal protocol and staff warnings is particularly concerning given it is unlikely to be able to conduct basic oversight of the funds it provided to GHF”.

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