Closing summary
This concludes our live coverage of the second Trump administration for the day. Here are the latest developments:
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The Supreme Court allowed Donald Trump to continue building his $400m White House ballroom project. In a 5-4 decision along political lines, the justices found that a group issuing a legal challenge against the ballroom did not have standing to bring their case. Trump celebrated with a post on his Truth Social platform while Democrats criticized the decision.
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Army Secretary Dan Driscoll is stepping down from his role after 18 months on the job, leaving another top military position vacant. Driscoll and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had reportedly butted heads for some time.
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Trump vowed further strikes on Iran and called it a “failed nation”. The remarks came as Washington and Tehran exchanged their first military strikes in a month.
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JD Vance gave a speech in Michigan that included an attacked against Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed. “There’s something about Abdul El-Sayed that is very, very evil,” Vance told the crowd.
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Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent accused Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney of turning their trade dispute into a “political shouting match”. Carney had rejected the Trump administration’s terms that would have given the US government extensive power over Canada’s trade policy.
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California Governor Gavin Newsom vowed to block the appointment of election denier Tina Peters, who was convicted in 2024 in relation to a plot to chase pro-Trump election conspiracies. Newsom announced he would take measures to prevent Peters from working as an election consultant for Northern California’s Shasta county.
Tina Peters declines Shasta County elections job as Newsom vows to block her
Former Colorado elections clerk Tina Peters, who was convicted in 2024 in relation to a plot to chase pro-Trump election conspiracies, has declined an offer to serve as an election consultant in a Northern California county, according to the Record Searchlight.
Shasta County Registrar Clint Curtis caused widespread political backlash in recent weeks after he offered Peters a role as consultant, despite her election denial views and past conviction. California Governor Gavin Newsom on Monday vowed to block the hiring by instructing the state’s department of correction to reject the transfer of her parole supervision from Colorado.
“Shasta County’s job offer to a felon CONVICTED OF TAMPERING WITH VOTING MACHINES to work on their election process is a disgrace,” Newsom’s press office posted on X.
Army secretary stepping down, White House says
Army Secretary Dan Driscoll is stepping down from his post after 18 months on the job and amid a wider shakeup of military leaders.
Driscoll, a former Yale Law School classmate of JD Vance, submitted his resignation this week after months of tension with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, according to The Wall Street Journal. Hegseth has fired numerous top military leaders over the past year, including Army Chief of Staff Randy George.
Driscoll was tasked last year with being the US government’s point person in negotiations between Russia and Ukraine in attempt to end their conflict, despite having little background in international diplomacy. He also backed incorporating more advanced technologies into the armed forces, including a push to cut down the time frame for testing new military technology.
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Donald Trump posted a Truth Social message on Monday evening celebrating the supreme court’s decision to allow construction to continue on his White House ballroom project.
“I am pleased to report that the United States Supreme Court has just ruled in favor of the Ballroom/Military Complex being built without any further contingency, doubt, or threat,” Trump said. “We are living in the Golden Age of America, and this Building will be one of the Greatest ever constructed in Washington, D.C.”
The supreme court’s decision to allow Donald Trump to continue with construction of his White House found that the group suing to block it did not have standing to bring its case. The 5-4 decision, backed by the conservative justices, ruled that the National Trust for Historic Preservation did not have legal standing and had not suffered “injury in fact” from the project.
Chief Justice John Roberts, joined by liberal justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, issued a dissenting opinion arguing that the court’s decision hands the presidency even more executive power and that the ballroom’s construction is likely unlawful.
“The president ordered the demolition of the East Wing of the White House to make way for a new, privately funded state ballroom in its place. Construction of the ballroom has proceeded apace for the better part of a year,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in a dissent. “That construction is likely unlawful”.
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Supreme Court gives Trump go-ahead on ballroom
The Supreme Court issued a decision on Monday that gives Donald Trump the ability to proceed with his plans for construction of a new White House ballroom.
Trump’s plans for a White House ballroom have been an ongoing point of contention and legal action, with opponents arguing that Trump has no legal authority to pursue the project without congressional approval. In a 5-4 decision, the court granted the Trump administration’s request to block a lower court ruling that would have prevented work from being done on the ballroom.
The Supreme Court also issued a temporary order earlier this month which allowed work to continue on the ballroom, resulting in Democratic Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer accusing the court of “rubber stamping Trump’s vanity-driven, gilded corruption”.
