Closing summary
This concludes our live coverage of the second Trump administration for the day. Here are the latest developments:
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A US federal appeals court has ordered the Trump administration to halt construction of the US president’s $400m White House ballroom, in a fresh blow to the controversial project. Donald Trump, who demolished the historic East Wing of the White House last year to make way for planned ballroom, has repeatedly touted it as “a gift” to the US people. More here.
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Donald Trump is attempting once again to oust the US Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook over allegations of mortgage fraud, despite a recent US supreme court decision that upheld the central bank’s independence. Cook reportedly received a letter from the White House that provided notice that Trump was “considering removing” her from her Fed position over the same claims of mortgage fraud that he levied against her last summer. More here.
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Bill Cassidy, the US Republican senator seen as the decisive holdout on Todd Blanche’s nomination for attorney general, announced that he will support the pick, setting the stage for a major win for Trump. Confirmation that Cassidy, of Louisiana, is prepared to back Blanche – Trump’s former personal lawyer, and a loyal ally of the president – appeared to clear the last hurdle of his confirmation process, which had been challenged by the defections of the Republican senators Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins. More here.
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Trump has made a second attempt to restrict the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship, just weeks after the US supreme court rejected his initial, more sweeping bid to deny automatic citizenship to the children born to undocumented immigrants and temporary foreign residents. Trump on Thursday signed two executive orders that seek to broaden the categories of children ineligible for automatic US citizenship and ban so-called “birth tourism”. More here.
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Trump has ordered a new 15% tariff on imported products made of polysilicon, an important ingredient in microchip manufacturing that is primarily produced by China. The new tariff, which will take effect on 4 December, is aimed at supporting US chip and solar panel supply chains to compete with Beijing on artificial intelligence and energy. More here.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, supreme court justice Samuel Alito confirmed that he will stay in his position “for another term,” rejecting any notion that he will retire soon.
His comments are the first regarding his time left as supreme court justice after NPR’s veteran reporter Nina Totenberg earlier this summer mistakenly reported that Alito was retiring.
“Obviously I’m here for another term,” Alito said in an interview published in the newspaper’s opinion section. The court’s annual term will begin in October.
In reference to rumors of his retirement, Alito said that “it’s not pleasant, in the sense that it’s a reminder of mortality.”
“It’s like, what are those vultures doing up there? They are flying around. But it goes with life tenure,” he said.
The Pentagon has revoked former Air Force secretary Frank Kendall’s eligibility for access to classified information, said Sean Parnell, the chief Pentagon spokesperson.
“This action follows his unauthorized disclosure of classified information regarding Air Force One’s capabilities to a media outlet,” Parnell said in a post on X.
The Pentagon also revoked “his ability to hold any sensitive position.”
The move follows reporting from The New York Times of security concerns over the new, Qatari-gifted Air Force One, including the lack of infrared countermeasures to divert heat-seeking missiles and sensors to detect incoming launches.
In the Times article, Kendall, a trained lawyer and engineer who served under President Joe Biden, is quoted as saying that the time for upgrades to the plane would not have been enough for “all the normal Air Force One modifications” and he was surprised that the plane was used outside the US.
The Trump administration is planning to give $1 billion in security assistance to the government of Colombia’s new right-wing President Abelardo De La Espriella, per Reuters.
“As a cornerstone of this renewed partnership, the United States, working with Congress, intends to announce $1 billion in assistance as part of a security package to support President de la Espriella’s Administration in achieving our shared goals,” the state department told the outlet in a statement.
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The New Jersey Attorney General’s Office announced a civil rights investigation looking into the state’s largest immigration detention facility, according to a statement released on Friday.
The probe comes days after Edwin Lopez-Cornejo, a Salvadorian immigrant being held at the Delaney Hall detention facility in Newark, died in ICE custody.
“New Jersey has a legal and a moral duty to stand up for the civil rights of people in our State,” said attorney general Jennifer Davenport. “For detained individuals, including those held by a private corporation like GEO Group, those rights include the right to humane treatment and adequate medical care. We will take every action available under law to safeguard these core legal principles. We ask individuals to share their personal experiences with us so that we can take action to ensure that rights are protected.”
Delaney Hall, an immigration detention facility operated by the private prison firm GEO Group, has faced intense scrutiny since reopening under the second Trump administration. It has since faced accusations of substandard medical care, inedible food and neglectful guards.
In May, a group of detained men launched a hunger and labor strike, demanding a meeting with the New Jersey governor and improved living conditions, with dozens of women joining shortly after.
Trump calls appeals court's decision to halt ballroom construction 'National Security Threat at the highest level'
Donald Trump called the decision to halt construction of his $400m White House ballroom a “National Security Threat at the highest level” in a post on Truth Social.
“We are not tenants, who pay rent and do all other things that a tenant must do, we are PRESIDENTS, elected by the people of the United States of America, and have many rights, including the right to fix, renovate, secure, protect, and beautify the White House grounds,” Trump wrote. “This decision, made after much of the work has been done and paid for, is a National Security Threat at the highest level.”
