Category Archives: Donald Trump

Trump v 60 Minutes is a stunning battle for the soul of US media

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President’s tensions with CBS show barely scratch surface of crusade against media he calls ‘enemy of the people’

Donald Trump’s battle with a US media he considers an “enemy of the people” has been a signature fight of his second term in office, sparking warnings of an erosion of press freedoms in America and fears over the independence of key publications owned by billionaires seeking to become close to the president.

But one struggle has now taken center stage that puts one of the most prestigious brands in US journalism in a direct legal fight with the White House, which has also dragged in a gigantic multibillion-dollar Wall Street deal by the corporate owners of one of America’s main broadcast networks.

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Trump order to loosen fishing regulations poses major risks, experts warn

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Conservationists fear fallout from president’s proclamation on fishing in federally protected area of Pacific Ocean

Environmental conservation groups are expressing major concerns over Donald Trump’s recent proclamation to reverse fishing regulations across the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine national monument, a federally protected area in the central Pacific Ocean spanning nearly 500,000 sq miles.

As one of the most pristine tropical marine environments in the world, the monument is now at risk following Trump’s decision last week to unleash American commercial fishing in the area with far-reaching environmental consequences.

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Chaos unleashed by Musk’s Doge is starting to wane – what does that mean?

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Tech billionaire plans to hang up the chainsaw as he steps away from ‘efficiency’ role amid Tesla sales slump

“This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy!” screamed Elon Musk, wielding the power tool before a cheering crowd at a rightwing political conference. The tech titan promised to slice and dice the US federal government and save taxpayers a trillion dollars. Oozing confidence, the world’s richest person seemed unstoppable.

That was February. Last week Musk announced that he is hanging up his chainsaw and stepping back from his role overseeing the unofficial “department of government efficiency”, or Doge, to focus on Tesla, his beleaguered electric vehicle company. The news led some to hope the chaos unleashed by Doge is finally waning.

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Trump says US ships should have free use of Panama and Suez canals

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US president tasks secretary of state Marco Rubio with making ‘immediate’ progress

Donald Trump has demanded free transit for American commercial and military ships through the Panama and Suez canals, tasking his secretary of state with making progress “immediately”.

Trump has for months been calling for the United States to take control of the Panama canal but his social media post also shifted focus on to the vital Suez route. “American ships, both military and commercial, should be allowed to travel, free of charge, through the Panama and Suez canals!” Trump posted on Saturday.

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Trump mega-donor’s paper savages his pardon of Las Vegas Republican

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Las Vegas Review-Journal, owned by billionaire Miriam Adelson, condemns pardon of ex-lawmaker Michele Fiore

A Nevada newspaper owned by a Donald Trump mega-donor has savaged the US president’s decision to pardon a Republican councilwoman who was convicted of using donations intended to fund a statue of a police officer to pay for cosmetic surgery.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal, owned by the billionaire Miriam Adelson, described the decision as a “debasement of presidential pardon power” in a scathing editorial published after Trump granted clemency to Michele Fiore, a former Las Vegas councilwoman and Nevada state lawmaker.

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Americans, including Republicans, losing faith in Trump, new polls reveal

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Trump scores poorly on economy and immigration as some fear he is ‘exceeding powers’ and focussed on wrong issues

Americans, including some Republicans, are losing faith in Donald Trump across a range of key issues, according to polling released this week. One survey found a majority describing the president’s second stint in the White House so far as “scary”.

Along with poor ratings on the economy and Trump’s immigration policy, a survey released on Saturday found that only 24% of Americans believe Trump has focussed on the right priorities as president.

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Trump officials deport two-year-old US citizen and mother of one-year-old girl

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Lawyers in both cases, one in Louisiana and another in Florida, say clients arrested at routine Ice check-ins

The Trump administration has removed a two-year-old US citizen from the country “with no meaningful process”, according to a federal judge, while in a different case the authorities deported the mother of a one-year-old girl, separating them indefinitely.

