Closing summary
Our live coverage is ending now. In the meantime, you can find all of our live US politics coverage here. Here is a summary of the key developments from today:
The supreme court has rejected the Trump administration’s request to remove a temporary block on deportations of Venezuelans under a rarely used 18th-century wartime law. Over two dissenting votes, the justices acted on an emergency appeal from lawyers for Venezuelan men who have been accused of being gang members, a designation that the administration says makes them eligible for rapid removal from the United States under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. Trump wrote on social media: “THE SUPREME COURT WON’T ALLOW US TO GET CRIMINALS OUT OF OUR COUNTRY!”
The Trump administration is working on a plan to permanently relocate up to 1 million Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to Libya, NBC reports. Two people familiar with the move said that the plan is under serious enough consideration that the administration has discussed it with Libya’s leadership.
Moody’s Ratings downgraded the United States’ credit rating today, lowering it one notch from the top-tier AAA to Aa1, citing mounting fiscal pressures and high interest rates. With this move, it now joins Standard & Poor’s, which downgraded the US in 2011, and Fitch Ratings, which followed suit in 2023, both assigning an AA+ rating.
Rightwing lawmakers derailed Donald Trump’s signature legislation in the House of Representatives, preventing its passage through a key committee and throwing into question whether Republicans can coalesce around the massive bill. The major and embarrassing setback raises the stakes for the House speaker, Mike Johnson, who had set a goal of Memorial Day to get the legislation passed through the House and on to the Senate.
Trump said the US will send letters to some of its trading partners to unilaterally impose new tariff rates, suggesting that Washington lacks the capacity to reach individual trade deals.
Trump accused the former FBI director James Comey of calling for his assassination in a coded social media post written in seashells. Comey’s Instagram post – a photograph of seashells on a beach arranged to spell the numbers 8647, which he captioned: “Cool shell formation on my beach walk” – was used by rightwing supporters of Trump to claim it was a call to assassinate the US president. Former FBI Director James Comey was escorted to the US Secret Service’s Washington Field Office on Friday afternoon for an interview, CNN reports.
Trump acknowledged that people are starving in Gaza and the US would have the situation in the territory “taken care of” as it suffered a further wave of intense Israeli airstrikes overnight. On the final day of his Gulf tour, the US president told reporters in Abu Dhabi: “We’re looking at Gaza. And we’re going to get that taken care of. A lot of people are starving.”
The Trump administration has terminated nearly 600 contractors at Voice of America, the US-funded international news network known for delivering independent journalism to countries with restricted press freedom. Among those dismissed are journalists from authoritarian countries who now face deportation, as their visas are linked to their jobs at VOA.
Ice effectively misled a judge in order to gain access to the homes of students it sought to arrest for their pro-Palestinian activism, attorneys say. A recently unsealed search warrant application shows that Ice told a judge it needed a warrant because the agency was investigating Columbia University for “harboring aliens”.
The former US ambassador to Ukraine, who resigned from the role in April, has said that she quit the post because she disagreed with Donald Trump’s foreign policy. Ambassador Bridget Brink, who served as ambassador to Ukraine from May 2022 until her departure last month, outlined the reasons for her departure for the first time in an op-ed published today by the Detroit Free Press. In the piece, Brink hit out at Trump for pressuring Ukraine rather than Russia and said she felt it was her duty to step down. “Peace at any price is not peace at all ― it is appeasement,” she wrote. More here.
US government records reveal Latin American leaders have spent millions hiring Washington’s top lobbyists to push for a laundry list of requests – from free-trade deals, security assistance and energy investments – to be heard by the Trump administration, according to an analysis by the Guardian and The Quincy Institute.
US district judge Paula Xinis expressed frustration on Friday that the Trump administration once again failed to provide sufficient details about its efforts bring back Kilmar Ábrego García, who was deported in error from the United States in March and sent to a prison in El Salvador.
The US Department of Homeland Security is reportedly considering an “out-of-the-box” pitch to participate in a television gameshow that would have immigrants compete to obtain US citizenship. Department spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin described the pitch to the New York Times as a “celebration of being an American” and said the show would include challenges based on American traditions.
NBC News has done a deep dive on the artifacts that have been removed from the National Museum of African American History and Culture, finding 32 removals since the Trump administration issued an executive order to remove certain pieces of history from the Smithsonian museums.
American abolitionist Harriet Tubman’s personal hymn book, with gospels that were sung as she led enslaved people to freedom, and the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, are among some of the museum’s losses.
The museum said in late April that “recent claims that objects have been removed for reasons other than adherence to standard loan agreements or museum practices are false.”
A federal judge has indefinitely blocked the Department of Health and Human Services from cutting $11 billion in public health grants set aside for state and local health departments.
On Friday, judge Mary McElroy of the US District Court for the District of Rhode Island extended a temporary restraining order she issued last month, which had stopped the Trump administration from slashing pandemic-era funding for Washington DC and 23 Democratic-led states.
The states bringing the lawsuit claimed HHS violated the law by abruptly halting the grants without assessing the potential benefits or consequences of the decision.
ICYMI, Lauren Gambino brings us the full report on the Supreme Court ruling today:
Supreme court blocks Trump bid to resume deportations under 1798 law
The supreme court has rejected the Trump administration’s request to remove a temporary block on deportations of Venezuelans under a rarely used 18th-century wartime law.
Over two dissenting votes, the justices acted on an emergency appeal from lawyers for Venezuelan men who have been accused of being gang members, a designation that the administration says makes them eligible for rapid removal from the United States under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.
The court, which returned the case to a federal appeals court, had already imposed a temporary halt on deportations from a north Texas detention facility in a middle-of-the-night order issued last month.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote the dissent, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas.
Donald Trump responded on social media, with a post that claimed: “THE SUPREME COURT WON’T ALLOW US TO GET CRIMINALS OUT OF OUR COUNTRY!”
“The Supreme Court of the United States is not allowing me to do what I was elected to do,” Trump added in a subsequent post, in which he also claimed, falsely, that the justices “ruled that the worst murderers, drug dealers, gang members, and even those who are mentally insane, who came into our Country illegally, are not allowed to be forced out without going through a long, protracted, and expensive Legal Process, one that will take, possibly, many years for each person.”
Read the full story here:
After the firm Moody’s downgraded the credit rating of the United States, the White House placed the blame on the Biden administration:
“The Trump administration and Republicans are focused on fixing Biden’s mess by slashing the waste, fraud, and abuse in government and passing The One, Big, Beautiful Bill to get our house back in order,” White House spokesperson Kush Desai said. “If Moody’s had any credibility, they would not have stayed silent as the fiscal disaster of the past four years unfolded.”
President Donald Trump used the “n-word” to refer to nuclear weapons on Fox News host Bret Baier’s show on Friday evening.
During the segment, Trump spoke about the India-Pakistan conflict that unfolded over the weekend.
