Closing summary
This concludes our live coverage of the second Trump administration for the day, but we will be back at it on Friday. Here are the latest developments:
The federal government remains shut down.
Donald Trump canceled plans for a federal deployment to San Francisco at the request of two billionaire supporters, but he reiterated threats to Chicago.
Trump said that he does not plan to ask Congress to declare war on Venezuela, ahead of possible strikes targeting suspected drug cartels as “we’re just gonna kill people”.
Trump said an unnamed “friend” had just sent him “a check for $130m” to be used to pay military salaries during the government shutdown.
A federal judge in Texas on Thursday dismissed a lawsuit filed by a Republican congressman who argued that California’s redistricting proposal would cause him personal injury and should be blocked.
Trump claimed his militarized war on drugs was a huge improvement over the Biden administration’s effort, but a government database shows drug seizures are down from 2022.
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Trump boasted of drug seizures, which are down from 2022
At the White House on Thursday, Donald Trump’s attorney general, Pam Bondi, recited a list of drugs seized by an administration taskforce, and attributed its great success to the president’s aggressive enforcement policies, including using the military to carry out lethal strikes on suspected drug smuggling boats.
However, according to a government database, the weight of drugs seized during the first months of the Trump administration appear to be similar to or even slightly lower than those seized at some points during the Biden administration.
The Drug Seizures dashboard on the website of US Customs and Border Protection show that the total weight of illegal narcotics seized in the first seven months since Trump took office is 373,600 lbs. That is up from the totals for the same period in 2024, which was 343,000 lbs, and 2023, which was 344,7000 lbs, but is is down from the same period in 2022, when the Biden administration seized 379,000 lbs of drugs.
The overall weight of drugs seized for fiscal year 2025, was 531,000 lbs as of September. In fiscal year 2022, it was 656,000 lbs.
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Who owns CNN's parent company 'is very important to the administration' - report
The Trump administration is making it known, through a report by a Fox Business correspondent published in the New York Post on Thursday, that it wants CNN’s parent company, Warner Bros Discovery, to be sold to his supporter Larry Ellison’s family.
“Who owns Warner Bros. Discovery is very important to the administration,” a senior Trump administration official reportedly told Charles Gasparino of Fox.
“The Warner board needs to think very seriously not just on the price competition, but which player in the suitor pool has been successful getting a deal done. And that points to the Ellisons,” the official said, referring to Paramount Skydance, run by David Ellison, the son of the billionaire Oracle founder.
The report from Gasparino also made explicit the fact that the White House could ease regulatory hurdles for its favored bidder.
Paramount Skydance, which has bid for Warner Bros Discovery, already owns CBS News and Comedy Central, home of John Stewart’s Daily Show, where Trump is often mocked and criticized. A combined company would also control CNN and HBO, which produces John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight, which also puts Trump under a harsh spotlight.
According to Gasparino, one rival bidder, Comcast, is weighed down by both “the anti-MAGA coverage of the cable giant’s far-left network MSNBC” and NBC’s Saturday Night Live, which employs a comedian largely because of his unflattering Trump impersonation.
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'We're just gonna kill people': Trump says he doesn't need a declaration of war for strikes on suspected drug smugglers
Donald Trump’s statement on Thursday that he has no intention of asking Congress for a declaration of war ahead of possible strikes on suspected drug smugglers in Venezuela, “we’re just gonna kill people that are bringing drugs into our country”, thrilled his supporters but disturbed many Americans.
Asked by a reporter if he intended to go to Congress, Trump suggested that his administration would brief lawmakers on the military operation, but said that he saw no reason to seek congressional authorization.
“I don’t think we’re gonna necessarily ask for a declaration of war, I think we’re just gonna kill people that are bringing drugs into our country. OK? We’re gonna to kill them. They’re going to be, like, dead,” the president said.
While Trump supporters posted video of the remarks on social media with a mic-drop emoji, a Democratic party account posted it without comment, apparently certain that the president’s violation of constitutional provision that only Congress can declare war was obvious.
Justin Amash, a former Republican congressman from Michigan, was more explicit in his criticism. “The Constitution doesn’t permit a president to act as the legislature and judiciary on top of being the chief executive,” Amash wrote on X. “If it’s war, he must go to Congress. If it’s crime, he must go to court. When there’s no imminent danger, there’s no justification for unilateral strikes.”
“I don’t know how anyone can read the absurd commentary from Maga, Inc., accounts regarding war powers and think these people are any better than the neocons on war,” he added. “If anything, the rhetoric is much more supportive now of unilateral militarism than it was even in the early 2000s.”
Adam Schiff, a Democratic senator from California, responded to Trump’s statement with the comment: “The president should come to Congress. Legally, he is required to come to Congress. Though he may not get the answer he expects. Americans don’t want another war.”
Last week, Schiff joined senators Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat, and Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, to introduce a war powers resolution that would have blocked the use of US military strikes within or against Venezuela. The measure failed to win a majority in the Senate.
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Trump says 'a friend' sent him a check for $130m to pay military salaries during the shutdown
At the very end of his freewheeling response to questions from reporters on Thursday, Donald Trump said an unnamed “friend” had just sent him “a check for $130 million” to be used to pay military salaries during the government shutdown.
As a reporter tried to ask the president a question about federal workers going without paychecks during the shutdown, Trump interrupted to say: “Yeah, I hate it. By the way, a man, a friend of mine, talking about donors, a friend of mine, a man that’s great, I’m not going to use his name unless he lets me do it … he called us the other day and he said ‘I’d like to contribute, any shortfall you have because of the Democrat shutdown, I’d like to contribute, personally contribute, any shortfall you have with the military, because I love the military and I love the country, and any shortfall, if there’s a shortfall, I’ll contribute it.’”
“Today, he sent us a check for $130m,” the president said.
Asked who the person was, Trump replied: “I would love to tell you, he deserves, he doesn’t really want the recognition.”
“He gave us a check for $130m,” Trump said again. “It’s gonna go to the military.”
He then looked across at his White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles, and asked: “Is that the correct number?”