Lawyers in the two cases, the first in Louisiana and the second in Florida, say their clients were arrested at routine check-ins at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) offices and were given virtually no opportunity to speak with them or family members.

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Trump says he fears Putin ‘may be tapping me along’ after Zelenskyy meeting

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US president admits to concern Russian counterpart does not want to ‘stop the war’ and ponders new approach to Moscow

Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy have sat down for a face-to-face talk in the opulent halls of a Vatican basilica to discuss a possible ceasefire, after which the US president accused his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, of not wanting to “stop the war”.

The White House described Trump’s meeting with the Ukrainian leader before Pope Francis’s funeral as “very productive”, while Zelenskyy said on X that the talk with the US president was symbolic and had the “potential to become historic, if we achieve joint results”.

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‘100-year timeframe’: how Project 2025 is guiding Trump’s attack on government

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David A Graham’s latest book considers the vast far-right plan to change US politics – and why its architects are playing the long game

David A Graham doesn’t say he read Project 2025 so you don’t have to, but it might be inferred.

The Atlantic staff writer’s new book, The Project: How Project 2025 Is Reshaping America, is a swift but thorough overview of the vast far-right plan for a second Trump administration that achieved notoriety last year. Over just 138 pages, a passing dream next to the Heritage Foundation’s 922-page doorstop, Graham considers the origins of Project 2025, its aims and effects so far.

The Project is published in the US by Random House

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Trump administration investigating California university over foreign gifts

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DoE investigation revives reports that UC Berkeley failed to disclose Chinese funding for a now severed partnership

The Trump administration launched an investigation into the University of California, Berkeley, on Friday centered on foreign funding, making it the latest university to be targeted by the federal government.

The investigation revives criticism from several years ago about the university’s partnership with China’s Tsinghua University. It comes after Donald Trump earlier this week signed a series of executive orders focused on universities that he views as liberal adversaries to his political agenda.

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Trump administration investigating California university over foreign gifts

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DoE investigation revives reports that UC Berkeley failed to disclose Chinese funding for a now severed partnership

The Trump administration launched an investigation into the University of California, Berkeley, on Friday centered on foreign funding, making it the latest university to be targeted by the federal government.

The investigation revives criticism from several years ago about the university’s partnership with China’s Tsinghua University. It comes after Donald Trump earlier this week signed a series of executive orders focused on universities that he views as liberal adversaries to his political agenda.

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A carve-up in gift wrapping: Trump’s peace plan puts the sacrifice on Ukraine

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Redolent of old great power thinking, Trump’s Crimea giveaway could usher a return to international lawlessness

“Crimea will stay with Russia,” Donald Trump told Time magazine in a largely sympathetic profile on Friday. And with that statement, the US president made clear that he wanted to carve up another country, Ukraine, and so legitimise the forcible seizure of land made by Moscow 11 years ago.

From reading the transcript of the interview, Trump’s thinking is hardly coherent. Crimea, he says, wouldn’t have been seized if he had been president in 2014, but “it was handed to them by Barack Hussein Obama” and now Crimea has “been with them [Russia] for a long time” – so it is time to accept the seizure.

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Pope’s funeral a diplomatic minefield as Trump sets fire to US alliances

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President’s international engagements have set stage for explosive confrontations and Pope Francis’s funeral comes at an especially fraught moment

A spectre is haunting Europe: the spectre of Donald Trump flying to the Vatican this weekend and publicly feuding with international leaders in front of St Peter’s Basilica in the midst of the sombre rituals and rites that will mark the funeral of Pope Francis.

The US leader’s first international trip of his second term comes at one of the most politically fractious and fraught moments in recent memory, as his “America first” project sets fire to US alliances and trade relationships around the world. Between international tariffs, the wars in Ukraine and in Gaza, the Trump team’s open antipathy toward Europe and its hard line on immigration from Central and South America, the papal funeral could prove to be a minefield of international diplomacy.