“It was getting deeper, and I mean more missiles. Everyone was stronger, stronger, to a point where the next one was gonna be you know what. The n word. You know what the n word is, right?,” Trump said.
Baier said, “nuclear,” before thanking Trump for the clarification.
Trump chuckled and said, “It’s the n word. That’s very nasty word, right? In a lot of ways. The n word used in a nuclear sense,” he said.
Trump’s use of the term “n-word” in reference to nuclear weapons drew criticism for its separation from the word’s widely understood association with a history of racial violence and discrimination in the United States.
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Former FBI Director James Comey was escorted to the US Secret Service’s Washington Field Office on Friday afternoon for an interview, CNN reports.
According to the Associated Press, the meeting lasted about an hour.
Agents are questioning Comey in connection with a social media post he shared yesterday, which showed seashells arranged on a beach spelling out “86 47”, a phrase widely interpreted online as a call to remove Donald Trump, the 47th president, from office.
Comey is not in custody and is cooperating voluntarily, sources told CNN.
Comey “knew exactly what that meant,” Trump said in a Fox News interview. “A child knows what that meant. If you’re the FBI director and you don’t know what that meant, that meant assassination.”
Updated
It looks like Axios obtained some of the audio of the interviews between former president Joe Biden and special counsel Robert Hur in October 2023.
Biden is heard struggling to recall the year his son died, when he left the vice-presidency, when Donald Trump was elected, and why he had classified documents.
The recordings include long pauses, occasional slurred speech and mumbled responses, Axios reports.
The newly released audio offers a better look into why the White House resisted calls to release the recordings last year, as concerns about Biden’s memory and cognitive sharpness mounted.
The recordings come less than a week until a new book on that topic – Original Sin, by Axios’ Alex Thompson and CNN’s Jake Tapper – will be released.
Updated
The New York Times is reporting that the Trump administration is planning to release audio of former president Joe Biden’s 2023 interview with the special counsel investigating his handling of classified documents.
The audio recording could be released as early as next week.
Biden was interviewed at the White House in October 2023 by Robert K Hur, who had been appointed to investigate whether crimes had been committed related to classified documents found at Biden’s former office and home after he left the Obama administration.
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Ice used ‘false pretenses’ for warrant to hunt for Columbia students, lawyers say
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) effectively misled a judge in order to gain access to the homes of students it sought to arrest for their pro-Palestinian activism, attorneys say.
A recently unsealed search warrant application shows that Ice told a judge it needed a warrant because the agency was investigating Columbia University for “harboring aliens”. In reality, attorneys say, Ice used the warrant application as a “pretext” to try to arrest two students, including one green card holder, in order to deport them.
What the unsealed document shows is that the agency “was manufacturing an allegation of ‘harboring’, just so agents can get in the door,” Nathan Freed Wessler, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), said. “What Ice was actually trying to do is get into these rooms to arrest them.”
The “harboring aliens” statute is applied to those who “conceal, harbor, or shield from detection” any immigrant who is not authorized to be in the US.
The search warrant, which was first reported by the Intercept, relates to two Columbia University students, Yunseo Chung and Ranjani Srinivasan, whom Ice sought to deport over their purported pro-Palestinian activism.
Read the full story here:
Moody’s Ratings downgraded the United States’ credit rating today, lowering it one notch from the top-tier AAA to Aa1, citing mounting fiscal pressures and high interest rates.
A credit rating signals how likely a country (or company) is to repay its debt.
“This one-notch downgrade on our 21-notch rating scale reflects the increase over more than a decade in government debt and interest payment ratios to levels that are significantly higher than similarly rated sovereigns,” the agency said in a statement.
With this move, it now joins Standard & Poor’s, which downgraded the US in 2011, and Fitch Ratings, which followed suit in 2023, both assigning an AA+ rating.
The US continues to run a large budget deficit, with interest costs on Treasury debt climbing amid both rising rates and increased borrowing.
So far this fiscal year, the deficit has reached $1.05 trillion, a 13% jump from the same period last year. An uptick in tariffs helped slightly narrow the gap last month.
Trump slams Supreme Court over decision to block attempts to deport Venezuelans to prison in El Salvador
President Donald Trump criticized the Supreme Court’s decision blocking his administration’s attempt to send Venezuelans whom he says are gang members to a notorious prison in El Salvador.
He wrote on social media: “THE SUPREME COURT WON’T ALLOW US TO GET CRIMINALS OUT OF OUR COUNTRY!”
His remarks come after the Supreme Court kept in place its order blocking the Trump administration from deporting Venezuelan migrants under the Alien Enemies Act.
“Under these circumstances, notice roughly 24 hours before removal, devoid of information about how to exercise due process rights to contest that removal, surely does not pass muster,” the ruling said.
Updated
The United States has issued emergency orders to address “critical grid security issues and improve grid resiliency” in Puerto Rico, the Energy Department said in a statement on Friday.
The DOE also said it would review $365 million in funding from the Puerto Rico Energy Resilience Fund to make sure all assistance “is used to support practical fixes to the grid and benefits all residents of Puerto Rico.”
“Access to energy is essential for all modern life, yet the current energy emergency jeopardizes Puerto Ricans’ access to basic necessities,” said US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright. “This system is unsustainable, and our fellow citizens should not be forced to suffer the constant instability and dangerous consequences of an unreliable power grid.”
The orders will unlock emergency protocols to address immediate programs, according to the statement.
The news comes about two weeks away from the start of hurricane season. In 2017, Puerto Rico was devastated by Hurricane Maria, a Category 4 storm and the strongest to hit the island in nearly a century. A Harvard study later estimated the death toll at 4,645 people.
Chronic power disruptions continue to affect the island amid a faulty power grid.
Donald Trump won the presidency with the help of a key constituency: Latino voters. But there are early signs of “discontent”.
A new poll by Equis Research, a Democratic-leaning group, found that fewer Latino voters approve of Trump’s second-term performance – 38% – than say they voted for him in the 2024 presidential election – 44%. In total, the poll found that 15% of Latinos who voted for Trump last year disapprove of his job to date.
“It is cracks, not a collapse,” Carlos Odio, the cofounder of Equis, said in an interview on Friday.
The Equis survey found “discontent” among Latino voters over Trump’s actions on the economy and his immigration policies, Odio said. While Latino voters are generally supportive of security measures, two-thirds of respondents said Trump’s actions were “going too far and targeting the types of immigrants who strengthen our nation”.
Among the Latinos who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 and Trump in 2024, a similar share – 64% – said the president had gone “too far” on immigration.
“Latinos, like all Americans, are still safety/security conscious, even while they don’t like what they’re seeing right now,” Odio said.
The polling memo notes that Trump’s slippage in approval ratings has not yet pushed Latino voters into the arms of Democrats – at least not yet. Among the respondents who disapprove of Trump’s immigration policies, 1 in 4 say they don’t prefer either party on the issue.
Emphasizing that many voters feel Trump has only just taken office and remain in a “wait-and-see posture,” Odio said, “there is damage that undoubtedly has been done in this early go.”