She nodded yes and said: “Um-hmm.”
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Federal judge in Texas dismisses Republican congressman's suit to block California redistricting vote
A federal judge in Texas on Thursday dismissed a lawsuit filed by a Republican congressman who argued that California’s redistricting proposal would cause him personal injury and should be blocked.
The lawsuit was filed by Ronny Jackson, who ran for Congress after serving as Donald Trump’s White House physician, in his hometown of Amarillo, Texas, where the sole judge is Matthew Kacsmaryk, an arch-conservative Christian who was nominated by Trump.
Republican activists often file suits in Amarillo expecting a favorable hearing from Kacsmaryk. In 2023, for instance, the judge effectively banned mifepristone nationwide, when he issued an injunction temporarily removing FDA approval of a medication used for more than half of all abortions in the United States. The supreme court later overturned that decision.
Kacsmaryk, however, disappointed conservatives on Thursday, when he ruled in favor of a motion to dismiss Jackson’s lawsuit brought by California’s governor and secretary of state.
Jackson had argued he would be injured if California re-drew its maps in a way that could elect more Democrats to Congress and potentially cost his Republican party the majority. The congressman said that he would be injured by losing “his current legislative powers as chair of two subcommittees and personal access to a larger staff of advisors”, his “influence over the congressional majority”, and “opportunities to enhance his media visibility”.
Kacsmaryk ruled that Jackson had “failed to show that California’s approval” of its new Congressional map would actually injure him, and so that he would not take the step Jackson had requested of blocking California’s November special election to ask voters to approve the redistricting plan.
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Speaking to reporters at City Hall, San Francisco mayor Daniel Lurie elaborated on his Wednesday evening call with Donald Trump.
Lurie said he had not reached out to Trump but that the president “picked up the phone and called me”. During the call, Lurie said he told Trump that crime was falling in San Francisco and the city was “on the rise”. Pressed on whether Trump sought any concessions from the city in exchange for calling off the “surge” Lurie said he “asked for nothing”.
Lurie said he did not know if Trump’s decision extended to the rest of the Bay Area and acknowledged that the mercurial president could yet change his mind.
“Our city remains prepared for any scenario,” Lurie said. “We have a plan in place that can be activated at any moment.”
Asked if other Democratic mayors could learn from his approach, which has been notably less antagonistic than the state’s governor, Gavin Newsom, Lurie demurred, suggesting that was more a question for the political chattering class than for a mayor “laser-focused” on his city.
“Every day I’m focused on San Francisco,” he said. “Heads down. How do we keep our city safe?”
Former New York City mayor Bill de Blasio has condemned a racist AI-generated ad posted – and then deleted – by Andrew Cuomo’s campaign depicting “criminals for Zohran Mamdani”.
On Thursday, De Blasio wrote on X: “This is disqualifying. No candidate who approves a racist, disgusting ad like this can be allowed to govern. Bye, @andrewcuomo.”
The ad which was shared on Cuomo’s official account on Wednesday featured Mamdani, the popular democratic socialist state assemblyman, eating rice with his hands before being supported by a Black man shoplifting while wearing a keffiyeh, a man abusing a woman, a sex trafficker and a drug dealer.
In June, Mamdani, who if elected would be the city’s first Muslim mayor, accused donors of Cuomo’s campaign of “blatant Islamophobia” after an altered image of him in a mailer to voters depicted him with a visibly darkened and bushier beard.
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Outside of San Francisco’s city hall on Thursday afternoon, local leaders and organizers were grappling with the whiplash.
“At this time, do not know which federal agencies are being called off. We don’t know if that’s the National Guard. We don’t know if it’s ice, if it’s Border Patrol,” said Jackie Fielder, the San Francisco city supervisor representing parts of the city’s Mission neighborhood. “I also want to be clear that ICE, CBP, any federal agency deputized by Trump, to help him carry out his mass deportation plans, are absolutely not welcome in San Francisco.”
Fielder also criticized Benihoff, Musk and other tech leaders who had voiced support for a National Guard deployment in the Bay Area. “I condemn every tech billionaire who supported this,” she said. “This city doesn’t belong to them.”
Fielder and other leaders and organizers emphasized that even as the region awaits clarity on whether and where there will be a federal deployment, and the extent to which the administration plans to ramp up immigration enforcement in the city, local leaders are going to continue to mobilize rapid response networks, legal aid and other support systems for the residents most impacted.
“We don’t need to get ready because we’ve been ready,” Fielder said. “This is not a time for panic. It is a time for power across this area.”
Organizers urged residents to check in regularly with friends and family, and prepare for the possibility that they may be arrested by immigration officers, urging immigrants to entrust their full legal names and A-Numbers with trusted allies. “Without this information, it becomes very challenging, and it takes time to locate our loved ones,” said Sanika Mahajan, Director of Community Engagement and Organizing for the local advocacy group Mission Action. Organizers who had lent support during the militarized raids in Los Angeles this summer encouraged San Franciscans to store important documents at home, and let loved ones know where to find them.
'Mexico is run by the cartels, I have great respect for the president,' Trump says
“Mexico is run by the cartels, I have great respect for the president”, Donald Trump just said near the end of the White House event to justify what he calls the success of his militarized war on drugs. “Mexico is run by the cartels and we have to defend ourselves from that”.
After a first phase of the roundtable discussion, in which senior administration officials took turns praising Trump and claimed that the crackdown on drugs has been a spectacular success, the president then took questions from reporters invited to cover the event.
Many of the correspondents he called on were from partisan, rightwing outlets who also laced their questions with praise for the president.
Clearly aware that many of the correspondents he called on to ask questions were on his side, Trump even said “This is the kind of question I like” to Daniel Baldwin of the pro-Trump news channel One America News, before Baldwin even asked his question.
When Trump did not recognize a correspondent, he asked them who they were with.
And when he did call on a reporter he views as adversarial, Kaitlan Collins of CNN, he even made a point of joking that her question would be a bad one.
No matter what the questions were, Trump repeated many of his familiar talking points, exaggerations, insults and lies, including that the Biden administration had “lost” hundreds of thousands of children.
