Closing summary
This concludes our programming for the evening. Thanks for joining us and here are the latest developments in the unfolding sequel to the first Trump presidency:
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The White House faced fresh questions over whether Donald Trump’s closest aide, Natalie Harp, had access to US government secrets without security clearance.
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At a Rose Garden event to promote Melania Trump’s advocacy for foster children, the first lady opened with a joked about her lack of recent public appearances, as her husband looked on with something less than rapt attention.
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Trump’s former fixer, Michael Cohen, who turned on the president in 2019, when he compared him to a mobster during congressional testimony, executed another 180-degree turn, showering the president with praise during a friendly conversation between the two men on Cohen’s New York City radio show.
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A 21-year-old recent college graduate was behind an anonymous website that put out widely shared fake election polling in Wisconsin, Nevada and California.
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Progressive Aisha Wahab was elected to Congress in a special election following a bitter intra-party battle over the seat formerly held by Eric Swalwell.
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One week after Trump ordered his navy secretary to redesign a new aircraft carrier, the USS Doris Miller - to scrap the modern electromagnetic system used to launch fighter jets, and install old-fashioned steam-powered catapults instead - CNN reports that the navy is considering another change to the same ship: removing the name of Miller, a Black sailor known for his heroism during the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, and naming it instead the USS Donald Trump.
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The non-partisan Cook Political Report updated its midterm election forecast to rate the US Senate races in both Texas and Iowa, which had leaned in favor of Republicans, as toss ups that could break for Democrats.
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Los Angeles mayor's attack on taco trucks puzzles voters
Voters in Los Angeles were left scratching their heads on Thursday, as word spread that the city’s mayor, Karen Bass, had suggested during a heated mayoral debate that taco trucks, a beloved LA institution, were a nuisance she compared to homeless encampments .
The mayor made the remarks as she attempted to attack her rival, city council member Nithya Raman, for defending street vendors in response to a question from one of the moderators at a debate sponsored by the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association.
“Just across the parking lot from here, La Fogata restaurant has been serving our community for 50 years. So now an unpermitted street vendor is operating in the parking lot and selling tacos,” the moderator began.
“How is that fair to an established local business that pays rent and taxes and complies with health and business regulations? Shouldn’t LA county require street vendors to meet the same health and safety standards as brick and mortar restaurants?” she asked.
“I really, really value our restaurant community,” Raman replied. “The food of Los Angeles is incredibly important. Street vendors in Los Angeles are a vibrant part of our community as well.”
She went on to argue that “if regulated appropriately … I believe the two can coexist in LA and actually make this city better”.
“I do not think that you should have a food vendor in front of a restaurant, period,” Bass countered. “I would like to see street vendors move into brick-and-mortar facilities so they can be restaurants.”
Having taco trucks “right in front of a restaurant … discourages patrons from going in”, Bass added, without explaining how. “Just like you shouldn’t have encampments in front of restaurants or in front of schools. You just should not do that. We have to end street homelessness. Period.”
To some Angelenos, the attack from Bass on their culture sounded like an echo of a claim made by one of Donald Trump’s supporters in the last phase of the 2016 campaign.
“My culture is a very dominant culture,” Marco Gutierrez, the Mexican-born founder of Latinos for Trump told MSNBC in September 2016, casting Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric as common sense. “It is imposing and it’s causing problems. If you don’t do something about it, you’re going to have taco trucks on every corner,” he added, triggering a tidal wave of memes and a rebuttal from Hillary Clinton.
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Progressive Aisha Wahab has been elected to Congress in a special election following a bitter intra-party battle over the seat formerly held by Eric Swalwell, who resigned in April after facing sexual misconduct allegations. Swalwell has denied the allegations.
Wahab, a state senator, was widely considered the frontrunner in the district in California’s East Bay and had the backing of the state Democratic party as well as Our Revolution, labor unions, local officials and the state’s attorney general, Rob Bonta.
She won the primary for the special election for the final months of Swalwell’s term by more than 20 points over Melissa Hernandez, the president of the board of directors for the Bay Area Rapid Transit (Bart) agency.
The same two candidates then faced off again in a general election rematch that was much closer.
“I will fight for this district that raised me,” Wahab said in a statement on Thursday. “From foster care to Congress, this journey shows the possibility of the American Dream.”
While Wahab held a major lead throughout the race, Hernandez’s campaign received a significant boost as Super Pacs connected to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) poured money into the race.
With 92% of votes counted on Thursday afternoon, Wahab led Hernandez by just over six points – a much closer race than expected.
Earlier this month, it emerged that Super Pacs had spent more than $5m in a matter of weeks on pro-Hernandez ads and Wahab attack ads. Track Aipac, which monitors the group’s funding of US politicians, recently reported that the lobby had spent nearly $6.4m to support Hernandez.
Wahab, the first Muslim woman and Afghan American elected to the California legislature, told the Guardian there had been a sudden surge of critical ads that had misrepresented her record. She described the Super Pacs’ involvement as election interference, and said they were attempting to buy the seat.