Updated
Former vice president Mike Pence said today that President Donald Trump shouldn’t accept a luxury jet from Qatar to use as the next Air Force One.
In an interview with NBC News’ “Meet the Press” Kristen Welker, Pence said:
“The very idea that we would accept an Air Force One from Qatar, I think is inconsistent with our security, with our intelligence needs. And my hope is the president reconsiders it. I think if Qatar wants to make a gift to the United States, they ought to. They ought to take that $400 million and plow it into infrastructure on their military base.”
Context: Trump has so far brushed off fierce criticism over his plan to accept a $400m luxury jet from the Qatari government. Trump has said Qatar’s offer for a Boeing 747-8 jetliner to use as Air Force One was too good to refuse, complaining the current presidential aircraft is underwhelming.
Trump administration working on plan to move 1 million Palestinians to Libya, reports
NBC News is reporting that the Trump administration is working on a plan to permanently relocate up to 1 million Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to Libya.
Two people familiar with the move said that the plan is under serious enough consideration that the administration has discussed it with Libya’s leadership.
In exchange for the resettling of Palestinians, the administration would potentially release to Libya billions of dollars of funds that the US froze more than a decade ago.
No final agreement has been reached, according to the news outlet, and Israel has been kept informed of the administration’s discussions.
The Department of Government Efficiency is planning to assign a team to review the congressional watchdog known as the Government Accountability Office, NOTUS reports.
“GAO was contacted by representatives of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), who sought to assign a team to GAO,” said an internal email sent to GAO employees at 12:42 p.m. on Friday. “Today, we sent a letter to the acting administrator of DOGE stating that GAO is a legislative branch agency that conducts work for the Congress. As such, we are not subject to DOGE or executive orders.”
Currently, GAO is the only federal body auditing DOGE’s operations. Many of the audit requests from Congress have been consolidated into a few major ongoing investigations, with final reports not expected for several months.
One of those reviews involves potential violations of the Impoundment Control Act, which could set GAO on a collision course with DOGE.
The 1974 law requires the president to notify Congress of any withheld budget authority and to follow a formal review process set by lawmakers.
US supreme court maintains block on Trump deportations under Alien Enemies Act
Reuters is reporting that the US supreme court is keeping in place its order blocking the Trump administration from deporting Venezuelan migrants under the Alien Enemies Act.
On 7 April, the supreme court ruled that those being removed under the law needed to be provided adequate notice that they were being removed under the Act so that they might be able to file a legal challenge.
Less than two weeks later, on 19 April, the supreme court ordered a halt to a deportation of migrants in Texas after being presented with evidence they weren’t being given adequate chance to file their removals.
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From a trip to the Middle East to talks between Russia and Ukraine, it’s a busy week for Donald Trump and US foreign policy. In this week’s episode of our Politics Weekly America podcast Jonathan Freedland speaks to the Guardian’s global affairs correspondent, Andrew Roth, about the big players behind the US president’s deals and decisions on the world stage.
You can listen here:
Updated
The day so far
Rightwing lawmakers derailed Donald Trump’s signature legislation in the House of Representatives, preventing its passage through a key committee and throwing into question whether Republicans can coalesce around the massive bill. The major and embarrassing setback raises the stakes for the House speaker, Mike Johnson, who had set a goal of Memorial Day to get the legislation passed through the House and on to the Senate. The budget committee will reconvene on Sunday night to consider the bill, giving Johnson another couple of days to find agreement with the fiscal hardliners in his party who want deeper spending cuts.
Trump said the US will send letters to some of its trading partners to unilaterally impose new tariff rates, suggesting that Washington lacks the capacity to reach individual trade deals.
Trump accused the former FBI director James Comey of calling for his assassination in a coded social media post written in seashells. Comey’s Instagram post – a photograph of seashells on a beach arranged to spell the numbers 8647, which he captioned: “Cool shell formation on my beach walk” – was used by rightwing supporters of Trump to claim it was a call to assassinate the US president. The Secret Service said it has launched an investigation. Comey has said it “never occurred to me” that the numbers represented a coded threat. Here’s our explainer of what “8647” really means (hint: it’s not what Trump’s supporters are saying).
Trump acknowledged that people are starving in Gaza and the US would have the situation in the territory “taken care of” as it suffered a further wave of intense Israeli airstrikes overnight. On the final day of his Gulf tour, the US president told reporters in Abu Dhabi: “We’re looking at Gaza. And we’re going to get that taken care of. A lot of people are starving.”
US military commanders will be told to identify troops in their units who are transgender or have gender dysphoria, then send them to get medical checks in order to force them out of the service. Story here.
The Trump administration has terminated nearly 600 contractors at Voice of America, the US-funded international news network known for delivering independent journalism to countries with restricted press freedom. Among those dismissed are journalists from authoritarian countries who now face deportation, as their visas are linked to their jobs at VOA. Story here.
Ice effectively misled a judge in order to gain access to the homes of students it sought to arrest for their pro-Palestinian activism, attorneys say. A recently unsealed search warrant application shows that Ice told a judge it needed a warrant because the agency was investigating Columbia University for “harboring aliens”. In reality, attorneys say, Ice used the warrant application as a “pretext” to try to arrest two students, including one green card holder, in order to deport them.
The former US ambassador to Ukraine, who resigned from the role in April, has said that she quit the post because she disagreed with Donald Trump’s foreign policy. Ambassador Bridget Brink, who served as ambassador to Ukraine from May 2022 until her departure last month, outlined the reasons for her departure for the first time in an op-ed published today by the Detroit Free Press. In the piece, Brink hit out at Trump for pressuring Ukraine rather than Russia and said she felt it was her duty to step down. “Peace at any price is not peace at all ― it is appeasement,” she wrote. More here.
US government records reveal Latin American leaders have spent millions hiring Washington’s top lobbyists to push for a laundry list of requests – from free-trade deals, security assistance and energy investments – to be heard by the Trump administration, according to an analysis by the Guardian and The Quincy Institute. Story here.
Lawyers for 252 Venezuelans deported by the Trump administration and imprisoned in El Salvador for two months have alleged that the migrants are victims of physical and emotional “torture”. Story here.
US district judge Paula Xinis expressed frustration on Friday that the Trump administration once again failed to provide sufficient details about its efforts bring back Kilmar Ábrego García, who was deported in error from the United States in March and sent to a prison in El Salvador. More here.
An Indian PhD graduate who was studying at a university in South Dakota, whom the Trump administration has been attempting to deport, was granted an injunction by a federal judge, allowing her to stay in the country after having received her degree. The Trump administration terminated Priya Saxena’s student visa in April, which would have prevented her from completing her doctoral program and graduating on 10 May.
And finally, the Department of Homeland Security is reportedly mulling a pitch for a new reality tv show that would pit immigrants against each other to win fast-tracked US citizenship. The Daily Mail has the story.