At one point, unprompted, he said: “Let me tell ya, Barack Hussein Obama was a lousy president.”
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Donald Trump was just asked about a call from Daniel Goldman, a Democratic congressman from New York, for the New York police department to arrest federal agents “who assault or detain New Yorkers without legal authority” during immigration raids or outside immigration courts in New York City.
Goldman referred specifically to a woman who was hurled to the floor by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer outside a court.
“Well, you know, I know Dan, and Dan’s a loser,” Trump replied. “It’s so ridiculous, a suggestion like that.”
What Trump did not explain is that he no doubt knows Goldman primarily from his role as lead counsel in the first impeachment of Trump, over his attempt to force Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, to open a sham investigation into Joe Biden in 2019 by withholding military aid.
Rather than address the issue, Trump then pivoted to suggesting that Democrats were desperate for attention and even imitating him by cursing more in public. Goldman did not curse when he told reporters on Tuesday: “No one is above the law – not ICE, not CBP, and not Donald Trump. Federal agents who assault or detain New Yorkers without legal authority must be held accountable and the NYPD must protect our neighbors if the federal government refuses to.”
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Trump says 'Don’t worry about the West Bank, Israel’s not going to do anything with the West Bank'
Donald Trump was just asked by a French reporter about the vote in the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, on formal annexation of the occupied West Bank, a Palestinian territory that Israel has occupied since 1967, where hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers now live, in a violation of international law.
He asked the reporter to repeat the question but louder. She did, in a distinct French accent.
Trump asked Pam Bondi, seated next to him to answer, saying, “I cannot understand a word she’s saying”.
When the question was then explained to him, the president told the reporter: “Don’t worry about the West Bank, Israel’s not going to do anything with the West Bank.”
Earlier on Thursday, the vice-president, JD Vance, said that Israel would not annex the West Bank, the day after Israeli lawmakers voted to advance two bills paving the way for the territory’s annexation.
“If it was a political stunt it was a very stupid political stunt and I personally take some insult to it,” Vance said on the tarmac as he wrapped up his visit in Israel.
Israeli analysts have pointed out that Israel currently rules the entire West Bank, except for limited urban enclaves under Palestinian self-rule, as if it were formally part of its territory.
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As is customary of Trump’s public-facing events, he has spent much of his time speaking blaming the Biden administration for the country he inherited.
“By the way, the cartels control large swaths of territory. They maintain vast arsenals of weapons and soldiers, and they used extortion, murder, kidnapping, to exercise political and economic control,” he said. “Thank you very much, Joe Biden, for allowing that to happen. Biden surrendered our country to the cartels.”
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Trump says that he will 'take care of Chicago', continues threats to deploy national guard
Donald Trump continued his threats to send the national guard to Chicago.
“They don’t have it under control,” Trump said. “It’s getting worse, so we’ll take care of as soon as we give the go ahead.”
This comes as the administration filed an emergency appeal to the supreme court after a federal judge blocked the administration’s from deploying troops to the Chicago indefinitely.
Trump claims success in curbing cartels following ninth strike of alleged drug vessel
The president has spent his opening remarks claiming his administration’s efforts in curbing cartels had been successful.
“These groups have unleashed more bloodshed and killing on American soil than all other terrorist groups combined. These are the worst of the worst. It should now be clear to the entire world that the cartels are the Isis of the western hemisphere,” he said.
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We’re waiting for Donald Trump to appear in the state dining room for an announcement on cartels and human trafficking. Several cabinet members are already seated. Including defense secretary Pete Hegseth, attorney general Pam Bondi, and homeland security secretary Kristi Noem.
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It’s important to note that, so far, Donald Trump has paid members of the military by ordering the Pentagon to use any unspent funds for the 2025 fiscal year. A move that experts and lawmakers alike say is squarely illegal.
Romina Boccia, director of budget and entitlement policy at Cato Institute, emphasized that Congress has the sole prerogative to authorize funding.
“The executive can’t just look for money under the cushions. It’s not their money to spend,” Boccia said. “If Congress doesn’t step up and reclaim its spending authority, the administration here is potentially setting very dangerous new precedents for executive spending that was never envisioned by America’s founders.”
She added that there is the option for the administration to repurpose “unobligated balances” using the rescissions process. However, this isn’t playing out in this case because it still requires Congress’s authorization.
“What we’re witnessing is the executive taking unprecedented steps to repurpose funding unilaterally,” Boccia said.
While today’s failed Senate vote might give Trump the “political justification” for inappropriate government spending, there was no “legal justification”, Boccia said
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Pivoting back to the Senate, where lawmakers failed to pass a bill to keep certain government workers and members of the military paid during the government shutdown.
As I noted earlier, only three Democrats broke ranks with their party to vote in favor of the legislation. Most Democratic lawmakers voted against the bill, arguing that it would give Donald Trump the ability to handpick which workers and departments get to receive paychecks. Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, called the bill a “ruse” that “doesn’t the pain of the shutdown” but “extends it”.
Democrats also offered alternative pieces of legislation. This included the True Shutdown Fairness Act, which would pay all roughly 700,000 furloughed federal employees, and inhibit the administration from carrying out any more mass layoffs while the government is shutdown. Senate Republicans, however, objected to their attempt to pass this bill by unanimous consent.
John Thune, the upper chamber’s top Republican, said that Democrats are “playing a political game” by blocking today’s bill, in an attempt to appease their “far-left base”. On the Senate floor, Thune said that the failed legislation introduced by Republicans today would include the more than 300 federal workers at the Capitol who had to “work through the night and into the next day” during Oregon senator Jeff Merkley’s marathon speech lambasting the Trump administration, which lasted almost 23 hours.
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Top House Democrats have accused Donald Trump of orchestrating an illegal scheme to pay himself $230m in taxpayer money, demanding he immediately abandon claims they say violate the constitution.
The representative Jamie Raskin, ranking member on the House judiciary committee, and the representative Robert Garcia, ranking member of the oversight committee, sent a letter to the president on Thursday condemning his plan to use a confidential administrative process to direct treasury funds into his own pocket.