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Former Trump fixer Michael Cohen tries to make amends by hosting president he compared to 'a mobster' on his radio show
Donald Trump’s former fixer and personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, who turned on the president in 2019, when he compared him to a mobster during congressional testimony, executed another 180-degree turn on Thursday, showering the president with praise during a friendly conversation between the two men broadcast on Cohen’s New York City radio show.
Cohen, who played the 1970s R&B hit Reunited in the background as he told listeners to tune in on Sunday for more of the interview, introduced the chat by saying that the two men had forgiven each other. Cohen then criticized people who think “holding on to hatred is a sign of strength”. Trump, famously, holds grudges for decades.
In the part of the conversation broadcast on Thursday, and then posted on YouTube, Cohen reminded Trump of his combative cable news appearances in defense of his candidacy in 2016. Trump responded: “you were a good advocate and then they weaponized you like nobody’s ever been weaponized, like few have been”.
“Well, maybe just you and I, sir,” Cohen interjected.
“Yeah, me too”, Trump said. “But they weaponized you; they weaponized a lot of people. And I respect the fact that you recanted everything you said, and that’s a big that’s a big thing that you did, that’s a very big thing.”
Cohen also fully supported Trump’s baseless claim that Iran would have obtained nuclear weapons and destroyed Israel by now had he not been elected president in 2024. That claim is contradicted by the fact that a 2025 US intelligence assessment, released shortly before Trump ordered strikes on Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities, said that Iran had abandoned its pursuit of nuclear weapons in 2003.
Later in the chat, Cohen again tried to jog Trump’s memory of his former role as his closest aide by saying, “Boss, you remember when I was by your side?”
At another stage in the conversation, Trump appeared to tacitly admit that he lost the 2020 election.
“I got elected partially on the border,” Trump said of his 2024 victory over Kamala Harris. “By the way, that happened two times”, he added. “When I ran in 2016, I got elected on the border”.
Trump usually claims to have been elected three times, based on his lie that he won the 2020 election he lost to Joe Biden.
Trump went on to claim that Cohen had been unfairly threatened with jail by the Manhattan and New York state prosecutors who used his testimony to convict Trump of campaign finance violations and fraud.
In 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty in federal court to orchestrating $280,000 in payments during Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign to buy the silence of two women who threatened to speak publicly about their alleged affairs with Trump.
In 2019, after defecting from Trump’s orbit, Cohen told Congress: “I am ashamed that I chose to take part in concealing Mr. Trump’s illicit acts rather than listening to my own conscience. I am ashamed, because I know what Mr. Trump is. He is a racist, he is a con man, and he is a cheat.”
In the same testimony, Cohen provided a Democratic-led committee with what he said was a copy of a check Trump wrote from his personal bank account to reimburse Cohen for hush-money payments to one of the women, Stormy Daniels, “to cover up his affair with an adult film star, and to prevent damage to his campaign.”
Cohen later testified to a Manhattan court in 2024 that he submitted fake invoices for legal services in 2016 to cover up what were, in fact, reimbursements for $130,000 hush-money payments to Daniels and that that he knew the payment violated federal election law.
After recording his chat with Trump, Cohen admitted to CNN that he had submitted a formal request for a pardon for the crimes he admitted to in 2018.
Cohen said that he first submitted a pardon request to Biden, which was supported by Jamie Raskin, a Democratic congressman, but never acted on. Recently, Cohen said, he changed the cover letter on the application so that it now urges Trump to grant him clemency.
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Navy considers plan to rename aircraft carrier for Trump, instead of Black war hero - report
One week after Donald Trump ordered his navy secretary to redesign a new aircraft carrier, the USS Doris Miller - to scrap the modern electromagnetic system used to launch fighter jets, and install old-fashioned steam-powered catapults instead - CNN reports that the navy is considering another change to the same ship: removing the name of Miller, a Black sailor known for his heroism during the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, and naming it instead the USS Donald Trump.
The language of Trump’s executive order last week, demanding the change back to steam catapults, perhaps offered a hint that the name chosen during his first term, to honor Doris “Dorie” Miller, might be changed. The order did not refer to the ship at any point as the Miller, instead using just its hull number, CVN-81.
According to an official biography on the US Department of Veterans Affairs website, Miller joined the US Navy in 1939 “as a mess attendant one of the only occupational specialties then open to a Black man”. During the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941:
Miller, on his own initiative, loaded and manned an unattended gun and fired at incoming Japanese planes. Although untrained, he laid down effective fire and stopped firing when he ran out of ammunition and the ship began to sink. Even then, he persisted in helping his fellow sailors to safety until he finally made his way to shore.
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A 21-year-old recent college graduate was behind an anonymous website that put out widely shared fake election polling in Wisconsin, Nevada and California, the Guardian can reveal.