Updated
US judge questions justice department over efforts to return wrongly deported Kilmar Ábrego García
US judge Paula Xinis expressed frustration on Friday that the Trump administration once again failed to provide sufficient details about its efforts bring back Kilmar Ábrego García, who was deported in error from the United States in March and sent to a prison in El Salvador.
Xinis said at a hearing in Greenbelt, Maryland, that the government had not produced information from high-level officials that adequately explained how it was complying with her order to “facilitate” the return of Maryland resident Ábrego García.
The Trump administration has argued that details sought by Ábrego García’s attorneys are confidential state secrets, but Xinis said the justice department had not shown how the doctrine would apply. She said:
You have not given me anything that I can really say: ‘Ok, I understand what of the plaintiffs’ requests or the court’s order, in the government’s view, poses a reasonable danger to diplomatic relations.’
Xinis said information provided by government officials in Ábrego García’s case so far had been “an exercise in utter frustration”.
Ábrego García’s lawyer Andrew Rossman told Xinis it was “deeply disturbing” that the administration indicated it was in compliance with the judge’s orders while “at the same time the highest officials in the government are saying the opposite”.
The hearing marks the latest court clash over Ábrego García’s deportation, amid concerns that the administration failed to comply with Xinis’ orders even after the US supreme court said it “should be prepared to share what it can concerning the steps it has taken” to facilitate his return.
Ábrego García was deported to El Salvador on 15 March despite an order protecting him from removal there. His case has sparked concerns that Trump’s administration is willing to disregard the judiciary, an independent and equal branch of government.
Xinis last month ordered the administration to provide more information about what it was doing to secure Ábrego García’s return. She previously said that the administration had not given her any information of value about its efforts.
Administration officials have accused courts of interfering with the executive branch’s ability to conduct foreign policy. They have invoked the state secrets privilege, a legal doctrine that allows the government to block the disclosure of information that could harm national security interests, to conceal details about its efforts to return Ábrego García.
The US Department of Justice said in a court filing this week that Ábrego García’s lawyers have “all the information they need” to confirm that it has complied with the court’s order on his return.
Earlier we reported that five Republicans revolted during a key House budget committee vote, sinking Trump’s signature legislation.
My colleague Chris Stein notes that one of the no votes - Pennsylvania’s Lloyd Smucker – initially voted to advance the bill, then changed his vote to no at the last minute, which he said was a procedural manoeuvre to allow the bill to be reconsidered in the future.
The other four no’s came from members of the far-right Freedom Caucus joined with the Democratic minority to block the bill from proceeding, arguing the legislation does not make deep enough cuts to federal spending and to programs they dislike.
Rightwing lawmakers want to see big reductions in government spending, which has climbed in recent years as Trump and Joe Biden responded to the Covid pandemic and pursued their own economic policies.
“We’re … committed to ensuring the final package is fiscally responsible, rightsizing government and putting our fiscal future back on track. Unfortunately, the current version falls short of these goals and fails to deliver the transformative change that Americans were promise,” one of the no’s Andrew Clyde, of Georgia, said at the budget committee.
He called for deeper cuts to Medicaid, but many Republicans in both the House and Senate have signaled nervousness with dramatic funding reductions to the program that provides healthcare to lower-income and disabled Americans. Others in the GOP dislike parts of the bill that would cut green tax credits created by Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.
And a small group of Republicans representing districts in blue states such as New York and New Jersey are demanding an increase in the deduction for state and local taxes, saying it will provide needed relief to their constituents. But including that would drive the cost of the bill even higher, risking the ire of fiscal conservatives.
Trump acknowledges people in Gaza are starving and US will take care of situation
Donald Trump has acknowledged that people are starving in Gaza and the US would have the situation in the territory “taken care of” as it suffered a further wave of intense Israeli airstrikes overnight.
On the final day of his Gulf tour, the US president told reporters in Abu Dhabi:
We’re looking at Gaza. And we’re going to get that taken care of. A lot of people are starving.
Israeli officials have consistently denied that the tight blockade imposed on the devastated territory more than 10 weeks ago has caused hunger – which flies in the face of obvious evidence – and Trump’s comments will be seen as further evidence of tensions between Benjamin Netanyahu and Washington, Israel’s closest ally.
There had been widespread hope that Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates could lead to a fresh pause in hostilities or a renewal of humanitarian aid to Gaza.
Instead, Israel’s raids and bombardment over the past 72 hours have raised the levels of violence higher than for several weeks, with the death toll coming close to that seen in the first days of Israel’s renewed offensive in Gaza after a fragile ceasefire collapsed in March.
Hamas on Monday freed Edan Alexander, the last living US citizen it held, after direct engagement with the Trump administration that left Israel sidelined.
As part of the understanding with Washington regarding Alexander’s release, Taher al-Nunu, a senior Hamas official, said the group was “awaiting and expecting the US administration to exert further pressure” on Israel “to open the crossings and allow the immediate entry of humanitarian aid”.
Israel, which claims Hamas systematically loots aid to fund its military and other operations, has put forward a plan to distribute humanitarian assistance from a series of hubs in Gaza run by private contractors and protected by Israeli troops.
The US has backed the plan, which has been described as unworkable, dangerous and potentially unlawful by aid agencies because it could lead to the mass forced transfer of populations.
Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, on Thursday acknowledged the criticism and said Washington was “open to an alternative if someone has a better one”.
Updated
Venezuelans deported by Trump to El Salvador mega-prison are victims of ‘torture’, lawyers allege
Lawyers for 252 Venezuelans deported by the Trump administration and imprisoned in El Salvador for two months have alleged that the migrants are victims of physical and emotional “torture”.
A law firm hired by the Venezuelan government said that it had been unable to visit the migrants in the mega-prison where they are locked up.
The lawyers are seeking “proof of life”, but say they have come up against a wall of silence from president Nayib Bukele’s administration and El Salvador’s justice system.
Grupo Ortega filed a habeas corpus petition with the supreme court on 24 March seeking an end to what it calls the “illegal detention” of the Venezuelans, but is still waiting for a ruling.
“They are treating them like common criminals,” lawyer Salvador Ríos said, after the migrants were shown dressed in prison clothing, shackled and with shaved heads.
“This is torture,” both physically and psychologically, Rios said in an interview with AFP.
The lawyers delivered a letter in early May to Bukele, a key ally of Donald Trump, requesting authorization to visit the Venezuelans, but so far without success.
AFP sought a comment from the Salvadorian presidency about the case and the lawyers’ efforts, but has not received a response.
Updated
As we reported earlier, former FBI director James Comey has said it did not occur to him that that the numbers 8647 – which he spotted spelled out in seashells on a beach, and posted on social media – could be interpreted as a call to assassinate the president, as many supporters of Donald Trump have claimed.
So what does ‘86’ really mean? My colleague Edward Helmore explains all:
US military commanders to be told to oust trans troops via medical checks
US military commanders will be told to identify troops in their units who are transgender or have gender dysphoria, then send them to get medical checks in order to force them out of the service.