“Your plan to have your obedient underlings at the Department of Justice instruct the US Treasury to pay you, personally, hundreds of millions of dollars – especially at a time when most Americans are struggling to pay rent, put food on the table, and afford health care – is an outrageous and shocking attempt to shake down the American people,” the lawmakers wrote.
The letter also comes as Democracy Forward, a leading legal advocacy group, filed a public records request on Wednesday seeking documents related to Trump’s claims for restitution over those same earlier Department of Justice cases against him.
Leavitt says that Trump is committed to bringing down beef prices, defends imports from Argentina
The press secretary said that the “immediate solution” to the rising cost of beef is to “increase our supply”, defending the decision to import it from Argentina.
She also highlighted a plan formulated with agriculture secretary Brooke Rollins to increase the domestic cattle herd, and incentivize more Americans to become ranchers.
Leavitt said that ranchers were “struggling because of the many horrible policies of the previous administration”.
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On the ballroom construction, Leavitt said that the White House has kept the public “apprised” of this project.
“We’ve shown you the renderings. If you look at the renderings, it’s very clear the East Wing was going to be modernized instead,” she said when explaining why this section of the White House needed to be demolished.
Karoline Leavitt didn’t say that White House would release a full list of companies and individuals who are donating to the construction of the new ballroom.
“Perhaps there will be more people who want to generously contribute to this project,” Leavitt said. “With any construction project, there are changes over time as you assess what the project is going to look like, and we’ll continue to keep you apprised of all of those changes, but just trust the process.”
Leavitt underscored that Trump was “privately funding this ballroom” when asked a question about the $300m price tag of the modernization effort.
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Leavitt highlights Snap lapsing during shutdown, repeats misleading claims about immigrant healthcare
The White House press secretary highlighted that the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) funding is set to lapse on 1 November if the government shutdown continues.
“Democrats are solely responsible for all of this unnecessary pain,” Leavitt said, before repeating the misleading claim that they are trying to “give taxpayer-funded healthcare benefits to illegal aliens, some of whom are violent criminals”.
It’s important to note two things here:
Democrats are trying to reverse several healthcare policies enacted by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). As I’ve reported, this includes allowing lawfully present noncitizens – which includes several groups, such as refugees and asylum seekers, those with temporary protected status (TPS), and survivors of domestic abuse and human trafficking who are awaiting visas or documentation – to still enroll in certain federal healthcare programs. All of these immigrants have entered the country legally and are accounted for by the federal government.
Undocumented immigrants remain ineligible for federally funded health insurance, and are only able to receive emergency Medicaid treatment, according to longstanding US laws. This is emergency care physicians are mandated to provide to individuals who do not have an eligible immigration status, but would otherwise qualify for Medicaid. According to a recent analysis by KFF, emergency Medicaid spending accounted for less than 1% of the program’s total expenditure between 2017 and 2023.
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Trump to meet with China's Xi Jinping on 30 October
The president will hold a bilateral meeting with China’s Xi Jinping on Thursday 30 October, the White House said. This will take place in Busan, South Korea, while both attend the Apec summit.
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Senate fails to pass bill to keep essential federal workers and troops paid throughout government shutdown
The Senate has failed to pass legislation that would keep federal workers deemed essential and troops paid throughout the ongoing government shutdown – now in its 23rd day.
With a 54-45 vote, the upper chamber didn’t meet the 60-vote threshold needed to advance the Shutdown Fairness Act, introduced by Republican senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin.
Three Democratic senators, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, and Georgia senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, broke ranks with their party and voted in favor of the bill.
Trump confirms he is holding off immigration enforcement surge
The president has confirmed that he is no longer carrying out an immigration enforcement surge in San Francisco, following a statement from the city’s mayor.
Trump said he was prepared to launch the effort but “friends who live in the area” called him and asked him not to go forward with that plans.
“I spoke to Mayor Lurie last night and he asked, very nicely, that I give him a chance to see if he can turn it around,” he added in his post on Truth Social.
He went on to write:
I told him I think he is making a mistake, because we can do it much faster, and remove the criminals that the Law does not permit him to remove. I told him, “It’s an easier process if we do it, faster, stronger, and safer but, let’s see how you do?” The people of San Francisco have come together on fighting Crime, especially since we began to take charge of that very nasty subject.
Judge extends block on national guard in Chicago indefinitely
A reminder that national guard troops won’t be deploying in the Chicago area anytime soon unless the US supreme court intervenes because a judge extended her temporary restraining order indefinitely.
Elsewhere, it will be at least days before the national guard could be deployed in Portland, Oregon, and federal appeals judges are weighing whether hundreds of California national guard members should remain under federal control.
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Trump 'calling off any plans for a federal deployment in San Francisco', mayor says
San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie said that Donald Trump told him late Wednesday evening that he was cancelling plans for a “federal deployment” to the city.
“In that conversation, the president told me clearly that he was calling off any plans for a federal deployment in San Francisco. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem reaffirmed that direction in our conversation this morning,” Lurie said in a statement.
San Francisco has been preparing for a major federal immigration enforcement operation after recent media reports indicated the administration planned to send more than 100 Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and other federal agents to the region. Trump had pledged to deploy the national guard to the city in recent weeks as well.
Lurie said in a statement that during a phone call on Wednesday, he told the president the city was “on the rise” and that a federal deployment would negatively affect San Francisco.
“Visitors are coming back, buildings are getting leased and purchased, and workers are coming back to the office. We have work to do, and we would welcome continued partnerships with the FBI, DEA, ATF, and U.S. Attorney to get drugs and drug dealers off our streets, but having the military and militarized immigration enforcement in our city will hinder our recovery,” Lurie said in a statement.
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Here’s some more context on Trump’s deployment of national guard troops in Democratic cities from the Associated Press:
Trump has deployed the guard to Washington DC, and Memphis, Tennessee, to help fight what he says is rampant crime.