The website, Median Strategies, abruptly shut down and withdrew its polling earlier this week following questions from a reporter from the Los Angeles Times. In an unsigned statement, it described a “short-term social experiment” to examine how fake polling “could enter and spread through the political information ecosystem without independent verification”.
“I wanted to see if fake polls could really penetrate the ecosystem that easily,” Rahil Prakash told the Guardian on Thursday when reached by phone. “And as it turned out, it could.”
Karen Bass, the mayor of Los Angeles, touted Median polling data after it appeared to put her ahead of her election challenger by more than 10 percentage points. The poll was also cited by the California Post. A widely followed polling aggregator on X also shared the group’s Nevada poll, although several credible polling organizations did not aggregate Median polling because they could not verify its methodology.
“Did I expect it to perhaps expedite in the way it did? Most definitely not,” said Prakash. “I did not expect the California political press to pick it up on their own.”
He added: “I’ll apologize straight out to the campaigns of Karen Bass, Nithya Raman and Francesca Hong for this.”
Raman is running against Bass in November’s LA mayoral election. Hong lost the Democratic primary for Wisconsin governor earlier this month, after Median suggested she had led the race by more than 20 percentage points. It also released a fake poll showing the Nevada governor, Joe Lombardo, up by five points before November’s general election.
In an interview, Prakash said he was motivated to start the fake polling project after a significant polling miss in the Michigan Senate primary, where polls had showed Abdul El-Sayed with a heavy lead over his opponent Haley Stevens before election day. In the event, El-Sayed wound up winning by a much smaller margin than polls had suggested.
“This is what inspired me to test my theory,” said Prakash. “I was a bit shocked, perhaps at how fast this sort of information can spread.”
The US treasury department announced sanctions on Thursday against 10 people it says formed a courier network that smuggled hundreds of millions of dollars to Hezbollah by carrying cash onboard commercial flights between Iran, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Lebanon.
The office of foreign assets control (OFAC) said the network allowed Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group,to obtain foreign currency and dodge sanctions outside the formal banking system. The treasury department linked the operation to a scheme once associated with Behnam Shahriyari, a now-deceased finance official for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force.
At the center of the network, according to the department, is Yunus Alper Yilmaz, a Turkish businessman accused of running the courier operation and using Turkish-based currency exchange houses as fronts, along with shell companies and bank accounts tied to the IRGC-QF. Two men accused of collecting cash from those exchange houses on his behalf, Halil Ibrahim Kacmaz and Onder Dede, were designated, as was Vasfi Akyuz, described as a logistics coordinator who also worked as a courier.
Six others – Mehmet Akyuz, Mehmet Acur, Feyyad Karasalih, Masoud Mousafar, Gulay Kaya Savci and Emrah Ayaz – are accused of physically carrying the cash to Lebanon on commercial flights. None of the 10 appear to be public or widely known figures.
The action lands amid a sharp rise in tensions between Turkey and Israel this week, after Israeli airstrikes on a Syrian airbase near Aleppo prompted Ankara to accuse Israel of using the incident as a pretext to violate Syrian sovereignty. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, warned Turkey against expanding its military footprint in Syria.
The White House faced fresh questions on Thursday over whether Donald Trump’s closest aide, Natalie Harp, had access to US government secrets without security clearance.
Harp, who is executive assistant to the US president, worked at the White House for a year without the routine clearance, the MS Now network reported on Thursday. She refused to file the relevant forms for unknown reasons, according to two unnamed sources cited by MS Now.
It was only when the White House counsel’s office raised the issue, and when Trump himself became involved, that Harp filled out the paperwork for a federal background investigation and was belatedly granted clearance, according to the report.
Norm Eisen, a former White House ethics tsar, said: “It is shocking that an aide who has potential exposure to the nation’s most sensitive secrets reportedly went without a security clearance for so long. Treating access to confidences as a casual job perk is an outrageous way to handle our national security.”
Eisen, co-founder of Democracy Defenders Action, a non-partisan group dedicated to free and fair elections, added: “This is the continued incompetence of an administration willing to set aside our country’s interests, ignore established protocol, and make the White House vulnerable to intelligence risks in order to appease Trump. The American people deserve answers.”
Harp’s influence has come under close scrutiny this week after her name was invoked by Jon Ossoff, a Democratic US senator for Georgia.
Harp has reportedly sent the US president adoring letters, helps him write social media posts, and has been dubbed “the human printer” because she supplies him with printouts of favourable coverage.
The MS Now report about her prolonged lack of security clearance drew criticism among former White House officials across the political spectrum.
Election forecaster now rates both Texas and Iowa Senate races as toss ups
The non-partisan Cook Political Report updated its midterm election forecast on Thursday to rate the US Senate races in both Texas and Iowa, which had leaned in favor of Republicans, as toss ups that could break for Democrats.
The forecaster’s analyst for Senate and governor’s races, Jessica Taylor, noted the political climate is starting to look like the sort of “wave election” in which Democrats could win races even in states that voted for Donald Trump by more than 13 points in 2024.