A senior defense official on Thursday laid out what could be a complicated and lengthy new process aimed at fulfilling Donald Trump’s directive to remove transgender service members from the US military despite years of service alongside all the other 2 million US troops.
Earlier this month, the Pentagon announced plans to remove in short order the 1,000 members of the military who openly identify as trans, and giving those who have yet to so identify openly 30 days to remove themselves.
That memo was fueled by a supreme court decision allowing the Trump administration to enforce a ban on trans military members. The defense department has said it will follow up by going through medical records to identify others who have not come forward.
The latest order to commanders relies on routine annual health checks that service members are required to undergo. Another defense official said the Pentagon had scrapped – for now – plans to go through troops’ health records to identify those with gender dysphoria.
Instead, transgender troops who do not voluntarily come forward could be outed by commanders or others aware of their medical status. Gender dysphoria occurs when a person’s biological sex does not match their gender identity.
The defense officials spoke on condition of anonymity to provide details of the new policy. The process raises comparisons to the earlier “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which at times had commanders or other troops outing gay members of the military who at the time were not allowed to serve openly.
Active-duty troops will have until 6 June to voluntarily identify themselves to the defense department, and troops in the national guard and reserve have until 7 July.
The department is offering a financial incentive to those who volunteer to leave, although some who have put their hand up point out that it is far from genuinely voluntary. They will receive roughly double the amount of separation pay of those who do not come forward.
'Peace at any price is appeasement': Former US ambassador to Ukraine says she resigned because of Trump's foreign policy
The former US ambassador to Ukraine, who resigned from the role in April, has said that she quit the post because she disagreed with Donald Trump’s foreign policy.
Ambassador Bridget Brink, who served as ambassador to Ukraine from May 2022 until her departure last month, outlined the reasons for her departure for the first time in an op-ed published today by the Detroit Free Press.
In the piece, Brink hit out at Trump for pressuring Ukraine rather than Russia.
I respect the president’s right and responsibility to determine US foreign policy ― with proper checks and balances by US Congress.
Unfortunately, the policy since the beginning of the Trump administration has been to put pressure on the victim, Ukraine, rather than on the aggressor, Russia.
Brink, a long-serving career diplomat, said that she therefore felt it was her duty to step down. She said:
Peace at any price is not peace at all ― it is appeasement.
Reuters notes that Brink took a public line that was supportive of Ukraine under the administration of Trump’s pro-Kyiv predecessor Joe Biden.
After Trump assumed office in January 2025 promising to quickly end the war in Ukraine, Brink’s public statements became far more neutral.
She was publicly criticised by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy in April for what he described as a weak reaction to a Russian missile strike on the city of Kryvyi Rih that killed 11 adults and nine children.
Several days later, a state department spokesperson announced that Brink was stepping down.
A member of the House budget committee said the panel will “ideally” vote to advance Trump’s tax and spending megabill on Monday, The Hill reports.
Republican representative Lloyd Smucker, of Pennsylvania, who was one of the five GOP no votes, told reporters:
We’re working through some remaining issues here; there are just a few outstanding issues I think everyone will get to yes, and we’re going to l resolve this as quick as we can and hopefully have a vote, ideally on Monday, and we can advance this bill.
Smucker said the panel plowed ahead with a vote despite the reservations among hard-liners because “there were continued, ongoing discussions and we were very close to having a yes”.
We thought potentially there would be a yes on this, but it’s part of the process of working through the remaining issues.
We will feel we’re on the right path to get this done.
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Representative Brandon Gill of Texas, who had been at home with his wife and newborn baby, surprisingly returned to participate in the committee vote after he was initially expected to miss it due to being on paternity leave.
But while his appearance gave House GOP leaders some added wiggle room, allowing the committee to lose two Republican votes and still pass the bill, rather than just one, it still wasn’t enough to save the bill when a whopping five of his colleagues rebelled.
Following the readout of the vote tally, House budget committee chair Jodey Arrington adjourned the hearing and told members they wouldn’t be meeting again this weekend.
The Texas Republican had earlier convened the panel by stressing the legislation’s importance to voters who elected Trump to the White House and gave the party full control of Congress last November, Reuters notes. He said:
They want common sense policies. And they want from all of us a commitment to putting America and Americans first. Let’s give the people what they voted for.
After the vote, Arrington said negotiations with the GOP holdouts, who are pushing for steeper spending cuts in the bill and raising concerns about its impact on the national deficit, will continue in the coming days and Republicans on the panel will try to regroup as soon as Monday, NBC News notes.
Reuters notes that the vote is likely a temporary – but no less humiliating and massive - setback for the bill in a Republican-controlled Congress that so far has not rejected any of Trump’s legislative requests.
But it could delay plans for a vote by the full House next week. That means it will now be more difficult for House speaker Mike Johnson to meet his self-imposed Memorial Day deadline to pass Trump’s signature “big, beautiful bill” and send it to the Senate.
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Trump's 'big, beautiful bill' suffers major setback as GOP fiscal hardliners sink key budget committee vote
Republican fiscal hawks refused to back down even after the president’s intervention earlier, with enough objecting to prevent Trump’s sweeping tax bill from advancing in a crucial House budget committee vote which, Reuters notes, could determine whether the bill is taken up by the full House of Representatives next week.
The committee voted no by 21-16. The GOP could only afford to lose two of their votes to advance the legislation. But five Republican representatives - Chip Roy, Ralph Norman, Andrew Clyde, Josh Brecheen, and Lloyd Smucker – joined all Democrats on the panel in voting against. The Hill notes that Smucker changed his vote from yes to no after it was clear the bill would not advance.
“We are writing checks we cannot cash and our children are going to pay the price. So, I am a ‘no’ on this bill unless serious reforms are made,” Roy, of Texas, told the committee.
Ralph Norman, of South Carolina, said he was “very disappointed” with the state of the measure, adding in the committee: “Sadly, I’m a hard no until we get this ironed out.”
The measure would add an estimated $3.72tn over a decade to the federal government’s existing $36.2tn debt.
All four lawmakers said they hoped to reach a deal with House speaker Mike Johnson, for whom this is a major and embarrassing setback to his self-imposed Memorial Day deadline for getting the bill to the Senate.
The Republicans are split between three factions: moderates from Democratic-led states who want to raise a federal deduction for state and local taxes (SALT); hardliners demanding that a bigger SALT deduction be offset by deeper cuts to Medicaid and the full repeal of Biden-era green energy tax credits; and other moderates determined to minimize cuts of Medicaid, upon which many of their constituents depend on for access to healthcare.
The proposed legislation would impose work requirements on Medicaid beginning in 2029. Hardliners want those expedited and have called for a sharp reduction in federal contributions to Medicaid benefits available to working-class people through the Affordable Care Act - an option vehemently opposed by Republican moderates.