Los Angeles was the first city where Trump deployed the guard, arguing it was necessary to protect federal buildings and agents as protesters fought back against mass immigration arrests.
He has also said they are needed in Chicago and Portland, Oregon. Lawsuits from Democratic officials in both cities have so far blocked troops from going out on city streets.
As protests ramp up in the California Bay Area, governor Gavin Newsom’s office told people should memorize contact information in case they’re detained.
“Act intelligently, take care of yourself, and don’t give them the pretext they’re looking for to intensify their repression,” Newsom’s office said in a post on X.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly said he plans to deploy national guard troops to the San Francisco to quell crime. On Sunday he told Fox News the city “was truly one of the great cities of the world” before it went “wrong” and “woke”.
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The designers of a cryptocurrency launched by the US first lady, Melania Trump, in January were accused in court filings of orchestrating a pump-and-dump scheme.
The $MELANIA coins were released for just a few cents each on 19 January, the day before Donald Trump was inaugurated as US president. Within hours, the $MELANIA coin’s price soared to $13.73. However, it then collapsed almost as quickly, and is now only worth about 10 cents – less than 1% of its peak price.
The plaintiffs say the coin’s creators organized the operation knowing that the digital currency’s value would plummet.
Halligan's use of text message auto-delete could be illegal
A top federal prosecutor’s use of an encrypted messaging application with messages set to be automatically deleted after eight hours was potentially illegal, two watchdog groups said.
Lindsey Halligan, the interim US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia, used Signal earlier this month to communicate with Anna Bower, a journalist for Lawfare, about the criminal case she is pursuing against the New York attorney general, Letitia James. Bower published the full conversation on Monday evening and said Halligan had set messages to auto-delete after eight hours.
Trump pardons founder of Binance, world’s largest crypto exchange
Donald Trump issued a pardon for the founder of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange on Thursday.
“President Trump exercised his constitutional authority by issuing a pardon for Mr Zhao, who was prosecuted by the Biden Administration in their war on cryptocurrency,” a White House statement said. “The war on crypto is over.”
Changpeng Zhao pleaded guilty in late 2023 to one count of failing to maintain an anti-money laundering program and stepped down as CEO of Binance, which paid $4.3bn to settle related allegations. He was sentenced to four months in prison.
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'No ICE or troops in the bay': Protests over immigration enforcement pick up in Bay Area
Protesters have gathered outside the US Coast Guard base in Alameda, objecting to the 100 Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and other federal agents that have been sent there to assist with a large-scale immigration enforcement operation.
The plans were first reported by the San Francisco Chronicle on Wednesday, citing an anonymous source familiar with the matter.
Today, protesters held signs reading “no ICE or troops in the Bay” and blocked CBP vehicles from entering the base.
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A reminder that my colleagues are covering the latest developments out of Europe. Currently, Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy is addressing EU leaders in Brussels.
As my colleague, Tom Ambrose, reports, so far Zelenskyy has said that Ukraine should be able to use Russia’s frozen assets for domestic weapons production and to purchase European and US weapons. He added that land swaps with Russia were “not acceptable”.
This comes as the US announced new sanctions on Russia’s two biggest oil producers, Rosneft and Lukoil, on Wednesday. American companies and individuals will also be barred from doing business with them.
Follow along with the latest below.
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Donald Trump picked Kristi Noem as homeland security secretary as a personal favour to his former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski despite objections that she was “obviously unqualified”, according to a new book.
The factional infighting behind Trump’s cabinet selection, where inexperience was no barrier to success, is detailed by journalist Jonathan Karl in Retribution: Donald Trump and the Campaign That Changed America. The Guardian obtained a copy.
Soon after his election victory last November, the book recounts, Trump picked Noem to run the Department of Homeland Security, central to fulfilling his campaign promise of the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants.
Like Pete Hegseth, who landed the job of defense secretary, Noem, then the governor of South Dakota – who faced an outcry over her admission in a book that she once shot a pet dog – had not been on the transition team’s list of possible candidates and had not gone through vetting for the job, Karl writes in Retribution.
“When a surprised Trump advisor asked the president-elect why he had decided to nominate Noem to be secretary of Homeland Security, he had a simple answer. ‘I did it for Corey,’ he said. ‘It’s the only thing Corey asked me for.’”
Lewandowski was Trump’s campaign manager until he was fired in June 2016 after a string of controversies that included being accused of forcibly yanking the arm of a female reporter. Rumours of an affair between Lewandowski and Noem have swirled in Washington for years, though both deny the relationship.
Eric Adams to endorse Andrew Cuomo in final stretch of NYC mayoral race – report
The outgoing mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, will endorse independent nominee Andrew Cuomo in final stretch of the mayoral race, according to the New York Times.
In an interview with the Times, Adams said that he would campaign with Cuomo, in areas where the incumbent is most popular.
“I think that it is imperative to really wake up the Black and brown communities that have suffered from gentrification on how important this race is,” Adams told the Times.
Before dropping out of the race, and offering his endorsement, Adams called Cuomo a “liar and a snake”.
The former governor of New York is still lagging behind frontrunner Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee, in the polls. On Wednesday, in the final debate before election day on 4 November, Mamdani and Cuomo exchanged barbs throughout, and clashed on several issues.
After the debate, Cuomo posted a picture with Adams at a New York Knicks basketball game. Mamdani retorted on social media: “Corruption goes courtside”.
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US targets drug-carrying vessel in second strike in two days
The Trump administration carried out another strike on an alleged drug-carrying vessel in the eastern Pacific on Wednesday – the second operation in the geographic region in two days. Three people, who the defense secretary Pete Hegseth identified as “narco-terrorists”, were killed in the strike.
“These strikes will continue, day after day,” Hegseth pledged in a statement. “These are not simply drug runners – these are narco-terrorists bringing death and destruction to our cities.”
On Tuesday, the administration attacked and destroyed two boats on the Pacific side of South America for the first time, killing two people. Both of these operations come after at least seven other strikes in the Caribbean that have killed at least 32 people and raised tensions with Colombia and Venezuela.
