Gavin Newsom confirms he is considering 2028 presidential run

Democratic California governor and high-profile Trump critic plans to make decision after 2026 midterms

Gavin Newsom, California’s Democratic governor, told CBS News Sunday Morning he plans to make a decision on whether to run for president in 2028 once the 2026 midterm elections are over.

“Yeah, I’d be lying otherwise,” Newsom said in response to a question on whether he would give serious thought to a White House bid after the 2026 elections. “I’d just be lying. And I’m not – I can’t do that.”

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

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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75% of Americans report soaring prices as Trump claims inflation ‘over’

Exclusive poll: Inflation remains a concern despite president’s pledge to reduce prices on ‘day one’

Nine months after Donald Trump took office, promising to reduce prices on “day one”, a clear majority of Americans say their monthly costs have risen by between $100 and $749, according to an exclusive new poll conducted for the Guardian.

The president has continued to insist that there is “virtually no inflation”. “Prices are ‘WAY DOWN’ in the USA,” Trump wrote on social media in late August.

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Republican and Democratic senators dig in heels over government shutdown

Lindsey Graham says closure won’t push him to meet Democrats’ demands on Obama-era healthcare subsidies

Republican and Democratic senators Lindsey Graham and Mark Kelly have dug their heels in over the government shutdown – which is now approaching two weeks, with the former saying that the closure won’t push him to meet Democrats’ demands for a restoration of Obama-era healthcare subsidies.

Graham said on NBC News’s Meet the Press on Sunday that he was in favor of the Senate voting to reopen the government and prepared to “have a rational discussion” with Democrats – but not with the government shut down.

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Democrats refuse to fold over shutdown as Republican outrage builds

Party sticks to its guns on healthcare and says it’s willing to hold out – much to the delight of its progressive supporters

When he sat down to talk about the US government shutdown with reporters from a closely read political newsletter this week, Chuck Schumer sounded as if he was relishing his standoff with the Republicans.

“Every day gets better for us,” he told Punchbowl News. As the shutdown got under way, Schumer explained, the Republicans believed that Democrats would quickly fold and vote to reopen the government, but instead they had stuck to their guns for a week and a half, demanding an array of concessions on healthcare and other issues.

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Senate Republicans vote against check on Trump using deadly force against cartels

First vote in Congress on military campaign that White House says has hit four vessels and killed at least 21 people

Senate Republicans voted down legislation Wednesday that would have put a check on Donald Trump’s ability to use deadly military force against drug cartels after Democrats tried to counter the administration’s extraordinary assertion of presidential war powers to destroy vessels in the Caribbean.

The vote fell mostly along party lines, 48-51, with two Republicans, Rand Paul and Lisa Murkowski, voting in favor and the Democrat John Fetterman voting against.

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House speaker says Democrats aren’t serious about shutdown negotiation as Democratic leader blames Republicans

Mike Johnson adds Trump does not want permanent job cuts as talks between parties stalled over weekend

The Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, accused Democrats of being “not serious” in negotiations to end the federal government shutdown, while the Democratic leader accused Republicans of driving the shutdown, now on its fifth day and expected to last at least through next week.

Talks between the opposing political parties stalled over the weekend, with no votes anticipated to end the standoff. A CBS poll found just 28% of Democratic voters and 23% of Republicans consider their party’s positions worth shutting down the government.

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US government shuts down after Democrats refuse to back Republican funding plan

First shutdown in nearly seven years as Republicans accused of ‘risking America’s healthcare’ in spending bill

The US government shut down on Wednesday, after congressional Democrats refused to support a Republican plan to extend funding for federal departments unless they won a series of concessions centered on healthcare.

The GOP, which controls the Senate and the House of Representatives, repudiated their demands, setting off a legislative scramble that lasted into the hours before funding lapsed at midnight, when the Senate failed to advance both parties’ bills to keep funding going.

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Palestinian American denied slot at DNC competing for Georgia governor: ‘We’re trying to rebuild the coalition’

Ruwa Romman is ‘running to build a movement’ and ‘restoring civic ethos of being involved in the government’

Ruwa Romman, the first Palestinian-American elected to state-level office in Georgia, was fighting for a speaking slot a year ago at the Democratic national convention, hoping to draw attention to concerns among progressive voters about the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza.

On Monday, she announced her candidacy for governor in Georgia – looking for a different kind of attention.

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White House tells agencies to prepare for firings if government shuts down

Democrats accuse Trump of intimidation tactics after memo outlines much more aggressive step than previous shutdowns

The White House is telling federal agencies to prepare large-scale firings of workers if the government shuts down next week in a partisan fight over spending plans – prompting the Democrats to accuse Donald Trump of intimidation tactics.

In a memo released on Wednesday night, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) said agencies should consider a reduction in force for federal programs whose funding would lapse next week, is not otherwise funded and is “not consistent with the president’s priorities”.