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US will start discussions later this year on troop reduction in Europe, US Nato ambassador says
The United States will begin discussions with European allies to reduce American troops in Europe later this year, Reuters reports that US ambassador to Nato Matthew Whitaker has said.
“It will be certainly after the [Hague Nato] summit, sometime later in the year, we are going to start those conversations”, Whitaker said, addressing a conference in Estonia today.
“Nothing has been determined but as soon as we do, we are going to have these conversations in the structure of Nato,” he added.
The Wisconsin judge accused of helping a man illegally evade immigration agents is seeking donations to fund her defense after pleading not guilty, reports the Associated Press.
The FBI arrested Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan last month after the agency accused her of obstruction after it said she helped a man evade US immigration authorities as they were seeking to arrest him at her courthouse.
She pleaded not guilty Thursday to one count of obstruction and one count of concealing a person to prevent arrest.
The state Supreme Court has suspended her from the bench while her case plays out. Dugan announced today that she has set up a fund for her defense, but will not take contributions that might compromise her judicial integrity.
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President Trump has endorsed Republican senator Shelley Moore Capito for reelection in West Virginia. Trump wrote on Truth Social:
“Senator Shelley Moore Capito is doing a tremendous job representing the Wonderful People of West Virginia, a State I love and WON BIG in 2016, 2020, and 2024!
As the Chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Shelley is working to advance Pro Growth policies, unleash America’s Energy Dominance, and prioritize Clean Air, Clean Water, Clean Soil, and BEAUTIFUL, CLEAN COAL for ALL Americans. Shelley is fighting tirelessly to Grow the Economy, Secure the Border, Stop Migrant Crime, Support our Great Military/Vets, and Defend our always under siege Second Amendment.
Senator Shelley Moore Capito has my Complete and Total Endorsement for Re-Election – SHE WILL NOT LET YOU DOWN!”
Capito previously endorsed Trump in 2016 and 2024. She has a “lifetime rating” of 17% from the League of Conservation Voters, indicating a mostly anti-environment voting record despite her position as chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has denounced a plan by House Republicans to impose a 5 percent tax on remittances — the money that immigrants in the US send home, often to family members in need.
During a news conference, Sheinbaum addressed the tax bill, calling it “a measure that is unacceptable”.
“It would result in double taxation, since Mexicans living in the United States already pay taxes,” she said. “This will not just affect Mexico. It will also affect many other countries and many other Latin American countries.”
Mexico’s foreign minister, Juan Ramón de la Fuente, also said the proposal “has no reason to exist” and that Mexico would fight it.
An Indian PhD graduate who was studying at a university in South Dakota, whom the Trump administration has been attempting to deport, was granted an injunction by a federal judge, allowing her to stay in the country after having received her degree.
Priya Saxena’s student visa was terminated by the Trump administration in April, which would have prevented her from completing her doctoral program and graduating on 10 May.
According to court documents, Saxena’s student visa was revoked due to having a “criminal record”, but her only infraction was from a minor 2021 traffic violation – “failure to stop for emergency vehicle” – for which she paid a small fine. According to her attorney, immigration law states the minor infraction is not a deportable offense.
Trump pushes GOP 'grandstanders' to unite behind tax bill
Donald Trump has called on fellow Republicans to pass his “one, big beautiful” tax bill, calling out “grandstanders” as lawmakers seek to advance the legislation amid spending cut demands from hardline conservatives.
He wrote on his Truth Social platform:
Republicans MUST UNITE behind, “THE ONE, BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL!” Not only does it cut Taxes for ALL Americans, but it will kick millions of Illegal Aliens off of Medicaid to PROTECT it for those who are the ones in real need. The Country will suffer greatly without this Legislation, with their Taxes going up 65%. It will be blamed on the Democrats, but that doesn’t help our Voters. We don’t need “GRANDSTANDERS” in the Republican Party. STOP TALKING, AND GET IT DONE! It is time to fix the MESS that Biden and the Democrats gave us. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
The megabill is on thin ice following a surprise holdout from GOP conservative hardliners who are threatening to vote no on a key budget vote this morning unless leaders agree to further cuts to Medicaid and the full repeal of green energy tax cuts implemented by Democrats.
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Trump claims ‘8647’ photo from former FBI director James Comey was call to assassinate him
Donald Trump has accused former FBI director James Comey of calling for his assassination after Comey posted a since-deleted Instagram post of seashells spelling out the numbers “8647”.
In an interview with Fox News, Trump said of Comey:
He knew exactly what that meant. A child would know what that meant. If you were the FBI director and you don’t know what that meant – that meant assassination. It says it loud and clear.
Now, he wasn’t very competent, but he was competent enough to know what that meant. And he did for a reason.
Trump added:
He’s calling for the assassination of the president.
Trump said he wasn’t going to take a position on what was going to happen to Comey, saying that was up to attorney general Pam Bondi.
Comey’s post triggered outrage among the president’s Maga base online, who have interpreted the message as an endorsement of violence against Trump, who survived an attempt on his life at a campaign event in Pennsylvania last year. Comey later said he was unaware of the potential interpretation and does not condone violence of any kind.
He wrote in an updated post:
I posted earlier a picture of some shells I saw today on a beach walk, which I assumed were a political message. I didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence. It never occurred to me but I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down.
The number 86 can often refer to throwing something out, while 47 refers to Trump’s current term in office as the 47th president. According to online publication Distractify, “8647” was originally meant as a form of silent resistance to Trump and his policies. Others have suggested it could be a call for impeachment.
Homeland security secretary Kristi Noem said yesterday evening evening that Comey’s post was being investigated as a “threat” and accused him of calling for the president’s assassination. Director of national intelligence Tulsi Gubbard accused Comey of “issuing a hit” on Trump and said he should be “put behind bars”.
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Trump megabill on thin ice after GOP holdouts threaten key budget committee vote
Ahead of a key vote at the budget committee today, Steve Scalise, the House majority leader, has told Punchbowl News he’s feeling “really good” about the votes and is meeting with budget holdouts. “We’re going to keep talking through today but we’re also going to keep moving this bill forward,” he said.
A surprise revolt from conservative hardliners is threatening to derail the vote on the party-line megabill, endangering speaker Mike Johnson’s ambitious Memorial Day deadline for passage through the House. Politico reports that multiple committee members Chip Roy, Ralph Norman, Andrew Clyde, Josh Brecheen, Glenn Grothman – said they’d vote no or wouldn’t commit to yes. “That forced leaders to scramble to assuage their concerns, possibly by speeding up the start of new Medicaid work requirements, which would drive up savings but also coverage losses,” writes Politico. “The holdouts also wanted speedier ends to clean-energy tax credits. And they’re frustrated that the CBO hasn’t yet cost-scored the energy and commerce committee’s part of the bill.”
“And it’s not just the right flank: Moderate members told GOP leaders they wanted changes to the Medicaid and food aid costs due to be foisted onto states — and the removal of a ban on legal immigrants getting food aid. Then there’s the ongoing debate over the state and local tax deduction, which will likely extend through the weekend, Bloomberg reports.”