Throughout this press conference, many Republicans are using an interview that minority whip Katherine Clark, one of the House’s top Democrats, gave to Fox News.
“Shutdowns are terrible and, of course, there will be, you know, families that are going to suffer. We take that responsibility very seriously. But it is one of the few leverage times we have,” Clark said.
Today, GOP lawmakers are latching on to her words and using it as the basis to blame colleagues across the aisle for the ongoing shutdown.
“We just let their own words speak for themselves. We’re not for that, the Democrats are,” speaker Mike Johnson said.
Duffy also implored air traffic controllers who will go without paychecks from next week to still come to work.
“Come to work even if you don’t get a paycheck. We need you to come to work,” he said. “But if they do not, we’ll know whose fault it is.”
Transportation secretary joins House Republicans to discuss shutdown impact on travel
We’re hearing now from Sean Duffy, the secretary of transportation, who is repeating the Republican party line that the reason Democrats refuse to pass the continuing resolution to reopen the federal government is because they are trying to appease a “a radical base” that is “out of control”.
Duffy said that 28 October will be the first day that air traffic controllers will go without a full paycheck.
“I want to reiterate we are all about safety,” Duffy said. “But again, I can’t guarantee you that your flight is going to be on time. I can’t guarantee you that your flight is not going to be canceled.”
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House Republicans are holding their daily press conference now. Today, GOP lawmakers are joined by transportation secretary Sean Duffy.
Rubio to meet with Netanyahu on Thursday
Secretary of state Marco Rubio will meet with Benjamin Netanyahu later today, according to the state department.
The pair will meet at 12.05pm ET/7.05pm local time.
This comes as vice-president JD Vance met with the Israeli prime minister earlier this week, and just left the region to travel back to Washington.
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Vance says West Bank annexation legislation is an 'insult'
Vice-president JD Vance has said that Israel would not annex the West Bank, the day after Israeli lawmakers voted to advance two bills paving the way for the territory’s annexation.
“If it was a political stunt it was a very stupid political stunt and I personally take some insult to it,” Vance said on the tarmac as he wrapped up his visit in Israel.
“The West Bank is not going to be annexed by Israel, the policy of the Trump administration is that the West Bank will not be annexed by Israel, that will continue to be our policy,” he added.
Earlier, as secretary of state Marco Rubio travelled to the region, he warned Israel against annexation. “I think the president’s made clear that’s not something we can be supportive of right now,” Rubio said as he boarded his plane. Annexation moves are “threatening for the peace deal”, he told reporters.
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Donald Trump has repeated his insistence that Chicago needs federal law enforcement on its streets. In a post on Truth Social he wrote:
14 people were shot over the weekend in Chicago, four DEAD! What does failed Governor Pritzker, and the equally pathetic Mayor, say now? BRING IN THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, AND BRING THEM IN NOW!!!
This comes after the Trump administration filed an emergency appeal to the supreme court, after an appeals court upheld a federal district judge’s decision to block the deployment of the national guard to Chicago.
Just a note that the latest failed vote on a funding bill to reopen the federal government took place after Jeff Merkley, the Democratic senator of Oregon, wrapped up a marathon speech on the Senate floor that lasted almost 23 hours.
Aided by placards behind him, declaring “Trump is violating the law”, the 68-year-old lawmaker issued a far-ranging critique of the administration’s policies.
“The fight isn’t over-we need to keep standing together to resist Trump’s attempts to tighten his authoritarian grip,” Merkley said, after wrapping his floor speech, that came in a couple of hours shy of breaking the record set by his Democratic colleague, Cory Booker, who spoke continuously for more than 25 hours back in April.
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Shutdown enters day 23 as Senate Republicans push bill to fund troops
The government shutdown entered its 23rd day, with little end in sight. On Wednesday the Senate failed, for the 12th time, to pass a House-passed stopgap funding bill.
Today, the upper chamber will also vote on legislation to continue paying federal workers who haven’t stopped working during the shutdown, as well as members of the military. The Shutdown Fairness Act is co-sponsored by Republican senator Ron Johnson, of Wisconsin.
The snag? It also needs 60 votes to advance, and Democrats look poised to hold out.
Donald Trump will be in Washington today, according to his official schedule. We’re set to hear from him at 3pm ET, when he makes an announcement in the state dining room.
Before that, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt will hold a briefing at 1pm ET. We’ll make sure to bring you the latest lines from both.
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More than half of Americans, including about three in 10 Republicans, believe president Donald Trump is using federal law enforcement to go after his enemies, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll that also found growing concern about US political divisions nine months into his second term in office.
Some 55% of poll respondents in the six-day poll, which closed on Monday, agreed with a statement that the Republican president is using law enforcement to target his enemies, while 26% disagreed and the rest were unsure or did not respond.
Some 85% of the poll respondents who identified themselves as Democrats agreed, as did 29% of the Republican poll takers.
Trump’s justice department in the past month has brought criminal charges against three prominent adversaries of the president, including former FBI director James Comey, New York state attorney general Letitia James and former national security adviser John Bolton. All three have denied wrongdoing.
The US justice department has historically kept an arm’s length distance from the president, seeking to protect prosecutorial independence. Trump campaigned ahead of the 2024 presidential election with pledges for retribution against his enemies.
He had particular disdain for Comey and James, who had led criminal probes against him that he contends were politically motivated. Trump has denied ordering the justice department to indict his foes, though last month he appeared to push federal prosecutors to charge Comey and James.
New York City’s three mayoral contenders had a fiery debate on Wednesday night in their final televised face-off less than two weeks before voters decide the city’s next leader on 4 November.
Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani, independent Andrew Cuomo and Republican Curtis Sliwa participated in a tense and often chaotic discussion. The current mayor, Eric Adams, who dropped out of the race weeks earlier, once again did not attend.
“It’s us versus them,” Sliwa declared in his opening remarks, grouping Cuomo and Mamdani together despite their mutual disapproval of one another.
Mamdani opened by accusing both rivals of focusing more on urging each other to drop out than on offering new ideas. The former governor’s allies have urged Sliwa to withdraw to consolidate anti-Mamdani votes, though it is unclear how many conservatives would back Cuomo.