Earlier today, a US federal appeals court sided with historic preservationists who sued to stop construction of the 90,000-square-foot (8,400-square-meter) ballroom, which he has repeatedly labeled as “a gift” to the US people.
The order upheld a preliminary injunction won by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The group sued last year after the Trump administration tore down the historic East Wing and began building a ballroom without seeking authorization from Congress.
The appeals court put its ruling on hold for two weeks to allow the administration to appeal to the US supreme court.
District court judge Richard Leon had said in a March opinion that any construction work left incomplete, although it poses concerns regarding the “safety and security of the White House grounds and the President himself, the existence of a ‘large hole’ beside the White House is, of course, a problem of the President’s own making.”
Prosecutor fired over blogposts critical of Trump sues US justice department
A federal prosecutor fired last year over critical comments he had written as a private citizen about Donald Trump sued the justice department, the AP reports, saying his termination violated his first amendment rights.
Will Rosenzweig was two weeks away from trying a multimillion-dollar Medicare fraud case when a blog he had written years earlier covering a broad range of topics was publicized online by a conservative political commentator who also included a screenshot of Rosenzweig’s LinkedIn account and tagged senior justice department officials for their awareness.
Less than three hours after the post, the lawsuit says, Rosenzweig received an email signed by then attorney general Pam Bondi informing him that he had been fired. The news came as Rosenzweig was out of town with his family observing the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashana.
Oregon governor supports locally-set moratoriums on data center development
Oregon’s Democratic governor, Tina Kotek, said she supports locally set moratoriums on new data center construction, with her comments coming nearly two weeks after the city of Hillsboro became the first in the state to enact such a temporary prohibition.
“Data center corporations are taking Oregon out to an expensive dinner and leaving our environment, communities, and people to foot the bill,” Kotek said in a statement. “Local governments are doing the right thing in calling for a pause until we can get this right.”
Kotek also directed the department of administrative services last week to terminate Oregon’s contract for the sale of approximately 32 acres in southeast Salem for a proposed data center project.
Her remarks respond to increasing concerns over data centers’ impacts on the environment and the electrical grid. A poll released this week found that 71% of Oregonians “have a negative impression of data centers.” Oregon currently has about 135 operational and planned data centers, according to Data Center Map.
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Donald Trump announced a list of deals and investments that aim to bolster mining, totaling more than $2 billion in projects and mining school investments.
The largest chunk will go to the California-based company Sila Nanotechnologies to build a battery facility and expand production, coming as a $1.4b investment from the defense department.
The department will also give $400m to Sunrise Energy Metals to develop scandium, which is used in fighter jets and spacecraft, among other companies. The Export-Import Bank, which provides financing to support US exports, is also investing in a boron deposit, battery manufacturing, and tantalum and niobium to make electronics, magnet, and steel.
Donald Trump once again targeted Jeanine Pirro, the US attorney for the District of Columbia, this time writing a post on Truth Social saying she should “re-visit her hastily made decision” after she dismissed vandalism charges against Olympic canoeist David Hearn last week.
Trump reposted images from a photographer of what seemed like the reflecting pool showing “slashes”, according to the US president, who also claimed “there were witnesses to the VANDALISM.”
“U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro should re-visit her hastily made decision,” he wrote.
These comments are just the latest in a series of snubs against Pirro, a longtime Trump ally. After her decision to dismiss the charges, the president accused her of having “folded like an umbrella.” He also told NBC News that he didn’t “understand why she did such a stupid thing.”
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Officers for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will be equipped with much-delayed body cameras by the end of next month, it was reported on Friday. But experts have questioned the transparency of a policy that allows the ICE director to restrict the public release of footage unless “it is in the best interests of the agency”.
Pressure has mounted on the Trump administration to provide body cameras after people caught up in encounters with federal immigration personnel suffered death or serious injuries.
Two men were shot and killed by ICE agents, in Texas and Maine, last month in circumstances similar to the death of another man during a traffic stop in Illinois last September. None of the officers involved was wearing a camera.
Tom Homan, Trump’s so-called border czar, said last month that ICE officers would be required to have at least one body camera recording during future vehicle stops. Policy for body-worn cameras was first established in a February 2025 ICE directive, but funding for their provision was held up by this year’s partial government shutdown, Homan said.
Louisiana congressional candidate Blake Miguez, a Republican state senator who was the subject of a police report accusing him of a rape that he denies, waited until the final day of a three-day qualifying period to make clear his intentions for the upcoming midterm elections.
Miguez on Friday afternoon signed up to run in Louisiana’s sixth congressional district – despite knowing, if he did so, he would have to again compete for a coveted Donald Trump endorsement which he had previously secured while campaigning for another US House seat.