Trump says that latest strikes on Iran are part of a 'limited' military campaign
In the Oval Office today, Donald Trump said the latest strikes on Iran, as the two countries exchange fire for the first time in a month, are part of a “limited” campaign.
“They’re a failed nation,” the president said after threatening to hit “Iran” hard after the regime struck Jordanian airbases over the weekend.
“Their leaders are largely dead. Their navy is gone. Their air force is gone,” Trump told reporters today. “That doesn’t mean we won’t smack them. We’ll see what happens.”
The president also claimed that traffic is increasing through the vital strait of Hormuz chokepoint, even though the average number is substantially lower – and has remained so – since the war began. There was, however, an uptick in the number of transits in the past two weeks, before the most recent strikes.
Chris Hippensteel
Vance – who has now finished speaking in Michigan – also fired back at El-Sayed for comments the Democratic nominee made about Vance’s wife on social media.
“Abdul, keep my wife’s name the hell out of your mouth because she’s way out of your league,” Vance told the crowd.
El-Sayed had previously insinuated in a post that Vance would not have introduced his wife, Usha, to his late grandfather, a remark that was widely interpreted as jab at Usha Vance’s Indian-American heritage.
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Donald Trump is now speaking in the Oval Office about price cuts for prescription drugs. We’ll bring you the latest lines.
Chris Hippensteel
JD Vance has turned his address in Michigan toward Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, Mike Rogers’ Democratic opponent in Michigan’s Senate race.
The vice-president is taking aim at El-Sayed’s association with leftwing political commentator Hasan Piker, and for comments El-Sayed made after an attack on the Temple Israel synagogue in West Bloomfield, Michigan, in March. El-Sayed has apologized for those comments, saying they were meant to add context. At the time the nominee condemned the violence but added that “hurt people hurt people” and that “violence is a cycle”.
“I made a mistake,” El-Sayed said over the weekend at an event in Lansing, and apologized for his comments. “If my statement caused pain, I’m sorry,” he added.
“There’s something about Abdul El-Sayed that is very, very evil,” Vance said today, describing El-Sayed as divisive and as willing to pit racial and religious groups against one another.
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Here's a recap of the day so far
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Trump vowed further strikes on Iran after a series of ballistic missile attacks on US airbases in Jordan. “We’re going to hit them hard,” Trump told a Fox News correspondent, adding: “There will be a response.” Iran fired ballistic missiles at the US-operated King Hussein and al-Azraq airbases in Jordan after the US launched its own strike on Iran’s Larak Island on Sunday night, the first US strikes on the country in more than a month. Larak Island is located near the mouth of the strait of Hormuz, the vital waterway and oil shipping chokepoint which has been at the center of the conflict.
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Treasury secretary Scott Bessent delivered opening remarks at a G20 meeting while touting the Trump administration’s new Iran sanctions. Bessent – who used his opening remarks at the conference of world financial leaders to praise President Trump – faces the challenge of winning the support of allies and adversaries for a plan to further isolate Iran’s already war-battered economy. He started off by thanking the EU for backing that plan. Speaking to the media before and after those opening remarks, Bessent expressed optimism that the sanctions could force Iran’s leaders to make a deal. He also spoke dismissively of Canada’s efforts to retaliate against the US in the two nations’ escalating trade showdown.
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Trump decried datacenter opposition on Truth Social on Monday. As a movement opposing the breakneck buildout of datacenters across the country gains steam, Trump took to his personal social media platform to scold those who want to see construction of the facilities slowed or put to a halt. The only reason communities would speak out against datacenters is “if they want to end up being backwards and poor”, Trump wrote. “If they want to be successful and rich, with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place, let Data Reign,” he added.
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The House of Representatives returned from a recess on Monday, with Republicans eager to avoid a shutdown. After a five-week hiatus, House Republicans are seeking to push through a stopgap spending bill to stave off a government shutdown, after multiple full or partial federal shutdowns have snarled Congress since the start of the second Trump administration. Funding is currently secured through the end of September, and GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson is expected to hold a floor vote on the issue this week.
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Chris Hippensteel
Vice-president JD Vance has taken the stage in Sterling Heights, Michigan, at a campaign event supporting Republican candidates up for election in the state in November.
He opened his remarks to the crowd by focusing on illegal immigration, and American workers – particularly American truck drivers – he describes as being displaced by undocumented immigrants.
“American jobs ought to go to American workers, not illegal foreigners,” Vance said.
