Category Archives: Trump administration

Air traffic controllers receive $0 paychecks as government shutdown stretches

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Nearly 11,000 air traffic controllers, deemed essential workers, did not receive wages for two weeks of work

Air traffic controllers and Transportation Security Administration employees have missed their first paycheck as the federal government shutdown rolls through its fourth week. They remain required to work.

Nearly 11,000 air traffic controllers, who are deemed essential workers, received a $0 paycheck on Tuesday, equating to two weeks of unpaid work. Sean Duffy, the transportation secretary, warned at a Tuesday press conference that another missed paycheck could be financially catastrophic for employees.

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Man deported to Laos despite US court order blocking his removal, attorneys say

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District judge told Ice to keep Alabama man in US while he showed what judge called ‘substantial claim’ to citizenship

Immigration officials have deported a father living in Alabama to Laos despite a federal court order blocking his removal from the US on the grounds he has a claim to citizenship, the man’s attorneys said on Tuesday.

US district judge Shelly Dick last week ordered US Immigration and Customs Enforcement to keep Chanthila “Shawn” Souvannarath, 44, in the United States while he presented what the judge called his “substantial claim of US citizenship”, court records show. He was born in a refugee camp in Thailand but was granted lawful permanent residence in the US before his first birthday, according to court filings.

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Shutdown stretches into 28th day as Senate again fails to pass spending legislation

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As funding for food aid program is about to be exhausted, Congress fails for 13th time to advance Republican bill

The US government shutdown stretched into its 28th day with no resolution in sight on Tuesday, as the Senate remained deadlocked over spending legislation even as a crucial food aid program teeters on the brink of exhausting its funding.

For the 13th time, Senate Democrats blocked a Republican-backed bill that would have funded federal agencies through 21 November. The minority party has refused to provide the necessary support for the bill to clear the 60-vote threshold for advancement in the Senate because it does not include funding for healthcare programs, or curbs on Donald Trump’s cuts to congressionally approved funding.

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Trump administration will revamp ICE leadership in quest to intensify deportations

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Government intends to reassign multiple directors of field offices as it falls well short of its targets on immigration

The Trump administration is planning to revamp the leadership of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), according to reports, as the government seeks to intensify its mass deportation efforts.

Multiple news outlets have reported that the government intends to reassign multiple directors of ICE field offices in the coming days, potentially replacing them with border patrol officials.

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Atlanta journalist says he ‘won’t be the only’ one deported by Trump officials

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Emmy award-winner Mario Guevara warns administration ‘has the power’ after he was arrested and sent to El Salvador

Mario Guevara has said he may have been “the first” immigrant journalist whom Donald Trump’s administration deported from the US while working – but the Emmy award-winner added: “I don’t think [I’ll] be the only one.”

“Just be careful because [immigration agents are] very aggressive,” Guevara recently said from El Salvador in a virtual interview with the US Freedom of the Press Tracker, during which he was asked whether he had any message for other immigrant colleagues in the industry. “They showed they are – they don’t care about journalists. They don’t believe in the media.”

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Republican Indiana governor calls special session to redraw congressional maps

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GOP-led state is latest that Trump administration has put pressure on to undertake redistricting to favor Republicans

The Indiana governor, Mike Braun, announced on Monday that he is calling a special session to consider redrawing congressional districts in the state, the latest state to work on its maps ahead of 2026.

Indiana is one of several Republican-led states the Trump administration has pressured to undertake mid-decade redistricting to favor Republicans, which began with a push in Texas to redraw lines to add Republican seats.

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Republican senator calls Trump’s military airstrikes ‘extrajudicial killings’

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Rand Paul’s comments come days after president claimed US lawmakers wouldn’t take issue with Venezuelan strikes

The Trump administration’s military airtrikes against boats off Venezuela’s coast that the White House claims were being used for drug trafficking are “extrajudicial killings”, said Rand Paul, the president’s fellow Republican and US senator from Kentucky.

