Category Archives: US Politics

US strike on alleged drug boat kills three in eastern Pacific

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Attack comes after Friday’s strike that killed three men as well, pushing death toll to more than 200 since last year

The US military said on Saturday it had carried out a strike on a vessel in the eastern Pacific killing three men, the second strike in as many days.

Officials with the US Southern Command said in a post on X that intelligence had confirmed that the vessel was transiting along “narco-trafficking” routes in the eastern Pacific and engaged in “narco-trafficking” operations.

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White House releases memo describing results of Trump’s health checkup

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President in ‘excellent’ health, despite ‘lower leg swelling’ and hand bruising after fourth hospital visit in second term

Donald Trump has been grappling with “lower leg swelling” as well as “benign” hand bruising but remains in excellent health, the US president’s physician said in a memo released by the White House.

Citing the results of a recent examination, the memo from Dr Sean Barbabella said Trump “remains in excellent health, demonstrating strong cardiac, pulmonary, neurological and overall physical function”.

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‘The rug pulled out from everyone’: the chaos of Trump’s new green card rules

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The policy memo issued last week requires many foreigners to obtain green cards through their home countries

A new policy memo issued last week by US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), requiring many foreigners in the US to leave the country and obtain green cards through their home countries, has sparked confusion and fear among hundreds of thousands of visa holders and families, as well as immigration advocates and lawyers.

Multiple Guardian readers, speaking anonymously out of fear, said the memo threatens to upend lives they have spent years building in the US – from careers and homes to marriages and long-term plans for stability.

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Pam Bondi admits to ‘redaction errors’ in Epstein files but defends DoJ’s handling

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Ex-attorney general tells House committee she did not ‘lead every aspect’ of effort but rather delegated to Todd Blanche

Pam Bondi, the former attorney general, defended the Department of Justice’s (DoJ) handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files under her leadership on Friday, and told lawmakers on the House oversight and reform committee that she did not “lead every aspect” of the department’s effort, but rather she delegated oversight of the process to Todd Blanche, her former deputy attorney general, who is now acting attorney general.

Democratic lawmakers also said that Bondi refused to answer questions about Donald Trump’s involvement in the release of the files.

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Bondi to face closed-door questioning from House committee over Epstein files – US politics

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Lawmakers to have fresh chance to dig for information on Trump’s administration’s handling of issue by grilling former attorney-general

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Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.

Former attorney-general Pam Bondi is testifying before the US House oversight and reform committee, a long-awaited appearance that brings fresh scrutiny of the administration’s release of the Epstein files.

A jury in Spokane, Washington found an Afghanistan War veteran and two others guilty of federal conspiracy charges on Thursday for their part in a protest last June outside the city’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility.

New Jersey’s governor, Mikie Sherrill, said that state health inspectors were denied full access to the privately run Delaney Hall immigration detention center in Newark, where detainees are staging a hunger and labor strike over health and sanitary conditions, and protesters rallying outside have been tased, pepper-sprayed and detained.

At least six of the nine featured musical acts recruited to play on the National Mall in Washington DC this summer, in a concert series planned by the Trump administration to mark the nation’s 250th anniversary, have dropped out of the concert series, just one day after the lineup was announced.

US vice-president JD Vance on Thursday told reporters that Washington was “not there yet” with Iran but he said the parties were close, adding that the US was in a position where it could substantially set back Tehran’s nuclear program. Earlier, Iran’s Tasnim news agency, citing a source close to the negotiating team, said the text of a potential memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the two countries had not yet been finalised or confirmed.

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‘True patriot’: White House pays bizarre tribute to Harambe 10 years after gorilla’s death

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White House made lengthy post about gorilla shot dead at Cincinnati zoo after a toddler entered his enclosure in 2016

The White House has posted on social media a tribute to mark Thursday’s 10th anniversary of the death of a figure it called “a true patriot”.

The hero was not a human, however; it concerned the infamous case of the 400lb western lowland gorilla that had been named Harambe, which was shot dead at the Cincinnati zoo after a toddler entered his enclosure and interacted with the animal.

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US building Ebola quarantine center in Kenya for Americans amid outbreak

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Some experts criticize White House approach and say not allowing Americans to return to US hurts treatment efforts

The Trump administration is building a quarantine and treatment center in Kenya for Americans affected by the Ebola outbreak, instead of bringing them home.

The White House on Wednesday confirmed that the US was setting up a facility in Kenya for Americans to quarantine after Ebola exposure in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

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Trump accuses Iran of stalling peace deal to ‘out-wait’ him until US midterms

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US president tells cabinet Tehran is delaying in hope of better terms after November congressional elections

Donald Trump has accused Iran of trying to stall on making a peace agreement by running down the clock before November’s US midterm elections in the hope of getting better terms.

“They thought they were going to out-wait me, you know, ‘We’ll out wait him, he’s got the midterms,” the US president told a meeting of his cabinet at the White House on Wednesday.

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Federal court blocks new Republican-friendly voting map in Alabama

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Panel of three judges says congressional map was drawn to intentionally discriminate against Black voters

Alabama cannot use a new Republican-friendly map in this year’s midterm elections because it was drawn to intentionally discriminate against Black voters, a panel of three federal judges ruled on Tuesday.

The decision blocks Alabama from using a congressional map lawmakers passed in 2023 but never went into effect because the same court found it was drawn with intent to discriminate. Alabama was eventually ordered to adopt a map with two majority-Black districts that both elected Democrats. After the US supreme court gutted a major provision of the Voting Rights Act in a case called Louisiana v Callais in April, Alabama took the extraordinary step of moving its imminent congressional primary and sought to use the 2023 congressional map this year.