To explain the updated forecast giving Democrats a chance to gain Senate seats in the two states, Taylor cited “both public and private polling showing both races to be more competitive”.
The most recent Fox News of the races showed Texas Democrat James Talarico leading Republican Ken Paxton 51%-48% and Iowa Democrat Josh Turek leading Republican Ashley Hinson 50% -46%.
“With these ratings shifts, we see the overall battle for the Senate as a toss up, but one in which Republicans may still hold the slimmest of advantages,” Taylor added.
Overall, the Cook Political Report now rates three of the nine competitive Senate races as favoring Democrats, with six rated as toss ups. Should Democrats sweep all those races, they would be on track to win a 53-47 Senate majority.
The forecaster also suggested that the governors’ races in both states are within reach for Democrats. In Iowa, Cook now rates the race for governor as leaning in favor of the Democrat, Rob Sand, and in Texas, the incumbent governor, Greg Abbott, is now just narrowly favored to win re-election against Democratic state lawmaker Gina Hinojosa.
Sand, the Iowa state auditor, held a lead over Republican Zach Lahn, a businessman and farmer, of between one and nine percentage points in recent polls.
A Fox poll last month showed Abbott leading Hinojosa by a single point, 50%-49%.
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The Rose Garden event to promote Melania Trump’s advocacy for foster children concluded with executives from IndyCar and Fox presenting her with an oversized novelty check for a $2 million donation to fund scholarships at Indiana University and Purdue University.
During the event, the first lady, who joked about her lack of recent public appearances, spoke about her desire to help young people from the foster care community go to college. Her remarks were followed by largely self-promotional speeches by executives from IndyCar and Fox.
Her husband, Donald Trump, attended the event but did not speak. He seemed less than riveted by the proceedings.
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“The greatest investment America can make is not in technology, infrastructure or capital markets,” she says. “It’s our children.”
Melania Trump nods to questions around absence: 'I heard you missed me. Here I am'
Aaand, scratch that. The Trumps have arrived early.
“Good afternoon. I heard you missed me. Here I am,” says Melania Trump, to laughs from the audience.
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Melania and Donald Trump to make fostering initiative announcement in Rose Garden
Melania and Donald Trump are due to make an announcement in the White House Rose Garden at 4pm ET related to the administration’s Fostering the Future Together initiative.
According to the New York Post, Melania will be announcing a new round of scholarships for foster children in partnership with Indycar, the US auto racing sanctioning body.
So far, the first lady has kept an even lower profile than during her husband’s first term, making only 38 public appearances this year. The last one was at the World Cup final, over a month ago.
Per my colleague Arwa Mahdawi, “NBC reported on Monday that she’s done about half as many public events as she did at this point in Trump’s first term. A senior adviser told the outlet she ‘prioritises results over appearances’.
“Her highest-profile public appearance this year was when she held a surprise press conference telling everyone not to speculate about her relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. This had the predictable result of getting everyone to speculate about her relationship with the dead sex offender.
“Melania [also] starred in an eponymous documentary bankrolled by Amazon that hit theatres at the beginning of the year. Ted Hope, a former Amazon employee, told the New York Times that the $35m in promotion and $40m in rights meant it had to ‘be the most expensive documentary ever made that didn’t involve music licensing’.”
The Trump administration plans to bar Palestinian Authority (PA) president Mahmoud Abbas from traveling to New York next month to speak before the UN general assembly for the second year running, the Times of Israel reports citing a US official.
Last August, the US state department denied and revoked visas from members of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the PA in advance of the annual meeting, including Abbas. The state department alleged at the time that the PA was “not complying with their commitments, and … undermining the prospects for peace”. Abbas in the end addressed the conference virtually.
It came amid a push from France and Saudi Arabia to recognize the state of Palestine and to promote a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which angered Israel.
DNC sues DOJ over unanswered FOIA requests regarding ballot seizures
The Democratic National Committee has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration today “over its failure to respond to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests seeking records about any plans to seize ballots in the midterm elections”.
“Following the seizure of archived ballots from Fulton County, Georgia, the DNC sent requests for records to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice regarding seizure of ballots, voting machines, and other voting system components,” the DNC said in a press release. “Nearly five months later, the DNC has not received a single responsive document, in clear violation of FOIA. This lawsuit comes as Trump is publicly musing about declaring an emergency to attempt to take over the midterm elections.
“The DNC previously sued the Trump administration for refusing to provide records regarding any plans to deploy federal agents or troops to polling places, drop boxes, and election offices in upcoming elections and won a court order forcing the administration to produce thousands of pages.
“The DNC filed the FOIA requests to inform the public and prepare for any legal actions needed to protect Americans’ right to vote and to protect the security, transparency, and integrity of elections across the country. The DNC will continue holding the administration accountable and demanding they not subvert or undermine the will of the voters.”