Miguez had first signed up to run for Louisiana’s fifth US House district seat for a primary initially scheduled for May, and he had won the president’s endorsement. But that race was postponed until the November midterms after the US supreme court’s landmark voting rights decision in Callais v Louisiana prompted the state to redraw the boundaries of its congressional districts.
Those redrawn boundaries pushed a residence that Miguez bought in March in the state capital of Baton Rouge from the fifth district to the sixth, as the Louisiana Illuminator news outlet reported.
In late July, after his campaign website had temporarily become blank and password protected, a spokesperson for Miguez acknowledged to the Guardian that the state senator was left hoping to again “earn” Trump’s endorsement as he weighed announcing a run for office “under the new district lines”. Politico, citing sources with direct knowledge of the matter, reported a day later that Miguez was mulling a run in the new sixth district.
The outlet furthermore reported that Trump officials had told Miguez privately that he would not have the president’s endorsement — at least not immediately — if he opted for a sixth district run.
In safely Republican districts like the sixth in Louisiana, Trump’s endorsement is eagerly sought by candidates from the party he has led across two presidencies.
Another Republican candidate who has also formally signed up to run in Louisiana’s sixth district has already expressed his confidence that Miguez won’t have Trump’s endorsement.
“What I do know is he’s not getting the president’s endorsement in the sixth district,” Louisiana state senator Rick Edmonds said to reporters after signing up to run there on Wednesday.
Miguez’s website was reactivated on Friday. It had replaced a prior mention of his Trump endorsement with a pledge to work alongside the president if eventually elected.
He also didn’t mention having Trump’s endorsement in a social media post announcing his signing up to run in the sixth district, saying he qualified there because that area had “given so much” to him through the years.
An additional complication with which Miguez has had to grapple is a 2007 police report containing a rape allegation made against him by an ex-girlfriend. He denies the claim, and it never led to formal charges.
But that document’s existence first became public when the Atlantic and the Guardian each published separate stories on 11 March, after Miguez had locked down Trump’s fifth district endorsement. The Atlantic also wrote that the police report raised concerns within the president’s team that Miguez “either wasn’t fully vetted or wasn’t forthcoming about discoverable documents from his past” while he successfully pursued Trump’s endorsement.
Miguez’s opponents are bound to invoke that police report ahead of a 3 November open primary – and a 12 December runoff if necessary. In fact, his qualification on Friday was immediately met with a mass text from a federal political action committee calling itself End Predator Abuse that provided recipients a link to a website with the police report.
“Blake Miguez CANNOT be our congressman,” the group’s text read.
In the months since the disclosure of that police report, US House members Eric Swalwell and Tony Gonzales – a California Democrat and a Texas Republican, respectively – heeded bipartisan calls to resign over allegations of sexual misconduct against both.
Then, on 10 July, Democratic US Senate hopeful Graham Platner of Maine withdrew his candidacy after detailed sexual assault allegations were made against him. And Republican congressman Max Miller of Ohio has been met with growing calls to resign over domestic abuse allegations.
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By an overwhelming majority, the Senate just advanced legislation that would extend government funding through 11 December – after the midterm elections.
Current spending expires on 30 September.
As a reminder, before the House went on recess last month, lawmakers approved a stopgap measure to head off a government shutdown until 4 December, sending it to the upper chamber for consideration.
Top congressional Republicans have argued that an extension to the continuing resolution is necessary to ensure that Democrats do not block government funding measures in the Senate.
They did so last year for a record 43 days in protest against the expiration of tax credits that lowered some healthcare costs, and twice again this year, to push for reforms to immigration enforcement operations after the killings of two US citizens in Minneapolis.
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Senator Elizabeth Warren, the top Democrat on the banking committee, has slammed reports that Donald Trump is attempting to fire Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook again, despite an earlier supreme court ruling this year that protects her from dismissal while she fights the Trump administration’s allegations that she has committed mortgage fraud.
Warren said that the president “is tanking the economy, and he is desperate to shift the blame for higher costs and higher interest rates. So he’s once again trying to illegally take over America’s central bank.”
She added: “If he [Trump] is successful, it will be working families who pay the price. We will fight back to make sure he fails.”
Donald Trump has started his state department roundtable on American mining, we’ll bring you the latest lines as it gets under way.
A number of Donald Trump’s other nominations were also confirmed in the Senate today.
By a vote of 51-47 along party lines, the upper chamber’s confirmations included David Cummins to lead the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), and the new Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) administrator, Cameron Hamilton.
Here's a recap of the day so far
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Senator Bill Cassidy, the last Republican who was undecided about Todd Blanche’s nomination as attorney general, said he would vote to confirm Donald Trump’s pick to lead the justice department. His “yes” vote, will now likely clear the way for Blanche to receive the 50 votes needed, effectively saving his nomination.
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This comes after Senator Lisa Murkowski, a moderate Republican from Alaska, said earlier that she would oppose Blanche’s nomination. “The politicization – even weaponization – of the Department did not start with this administration but has accelerated during it,” she said in a statement, adding that she does not have confidence that Blanche would be able to “check the worst impulses of this administration”.