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Democratic lawmakers call for release of Tufts student from Ice detention

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Jim McGovern and Ayanna Pressley exhort authorities to free Rümeysa Öztürk, calling her treatment ‘repression’

A group of high-profile Democratic lawmakers has called on the Donald Trump administration to immediately release the Tufts University graduate student Rümeysa Öztürk, praised her “unwavering spirit” and warned that the White House is engaging in “repression”.

In a New York Times essay published on Friday morning, the US senator Ed Markey and representatives Jim McGovern and Ayanna Pressley, who all represent Massachusetts, where Tufts is based, shared more details from their visit to Öztürk this week at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detention center in Louisiana, where she has been held since her arrest last month.

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US consumer sentiment sees largest drop since 1990 after Trump tariff chaos

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Experts warn of slowing economy after score based on Americans’ financial outlooks fell by 32% since January

US consumer sentiment plummeted in April after Donald Trump’s trade war threw the global economy into chaos, according to a new report.

The index of consumer sentiment, a score based on a monthly survey asking Americans about their financial outlooks, fell by 32% since January – the largest drop since the 1990 recession, according to the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research.

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Bill Maher calls Larry David’s satire of his Trump dinner ‘kind of insulting to 6 million dead Jews’

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‘Nobody has been harder … about Donald Trump than me,’ Maher says after fellow comedian compared his meal with US president to meeting Hitler

Bill Maher has responded to Larry David’s satirical essay in the New York Times that compared Maher’s glowing account of having dinner with Donald Trump to dining with Adolf Hitler.

Maher, a vocal critic of Trump in the past, had dinner with the US president and a group of his high-profile supporters, including their mutual friend Kid Rock, on 31 March. On an episode of his talkshow Real Time on 11 April, Maher described Trump as “gracious” and “much more self-aware than he lets on”, saying: “Everything I’ve ever not liked about him was – I swear to God – absent, at least on this night with this guy.”

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Trump targets Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue with memorandum

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President directs attorney general to investigate supposed foreign contributions, an unsubstantiated rightwing claim

The Republican president is taking aim at a Democratic fundraising platform, issuing a presidential memorandum to crack down on supposed foreign contributions to elections, an unsubstantiated claim from the right..

Donald Trump announced the memo on Thursday, directing the attorney general to investigate, and report to the president, “concerning allegations regarding the use of online fundraising platforms to make ‘straw’ or ‘dummy’ contributions and to make foreign contributions to US political candidates and committees, all of which break the law”.

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‘Trump 2028’ hats and T-shirts for sale on US president’s online store

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Donald Trump, who has seen his approval rating sink, has not ruled out serving a third term – though most spectators consider that highly unlikely

Donald Trump’s online store is selling clothing emblazoned “Trump 2028”, the year of the next US presidential election, in which the Republican is constitutionally banned from running.

The 78-year-old, who has seen his approval rating sink in recent opinion polls, has not ruled out serving a third term – though most spectators consider that highly unlikely.

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‘Vladimir, stop!’ Trump in rare rebuke to Putin as Kyiv attack toll rises to 12

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Intervention comes as US president makes renewed push to end war, reportedly on terms favourable to Moscow

Donald Trump has issued a rare rebuke to Moscow for an air attack that killed 12 people in Kyiv, telling the Russian president in a social media post: “Vladimir, STOP!”

The US president’s remarks come as he makes a renewed push to end the Ukraine war, reportedly on terms favourable to Russia that include recognition of Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, something the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has said he cannot accept.

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Trump accuses Zelenskyy of jeopardising imminent peace deal

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US president attacks Ukrainian counterpart, complaining Kyiv is unwilling to cede Crimea to Russia

Donald Trump has accused Volodymyr Zelenskyy of jeopardising what he claimed was an imminent peace deal to end the war in Ukraine, as he gave the clearest hint yet that the US would be willing to formally recognise Russia’s seizure of Crimea as part of any agreement.

The US president claimed a deal to end the war – largely negotiated between Washington and Moscow – was close, while the vice-president, JD Vance, said the agreement would include a proposal to freeze the conflict roughly along the current frontlines.

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