Cuomo claimed Mamdani “has no new ideas” and merely rehashed ideas from former mayor Bill de Blasio, prompting Mamdani to fire back: “I have plans for our future, my opponents only have fear.”
Beginning with the topic of ICE raids in New York, Cuomo said federal immigration agents should not focus on quality-of-life offenses like street vending, calling those a police matter. He added he would have personally called Donald Trump to rein in ICE.
Sliwa countered that, unlike Cuomo and Mamdani, he would “negotiate with Donald Trump and try to get the best deal possible”. Mamdani hit back, calling Cuomo “Donald Trump’s puppet”.
The two then sparred over which candidate Trump preferred. Cuomo claimed Trump wanted Mamdani elected so he could “come in and take over the city”, calling the progressive “Trump’s dream”.
The debate later turned to the city’s record 150,000 homeless students. Mamdani spoke about plans to double a program pairing shelter families with city workers for regular check-ins. Cuomo said the “homeless rate has more than doubled” since he left office, without clarifying his figures.
Pregnant women have reported bleeding, miscarriages, being shackled and other instances of medical neglect while in US immigration custody, according to a group of prominent civil rights organizations.
The groups – which include the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and its Louisiana chapter, the National Immigration Project, Robert F Kennedy Human Rights, Sanctuary of the South and Sanctuary Now Abolition Project – sent a letter to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Senate committees on Wednesday, describing interviews with more than a dozen women.
“ICE has issued detainers, arrested, and taken pregnant individuals into custody, even after they have informed officers of their pregnancy, in violation of agency guidance,” the letter said.
It noted in particular that ICE had “detained several cases of pregnant individuals arising from domestic disputes. This practice endangers survivors of domestic violence, particularly pregnant individuals, who are more vulnerable to abuse and violence.”
Some of the pregnant women reported being shackled and held in other restraints during transport; detention in solitary confinement; delayed and substandard prenatal care; denial of prenatal vitamins; inadequate food; lack of interpretation and translation in medical encounters; medical care without informed consent; and medical neglect leading to dangerous infection after miscarriage, the letter said.
The letter specifically detailed the experience of six women held in two detention centers in Basile, Louisiana, and Lumpkin, Georgia.
The New York state attorney general, Letitia James, rolled out a “Federal Action Reporting Portal” form urging New York residents to share photos and videos of federal immigration enforcement action across the state, just a day after a high-profile ICE raid rattled Manhattan’s Chinatown and prompted hundreds to come out in protest.
A US congressman revealed in a Wednesday press conference that four US citizens were arrested and held for “nearly 24 hours” after Tuesday’s raid. Protests broke out in New York on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings.
“Every New Yorker has the right to live without fear or intimidation,” James wrote in a statement announcing the portal.
“If you witnessed and documented ICE activity yesterday, I urge you to share that footage with my office. We are committed to reviewing these reports and assessing any violations of law.”
The form offers spaces to submit images and video footage of the raid, as well as a place to indicate location information. Before submitting, users must check a box that indicates that “the attorney general may use any documents, photographs, or videos I provided in a public document, including in a legal proceeding or public report or statement”.
The Guardian has contacted James’s office for more information.
Vice-president JD Vance said on Thursday that president Donald Trump’s policy remains that the occupied West Bank won’t be annexed by Israel.
He told reporters in Tel Aviv that he “feels pretty good” about the Gaza ceasefire after his talks with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
White House East Wing will be torn down ‘within days’ even as no plans filed for Trump’s new ballroom
Trump administration officials confirmed to various outlets on Wednesday that the White House’s East Wing will be demolished “within days”, a revelation given the administration has not submitted plans for the new ballroom to the federal agency that oversees construction of federal buildings.
In discussion with reporters in the Oval Office, Donald Trump was asked by Jeff Mason of Reuters to respond to the widespread surprise that the entire East Wing is being torn down. Trump said the wing he described as a separate building “was never thought of as being much; it was a very small building”.
“Rather than allowing that to hurt a very expensive, beautiful building,” he continued. “In order to do it properly, we had to take down the existing structure.”
Then, pointing at a model of the new ballroom on a table in front of him, and a new structure leading to the ballroom in the location where the East Wing used to be, Trump added: “The way it was shown, it looked like we were touching the White House. We don’t touch the White House.”
“That’s a bridge, a glass bridge going from the White House to the ballroom,” Trump said, of the new structure that will replace the East Wing.
Trump said the result is “going to be probably the finest ballroom ever built” and that the ballroom is “being paid for 100% by me and some friends of mine”.
The New York Times, citing a senior administration official, reported that the ballroom plans will mean the demolition of the entire East Wing. The official also said the demolition should be finished by this weekend.
Two Trump officials told NBC News similar information, saying the entire East Wing of the White House will be demolished “within days”.
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The US has sanctioned Rosneft and Lukoil, Russia’s two largest oil companies, as the Trump administration increased pressure on the Kremlin to negotiate an end to its war against Ukraine.
The sanctions were the first against Russia since Donald Trump returned to the White House in January, and were targeted to cut key revenues from oil sales that finance the Russian war machine.
The move against Russia marks the latest swing of the pendulum under the Trump administration from coercing Kyiv to sue for peace to growing frustration with Vladimir Putin’s maximalist demands.
“Now is the time to stop the killing and for an immediate ceasefire,” said the treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, in a statement announcing the sanctions against Russia. “Given President Putin’s refusal to end this senseless war, Treasury is sanctioning Russia’s two largest oil companies that fund the Kremlin’s war machine. Treasury is prepared to take further action if necessary to support President Trump’s effort to end yet another war. We encourage our allies to join us in and adhere to these sanctions.”
The British government sanctioned Rosneft and Lukoil last week. The EU has sanctioned Rosneft, the Russian state-owned oil company, but not Lukoil, which is privately owned, largely due to exemptions for Hungary and Slovakia, which buy Russian oil.