DNC chair Ken Martin said in a statement:
Donald Trump is historically unpopular and doing everything he can to subvert our elections this November – which is why we’re suing his administration once again. In our ongoing fight to protect free and fair elections, the DNC is holding Trump and his cronies accountable for their continued threats to our democracy. Whether in court or at the ballot box, we will stand with voters and defend them from Trump’s attempts to suppress their voices.
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'Maybe, maybe not': Michael Cohen declines to say if he’ll use his Trump interview to seek a pardon
Donald Trump has given a radio interview to none other than Michael Cohen, his former longtime personal fixer turned fierce critic, after an apparent reconciliation set the stage for their first public conversation in eight years.
Their exchange, recorded earlier today and due to be broadcast on 77WABC at 6pm ET, amounts to an extraordinary twist in the pair’s relationship.
Cohen once had such a tight relationship with Trump that he described himself back in the day as his “attack dog with a law license”, but later became the star witness in Trump’s 2024 criminal trial over his hush-money payments to the adult film star Stormy Daniels. Trump was found guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records in an effort to interfere with the 2016 election.
In 2018, Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison on charges related to hush-money payments on Trump’s behalf to help conceal the affair with Daniels, including campaign finance violations, tax evasion and bank fraud, as well as lying to Congress. He spent more than a year behind bars and the rest of his sentence in home confinement. He was also disbarred in New York. He later started a podcast and wrote books devoted to fierce criticism of Trump.
Cohen’s tune changed shortly after Trump returned to office, stating publicly in January last year that he felt “pressured and coerced” by federal prosecutors during the hush-money trial. Now, Trump will appear on the New York City radio show that Cohen began hosting last month.
Asked last night by Politico if during the phone interview he and the president would discuss presidential clemency for the conviction that landed Cohen a three-year prison sentence, Cohen replied:
We’ll see. Will I make that request down the road? I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not.
Scott Jennings reportedly pushing for White House press secretary role
And speaking of Karoline Leavitt, Scott Jennings is pushing to replace her as White House press secretary when she departs at the end of the month, Politico reported this morning.
Per Politico’s Dasha Burns: “After clips of Jennings defending Natalie Harp made their way around the WH – including some he sent to senior staffers himself – he reached out to schedule a private meeting with [White House chief of staff] Susie Wiles over the weekend, a person close to the WH told me.
“No decision was made and no offer extended. The process to replace Leavitt remains slow-moving.”
CNN is also reporting that Jennings has emerged as an early frontrunner to take over in the role – with the caveat that its sources “stressed that the process is far from complete” – and met Wiles recently at Mastro’s Steakhouse in Washington DC at the request of the White House.
Multiple staffers told CNN they believe Jennings has her backing, but others pushed back on that claim and said Wiles plans to meet several other potential contenders before making any decisions.
Jennings, CNN’s most prominent pro-Trump commentator and longtime conservative strategist, previously served in the George W Bush administration and an adviser to GOP senator Mitch McConnell.
Asked if he wants the job, Jennings told Politico: “I don’t have anything to say about that.”
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Further to that, Trump’s outgoing White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt did not issue a flat-out denial of its report that Natalie Harp resisted applying for security clearance for months before eventually relenting after pressure from White House staff.
When asked for comment by MS NOW, Leavitt said: “Natalie Harp has a security clearance like everyone else, and she is a loyal and hardworking member of President Trump’s team.”
Allegations over Natalie Harp's lack of security clearance 'deadly serious' if true, says former senior adviser to Obama
David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to Barack Obama, has expressed concern over the Natalie Harp affair, responding to reports (which the Guardian has not verified) that she resisted applying for security clearance on X:
If this story is true, and the person closest to the @POTUS and his thinking on a daily basis has no security clearance and refuses to submit to the process of getting it, it’s a deadly serious issue.
MS NOW reported that Harp, Donald Trump’s closest aide, declined several times over more than a year to apply for the routine security clearance normally obtained by West Wing staffers to work at the White House, citing two people familiar with the matter.
The people did not know Harp’s reasons for declining to complete the process. “After concerns mounted among the White House counsel’s office and security officials, the president himself intervened, and Harp in recent months filled out the forms to launch a formal federal background investigation and received the clearance,” MS NOW reported.
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The state department has declared that Min Zin, an American scholar arrested in China during an academic trip is being wrongfully detained.
The announcement “follows an extensive review of the circumstances surrounding his 3 June detention in Yunnan, China, where Zin had traveled to attend an academic conference at the invitation of the Chinese government,” the state department release says. “There are now two wrongfully detained U.S. citizens in China: Mr. Zin and Dr. Youlin Chen.”
The Chinese government arrested Zin, a US scholar who writes about Myanmar and Chinese foreign policy in June for “espionage activities.” Zin had visited China many times before without incident, according to Burmese activists. Zin was a student activist in Myanmar during the pro-democracy movement in 1988. He later sought asylum in the US.
