Category Archives: US Politics

Supreme court blocks order that found Texas congressional map was likely racially biased

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Temporary hold on lower court ruling will remain in place while supreme court considers whether to allow new map

The US supreme court on Friday temporarily blocked a lower court ruling that found Texas’s 2026 congressional redistricting plan pushed by Donald Trump likely discriminated on the basis of race.

The order, signed by Justice Samuel Alito, will remain in place at least for the next few days while the court considers whether to allow the new map, which is favorable to Republicans, to be used in the midterm elections.

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Marjorie Taylor Greene to resign from office effective January 2026

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Georgia representative had said she had received death threats and was called a ‘traitor’ by Trump over Epstein vote

Marjorie Taylor Greene announced on Friday evening she will be resigning from office effective 25 January.

The Republican congresswoman who was denounced by Donald Trump over her support for the release of the Epstein files, explained her decision in a 10-minute social media video posted on X.

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‘I’ll stick up for you’: key moments from the cordial Trump-Mamdani meeting

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The president hosted the mayor-elect at the White House – and seemed enamoured of his fellow New Yorker

The highly anticipated Oval Office meeting between Donald Trump and Zohran Mamdani – the mayor-elect of New York City, the US president’s beloved home town – was hardly the combustible tête-à-tête many had predicted. For the moment at least, the two New Yorkers appeared friendly, smiling and cautiously optimistic about the work they might accomplish together.

Neither revived their hot campaign trail rhetoric, in which they cast each other as diametrically opposed political adversaries. Trump had labeled Mamdani a “100% Communist Lunatic” and urged voters to back his opponent, the former New York governor Andrew Cuomo. In turn, Mamdani had assailed Trump as a “despot” and pledged to be the president’s “worst nightmare”. Here are five things that stood out from their surprising display of political bonhomie.

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Democrats investigating Epstein decry Andrew ‘silence’ over interview request

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Mountbatten-Windsor ‘continues to hide’, US lawmakers say, after deadline they set to receive response passes

Two Democratic lawmakers involved in the US congressional investigation into the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein on Friday condemned Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s “silence” in response to their request that he sit for a deposition.

Robert Garcia, the ranking member of the House oversight committee, and Suhas Subramanyam, a member of the panel, were among the Democrats who earlier this month sent the former British prince a letter seeking his cooperation in their inquiry into Epstein, who died in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges.

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Trump has assembled least diverse US government this century, study shows

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President has chosen white men for key posts at expense of women and people of colour, Brookings Institution finds

Donald Trump has assembled the least diverse US government of the 21st century, filling the corridors of power with white men at the expense of women and people of colour, research shows.

Nine in 10 individuals confirmed by the Senate in the first 300 days of the second Trump administration were white, according to the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington.

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Workers inside Department of Education say Trump’s latest bid to dismantle agency ‘makes no sense’

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‘Morale is completely lost,’ say workers as Trump administration strips some programs and transfers others

Donald Trump’s bid to gut the US Department of Education “makes no sense”, according to workers inside the federal agency, who accuse the administration of trying to make their lives “as difficult and traumatic as possible”.

Three employees inside the department spoke to the Guardian, with one warning that morale has been “completely lost”, 10 months after Trump returned to the White House. All requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation.

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Tears and solemnity at Cheney funeral – but no memorial for those killed in Iraq

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Great and good pay tribute in Washington but honouring of former vice-president was an exercise in omission

You suspected that Maga had not conquered the Washington national cathedral when Bill Kristol was spotted at a men’s urinal conversing with Chris Wallace. You knew it for sure when James Carville, Anthony Fauci and Rachel Maddow were seen sitting close to one another in the nave.

The funeral of the 46th US vice-president, Dick Cheney, who died earlier this month aged 84, was a throwback to a less raucous and rancorous time. Ex-presidents and vice-presidents, Democratic and Republican, made small talk, but Donald Trump, who spent Thursday crying treason and calling for Democrats to be put to death, and his deputy JD Vance were not invited.

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Documents reveal Gerald Ford’s effort to block report on CIA assassination plots

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Release of documents comes amid conjecture Trump may have authorized the agency to assassinate Venezuelan president

The White House under Gerald Ford tried to block a landmark Senate report that disclosed the CIA’s role in assassination attempts against foreign leaders and ultimately led to a radical overhaul in how the agency was held to account, documents released to mark the 50th anniversary of the report’s publication reveal.

The documents, dating from 1975, were posted on Thursday by the National Security Archive, an independent research group, as it sought to highlight the report’s significance amid conjecture that Donald Trump may have authorized the agency to assassinate Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, amid a massive US military build-up against the country.

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US in talks to attend G20 summit after initial boycott, South Africa says

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Cyril Ramaphosa says US has had ‘change of mind’ but does not confirm Trump’s attendance in Johannesburg

The US has changed its mind about attending the G20 summit in Johannesburg, South Africa’s president has said, without confirming whether Donald Trump, who had said the US would boycott the event, now wanted to come.

Trump has claimed that South Africa racially discriminates against the minority white Afrikaner community, which led the country during the apartheid regime that ended in 1994.

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Trump and Mamdani to meet in Oval Office on Friday after months of bickering

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President has previously criticised the New York City mayor-elect, labelling him a ‘communist’ and threatening to deport him

Donald Trump has confirmed a long-awaited meeting with New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani will happen in Washington this week, setting up an in-person clash between the political opposites who for months have antagonised each other.