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A US federal appeals court has ordered the Trump administration to halt construction of the US president’s $400m White House ballroom, in a fresh blow to the controversial project. Trump, who demolished the historic East Wing of the White House last year to make way for planned ballroom, has repeatedly touted it as “a gift” to the US people. The president has said his administration will be “immediately appealing” the decision to the supreme court.
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US employers unexpectedly lost 23,000 jobs in July and job gains for the previous two months were revised down sharply, as the summer slump in job growth continued amid ongoing conflict in the Middle East. The unemployment rate, however, held steady at 4.1%. Economists had projected an unchanged unemployment rate and 83,000 new jobs for the month.
By a large, bipartisan margin, the US Senate on Friday approved a bill intended to punish Russia and countries that buy its petroleum exports over the invasion of Ukraine, capping a legislative push that was spurred by the death of its champion, the Republican senator Lindsey Graham.
The measure, renamed the Lindsey O Graham Sanctioning Russia Act in honor of the late senator’s work on the issue, was approved by an 86-11 vote.
The bill would impose new sanctions and visa bans on Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, and top military commanders, as well as put tariffs of up to 500% on the country’s exports. It would also allow Donald Trump to impose levies of up to 100% on goods from countries that are the top five importers of Russian oil and gas.
The bill now heads to the House of Representatives, which may consider once it returns from recess at the end of August.
Some Democrats have warned that the bill would give Trump new tariff powers at a time when he has put such levies at the center of his trade policy.
“This bill gives him so much discretion that Trump can ultimately decide what countries to tariff, or what countries to exempt. And he can modify tariffs at his will,” said Ron Wyden, a Democratic senator who opposed the bill.
Trump vows to 'immediately' appeal court's decision to block ballroom construction to supreme court
Following an appeals court’s ruling to temporarily stop construction of Donald Trump’s sprawling $400m ballroom, the president has said his administration will be “immediately appealing” the decision to the supreme court.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump went on to defend the new complex, which includes a “desperately needed military center” as well as a new “totally secure” ballroom.
“The Military and Secret Service are viewing this horrendous, politically motivated, and unlawful ruling as a National Security threat to our Nation,” the president wrote, while noting that the project is privately funded. “Much is already on site, or being delivered … There will be no expense to the American Taxpayer. This unjust decision must be overturned by the Supreme Court in its entirety,” Trump added.
As my colleague Robert Tait notes, the latest ruling by a US appeals court for the Trump administration to temporarily halt construction on its sweeping ballroom project, supports an earlier decision issued by a federal judge in April. This limited the construction project only to the undergound part of the project deemed necessary on national security grounds while blocking the hospitality facility envisioned by Trump for entertaining guests.
At the time, Trump lambasted that decision, by Judge Richard Leon – appointed to the bench during George W Bush’s presidency – as the work of a “Trump Hating” judge who he alleged had “gone out of his way to undermine National Security, and to make sure that this Great Gift to America gets delayed, or doesn’t get built”.
Trump moving forward with attempt to fire Lisa Cook after supreme court ruling - report
Donald Trump is moving forward with his attempt to fire Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook, weeks after the US supreme court refused to allow the president to fire her, ABC News is reporting, citing sources.
According to ABC New’s report, the White House told Cook in a letter this week that the president was “considering” removing her from her role and demanded she respond within three weeks.
It comes after the supreme court refused Trump’s attempts to immediately fire Cook, in a landmark ruling that limited a president’s authority over the central bank.
In a narrow 5-4 opinion, the court said that Cook could stay on as a governor while she fights unproved allegations of mortgage fraud made by the Trump officials.
“The court decides this application on the narrow ground that the president failed to afford Cook the procedural protections to which she was entitled by statute. Without such protections, she could not properly dispute the charges the president laid against her,” the justices said.
But, as ABC News notes, the high court did not take a position on the underlying allegations against Cook - effectively leaving the door open for Trump to try to remove her.
“Only after Cook has had the opportunity to respond to the charges made against her ... may a final decision be made,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote. “And only then can the courts assess the validity and sufficiency of such charges.”
After the decision, Trump doubled down, saying he would “take appropriate action immediately” to remove Cook from her position.
According to the letter reported by ABC News, Trump now appears to have formally initiated the process to remove her for “gross negligence” based on the allegations of mortgage fraud, which are still untested in court. It also suggested that Trump was carrying out the steps set out in the supreme court’s ruling.
ABC News’s sources said the letter was signed by deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino, who argued that Cook’s conduct constituted negligence that calls into question her trustworthiness as a Federal Reserve governor, even if the allegations do not amount to a crime.
“These allegations are as baseless now as they were a year ago when President Trump tried to remove Governor Cook and interfere with the independence of the Federal Reserve,” Cook’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, said in a statement to ABC News. “No matter what President Trump tries to do next, this much is clear under the facts and Supreme Court precedent -- there is no valid cause for removing Governor Cook. As we did before, we will challenge this latest pretext and preserve her position and the historic role of the Fed.”