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Thomas Massie files to run in 2028 after losing to Trump pick Ed Gallrein

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Kentucky conservative says ‘I haven’t made a final decision about which office to seek, if I run’

Thomas Massie is planning his comeback.

The conservative Kentucky congressman filed to run again for the US House of Representatives in 2028, less than a week after losing to Donald Trump’s hand-picked challenger Ed Gallrein 55-45 in a bruising primary.

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Protesters clash with ICE agents outside New Jersey detention center

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Protesters say agents used pepper spray and batons in clash outside Delaney Hall where a hunger strike is under way

Protesters outside a New Jersey migrant detention center where a hunger strike is under way alleged that US immigration agents deployed pepper spray and batons against them during a demonstration on Monday.

The protesters tried to stop ICE from transferring Martin Soto – who announced the strike – but officials said that they were able to move him to the Elizabeth contract detention facility.

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Iran denies deal with US is imminent despite some progress

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Tehran says ‘contradictory statements’ from US and Israeli interference hindering negotiations

Iran has poured cold water on suggestions that a deal with the US is imminent, pointing to the confusion in US positions and Israeli interference as key factors in why a complete agreement is proving difficult to secure.

Speaking at the weekly foreign ministry press briefing, Esmail Baghaei, the spokesperson for Iran’s negotiating team, also said future management of the strait of Hormuz was a matter for Oman and Iran to reach agreement on, and that it was not tolls that were being proposed but “fees for navigational services”.

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Republican hawks warn of ‘disastrous mistake’ as Trump nears deal with Iran

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Trump insists US won’t rush talks with Tehran after rebukes from Republicans, including Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham

Republican hawks have issued a rare rebuke of Donald Trump over his planned peace deal with Iran, describing it as a “disaster” and questioning why the US president launched the war in the first place.

Allies of Trump who strongly backed his controversial decision to order war on Iran alongside Israel urged him to “hold the line” this weekend, despite mounting economic costs and no sign of progress on many of the the initial objectives set out by his administration.

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Gunman who opened fire near White House was known to Secret Service

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Suspect who died after exchanging fire with agents had tried to enter the complex last summer, records show

A gunman who opened fire outside the White House on Saturday before he was shot by federal agents was already known to the US Secret Service, court records show.

The man, 21, was taken to a nearby hospital, before he was later pronounced dead. He had previously tried to enter the complex, according to an affidavit filed in DC superior court in 2025, following an arrest nearby.

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What may be included in proposed Iran ceasefire deal?

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Proposed framework hinges on a 60-day truce, reopening strait of Hormuz, and revived talks on limiting Iran nuclear programme

• Middle East crisis: live updates

Donald Trump has said a “memorandum of understanding” in talks to end the US-Israel war on Iran “has been largely negotiated”.

Official details of the deal remain scant and it remains possible some aspects of the memo could change, but here is what we know so far about the potential agreement that could bring an end to the war.

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White House pauses removal of detainees to DRC as Ebola outbreak widens

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But Trump administration will not return detainees deported to third countries in disease-stricken region

The Trump administration will temporarily pause the removal of refugees to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) during a spiraling Ebola outbreak, according to reporting by Politico, but experts say the move won’t help prevent the spread of the disease.

At least one woman is now in limbo after officials moved her to Kinshasa, the capital of the DRC, and now say they won’t bring her back because of the Ebola travel ban – despite a judge’s order for her return.

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Trump’s justice department scrubs its website of news releases about January 6 defendants

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Department of Justice acknowledges removal of information about criminal cases related to 2021 US Capitol rioters

The Department of Justice is acknowledging it has removed from its website news releases about criminal cases related to the 6 January 2021 Capitol attack, calling the information about the prosecutions “partisan propaganda”.

The purge of news releases documenting criminal charges, convictions and sentencings is the latest step by the Trump administration to dramatically rewrite the history of the assault on the US Capitol, when hundreds of supporters of Donald Trump stormed the building in an effort to halt the congressional certification of his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

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How big tech got its way on Trump’s AI executive order

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The US president’s reversal on calling for a safety review of new AI models is a green light for tech’s unchecked power

Only hours before Donald Trump was set to sign a long-awaited executive order on Thursday that would have called for a government safety review of new artificial intelligence models before their release, the president abruptly backed out. Despite growing public backlash to the technology and experts warning new models will pose critical security risks, Trump vowed the US government would not slow down the AI race.

During a meeting with reporters on Thursday, Trump cited both American dominance and competition with China and as his reasoning behind the reversal.

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Rubio doubtful of diplomacy with Cuba as Trump renews threat of military action

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US secretary of state says president would like a negotiated agreement with Havana but likelihood ‘is not high’

The US president, Donald Trump, and the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, on Thursday again raised the spectre of military intervention in Cuba, a renewed threat that takes on greater weight a day after the administration announced criminal charges against Raúl Castro, the island’s former leader.

“Other presidents have looked at this for 50, 60 years, doing something,” Trump told reporters when asked about Cuba during an event in the Oval Office. “And it looks like I’ll be the one that does it. So I would be happy to do it.”

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Trump says he will ‘try and make’ son’s wedding, but timing is ‘not good’ for him

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‘I have a thing called Iran, and other things,’ says president as he considers invitation to Donald Trump Jr’s nuptials

Get Me to the Church on Time, sang Alfred Doolittle in the musical My Fair Lady. But for Donald Trump, attending a wedding is not simple – even when it’s that of his son.

On Thursday, the US president admitted that he might skip Donald Trump Jr’s nuptials, reportedly taking place in the Bahamas over the upcoming Memorial Day weekend.

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