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Kristi Noem reportedly supportive of pitch for new reality tv show where immigrants compete for US citizenship
Department of Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem is apparently supportive of a pitch for a new reality tv show that would pit immigrants against each other to win fast-tracked US citizenship, The Daily Mail reports. Yes, you read that correctly.
According to the Mail, in a 35-page pitch comes from a producer for Duck Dynasty, and is proposed to be called The American. “Along the way, we will be reminded what it means to be American – through the eyes of the people who want it most,” reads the pitch.
According to the pitch, contestants from various backgrounds and countries would arrive at Ellis Island in New York, greeted by the host – a “famous naturalized American” - and proceed to ride around the country by train to compete in regional specific “cultural” challenges, such as collecting gold from mines in San Francisco and assembling a car in Detroit. The winner would be sworn in as an American citizen on the steps of the US Capitol.
Tricia McLaughlin, the top spokesperson for DHS, acknowledged that agency staff are reviewing this pitch and had a call with the producer last week. She insisted Noem is yet to be briefed on the initiative. However, The Daily Mail says it has confirmed that Noem supports the project and wants to proceed. And McLaughlin said: “I think it’s a good idea.”
At the same time, sources told The Daily Mail of concern among some in the department about the possible optics of turning the plight of immigrants into a reality game show. I’m glad someone has said it. You can read all the bonkers details here.
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Trump says US will set tariff rates for some of its trading partners
Donald Trump has said the US will send letters to some of its trading partners to unilaterally impose new tariff rates, suggesting that Washington lacks the capacity to reach individual trade deals.
Highlighting the challenge for the White House to negotiate deals with hundreds of countries at once, Trump said it was “not possible to meet the number of people that want to see us”.
Speaking at a meeting with business leaders in the United Arab Emirates on the president’s tour of the Gulf, he said:
We have, at the same time, 150 countries that want to make a deal, but you’re not able to see that many countries.
The president said that his treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, and commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, would be “sending letters out essentially telling” some of Washington’s trading partners what tariff rates would be imposed on their goods exports to the US market.
“At a certain point over the next two three weeks, I think Scott and Howard will be sending letters out essentially telling people – it will be very fair – but we’ll be telling people what they’ll be paying to do business in the United States,” he said.
Trump’s comments expose the difficulty of the task the president set for his administration after imposing sweeping border taxes on goods imports from all of the US’s trading partners on his 2 April so-called “liberation day”.
Washington has withdrawn some of its toughest measures after a backlash in the bond markets, including pausing so-called “reciprocal tariff” rates on many trading partners, including the EU, striking a trade deal to lower tariffs with the UK, and agreeing a 90-day pause with China.
Trump urges Iran to move quickly on nuclear deal or "something bad will happen"
Also on Iran, AFP reports that Trump said earlier that Tehran should make a quick decision on an American proposal for a nuclear deal or “something bad will happen”.
Speaking in Abu Dhabi as he finished his Gulf tour, Trump said his administration had handed Iran a proposal for a agreement, adding that “they know they have to move quickly or something bad is going to happen”.
Trump says Iran wants to trade with US
Donald Trump has said that Iran wants to trade with the United States, according to excerpts from an interview with Fox News.
“Iran wants to trade with us, OK? If you can believe that I’m OK with that. I’m using trade to settle scores and to make peace,” Trump said in the interview conducted before he left Abu Dhabi after a four-day Middle East tour.
“But I’ve told Iran, we make a deal. You’re going to be really - you’re going to be very happy,” said Trump, who has been pushing Iran on a nuclear deal.
US government records reveal Latin American leaders have spent millions hiring Washington’s top lobbyists to push for a laundry list of requests – from free-trade deals, security assistance and energy investments – heard by the Trump administration, according to an analysis by the Guardian and The Quincy Institute.
Since the lead-up to Donald Trump’s election as president in November 2024, Department of Justice records show that at least 10 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have registered their top officials and envoys as foreign principals under the Foreign Agent Registration Act (Fara). Fara aims to promote transparency by requiring those working as foreign agents to disclose their activities and compensation.
“Under Trump, we’ve seen a more directly transactional approach to influencing government,” said Jake Johnston, director of international policy at the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research (Cerp). “The very personal relationships that have developed with the far right in Latin America have given direct access to the White House. I wouldn’t say this influence peddling is unprecedented, but the magnitude is.”
El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, has arguably seen the greatest return to his three-year, $1.5m lobbying spree. Since February, Bukele has scored an Oval Office meeting with Trump, a nuclear energy deal, US assurance to help expand his country’s notorious mega-prison and an upgraded travel safety rating from the state department.
US to impose new tariffs on roughly 150 countries - reports
Donald Trump has said the US will be sending letters over the next two to three weeks to set out new tariffs with about 150 countries.
CBS News’s Weijia Jiang reported on X that the letters will alert countries how much they will have to pay, while “negotiations for potential new trade deals continue for now”.
It comes as the Financial Times reports:
Trump said that, while “150 countries” wanted to agree deals, “it’s not possible to meet the number of people that want to see us”. The Trump administration has scaled back many of the tariffs Trump announced on his so-called liberation day on April 2 to 10 per cent for many of its trading partners for a 90-day period.
It has also struck a deal with the UK this month to provide tariff relief for products such as steel and cars, as well as jointly announcing duty reductions with China this week. In addition, Washington has been carrying out negotiations with the EU, Japan, India and other countries.
This is a developing news line and we will bring you more as we get it.
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Trump wants to meet Putin 'as soon as we can set it up'
US president Donald Trump has said wants to meet Russian president Vladimir Putin “as soon as we can set it up”, AFP is reporting.
It comes as the Kremlin said on Friday that a meeting between Putin and Trump was essential but required considerable advance preparation and had to yield results when it happened.
David Hogg believes the Democratic party not only needs better messengers – it needs stronger fighters.
“The base of the party, they just want us to do anything,” the 25-year-old Florida activist and Democratic National Committee (DNC) vice-chair said in an interview last week. “They feel alone, they feel isolated, they feel unheard, and they feel like they’re not being fought for.”
Frustrated by what he sees as an entrenched establishment dominated by a culture of “seniority politics”, Hogg is urging Democrats to embrace growing calls for generational change. His pitch is competitive primaries, which he argues are a “healthy” way to inject new energy into a party desperately seeking momentum after last year’s demoralizing losses swept Democrats from power in Washington.
Many Democrats – especially younger members of the party, such as Hogg – are urging their leaders to adopt a more combative posture toward Donald Trump, emboldened by a building resistance to the president’s brazen defiance of constitutional norms. Yet support for the party has fallen to record-lows. A recent Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll found that nearly 70% of Americans view the Democratic party as out of touch “with the concerns of most people” – a higher share than said the same of either Trump or the Republican party.