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Texas Ice facility shooting: Republicans blame ‘radical left’ as Democrats focus on victims and gun control

Democrats say Trump allies are using incident for ‘political points’ against the left despite the victims being detainees

A deadly shooting at a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) field office in Dallas has been met with markedly different reactions from the political right and left.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) confirmed shortly after the news broke that detainees were the victims of the sniper attack on the facility and that no federal agents had been injured. The president and his allies, however, were quick to frame the shooting as an attack on Ice and place blame on the “radical left”.

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US must ‘universally condemn political violence’, Democratic governor Shapiro says

Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro says US stands at ‘inflection point’ after Charlie Kirk killing and urges unity over division

Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro has said Americans must “universally condemn political violence, no matter where it is” after the killing of rightwing youth organizer Charlie Kirk as well as a deadly shootout in Shapiro’s state that left three police officers dead and two others injured.

Hours before Kirk’s funeral, Shapiro said that the nation stands at an “inflection point” and urged Americans to choose shared values over division, pointing to the solidarity shown by Pennsylvanians in the aftermath of the officers’ killings in York county last week.

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Trump declines to call for unity after Charlie Kirk killing in stunning move

President tells Fox News ‘the radicals on the left are the problem’ and refuses to seek common way forward

Donald Trump has declined to call for the US to come together as a way of fixing the country’s divisions in the wake of the assassination of his close associate, the rightwing activist Charlie Kirk, preferring to cast “vicious and horrible” radicals on the left of US politics as the sole problem.

In an interview on Fox & Friends on Friday morning, the US president was asked what he intended to do to heal the wounds of Kirk’s shooting in Utah. “How do we fix this country? How do we come back together?” he was asked by the show’s co-host Ainsley Earhardt, who commented that there were radicals operating on the left and right of US politics.

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‘Despicable’: Republicans and Democrats condemn violence after Charlie Kirk killing

US lawmakers, in bipartisan rebuke, say violence has no place in America as Trump orders flags lowered

The killing of the rightwing activist Charlie Kirk at a Utah college on Wednesday afternoon prompted outrage from Democrats and Republicans over the latest act of political violence in the United States, with Donald Trump lamenting the loss of a key ally.

“The Great, and even Legendary, Charlie Kirk, is dead. No one understood or had the Heart of the Youth in the United States of America better than Charlie,” the US president posted on his Truth Social platform.

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House committee releases image of ‘sickening’ birthday note reportedly from Trump to Epstein – US politics live

White House officials seek to discredit note and claim Donald Trump signature is false

Donald Trump now cannot claim presidential immunity to get off the hook from paying $83.3m in damages to the writer E Jean Carroll, a federal appeals court ruled on Monday, upholding a jury’s 2024 award against the president for defamation.

Trump’s lawyers had pointed to the supreme court’s ruling last year saying the president has immunity for official acts to argue that the damages should be overturned. A three-judge panel for the US court of appeals for the second circuit, rejected that argument.

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Will Republicans in Congress finally stand up to Trump?

The president has steamrollered the separation of powers but so far his sway over his party has been firm

Democrat Chuck Schumer returned to the Senate floor last week with some urgent questions. “Will Senate Republicans continue to kowtow to a leader they know is dragging the country down?” he demanded. “That they know is a pathological liar? Or will they, as the Founding Fathers intended, stand up to him? Will they help us fight America’s slide into authoritarianism?”

It was a recognition of how Donald Trump has spent eight months seeking to expand presidential power at the expense of Congress and others. He has signed 200 executive orders – more than Joe Biden in four years – unleashed squadrons of national guard troops in Washington, turned investigators on his political foes and sought to bring academic, cultural, financial and legal institutions to heel.

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Joe Biden to begin fundraising to build presidential library in Delaware

Effort could be a tough task in current political climate, with Trump maligning ex-president and left-leaning groups daily

Former US president Joe Biden has decided to build his presidential library in Delaware and has tapped a group of former aides, friends and political allies to begin the heavy lift of fundraising and finding a site for the museum and archive.

The Joe and Jill Biden Foundation this past week approved a 13-person governance board that is charged with steering the project. The board includes former secretary of state Antony Blinken, longtime adviser Steve Ricchetti, prolific Democratic fundraiser Rufus Gifford and others with deep ties to the one-term president and his wife.

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Joe Biden to begin fundraising to build presidential library in Delaware

Effort could be a tough task in current political climate, with Trump maligning ex-president and left-leaning groups daily

Former US president Joe Biden has decided to build his presidential library in Delaware and has tapped a group of former aides, friends and political allies to begin the heavy lift of fundraising and finding a site for the museum and archive.

The Joe and Jill Biden Foundation this past week approved a 13-person governance board that is charged with steering the project. The board includes former secretary of state Antony Blinken, longtime adviser Steve Ricchetti, prolific Democratic fundraiser Rufus Gifford and others with deep ties to the one-term president and his wife.

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

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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