A reminder that Trump abruptly fired Cook in August last year, claiming he had evidence that she had committed mortgage fraud. Cook denied the allegations and sued the Trump administration, saying it fired her without cause.
It came amid Trump’s broader pressure campaign on the Fed and its chair at the time, Jerome Powell, whom he routinely attacked for defying his calls for lower interest rates.
In a statement after the supreme court ruling, Cook said: “This was never about mortgage documents signed years before I became a Federal Reserve governor. It was an attempt to remove me on a manufactured pretext because I refused to bow to political pressure and continued to set interest rates based only on what would best serve the American people.”
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US judge allows deportation protections to end for South Sudanese nationals
A federal judge has cleared the way for the Trump administration to end temporary protections from deportation that had allowed hundreds of South Sudanese nationals to live and work in the United States.
US district judge Patti Saris in Boston rejected a last-ditch effort by immigrant-rights advocates to maintain South Sudan’s Temporary Protected Status designation after the US supreme court in June allowed the administration to strip similar protections from thousands of people from Haiti and Syria.
The supreme court’s ruling this year, powered by its 6-3 conservative majority, curtailed the ability of lower-court judges to review the Department of Homeland Security’s efforts under Trump to end TPS for about a dozen countries.
That designation covers people whose home countries have experienced natural disasters, armed conflicts or other extraordinary events, providing eligible migrants temporary protection from deportation and work authorization.
DHS moved in November to terminate TPS for conflict-ridden South Sudan, saying the country no longer met the conditions for the designation, which was first issued in 2011. The department’s action would have led to the end of protections for more than 232 South Sudanese and at least 73 South Sudanese with pending applications. An earlier order by Saris had blocked that from happening.
After the high court’s ruling, lawyers for a group of South Sudanese nationals and the nonprofit African Communities Together urged Saris to once again block the end of TPS on new grounds that the justices had not addressed.
That included an argument that DHS lacked authority to terminate TPS because the statute that created the TPS program in 1990 referred only to the attorney general as the official who had authority to extend and terminate the deportation protections. DHS was established later, in 2002, after 9/11.
Most of the Department of Justice’s immigration-related functions were transferred to it at that time. Saris, an appointee of Bill Clinton, concluded that Congress had likewise transferred authority over TPS to DHS.
She said arguments to the contrary rested on a “self-contradictory, self-defeating foundation,” since if DHS had no authority to terminate TPS for South Sudan it also never had the ability to extend protections in the first place.
“South Sudan’s original TPS designation would thus be invalid by the same token as its termination,” she said.
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Donald Trump’s statement that oil companies have made “too much money” from his war against Iran has angered environmentalists, who say that his policies were designed to benefit those very corporations and if he really believes his own claims, he should impose a windfall profits tax.
“Trump’s declaration that big oil is ‘making too much money’ belies his accommodation and giveaways to the industry that have enabled its price-gouging – not to mention his disaster of a war of choice against Iran,” said Tyson Slocum, energy program director at the consumer advocacy non-profit Public Citizen. “But like a broken clock that’s correct twice a day, the president is right that oil companies are ‘making too much money’, which means Trump should endorse a windfall profits tax.
ExxonMobil and Chevron on Friday both reported windfall profits for the second quarter of the year. Chevron said its earnings soared nearly 400% to $12bn, while Exxon’s profits more than doubled to $14.5bn. On Monday evening, Trump took aim at those gains, saying the companies “ought to give some of that back to the public”.
“They’re making too much money based on a shortage,” he told reporters at the White House. “I don’t like it.”
Not long ago, however, Trump was celebrating the fact that the war on Iran, which he launched with Israel in February, has pushed up gas prices. “When oil prices go up, we make a lot of money,” he said on social media in March.
Earlier that month, Trump claimed that Iran’s shutdown of the major shipping route the strait of Hormuz “doesn’t really affect” the US the way it does “other countries” because it is the top global crude producer, and because just a small portion of the country’s oil imports comes from the Persian Gulf. But oil prices are influenced by global markets and supply chains, experts have noted.
Trump has also relentlessly boosted oil and gas interests while in office. In 2024, he reportedly met with more than 20 oil bosses, seeking $1bn in campaign donations from their industry and promising if elected to remove dozens of environmental regulations.
While he did not manage to get to that $1bn figure, he did obtain record contributions from the sector. Since re-entering the White House last year he has eased dozens of restrictions and regulations on fossil fuel expansion, exempted fossil fuel producers from environmental rules, and signed an executive order last year directing the attorney general to prioritize blocking climate lawsuits targeting oil majors.
“We shouldn’t be surprised that the same companies that struck a $1bn quid pro quo to help elect Trump in exchange for delivering on their policy wishlist are now cashing in on his anti-consumer agenda,” said Lena Moffitt, executive director of climate advocacy group Evergreen Action.