“We need to dramatically change,” Hogg said. “The fact that we spent $2bn last election cycle and still lost to a convicted felon who attempted to overthrow our government – and despite the fact that he has crashed our economy, despite the fact that he has disappeared people – our approvals remain where they are is a serious indictment of our party.”
President Donald Trump said on Friday he was returning to Washington after wrapping up his Gulf tour.
“Let’s see what happens with Russia and Ukraine,” he said, referring to Russia-Ukraine talks taking place in Turkey.
Trump said he will meet Russian president Vladimir Putin “as soon as we can set it up”.
James Comey investigated over seashell photo claimed to be ‘threat’ against Trump
A photo of seashells posted on Instagram by the former FBI director James Comey is now being investigated by the US Secret Service, after the US homeland security secretary Kristi Noem said it constituted a “threat” against Donald Trump.
On Thursday, Comey posted a photo of seashells forming the message “8647”, with a caption that read: “Cool shell formation on my beach walk.”
Trump’s supporters have interpreted the message as an endorsement of violence against Trump – the 47th president. There is more debate around the use of 86, a slang term often used in restaurants to mean getting rid of or throwing something out, and which, according to Merriam-Webster, has been used more recently, albeit sparingly, to mean “to kill”.
Comey later took down his post, saying in a statement that he was unaware of the seashells’ potential meaning and saying that he does not condone violence of any kind.
“I posted earlier a picture of some shells I saw today on a beach walk, which I assumed were a political message,” Comey said in a statement. “I didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence. It never occurred to me, but I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down.”
A spokesperson for the Secret Service confirmed the agency was “aware of the incident” and said it would “vigorously investigate” any potential threat, but did not offer further details.
Trump agenda hits speed bump in US Congress as hardliners revolt
A Republican push to advance US president Donald Trump’s sweeping tax bill through Congress appeared to hit a roadblock on Thursday, as hardline conservatives demanded deeper cuts to Medicaid in exchange for their support in a key procedural vote.
House budget committee chair Jodey Arrington warned that the vote, planned for Friday, could be delayed due to opposition to the measure, which could add trillions to the nation’s $36.2tn in debt over the next decade, Reuters reported.
“There are concerns about having to get more information, which would potentially delay this to next week,” Arrington, of Texas, told reporters.
He later issued a statement saying he was confident that Republicans on his committee would advance the legislation, even though at least four hardliners had threatened to block it. There was no indication late on Thursday that their positions had changed.
Four “no” votes would be enough to stop the measure from advancing, given Republicans’ 21-16 majority on the committee.
House of Representatives speaker Mike Johnson insisted that the legislation was still on track for a floor vote next week, while other Republican leaders said disagreements between warring party factions had dwindled to a handful of issues.
“This is always what happens when you have a big bill like this. There’s always final details to work out, all the way up until the last minute, so we’re going to keep working,” House majority leader Steve Scalise told reporters.
The legislation would extend tax cuts passed during Trump’s first term. Congress’ bipartisan Joint Tax Committee estimates the tax cuts would cost $3.72tn over a decade.
Trump has highlighted measures including lifting taxes on tips and overtime that Republicans say would boost working class Americans, while critics say the bill will offer more benefits to the wealthy.
Trump announces more than $200bn of deals between US and UAE
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and will be bringing you the latest news lines over the next few hours.
We begin with news that Donald Trump has announced deals totaling more than $200bn between the United States and the United Arab Emirates, including a $14.5bn commitment among Boeing, GE Aerospace and Etihad Airways, as he pledged to strengthen ties between the US and the Gulf state during a multiday trip to the Middle East.
The White House said on Thursday that Boeing and GE had received a commitment from Etihad Airways to invest $14.5bn to buy 28 US-made Boeing 787 and 777X aircraft powered by GE engines.
“With the inclusion of the next-generation 777X in its fleet plan, the investment deepens the longstanding commercial aviation partnership between the UAE and the United States, fueling American manufacturing, driving exports,” the White House said.
Antonoaldo Neves, the CEO of Etihad, said last month that the airline planned to add 20 to 22 new planes to its fleet of roughly 100 aircraft this year, as it aims to expand to more than 170 planes by 2030 and boost Abu Dhabi’s economic diversification strategy.
Etihad, which is owned by Abu Dhabi’s $225bn wealth fund ADQ, has been through a multiyear restructuring and management shake-up, but has expanded under Neves.
He said that 10 of the new aircraft this year would be Airbus A321LRs, which the carrier launched on Monday and will start operating in August. The remainder include six Airbus A350s and four Boeing 787s.
In other news:
A Republican effort to advance President Donald Trump’s sweeping tax bill hit a setback today, as hardline conservatives demanded larger Medicaid cuts in exchange for their support in a procedural vote. House Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington, a Republican from Texas, said that the vote, scheduled for Friday, could be delayed amid internal opposition.
The Trump administration is planning to drop routine Covid-19 vaccine recommendations for pregnant women, children, and teenagers, the Wall Street Journal reports. The Department of Health and Human Services, led by secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, is expected to make the change as it introduces a new vaccine approval framework. The timing of the announcement is unclear but could come within days.
Donald Trump announced deals totaling over $200bn between the United States and the United Arab Emirates, including a $14.5bn commitment between Boeing, GE Aerospace and Etihad Airways, the White House said. The White House said Boeing and GE had received a commitment from Etihad Airways to buy 28 American-made Boeing 787 and 777X aircraft powered by GE engines.
Trump’s executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship found no traction today at the supreme court, with justices taking issue at the attempt to sidestep the constitution. However, the conservative majority seemed open to limiting district judges’ ability to issue broad injunctions against federal policies.
Former House speaker Nancy Pelosi criticized Donald Trump for calling America “stupid” as she joined hundreds of protestors outside the supreme court. Trump had earlier called the US “stupid” for upholding the 14th amendment. Pelosi said: “No Mr President, America isn’t stupid. It’s the Constitution of the United States which all of us in elective office take an oath to protect and defend.” She added: “This is about birthright, it’s about citizenship, it’s about due process.”
Trump arrived in the UAE for day three of his Middle East tour aimed at drumming up investment in the US and securing lucrative economic deals with the Gulf nations. He finished the day walking out of the presidential palace in Abu Dhabi with UAE President Sheik Mohammed after dinner.
Trump said he will “probably” return to Washington on Friday after a tour of three Gulf countries, although he said his destination is unknown as of yet. Trump earlier had hinted that he could stop in Istanbul for talks on Ukraine.
His secretary of state Marco Rubio echoed Trump’s earlier remarks that the only way a breakthrough will happen in the efforts to end Russia’s war in Ukraine would be through direct talks between the US president and Vladimir Putin after Moscow sent a second-tier team to talks taking place in Turkey. Rubio said he would travel to Istanbul for meetings on Friday with Turkey’s foreign minister Hakan Fidan and a Ukrainian delegation, but said he did not have high expectations for the talks.
The Trump administration said it will audit some $15bn in grants to power grid and manufacturing supply chain projects awarded during the Biden administration.
