Category Archives: Trump administration

Trump to reverse Biden’s plan to phase out plastic straws across US government

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President said he will sign an executive order next week despite global plastics crisis

Donald Trump has said that he will reverse Joe Biden’s plan to phase out plastic straws across the US government, complaining that paper alternatives don’t work and that a move is needed to go “BACK TO PLASTIC!”

Trump said in a Truth Social post that he will sign an executive order next week “ending the ridiculous Biden push for Paper Straws, which don’t work. BACK TO PLASTIC!” The US president added in a separate post that Biden’s “mandate” for paper straws was now dead: “Enjoy your next drink without a straw that disgustingly dissolves in your mouth!!!”

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Trump cuts aid to South Africa over ‘racial discrimination’ against Afrikaners

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US president also offers asylum to Afrikaners and criticises law that allows land seizures without compensation in some circumstances

The US president, Donald Trump, has signed an executive order to cut financial assistance to South Africa, accusing the country’s government of “unjust racial discrimination” against white Afrikaners and offering them asylum in the US.

The order criticised a law signed by the South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, last month that allows for land to be expropriated with “nil compensation” in limited circumstances.

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What does Elon Musk believe?

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The man given free rein by Trump to crusade against the federal government supported Democrats until 2022. But some of Musk’s longstanding positions lead a straight line to his far-right sympathies

Elon Musk is not a people person, as millions around the world will be able to attest after the planet’s richest man cut off food supplies, healthcare and probably even life itself to some of the most vulnerable without so much as a fore- or afterthought.

Musk sees himself as a data man, wielding numbers like a machete to slash and burn his way through government waste and corruption as he leads the rightwing charge to capture the US state.

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Show strength and offer a win: experts’ tips for Starmer on dealing with Trump

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Veterans of May and Johnson governments share lessons from their experiences with unpredictable US president

It was just a few mangled sentences spoken in the darkness on an airport tarmac. But Donald Trump’s comments this week – his most significant yet regarding the UK – were enough to give heart to people in Downing Street and the Foreign Office.

“UK is out of line. But I’m sure that one, I think that one, can be worked out,” Trump said to reporters travelling with him at the Joint Base Andrews air force facility in Maryland. “Prime Minister Starmer has been very nice. We’ve had a couple of meetings, we’ve had numerous phone calls, we’re getting along very well.”

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‘Backsliding’: most countries to miss vital climate deadline as Cop30 nears

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Developing countries urge biggest polluters to act as Trump’s return to the White House heightens geopolitical turmoil

The vast majority of governments are likely to miss a looming deadline to file vital plans that will determine whether or not the world has a chance of avoiding the worst ravages of climate breakdown.

Despite the urgency of the crisis, the UN is relatively relaxed at the prospect of the missed date. Officials are urging countries instead to take time to work harder on their targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions and divest from fossil fuels.

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Judge temporarily blocks Musk’s ‘Doge’ team from accessing treasury records

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Injunction granted in response to lawsuit alleging the Trump administration allowed Musk’s team access to sensitive data in violation of federal law

A federal judge early on Saturday blocked Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) from accessing treasury department records that contain sensitive personal data such as social security and bank account numbers for millions of Americans.

US district judge Paul A Engelmayer issued the preliminary injunction after 19 Democratic attorneys general sued Donald Trump. The case, filed in federal court in New York city, alleges the Trump administration allowed Musk’s team access to the treasury department’s central payment system in violation of federal law.

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Trump and Japanese PM Ishiba talk tariffs and vow to stand against Chinese ‘aggression’

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Leaders praise each other at White House but president warns Japan could face tariffs if it doesn’t cut US trade deficit to zero

The Japanese prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba, and the US president, Donald Trump, struck a warm tone at their first meeting on Friday, with Tokyo avoiding tariffs that Trump has slapped on other allies – for now.

Heaping praise on each other at the White House, the two leaders pledged to stand together against Chinese “aggression” and said they found a solution for a blocked deal for troubled US Steel.

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Trump delays key piece of China tariff plan amid threats to other countries

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President halts plan to put tariffs on low-value packages but says he will impose duties on more countries next week

Donald Trump halted a key part of his tariff attack on China on Friday, as he threatened to impose new US duties on goods from many more countries next week.

Plans to ensure shipments from China to the US worth less than $800 still face tariffs – removing the longstanding duty-free status of low-cast packages – have been delayed to give more time to federal agencies to prepare for the change.

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Trump administration suspends $5bn electric vehicle charging program

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Highway agency ordered states to no longer spend funds allocated under Biden’s EV charging station program

The Trump administration has ordered US states to suspend a $5bn electric vehicle charging station program in a further blow to the environmental movement since the president’s return to the White House.

In a memo issued on Thursday to state transportation directors, the transportation department’s Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) ordered states not to spend any funds allocated to them under the Biden administration as part of the national electric vehicle infrastructure (NEVI) program.

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Trump’s Gaza plan suggests his pro-settler advisers are in the ascendant

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Idea of US occupying Gaza and pushing out the Palestinians delights Israel’s pro-settler movement and its US allies

When Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in Washington this week, his first stop was to meet evangelical Christian leaders, who have cheered on Israel in the war in Gaza in an alliance with the country’s pro-settler rightwing government. For both constituencies, Israel’s right to annex the occupied Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank is a matter of faith and, they hope, a matter of time.

Both constituencies cheered this week as Donald Trump announced his half-baked plan to “take over” Gaza, an idea he had only tinkered with before Tuesday evening, when it tumbled out to the obvious surprise of his closest aides.