The sit-down, which Trump said on social media would take place on Friday in the Oval Office, could possibly represent a detente of sorts between the Republican president and Democratic rising star.

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Trump signs bill to compel release of more Epstein documents

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President attacks Democrats in post on Truth Social after US lawmakers swiftly move bill through Congress

Donald Trump signed a bill Wednesday directing the justice department to release files from the investigation into the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, surrendering in the face of joint pressure from Democratic opponents and the president’s conservative base.

The signature marked a sharp reversal for Trump, who had the authority as president to release the documents himself, but chose not to.

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Top judge resumes contempt inquiry into Trump El Salvador deportations

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James Boasberg demands sworn testimony to determine whether US officials defied March court order

A federal judge on Wednesday said he was resuming his long-stalled court proceeding to determine whether Trump administration officials willfully violated a court order by deporting hundreds of men to El Salvador in March.

US district judge James Boasberg said he would demand sworn testimony from administration officials to determine whether they defied his March court order to turn around aircraft that were removing the men from US territory.

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Saudi Arabia releases US retiree jailed over critical tweets

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Saad Almadi’s family thanks Trump and state department as announcement comes after meeting with crown prince

Saudi Arabia has agreed to allow US citizen Saad Almadi to return home to Florida, five months ahead of the scheduled lifting of travel restrictions and a day after Saudi crown prince and prime minister Mohammed bin Salman met Donald Trump at the White House.

Almadi, 75, was sentenced to 19 years of incarceration in the kingdom in 2021 after he wrote 14 tweets critical of the Riyadh government. Two years later, the charges were reduced to so-called “cyber crimes” and he was sentenced to a 30-year ban on leaving Saudi Arabia.

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Pope Leo condemns US’s ‘extremely disrespectful’ treatment of immigrants

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Pontiff backs statement by US bishops condemning raids and mass deportations under Trump administration

Pope Leo has reiterated his disapproval of Donald Trump’s immigration policies, saying foreigners in the US are being treated in an “extremely disrespectful way”.

Leo, the first US pontiff in the history of the Catholic church, made the remarks in response to questions about a statement adopted last week during a special assembly of US bishops that criticised the Trump administration’s mass deportations and lamented the fear and anxiety caused by immigration raids.

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How did your representative vote on releasing the Epstein files?

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US House today voted on the release of government files relating to Jeffrey Epstein. Find out how your representative voted

The US House of Representatives on Tuesday passed a bill that will force the release of investigative files related to the late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, after Donald Trump and his Republican allies backed down from their opposition amid a scandal that has dogged the president since his return to the White House.

Though Trump has for months dismissed the uproar over the government’s handling of the Epstein case as a “Democrat hoax”, he signaled his support for the House bill over the weekend, and said he would sign the measure if it reaches his desk. Here is how the House voted.

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Sheinbaum again dismisses Trump’s threat of sending troops to Mexico: ‘We do not want intervention’

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Mexico’s president responds to Trump’s latest warning that he could authorize strikes against drug cartels in country

Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has again dismissed Donald Trump’s threat of military action against drug cartels inside her country, telling reporters: “It’s not going to happen.”

Sheinbaum made the comments on Tuesday morning in response to the US president’s latest warning that he could authorise strikes in Mexico.

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‘Deeply ashamed’ Larry Summers steps back from public life over Epstein links

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Former treasury secretary steps away to ‘rebuild trust’ after severe backlash but will continue teaching Harvard classes

The Harvard professor and economist Larry Summers said he would be stepping back from public life after documents released by the House oversight committee revealed email exchanges between Summers and the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who called himself Summers’ “wing man”.

Politico reported on Monday that Summers, a former treasury secretary, expressed deep regret for past messages with Epstein.

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Nicki Minaj to spotlight plight of Nigerian Christians in UN speech arranged by White House

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Rapper to give address on Tuesday after supporting Trump’s post condemning Nigerian government

The US-based Trinidadian rapper Nicki Minaj will work alongside the White House to highlight claims of Christian persecution in Nigeria.

Minaj is expected to deliver a speech at the United Nations headquarters in New York on Tuesday, according to a Time journalist who first posted about the collaboration on Sunday, adding that it was arranged by Alex Bruesewitz, an adviser to Donald Trump.

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New international student enrollments in US plunge this year, data shows

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Enrollment fell 17%, the largest drop in a decade aside from the pandemic, amid Trump’s immigration crackdown

The number of international students enrolling in US colleges and universities plunged this year as the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown on higher education began to bite, data released on Monday reveals.

New international student enrollment fell 17% in the current academic year, the largest drop in more than a decade aside from the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a fall snapshot published by the Institute of International Education (IIE).

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Trump’s reversal with call to release Epstein files reveals inability to control Maga allies

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President attempts to save face politically after pressuring Republicans to back off their pushes to release files

Donald Trump’s call for Republicans to back the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files, an abrupt reversal, is a rare instance of the president being unable to tame his Maga base and being instead forced to accede to it.

Many Republicans are expected to support a vote in the US House this week to force the justice department to release the files. Once the measure passes, it would still need approval in the US Senate, where 13 Republican senators would need to join with all 47 Democrats to approve it.

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