Paul’s strong comments on the topic came on Sunday during an interview on Republican-friendly Fox News, three days after Donald Trump publicly claimed he “can’t imagine” federal lawmakers would have “any problem” with the strikes when asked about seeking congressional approval for them.

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Trump sanctions have swift impact but will world stop buying Russian oil and gas?

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Analysts say president’s war on Russia’s fossil fuel revenues is a chance to bring peace to Ukraine and profit to US

Donald Trump’s stated mission to broker peace in Ukraine could come down to this simple question: can the US president convince the world to stop buying Russia’s fossil fuels?

Last week, Trump imposed sanctions on Russia’s two largest oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil, in an effort to damage Moscow’s ability to fund its war machine.

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Gun violence prevention groups disqualified from grants built around their work

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Trump administration altering program that was a lifeline for pioneering non-profits helping reduce gun violence

The Trump administration has released solicitations for a grant program meant to stop gun violence in underserved communities. But this year, the non-profits the grant was built around are disqualified from applying, according to an application notice released by the Department of Justice (DoJ) in September.

The Community Based Violence Intervention and Prevention Initiative (CVIPI), was created in 2022, to support groups working in rural and urban communities struggling to address violence and fund research studying the programs’ efficacy.

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Trump oversees Thailand-Cambodia ceasefire signing as Asia tour gets under way

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Trump has begun a five-day trip to Malaysia, Japan and South Korea, his first visit to the region since taking office in January

Donald Trump has overseen the signing of a ceasefire agreement between Thailand and Cambodia on the first day of an Asia tour where he will seal new trade agreements and hold a crucial meeting with Xi Jinping.

The US president arrived in Malaysia on Sunday before the Asean summit in the capital, Kuala Lumpur. At a ceasefire ceremony in front of a sign that read “Delivering Peace”, the Thai prime minister, Anutin Charnvirakul, and his Cambodian counterpart, Hun Manet, signed an expanded ceasefire deal related to a deadly five-day conflict in July.

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Pentagon deploys top aircraft carrier as Trump militarisation of Caribbean ratchets up

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Use of USS Gerald Ford along with fighter jets comes as president plots strikes against alleged cartels on land

The Pentagon said on Friday that it was deploying the United States’s most advanced aircraft carrier to the Caribbean, a major escalation in the Trump administration’s war against drug cartels that provides the resources to start conducting strikes against targets on the ground.

The move will bring the USS Gerald Ford, with dozens of stealth fighter jets and surveillance aircraft, in addition to other warships that accompany the carrier, to the coast of Venezuela as it nears the end of its current deployment in the Mediterranean.

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Democratic senators call on education department to stop ICE raids by schools

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Cory Booker, Ed Markey and others urge Linda McMahon to step in amid violent crackdowns near Chicago schools

A group of Democratic senators have demanded that the Department of Education to stop immigration enforcement activities from taking place close to schools, following several violent crackdowns near school grounds in Chicago.

Although the raids are conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which is under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the senators are making an appeal directly to the education secretary, Linda McMahon.

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Pentagon chief announces another US military strike on alleged drug boat in Caribbean

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Pete Hegseth claimed that six ‘narco-terrorists’ onboard craft were killed in night strike in international waters

The US has carried out another military strike against what it claimed was a vessel carrying illegal drugs in the Caribbean, killing six people onboard, the Pentagon chief, Pete Hegseth, said.

In a social media post, Hegseth stated: “The vessel was known by our intelligence to be involved in illicit narcotics smuggling, was transiting along a known narco-trafficking route, and carrying narcotics.”

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US prices rose at a 3% annual rate in September, slightly beating forecasts

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Increase was largely driven by a 4.1% increase in gasoline prices despite Trump’s campaign pledge to ‘end inflation’

Prices continued to rise in September, increasing at an annual rate of 3%, according to the latest government inflation report.

The September 2025 consumer price index (CPI) was published approximately two weeks later than usual due to the federal government shutdown, which halted all Bureau of Labor Statistics operations.

