Category Archives: Trump administration

American Oligarchs review: Trump, Kushner and the melding of money and power

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Andrea Bernstein delivers the goods on the bad business which propelled two New York families to Washington

America’s cold civil war rages, impeachment inches ahead and Donald Trump remains a focal point of conflict. As for Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, he is markedly more unpopular than his wife, her father or her gun-toting brother. Donald Trump Jr and Ivanka Trump are rated among the top Republican contenders for 2024.

Related: Trump Jr and Ivanka Trump ‘knew they were lying’ over ploy to sell condos, book claims

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Iran plane crash: Ukraine’s president calls on US and allies to share evidence – live

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Volodymyr Zelenskiy to discuss investigation with US secretary of state Mike Pompeo

The head of Iran’s Civil Aviation body has told reporters that authorities examining the contents of the Flight 752’s black box today at a laboratory at Tehran’s Mehrabad Airport.

The will attempt to assess whether it is possible to reconstruct and analyse the information inside the country, according to Iran’s IRNA news agency.

A British-Iranian woman jailed in Iran has had panic attacks since tensions between the country and the US escalated, her husband has said.

Richard Ratcliffe said the fallout from Donald Trump’s assassination of the Iranian general Qassem Suleimani was taking a toll on the mental health of his wife, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe.

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Why did Trump order the killing of Iran’s Qassem Suleimani? – video explainer

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Qassem Suleimani, who was killed in a US drone strike in Baghdad, was widely considered to be the most powerful man in Iran after the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – and Iran's leading military figure. 

Suleimani’s assassination has plunged the Middle East into a crisis that seems likely to lead to further escalation between Washington and Tehran. The Guardian's Middle East correspondent Martin Chulov examines what motivated Donald Trump to order the assassination

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White House unveils plan for major projects to bypass environmental review

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Plan would help Trump administration advance projects held up over global heating concerns such as the Keystone XL oil pipeline

The Trump administration on Thursday unveiled a plan to speed permitting for major infrastructure projects such as oil pipelines, including dropping consideration of their potential impact on the climate crisis.

The plan, released by the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), would help the administration advance big energy projects such as the Keystone XL oil pipeline that had been tied up over concerns about their effect on global heating.

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The optics of Trump’s announcement: America stands ready to strike

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President flanked by cabinet members and backed by eight military officers sent a clear message

As concern swelled about a potential military confrontation with Iran, Donald Trump appeared at the White House on Wednesday to deliver a notably non-provocative message, emphasizing that no Americans had been killed in Iranian missile strikes the night before.

But the choreography of the announcement, with Trump flanked by cabinet members and backed by eight military officers, communicated a clear subtext: America stood ready to strike.

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‘Wrong then, wrong now’: US clash with Iran echoes march to Iraq war

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As a new Republican president seeks re-election, senior figures in Washington warn history may be repeating itself

A Republican president facing a tough re-election campaign and widely viewed as hopelessly out of his depth. Bureaucrats itching to turn US military firepower on a Middle Eastern regime they claim without evidence is plotting an imminent attack. Compliant sections of the media that put flag-waving jingoism ahead of skeptical scrutiny.

So it was in late 2002, when President George W Bush’s administration built unstoppable momentum towards invading Iraq, promising to destroy weapons of mass destruction (WMD) that never existed. Nearly two decades later the potential target is not Iraq but Iran, with many of the same concerns over false pretexts and official lies.

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Impeachment: Warren accuses Trump of ‘wag the dog’ strike on Suleimani

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Elizabeth Warren has suggested Donald Trump ordered the drone assassination of Iranian general Qassem Suleimani to distract the American public from his own impeachment, taking the country “to the edge of war” for his own political purposes.

Related: Making of a martyr: how Qassem Suleimani was hunted down

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Qassem Suleimani: chants of ‘death to America’ at Baghdad funeral

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Thousands of mourners attend funeral procession for Iranian general killed in US airstrike

Thousands of mourners have marched in a funeral procession through Baghdad for Iran’s top general and Iraqi militant leaders, who were killed in a US airstrike, chanting: “Death to America.”

The bodies of Iranian general Qassem Suleimani and others killed in a US drone strike were taken on a funeral procession starting in Baghdad on Saturday before a public farewell for the slain military leader in Tehran on Sunday, according to officials in Iran.

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Qassem Suleimani’s death threatens to open grisly new chapter in Middle East

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Killing of powerful Iranian general will have far-reaching consequences for Trump

In his long military career, Qassem Suleimani left the Middle East littered with corpses. Now he has finally joined them. His death has closed one gruesome chapter in the region’s endless conflicts, only to open another, which could well prove even worse.