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US-Panama relationship was ‘very strong’. Then Trump upended the diplomatic playing board

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US had made inroads against Chinese influence in Panama, but Trump’s demands could help Beijing expand its regional power

When Panama’s then president Juan Carlos Varela was invited to the White House in June 2017, Donald Trump said the Panama canal was doing “pretty well” and described the bilateral relationship as “very strong”.

Just days earlier, Varela had broken ties with Taiwan to establish diplomatic relations with China, but there was no indication that this snub to a key US ally had clouded the meeting.

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Rebuilding shattered Gaza may require a new Marshall plan

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Palestinians face a mammoth task to rebuild homes and infrastructure – and Trump is unlikely to help

In the week that Donald Trump called for what has been described as an “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians from Gaza to rebuild it as a US “riviera” – an idea as unworkable as it is unhinged – the issues of how, if and when Gaza will be reconstructed have returned to the fore.

The reality is that, for all the promises to rehabilitate the coastal strip after previous conflicts, reconstruction – when it has happened – has at best been very partial and always subordinated to Israel’s demands.

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US cedes ground to China with ‘self-inflicted wound’ of USAid shutdown, analysts say

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Sudden suspension of aid funding a ‘perfect opportunity’ for Beijing to fill the gap and grow its own soft power

Donald Trump’s shutdown of USAid has already had disastrous effects on humanitarian aid and development programmes around the world, but it has also ceded ground to the US’s chief rival, China, analysts have said.

The result of the sudden 90-day suspension of USAid funding – which accounts for 40% of global foreign aid – has been chaos: employees locked out of offices, humanitarian shipments left to rot, and lifesaving assistance stopped. Around the world, development programmes previously assisted by the USAid are panicking, warning of disastrous risks of escalating famine, death and disease.

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US election commission chair says Trump tried to fire her illegally

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Ellen Weintraub of Federal Election Commission rejects letter from president that claims she has been removed

United States Federal Election Commission commissioner and chair Ellen Weintraub said on Thursday she received a letter from Donald Trump that purports to fire her but added that the action was illegal.

In a post on X, Weintraub attached the January 31 letter signed by Trump which said: “You are hereby removed as a member of the Federal Election Commission, effective immediately.”

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Trump administration disbands taskforce targeting Russian oligarchs

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US attorney general issues memo to break up effort started after 2022 Ukraine invasion to target those close to Kremlin

The US justice department under Donald Trump is disbanding an effort started after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine to enforce sanctions and target oligarchs close to the Kremlin.

A memo from the attorney general, Pam Bondi, issued during a wave of orders on her first day in office but not previously reported, said the effort, known as Task Force KleptoCapture, will end as part of a shift in focus and funding to combating drug cartels and international gangs.

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Panama accuses US of peddling ‘intolerable falsehood’ about canal

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President José Raúl Mulino denies making a deal that US ships can transit the canal free of charge

The president of Panama, José Raúl Mulino, has accused the US of peddling a “quite simply intolerable falsehood” about the Panama canal, as Donald Trump’s pledge to “take back” the waterway continued to poison relations between the two countries and cause alarm around Latin America.

The US state department claimed late on Wednesday the Central American country had agreed to no longer charge US government vessels to pass through its canal – a move that would supposedly save Washington millions of dollars a year.

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US supreme court may revive doctrine that would curb federal agencies’ power

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Case on nondelegation doctrine comes after conservative court substantially curbed regulatory power in recent years

The US supreme court may soon revive an obscure, pro-big business legal doctrine that could make it virtually impossible for the US government to develop new laws and regulatory rules that protect Americans.

The theory, called the “nondelegation doctrine”, could also potentially invalidate large pieces of bedrock American laws and protections put in place since the first Congress.

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Trump might want to revive America’s imperial heyday – but does his base?

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The president’s Gaza proposal is a signal that old-school, blunt-force US expansionism seems to be back in fashion

Donald Trump’s proposal that the US take ownership of the Gaza Strip, expel and resettle the people there, and turn Gaza into a “Riviera of the Middle East” has outraged Palestinians, shocked the international community and even confused many of his own conservative voters.

Yet the announcement seems like yet another sign that the president, while sometimes distancing himself from the neoconservative foreign policies that entangled the US in Iraq and Afghanistan, is willing to pursue – or at least entertain pursuing – an undisguised US imperialism that has more in common with the expansionism of Teddy Roosevelt and Andrew Jackson, the 19th- and early 20th-century presidents associated with some of American’s most brazen and violent conquests.

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UN chief warns against ‘ethnic cleansing’ after Trump’s Gaza proposal

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President’s plan for US to take over Gaza Strip and move Palestinians out also rejected by allies Saudi Arabia and Jordan

Donald Trump’s proposal for a US takeover of Gaza was met with anger and blunt rejection from regional allies, delight from Israel’s far right and a warning against “ethnic cleansing” from the head of the UN.

The secretary general, António Guterres, planned to tell a UN meeting on Wednesday that “it is essential to avoid any form of ethnic cleansing” after the US president said he wanted to “own” Gaza and resettle its Palestinian residents elsewhere.

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‘Dangerous, provocative, illegal’: Arab Americans condemn Trump’s vow to ‘take over’ Gaza

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‘Arab Americans for Trump’ group rebrands itself while activists also criticize Biden and Harris’s support of Israel

Donald Trump’s remarks that the US will “take over” Gaza and resettle the Palestinian population elsewhere have drawn outrage and criticism from Palestinian and Arab Americans across the US.

A group of Arab Americans that supported Trump during the 2024 election rebranded itself following Trump’s comments on displacing Palestinians, from “Arab Americans for Trump” to “Arab Americans for Peace”.

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