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First Thing: Trump backs down on sending federal troops to San Francisco

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Protesters flood streets in show of resistance. Plus, our architecture critic on Trump’s bulletproof ballroom bling

Good morning.

Donald Trump has canceled plans for a deployment of federal troops to San Francisco that had sparked widespread condemnation from California leaders and sent protesters flooding into the streets.

What did Trump say about his change of mind? Trump confirmed he had a conversation with the city’s mayor, Daniel Lurie, writing on social media: “I spoke to Mayor Lurie last night and he asked, very nicely, that I give him a chance to see if he can turn it around.”

What are current tariffs on goods from Canada? Washington originally imposed a 25% tariff on imports of goods including timber, steel, aluminum and cars in the spring, prompting retaliatory action from Ottawa. The rate was raised to 35% by Trump in August.

How did Carney respond to Trump’s fusillade? His office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment last night. The prime minister was due to leave on Friday morning for a summit in Asia, while Trump is to do the same on Friday evening.

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Revealed: police across US spread false rumors about Venezuelan gang threats

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Claim that Tren de Aragua planned to attack officers was widely shared – only for FBI to later acknowledge it was mistaken, internal files show

An unverified rumor that Venezuelan gang members were preparing to kill police officers spread like wildfire through US law enforcement agencies last year, internal records reveal, only for federal officials to later quietly acknowledge the claim was mistaken.

The intelligence report, which appears to have first been disseminated by a local New Mexico police department in July 2024, suggested that the Tren de Aragua (TdA) gang had directed its members to “fire on or attack” law enforcement. The vague assertion quickly traveled among law enforcement agencies. It even made its way into a formal proclamation by the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, and was repeated by Republican Congress members as evidence of the dangers of Venezuelan immigrants and Democrats’ border policies.

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Pregnant women report medical neglect in ICE detention, rights groups say

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Women report miscarriages, delayed care, being shackled and being held in solitary confinement, letter says

Pregnant women have reported bleeding, miscarriages, being shackled and other instances of medical neglect while in US immigration custody, according to a group of prominent civil rights organizations.

The groups – which include the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and its Louisiana chapter, the National Immigration Project, Robert F Kennedy Human Rights, Sanctuary of the South and Sanctuary Now Abolition Project – sent a letter to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Senate committees on Wednesday, describing interviews with more than a dozen women.

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Trump poised to send scores of federal agents to San Francisco

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Newsom calls move ‘right out of the dictator’s handbook’ as agents prepare for key immigration enforcement operation

The Trump administration appeared poised to send dozens of federal agents to the San Francisco Bay Area for a major immigration enforcement operation, prompting condemnation from California leaders.

Details of the deployment were still emerging, but it will reportedly involve more than 100 federal agents, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The agents are reportedly set to begin using the US Coast Guard base in Alameda, a city located across the bay from San Francisco. It remained unclear whether national guard troops would also be involved.

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US demands EU reverse new climate rules to allow surge in gas imports

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US and Qatar say new rules will hinder imports of LNG, posing ‘existential threat’ to European economies

The US has demanded that the European Union roll back its climate and human rights rules in order to allow greater imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG), as the Trump administration approved a controversial gas export hub along the Gulf of Mexico coast.

A letter jointly sent by the US and Qatar, two of the three largest LNG exporters in the world, warned the EU that its new rules pose an “existential threat” to European economies as they would hinder imports of gas from countries such as theirs.

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Trump administration considering curbs on exports to China made with US software

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Plan would include everything from laptops to jet engines, to retaliate against Beijing’s latest round of rare earth export restrictions

The Trump administration is considering a plan to curb a dizzying array of software-powered exports to China, from laptops to jet engines, to retaliate against Beijing’s latest round of rare earth export restrictions, according to a US official and three people briefed by US authorities.

While the plan is not the only option on the table, it would make good on Donald Trump’s threat earlier this month to bar “critical software” exports to China by restricting global shipments of items that contain US software or were produced using US software.

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