Here’s Dharna report:
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Appeals court halts construction of Trump’s $400m White House ballroom
A US federal appeals court has ordered the Trump administration to halt construction of the US president’s $400m White House ballroom, in a fresh blow to the controversial project.
Donald Trump, who demolished the historic East Wing of the White House last year to make way for planned ballroom, has repeatedly touted it as “a gift” to the US people.
But in a major setback in a case testing his presidential authority, the Washington-based US court of appeals for the District of Columbia circuit upheld a preliminary injunction in a divided 2-1 order on Friday.
The injunction was won by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which sued last year after the Trump administration tore down the East Wing and began building a 90,000 sq ft (8,360 sq meter) ballroom without seeking authorization from Congress.
The appeals court put its ruling on hold for two weeks, allowing the administration to appeal to the US supreme court.
Cassidy also noted that pushing back against Donald Trump’s “unrelenting” pursuit of perceived political enemies is a constant “no matter who the attorney general is”.
“This is the rationale for having a Senate confirmed attorney general with more leverage to push back,” Cassidy added, while explaining his vote for Blanche.
The Louisiana senator also said that Blanche is criticized “for things over which he has no control” – namely the presidential pardons of January 6 rioters.
“But this is a presidential prerogative, and he is not the president,” Cassidy said. “He can advise the president, but the president is not obligated to take his advice.”
Cassidy noted in a recent conversation with Bill Barr, an attorney general for part of Trump’s first term in office, that the president would “at times” not take Barr’s advice.
While Cassidy did criticize Blanche’s recent actions, noting that Trump’s nominee showed “poor judgment” in approving the $1.8bn so- called “anti-weaponization fund”, and exempting the president from IRS audits, these did not impact his vote to confirm Blanche as attorney general.
Cassidy says he will vote to confirm Todd Blanche as attorney general: 'I will be criticized for this vote'
Senator Bill Cassidy, the last Republican who was undecided about Todd Blanche’s nomination as attorney general, said he would vote to confirm Blanche.
He noted that while Blanche, who previously served as Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, is “not perfect”, it is ultimately a decision between him or “another acting attorney general who may not run the department effectively”.
“This is not a referendum on President Trump. It is a decision regarding Mr Blanche in very specific circumstances,” Cassidy said on the Senate floor, explaining his decision process. His “yes” vote, will now likely clear the way for Blanche to receive the 50 votes needed. Vice-president JD Vance will then cast a tie-breaking vote that will ensure Blanche’s confirmation.
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One of the first legislative items on the Senate’s agenda today is a sanctions bill, named after the late senator, Lindsey Graham.
Late last month, the Senate voted to advance the bill with widespread support from both sides of the aisle, but did receive criticism because it would allow Donald Trump to slap hefty tariffs on major importers of Russian oil – namely India, China and the European Union.
We can expect a vote shortly in the upper chamber, where it will need 60 votes to pass.
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In a new straight-to-camera video on social media, Mike Rogers – the Republican nominee in the US Senate race in Michigan – made a plea to Democratic voters who did not pick Abdul El-Sayed in Tuesday’s primary to join his campaign in the general election.
Rogers – who ran unsuccessfully for Senate in 2024 but lost out narrowly to Elissa Slotkin – addressed Democratic voters who “woke up on Wednesday feeling well hopeless because the person who won does not represent your values”. Rogers added that they “have a home” in his campaign.
“To the vast majority of people across Michigan who do not want to throw their support behind a campaign filled with anger, divisiveness, calls for violence, and the views that are out of touch with your values, well, you have a home with us,” Rogers said.
Haley Stevens lost by a single percentage point, just over 15,000 votes, in the Democratic primary, and now El-Sayed is working to heal the fracture within his party to shore up Stevens’ base to ensure that Democrats can retain Michigan’s open Senate seat in November.
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Max Miller lends re-election campaign $1m despite growing calls to resign amid domestic abuse allegations - report
Max Miller, the controversy-plagued congressman running for re-election in his Ohio district, is lending his campaign $1m, according to the Wall Street Journal.
This comes as Miller faces pressure to drop out of the race and resign, amid several allegations of domestic abuse against his ex-wife and infant daughter.
The outlet is the first to report that the congressman is investing the large sum of cash, which appears to be the latest example of him choosing to stay in the race.
Miller said he plans to transfer $1m to his campaign in two installments of $500,000, according to the Journal. The loan would give Miller at a significant financial bump over his Democratic challenger, Brian Poindexter.
Blanche can’t afford to lose Bill Cassidy’s vote in quest for confirmation
Following Lisa Murkowski’s announcement that she plans to vote “no” on Todd Blanche’s nomination to lead the Department of Justice, the acting attorney general can’t afford another defection in order to secure the permanent position.
So far the only other holdout is Senator Bill Cassidy – a GOP lawmaker from Louisiana. Cassidy, a former physician, said this week he’s concerned about Blanche’s ability to lead the justice department independently, considering he once served as Donald Trump’s personal lawyer.