His arrest follows that of Youlin Chen, a seismologist arrested in 2024 by the Chinese government. Chen’s research includes how to detect underground nuclear tests using seismological data. Advocates for his freedom believe the Chinese government may be trying to determine the extent of America’s ability to detect an underground nuclear test.
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The Democratic National Committee has narrowed its finalist cities to host the 2028 Democratic National Convention to Boston, Denver, and Philadelphia. The convention is scheduled to take place from 7-10 August 2028, with a final city selection expected later in the year.
Chicago and Atlanta are a little salty about that.
Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens expressed some irritation at hearing about the finalist selection from the news. He blasted the DNC in a letter Thursday, Fox 5 Atlanta reported.
“For the DNC to not even include Atlanta in the shortlist means that the DNC does not consider Atlanta or Georgia relevant to the past, present, or future of the Democratic Party,” Dickens said, adding, “They are afraid to leave their comfort zone and blind to the fact that the South is the answer. They are abandoning Atlanta, abandoning the South, and once again abandoning Black voters.”
Emily Soong, spokesperson for the Chicago 2028 Bid Committee, said that “Chicago is proud to have hosted the best Democratic National Convention in history, and we were honored to raise our hand once again to be considered for 2028. We are deeply committed to the success of the next convention, and we are all-in to support whichever host city is selected in this process.”
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Swalwell's electronics seized and home raided by FBI - report
An FBI team seized electronic devices from former US representative Eric Swalwell at the San Francisco airport on Saturday, then raided his home in Washington, DC, the next day, CNN reported Thursday.
The raid is part of a federal investigation into the sexual assault allegations which ultimately drove the Bay Area Democrat to resign from office in April, sources familiar with the investigation told CNN. The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department subsequently opened criminal investigations on Swalwell.
The White House released damaging declassified documents this week about Swalwell’s alleged relationship with Christine Fang, a suspected Chinese spy. The documents show that Swalwell told FBI agents in 2015 that he had had “physical relations” with Fang when she was campaigning on his behalf as an unpaid volunteer in 2012. Swalwell served on the House Select Committee on Intelligence when he spoke with the FBI in 2015, and remained so through their investigation, which did not result in charges.
A report by the San Francisco Chronicle on 10 April that Swalwell sexually assaulted an ex-staffer while she was too intoxicated to consent was followed by additional CNN reporting that surfaced three other women with detailed allegations of inappropriate conduct.
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Historian Heather Cox Richardson weighed in on the attention that White House aide Natalie Harp has drawn over the last week.
In the most recent edition of Richardson’s “Letters from an American” newsletter, the Boston College history professor and popular writer took note of the strident attacks the White House made on CNN reporter Kristen Holmes after she asked Trump about comments on Harp made by Jon Ossoff at an Atlanta rally Sunday.
“You could almost feel the palpable relief that the White House might be able to gin up a controversy that could rally the base, one that, for the first time in a long time, didn’t automatically show the president or the administration in a bad light,” Richardson wrote. “Undermining Ossoff, whose speeches have been a particularly sharp thorn in the administration’s side lately, appeared to be icing on the cake.”
Richardson described the reaction as a “Streisand effect,” drawing additional attention to a subject conservatives might prefer to let lie, and “manufactured outrage” which distracts from the other topics Ossoff raised in the speech – Trump’s profiteering from his service in the White House, the consequences of the Iran war and rising prices for consumers.
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A White House meeting on cryptocurrency and is amplifying a spike in bitcoin values Thursday.
President Donald Trump – who disclosed $1.4 billion in cryptocurrency earnings from his family’s investments in 2025 – is pushing congress to pass the CLARITY Act, which would define cryptocurrency as a commodity and move much of its regulation to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Bitcoin – along with gold and other commodities – began rising sharply in value at 10:30 Wednesday morning when the US treasury department announced it would double its long-end bond buybacks to at least $4 billion per operation, supporting market liquidity. That set off a short squeeze in cryptocurrencies. Twenty-four hours later, bitcoin hovered around $71,500, an increase of about 10 percent in value.
“We need Congress to take the next step by passing the Clarity Act – a fair version of the Clarity Act,” Trump said in opening remarks at a summit held Wednesday on the legislation with cryptocurrency industry leaders. “It’s a very, very powerful structured legislation which will keep us ahead of China, keep us ahead of everyone else, will open the door to the next wave of innovations and innovators.”
Thursday morning, the CFTC’s Innovation Advisory Committee held its inaugural meeting to discuss the regulation of crypto assets, artificial intelligence, and prediction markets.
“America has long been the global hub of financial innovation,” said Chairman Michael S. Selig. “I look forward to meeting with the entrepreneurs, thinkers, and builders of the CFTC’s Innovation Advisory Committee to discuss ways emerging technologies and financial products are shaping our markets as we embark upon the new frontier of finance.”
The agenda includes discussion of agentic finance and the use of AI in derivatives markets, as well as the regulation of prediction markets like Kalshi.