No one can predict how this will turn out, perhaps least of all the two leading protagonists. Nothing about Donald Trump’s actions in the Middle East until now suggests that Suleimani’s assassination by drone outside Baghdad airport was part of a considered plan.

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Footage shows aftermath of US airstrike that killed top Iranian general Qassem Suleimani – video

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The White House said Donald Trump ordered an airstrike that killed the powerful Iranian general Qassem Soleimani and Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. The attack came amid Iranian tensions with the US after thousands of Iraqis stormed the US embassy compound in Baghdad this week. The killing of Suleimani presents a dramatic escalation of an already bloody struggle between Washington and Tehran for influence across the region

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US sends asylum seekers to Mexico to await hearings held 350 miles away

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Authorities are expanding the Remain in Mexico program, which critics say puts migrants into dangerous border towns

The US government has started sending asylum seekers back to Nogales, Mexico, to await court hearings that will be scheduled roughly 350 miles (563 kilometers) away in Ciudad Juárez.

Authorities are expanding a program known as Remain in Mexico that requires tens of thousands of asylum seekers to wait out their immigration court hearings in Mexico. Until this week, the government was driving some asylum seekers from Nogales, Arizona, to El Paso, Texas, so they could be returned to Juárez.

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Trump impeachment: Lisa Murkowski ‘disturbed’ by Mitch McConnell’s stance

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Republican senator unhappy with Senate leader saying he was working in ‘total coordination’ with White House

Republican US Senator Lisa Murkowski has said she was “disturbed” by the Senate leader’s approach to working with White House counsel on the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump, saying there should be distance between the two.

The comments by the Alaska lawmaker come after Mitch McConnell, majority leader of the Republican-led Senate, said during a Fox News interview earlier this month that he was working in “total coordination” with the White House on the upcoming trial.

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Nancy Pelosi on Trump and the power of the gavel: ‘He’ll be impeached for ever’

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Trump heads to Florida for the holidays as Senate adjourned until January without agreeing to impeachment trial procedures

Nancy Pelosi promised as speaker she would “show the power of the gavel”. This year, she laid it out for all to see.

The past week alone, the Democratic leader delivered a $1.4tn government funding package to stop a shutdown, pushed through the bipartisan US-Mexico-Canada trade agreement, and passed her party’s plan to lower prescription drug costs. In between, she led a congressional delegation to Europe for the 75th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge.

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US officials remove Black Panther’s Wakanda from list of trading partners

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Agriculture department says fictional country from Marvel movies was used to test systems and was not meant to remain visible

Trade talks between Captain America and Black Panther didn’t quite pan out, it seems. Wakanda, the fictional home of the Marvel superhero, is no longer listed as a free trade partner of the US.

Until Wednesday, the made-up east African country was listed on the drop-down menu for the agriculture department’s foreign agricultural service’s tariff tracker along with Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama and Peru.

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Trump accuses Democrats of ‘open war on American democracy’ in stinging impeachment letter – live

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President sends six-page letter to House speaker Nancy Pelosi condemning inquiry as ‘unprecedented and unconstitutional abuse of power’

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Related: Trump impeachment inquiry: a timeline of key events so far

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US-China trade deal ‘totally done’, Trump aide Lighthizer says

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The “phase one” US-China trade deal will nearly double US exports to China over the next two years and is “totally done” despite the need for translation and revisions to its text, US trade representative Robert Lighthizer said on Sunday.

Related: 'Amazing deal' or 'capitulation'? Why the US-China trade truce may not last

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James Comey admits FBI ‘sloppiness’ but rejects Trump political bias claim

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James Comey, the former director of the FBI who has become a prime nemesis of Donald Trump, admitted on Sunday to being responsible for “real sloppiness” over the handling of surveillance of a Trump campaign adviser.

Related: The lies have it: Republicans abandon truth in Trump impeachment defence

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Trump’s plan to sign antisemitism order raises fears it could stifle Israel criticism

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Executive order could redefine Judaism as a race or nationality, which critics argue is itself antisemitic

Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order on Wednesday targeting antisemitism on college campuses.

First reported by the New York Times, the policy would broaden the federal definition of antisemitism, according to administration officials who spoke to various news outlets on condition of anonymity. By expanding protections granted by Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to people subjected to antisemitism, the order could also redefine Judaism as a race or nationality.

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Trump: Kim Jong-un risks losing everything if he acts ‘in a hostile way’

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Donald Trump said on Sunday North Korean leader Kim Jong-un risks losing “everything” and his country must denuclearize, after the North said it had carried out a “successful test of great significance”.

“Kim Jong-un is too smart and has far too much to lose, everything actually, if he acts in a hostile way. He signed a strong Denuclearization Agreement with me in Singapore,” Trump said on Twitter, referring to his first summit with Kim in 2018.

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