Cassidy said in a radio interview Wednesday that he’s still undecided. “I’ve got to be convinced that he is an attorney general who just happens to have once been President Trump’s personal attorney, as opposed to President Trump’s personal attorney who is now the attorney general,” he said. “I think there’s a big difference between the two.”
Cassidy’s “yes” would get Blanche to 50 votes – with both Murkowski and Susan Collins voting “no” and Mitch McConnell still absent from Congress as he recovers from a fall. In this case, vice-president JD Vance would offer a tie-breaking vote to get Blanche across the finish line. Without Cassidy, however, it would result in failed confirmation that would be a major setback for Trump’s agenda.
Cassidy is one of two Republican senators up for re-election this year who voted to convict the president during his 2021 impeachment trial after the Capitol riots.
However, Cassidy lost his primary race earlier this year to a Trump-backed challenger – hardline representative Julia Letlow – and will be leaving Congress at the end of his term.
Since Trump returned to the White House last year, Cassidy has notably clashed health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr. Although the Louisiana senator voted to confirm Kennedy, he has since expressed frustration and disappointment in much of the health secretary’s anti-vaccine agenda.
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US employers lost 23,000 jobs in July amid ongoing job growth slump
US employers unexpectedly lost 23,000 jobs in July and job gains for the previous two months were revised down sharply, as the summer slump in job growth continued amid ongoing conflict in the Middle East.
The unemployment rate, however, held steady at 4.1%. Economists had projected an unchanged unemployment rate and 83,000 new jobs for the month.
In June, the US added 57,000 jobs, about half of what economists had predicted, with most of the growth concentrated in healthcare and social assistance. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) also revised its job figures for the previous two months down by a total of 74,000 jobs.
The unemployment rate had also dropped to 4.2% in June, down from 4.3% in May, driven by 720,000 people leaving the workforce.
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Donald Trump will begin his day in Washington. We can expect to hear from the president at 3pm ET when he holds a roundtable event at the state department on American mining. We’ll bring you the latest as that gets under way.
Trump will then travel to Bedminster, New Jersey where he’ll be through the weekend.
Donald Trump has ordered a new 15% tariff on imported products made of polysilicon, an important ingredient in microchip manufacturing that is primarily produced by China.
The new tariff, which will take effect on 4 December, is aimed at supporting US chip and solar panel supply chains to compete with Beijing on artificial intelligence and energy.
The executive order signed by the president on Thursday evening said: “The plan of action in this proclamation will, among other things, help ensure the commercial viability of United States production of polysilicon and its derivatives that is necessary to meet United States economic and national security requirements.”
Polysilicon, an ultra-pure form of silicon, is an important ingredient in making the semiconductors vital for AI processing power, datacentres and solar power generation.
US solar factories have long accused Chinese rivals of dumping cheaper panels on the market, which they say have been enabled by excessive government subsidies and by moving manufacturing to other countries to dodge US tariffs.
Justin Pearson and Brent Taylor win primaries for key Tennessee House seat
Tennessee primary voters picked a pair of Memphis-area lawmakers to square off in a dramatically reconfigured US House seat central to Donald Trump’s plan to try to hold on to a slim Republican majority in the midterm congressional elections.
Republicans chose state senator Brent Taylor, who was endorsed by Trump, to be their nominee in the revamped 9th congressional district. Democrats picked state representative Justin Pearson, who gained national prominence three years ago when he was expelled from the Tennessee House for protesting in support of gun control measures.
The previously compact Memphis-based district had a majority Black population, but it was cracked apart by Republican officials this year following a US supreme court ruling that weakened federal Voting Rights Act protection for minorities. Republicans hope the redistricting, which is part of a broader national plan pushed by Trump, could give them a clean sweep of all nine of Tennessee’s seats.
The new ninth district stretches about 200 miles (320km) east from Memphis across rural areas before reaching north toward Nashville. It previously favored Democrats but now tilts Republican, with 71% of voters new to the district, according to an Associated Press estimate. Some Memphis voters have raised concerns that their representation has been diminished.
The redistricting also significantly reshaped the fifth congressional district held by Republican representative Andy Ogles, who was defeated by the former Tennessee agriculture commissioner Charlie Hatcher.
Progressive Democratic proposals including ‘Medicare for all’ and new taxes on billionaires have powered insurgent candidates to primary victories this year, shaking the party establishment and leading it to worry about how Democrats will perform in November’s midterm elections.
But a Reuters/Ipsos poll concluded early this week found those ideas – though by no means all of the progressive agenda – are supported by independent voters who could be decisive in determining whether president Donald Trump’s Republican Party maintains its congressional majorities for the next two years.
Some 64% of independent registered voters in the six-day nationwide poll said they support increasing taxes on corporations and billionaires, compared to 15% who oppose the idea.