The CLARITY Act faces questions from the banking industry, which does not want crypto assets to be able to offer interest payments, which is seen as undermining traditional banking deposits. Lawmakers also want better protections against the use of cryptocurrency in money laundering and to restrict officials – including Trump – from conflicts of interest in the crypto industry.
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James Braid departs White House ahead of midterms
James Braid, the longest-serving legislative affairs director of Trump’s presidency, is leaving the White House ahead of the midterms. Braid navigated the cabinet confirmations of controversial appointees like that of Pete Hegseth at defense and Robert Kennedy Jr. at health and human services. He also shepherded the One Big Beautiful Bill Act through a congress with historically-tight margins for Republicans, while beating back war powers resolutions.
Republican lawmakers are acknowledging his service as he exits.
“James Braid has served his country with distinction and led the White House’s Office of Legislative Affairs with extraordinary skill,” wrote Speaker Mike Johnson on X. “His great friendship, unwavering commitment, and tireless work ethic have helped House and Senate Republicans advance President Trump’s America First agenda in spite of our razor-thin majorities, and he has played an essential role in delivering historic results for the American people. We wish James, his wife Melissa, and their family all the best in their next chapter.”
Vice President JD Vance, for whom Braid worked as legislative director before joining the White house, described him in a post on X as “brilliant.”
“James Braid had one of the toughest jobs in the entire Administration as White House Legislative Director and delivered for President Trump at every turn,” Vance wrote. “He played a critical role in all of the administration’s achievements in Congress: largest tax cut ever, resources to carry out President Trump’s historic immigration agenda and finish the border wall, defeating two Democratic shutdowns, a landmark first crypto bill, the fastest confirmation of the cabinet in decades and much more.”
Trump cycled through four legislative directors in his first term. The role will shift sharply if Republicans lose control of either chamber in the midterm elections, with the White House having to work to avert government shutdowns over budget battles and congressional investigations into Trump’s operations.
His exit follows that of Pace McMullan, who worked under Braid in Senate outreach.
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US unemployment claims dropped to 206,000 last week, with layoffs still sparse
The weekly Labor Department report for jobless claims dropped to 206,000 last week from a revised 212,000 the week before, the Associated Press reported Thursday.
Claims typically hover between 200,000 and 230,000. The weekly jobs report is viewed as a proxy for layoff notices.
The U.S. unemployment rate of 4.1% remains near historical lows, showing resilience despite higher energy prices caused by the war with Iran. It also reflects a shrinking labor market as immigration enforcement and Baby Boomer retirement reduce the number of available workers, AP reported.
Nonetheless, about 1.3 million people have dropped out of the labor market over the past year. Hiring in 2026 remains well below the 166,000 monthly jobs created, on average, in 2023 and 2024, and the 491,000 a month recorded during the 2021-2022 hiring boom that followed pandemic lockdowns.
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Natalie Harp worked at White House without security clearance for nearly a year – report
Natalie Harp, special assistant to Donald Trump, continues to be the focus of media attention Thursday after an MS Now report revealed that she had worked at the White House for nearly a year without obtaining a security clearance.
Harp, a former One America News Network show host, has emerged as a key gatekeeper to the president. Her presence with Trump when the president left Air Force One as a decoy while sneaking on to another plane in a service cart – even as senior officials remained behind – drew attention.
Jon Ossoff, a Democratic senator from Georgia, amplified that attention with comments at a rally Sunday in Atlanta. Speaking of Trump, Ossoff said: “He golfs and trades stocks. See, he doesn’t want to do the job; he wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar.”
A clip of his commentary went viral on social media, drawing attacks from the president’s defenders.
White House communications director Steven Cheung posted in reply on X: “Jon Jackoff has to be the biggest cuck loser in politics,” while White House spokesman Davis Ingle posted, “Jon Ossoff is a cringeworthy, feminine theatre kid cosplaying as Barack Obama. Nobody gives a shit what this lightweight loser says.”
Ossoff marveled at the reaction to his observations in an interview Wednesday with Laurence O’Donnell on MS Now. “It’s been amazing to watch this White House melt down over this all week,” Ossoff said. “These White House staffers are adults, public officials paid by the taxpayer with immense power in positions of public trust. And whether it’s Natalie Harp printing out Donald Trump’s daily dose of delusion and flattery, or Peter Navarro steering taxpayer-funded loans to Trump family investments, or Pete Hegseth deluding the president daily into deepening this quagmire in the Middle East, no one cares about their feelings.”
The pile on continues: Rosie O’Donnell, a longstanding Trump antagonist filling in Wednesday night for Jimmy Kimmel, picked at the topic.
“That’s all I’m going to say about you tonight, sweetheart,” O’Donnell said of Trump. ”You got to realize it’s time to hang up your wig and let Natalie tuck you in. Time to go nighty-night!”