Trump, speaking in the Oval Office with the Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, on Wednesday, also confirmed he had cancelled a planned summit with Putin in another sign of a breakdown in negotiations between Washington and Moscow.
“We cancelled the meeting with President Putin,” Trump said. “It didn’t feel right to me. It didn’t feel like we were going to get to the place we have to get so I cancelled it. But we’ll do it in the future.”
The US military has for the first time attacked and destroyed two boats on the Pacific side of South America, as part of its controversial fight against what it says are drug-trafficking activities.
The strikes – on Tuesday night and then early on Wednesday – killed five people, according to the US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth. They came on top of at least seven other strikes in the Caribbean that have killed at least 32 people and raised tensions with Colombia and Venezuela.
Hegseth released a brief video of the Tuesday night strike, showing a small boat, half-filled with brown packages, moving along at sea. Several seconds into the video, the boat explodes and is seen floating motionless in flames.
In a post on social media, Hegseth took the unusual step of equating the alleged drug traffickers to the terror group that conducted the attacks on the US on September 11, 2001.
“Just as al-Qaida waged war on our homeland, these cartels are waging war on our border and our people,” Hegseth said, adding that “there will be no refuge or forgiveness – only justice”.
The Colombian president, Gustavo Petro, who is in the midst of a spat with Donald Trump over the boat strikes and tariffs, said: “The attack on another boat in the Pacific … killed people. It is murder. Whether in the Caribbean or Pacific, the US government strategy breaks the norms of international law.”
Venezuela is a major drug transit zone, but the eastern Pacific Ocean, not the Caribbean, is the primary area for smuggling cocaine.
The University of Virginia (UVA) has become the latest institution to agree to the Trump administration’s demands concerning discrimination in admissions and hiring following significant pressure from the justice department.
The deal, which the department announced on Wednesday, comes after the president of the esteemed public university resigned in June to resolve a justice department investigation into UVA’s diversity, equity and inclusion policies.
If the president, Jim Ryan, had stayed in the job, he was told “hundreds of employees would lose jobs, researchers would lose funding, and hundreds of students could lose financial aid or have their visas withheld”, according to Mark Warner, a Democratic senator from Virginia.
The deal means the justice department will end its investigation into the school, while the school agreed “not engage in unlawful racial discrimination in its university programming, admissions, hiring or other activities. UVA will provide relevant information and data to the Department of Justice on a quarterly basis through 2028,” the announcement states.
The University of Pennsylvania, Columbia and Brown had already reached agreements with the Trump administration to have federal funding, which had been cut, restored in exchange for settlements concerning claims of alleged antisemitism. They also agreed to demands such as adopting the administration’s definitions of male and female.
Trump poised to send scores of federal agents to San Francisco
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I am Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news lines over the next few hours.
We start with the news that the Trump administration appears poised to send dozens of federal agents to the San Francisco Bay Area for a major immigration enforcement operation, prompting condemnation from California leaders.
Details of the deployment were still emerging, but it will reportedly involve more than 100 federal agents, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The agents are reportedly set to begin using the US Coast Guard base in Alameda, a city located across the bay from San Francisco. It remained unclear whether national guard troops would also be involved.
The deployment follows weeks of threats by Donald Trump to target the Democratic-run city. California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, criticised the move, calling it “right out of the dictator’s handbook”.
“He sends out masked men, he sends out border patrol, he sends out ICE, he creates anxiety and fear in the community so that he can lay claim to solving for that by sending in the [national] guard,” Newsom said in a video statement. “This is no different than the arsonist putting out the fire.”
Mia Bonta, the state assembly member who represents Alameda, denounced the arrival of federal agents in her district as “authoritarian theatrics”. “This is against our values as Alamedans to have our city used as a staging ground to inflict fear, terror and state-sponsored violence across the Bay,” she said.
San Francisco is the latest major city targeted by Trump’s campaign of mass immigration arrests. The deployment is expected to trigger a showdown between the administration and local leaders, who have pledged to block militarized immigration enforcement in the city.
San Franciscans have been readying for months for Trump to make good on repeated threats to send troops to the city. At a Wednesday afternoon press conference, San Francisco’s mayor, Daniel Lurie, reiterated that the city was prepared.
“For months, we have been anticipating the possibility of some kind of federal deployment in our city,” said Lurie, adding that he had taken further executive actions on Wednesday to “strengthen the city’s support for our immigrant communities, and ensure our departments are coordinated ahead of any federal deployment”.
Read our full story here:
In other developments:
Donald Trump said Vladimir Putin was not being “honest and forthright” in Ukraine talks, the US treasury chief has said. The sanctions against Rosneft and Lukoil came a day after a planned Trump-Putin summit in Budapest was shelved, with Washington expressing its disappointment at the lack of progress in ceasefire negotiations with Moscow.
Trump administration officials confirmed to various outlets on Wednesday that the White House’s East Wing will be demolished “within days”, a revelation given that the administration has not submitted plans for the new ballroom to the federal agency that oversees construction of federal buildings.
The president declared himself the arbiter of whether or not his own administration should pay him damages over past federal investigations, telling reporters that any such decision “would have to go across my desk”. Trump insisted on Tuesday that the government owed him “a lot of money” for previous justice department investigations into his conduct, while at the same time asserting his personal authority over any potential payout.
A small boat half-filled with brown packages is seen moving along at sea and then explodes and floats motionless in flames, in a brief video released by the US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth. The operation happened off coast of Colombia, marking the first such strike in the Pacific. Seven previous attacks in Caribbean killed at least 32 people.
The University of Virginia (UVA) has become the latest school to agree to the Trump administration’s demands concerning discrimination in admissions and hiring after significant pressure from the justice department.
Graham Platner, a Democratic candidate for the US Senate in Maine, said on Wednesday that a tattoo on his chest has been covered to no longer reflect an image widely recognised as a Nazi symbol.
Oregon Democrat Jeff Merkley spoke for nearly 23 hours on the Senate floor to press the case that Trump is acting as an authoritarian by prosecuting political enemies and deploying the military into Merkley’s home town of Portland.