And 60% of independents said they support government-provided healthcare coverage for all Americans, which progressives including Michigan US Senate nominee El-Sayed have pitched as “Medicare for all” - expanding the government-run health insurance program to cover all Americans.
President Donald Trump will convene executives from some of the world’s largest mining companies at the State Department on Friday as his administration intensifies efforts to secure domestic and allied supplies of critical minerals.
The White House needs critical minerals to replenish weapons stockpiles depleted during the Iran conflict and reduce US dependence on Chinese supply chains, Reuters reports.
US forces have burned through large numbers of precision-guided missiles and air-defense interceptors during the five-month-long Iran war.
Defense officials and lawmakers have warned that replenishing some inventories could take years given existing production constraints, even as the Trump administration has disputed reports of significant shortages.
Another Republican comes out against Blanche's confirmation
Republican senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said on Friday that she will oppose US president Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general, Todd Blanche.
“I have had numerous constructive meetings with Mr. Blanche and he comes across as decent and capable,” Murkowski said in a post on X.
“Ultimately, however, I will oppose his nomination,” she said.
In her statement Murkowski noted that the “politicization – even weaponization – of the Department did not start with this administration but has accelerated during it”, adding that she does not have confidence that Blanche would be able to “check the worst impulses” of Trump’s White House.
It comes after another moderate Republican, Susan Collins, said on Tuesday she would vote against him, leaving Trump’s former personal lawyer with little margin for error.
With Republican senator Mitch McConnell out indefinitely, Blanche is only able to afford one more Republican defection, in the shape of Murkowski.
Blanche, now serving as acting attorney general, persuaded Republican holdouts John Cornyn and Thom Tillis to support him by pledging in writing that Trump’s $1.8bn “anti-weaponization” fund was dead and that a related tax-immunity deal applied only to past tax returns. Both arose from a settlement of Trump’s $10bn lawsuit against the IRS.
Questions remain about whether the fund could later be revived and why the president would receive a deal from his own administration that could personally save him millions of dollars
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Trump signs new orders targeting birthright citizenship
Donald Trump has made a second attempt to restrict the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship, just weeks after the US supreme court rejected his initial, more sweeping bid to deny automatic citizenship to the children born to undocumented immigrants and temporary foreign residents.
Trump on Thursday signed two executive orders that seek to broaden the categories of children ineligible for automatic US citizenship and ban so-called “birth tourism”. The directives are expected to face legal challenges.
Trump has long sought to dismantle birthright citizenship and has made the effort a centerpiece of his second-term immigration crackdown. He has thus far been unsuccessful.
On Thursday, the president lashed out at the supreme court over what he called “a very unfortunate decision in the supreme court concerning birthright”.
“It was close, but a very, very unfortunate decision,” Trump told reporters. “So we’re making adjustments because it’s very unfair.”
A first new order seeks to expand the definitions of children who would not be able to receive birthright citizenship.
Trump refuses to say whether Max Miller should step aside by tomorrow
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.
Donald Trump is declining to say whether representative Max Miller, of Ohio, should withdraw his reelection bid following domestic abuse allegations levelled against him by his ex-wife.
Trump was asked about the embattled Republican congressman while taking questions from reporters in the Oval Office at a Thursday signing event.
“Well, I’m not going to get involved in that,” Trump said. He echoed his earlier comments, calling it a “very sad situation.” Miller was a senior adviser to Trump during the president’s first term.
Miller’s ex-wife is the daughter of Republican senator Bernie Moreno of Ohio, who has said Miller should not be serving in the House.
“If there are any basic standards of character required to hold elected office, Max Miller fails them,” Moreno, an ally of Trump, posted on Sunday. “He should not serve in the House of Representatives.”
Moreno’s comments came after Miller posted a livestream video defending himself against the abuse accusations and saying his former wife had “significant mental-health challenges”.
Ohio’s other Republican senator, Jon Husted, on Thursday called for Miller to resign and not seek reelection.
Under Ohio law, Miller would need to withdraw by Saturday to allow enough time for the replacement process to play out before the 4pm Monday deadline.
In other developments:
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One month after the United States supreme court struck down his first attempt to restrict the guarantee of birthright citizenship enshrined in the US constitution, Donald Trump signed executive orders on Thursday that aim to deny US citizenship to children born in the United States to so-called “birth tourists”.
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The two new orders came just five weeks ago after the US supreme court struck down Trump’s previous order denying citizenship to the children of non-citizens, a right that has been guaranteed since the 14th amendment was ratified in 1868.
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The orders were part of a quixotic campaign Trump has waged for more than a decade, since he promised to eliminate the right at a 2015 campaign event.
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Despite an endorsement from Trump, congressman Andy Ogles, a virulently anti-Muslim Tennessee Republican, was in danger of losing his re-election bid to a primary challenger backed by the state’s governor, Bill Lee.
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Trump refused to confirm a Washington Post report that he told donors at a recent meeting that they need to help JD Vance win the 2028 presidential election.