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Michele Tafoya: from unassuming NFL sideline reporter to rightwing firebrand
As the third leg of NBC’s Sunday Night Football crew alongside play-by-play man Al Michaels and the tart-tongued analyst Cris Collinsworth, Michele Tafoya was a paragon of deference and neutrality for 11 years as an NFL sideline reporter, dutifully relating boilerplate tactics, talking points and injury updates when she wasn’t nodding along to softball interviews or fumbling through hammy production gimmicks for viewers who might have been too offline to get the bit.
She was almost pathologically committed to not doing anything to draw attention to herself or her gender in an era when sideline reporting was a fast track to national celebrity. Even her football takes hewed to the middle. (“New Orleans doesn’t want to lose to Atlanta twice in a season …”) Anyone who says they saw the 61-year-old emerging as a rightwing firebrand was watching a different game.
And yet here we are. Last week, Tafoya was the decisive winner of Minnesota’s US Senate Republican primary, earning the party’s nomination for November’s general election. Even more striking: she beat back eight challengers, not least Adam Schwarze, the party-endorsed pro-gun, pro-military ex-Navy SEAL, and Royce White, the anti-leftist, anti-trans NBA flameout currently testing WNBA gender norms.
From McDonald’s to Congress: can a former fry cook flip a key district for Democrats?
During his presidential campaign in October 2024, Donald Trump staged a photo op at a McDonald’s franchise in Pennsylvania, where he was briefly taught how to work the fryer and drive-thru window at the closed restaurant, while making several unsubstantiated claims about Kamala Harris’s past summer job at McDonald’s.
The posturing around McDonald’s garnered significant publicity, as Trump and Republicans capitalized on an affordability crisis triggered by high inflation that occurred globally due to the Covid pandemic.
Now, as Trump’s promises to “end inflation” and bring down prices have fallen flat, a real former fry cook is hoping affordability will help him flip Colorado’s eighth congressional district, a swing district narrowly won by the Republican Gabe Evans in 2024. The district is rated a toss-up by the Cook Partisan Index, and affordability is front and center in Democratic nominee Manny Rutinel’s congressional campaign.
Iran foreign minister points to US national debt as Trump threatens 'economic warfare'
Donald Trump on Wednesday posted that he intends to inflict on Iran “the MOST CRUSHING ECONOMIC OPERATION EVER TAKEN AGAINST ANY COUNTRY!”
“This will be Economic Warfare and Isolation on an unprecedented scale,” the president said.
On Thursday, Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s minister of foreign affairs posted on X screenshots from various news outlets reporting that the US national debt had reached $40tn for the first time in history.
“The so-called ‘Economic D-Day’ is a diversion from America’s own crisis: unprecedented debt and surging interest costs,” Araghchi said. “Doubling down on failed policies will only bring further defeat — and enmity of Iranians. US economic terrorism threatens global economy and sovereignty worldwide.”
Democrats and Republicans outraged over $40tn national debt
Hello and welcome to our live coverage of US politics.
The US gross national debt reached $40tn for the first time on Wednesday, the highest in US history.
The government deficit doubled over the past decade, with government spending growing under both Donald Trump and Joe Biden – Trump approved $8.4tn worth of debt during his first term, with a large chunk going to Covid-19 relief spending, while Biden approved $4.3tn worth of debt.
In fiscal year 2026, which began in October 2025, $1.8tn has been added to the debt so far.
Both Democrats and Republicans responded to the milestone with outrage, with Democrats placing the blame on Trump and a Republican-controlled Congress for the uptick in spending.
“The President said he’d pay off the debt in his first term. Well we all knew that was a lie. Instead he ran it up to $40 trillion while he and his family made billions,” Mark Kelly, a Democratic senator from Arizona, posted on X.
“Republicans ran up the tab, handed billionaires another tax break, and now wanna lecture working families about ‘fiscal responsibility’. You can’t max out the card AND pretend you’re the accountant. Pick a struggle,” Jasmine Crockett, a Democratic congresswoman from Texas, said.
“The Republican One Big Ugly Bill adds over $4 trillion alone—all to shamefully give tax breaks to billionaires and corporations,” Jason Crow, a Democratic congressman from Colorado, posted on X.
Crow is referring to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimates will increase the deficit by $3.3tn. After Republican senator Rick Scott posted on X that “Congress needs to get spending under control”, netizens were quick to add that he had voted to pass this bill.
Republican congressman Thomas Massie, who regularly clashed with Trump and his own party as well as with his colleagues across the aisle, has long worn on his suit jacket a debt badge, a three-inch-long pin he created that updates the national debt in real time. “When I invented the debt badge, the national debt was just over $31 trillion,” he posted on X.
“$4,000 per year per American. That’s how much interest we are paying on the debt to banks & foreign countries every year. A family of four owes $16,000 per year for nothing but interest on the debt!” Massie said. “I lost my re-election because I voted against the policies that caused this.” In May, the seven-term incumbent lost the House primary to keep his seat to Ed Gallrein, a retired Navy Seal and farmer who was recruited into the race by Trump.
Stay with us for more reaction.