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Providers are seeing more patients in need of abortions later in pregnancy as abortion bans and restrictions proliferate in US states, all while access to insurance falls.
Those bans and restrictions have also meant that later abortion care access has grown over the past decade in a handful of haven states and cities.
Patients are showing up “later and sicker” in need of reproductive healthcare, said Diane Horvath, a co-founder of Partners in Abortion Care in Maryland.
About 41 states have abortion bans or significant restrictions at some point in pregnancy. More than 20 million people have lost Medicaid coverage since 2023, while between 3 and 5 million people have lost or dropped their coverage through Affordable Care Act exchanges in recent months.
“People are getting chucked off of Medicaid. The premiums are all going up,” Horvath said. Instead of seeking care early in pregnancy, she said: “They’re just not going in. There’s no place to go.”
The cost of later abortion – which is loosely defined as anything past the first trimester, the time during which the vast majority of abortions occur – tends to rise the later it happens in a pregnancy.
“Sometimes you’re looking at a $22,000 gap with maybe three days to pull together funding,” said Alisha Dingus, executive director of the DC Abortion Fund (DCAF), one of the largest abortion funds in the country. Rising costs and decreasing availability “may create substantial barriers to accessing later abortion care”, a recent Jama study found.
Read the full report here:
As we reported earlier, the United States and Iran have exchanged fire for the first time in a month, with missiles and drones fired at Iranian rocket launchers on an island in the strait of Hormuz, and Iran targeting US military bases in Jordan and the UAE in response. Donald Trump has threatened further action.
Here’s my colleague Patrick Wintour’s report:
Vice-president JD Vance will shortly be speaking at a manufacturing facility in Sterling Heights, Michigan.
He is there campaigning on behalf of several Republican nominees in key statewide races, including Mike Rogers, who is running for Senate in a closely watched race against Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, and congressman John James, who is running to replace Gretchen Whitmer in the governor’s race. James will face Jocelyn Benson, Michigan’s secretary of state, in the November general election.
I’ll bring you all the key lines from Vance’s remarks when it gets going.
Pentagon plays down report of Hegseth regularly overruling military advice
Pete Hegseth regularly receives formal objections from senior commanders and proceeds anyway, the Pentagon’s top spokesman has said, as he tried to discredit a Washington Post report that four generals and admirals had advised against prolonging the war against Iran.
“Of course, we demand candid military advice,” Sean Parnell wrote on X. “Non-concurs are standard. The Secretary sees them constantly. That’s how you run a real military.”
Parnell was responding to the Post’s account of four four-star commanders who had lodged formal “non-concurs” against a plan to keep more than 50,000 US troops in the Middle East through September, with some deployments potentially running into 2027.
In dismissing the story, Parnell did not dispute that the objections had been filed, or that Hegseth fields such dissent on an ongoing basis.
“Publishing highly classified assessments from the Secretary’s orders book is a crime,” he wrote. “It’s a betrayal of the force. And much of what they’re publishing is inaccurate … We are in great shape around the world. This story isn’t about readiness. It’s TDS and PDS – they hate President Trump and Secretary Hegseth more than they love America.”
It was unclear which parts of the story the Pentagon deems to be inaccurate. A community note attached to the X post noted that, while leaking classified material is illegal for government employees, the US supreme court ruled in 1971 that the first amendment protects the press’s right to publish classified information of public interest.
Here’s Joseph’s full report:
Kalshi permanently bans George Santos after he bet on his State of the Union plans
Prediction market platform Kalshi has issued its first lifetime ban on none other than the disgraced former Republican congressman George Santos, who bet against his own announced plans to attend Donald Trump’s State of the Union address.
In a filing, Kalshi said of the affair: “The Compliance Department found that Santos made these statements with the intent to manipulate the price of the Yes or No contracts that he intended to purchase. Ultimately, these statements did in fact manipulate the price of said contracts.
“The Compliance Department has issued a penalty permanently suspending Santos from direct or indirect access to Kalshi and has imposed a penalty of $71,356.”
The company said he had made $17,839.57 from his wagers.
Santos responded in a post on X this morning: “Hey @Kalshi thanks for the lifetime ban from your gambling platform. Let’s see how much longer you guys are around for.”
Santos was released from prison in New Jersey in October after Donald Trump commuted his seven-year, three-month sentence for wire fraud and aggravated identity theft.
The former congressman was revealed to have fabricated much about his life during his congressional campaign and was expelled from Congress while under federal investigation for fraud in 2023.
Following his release, Santos returned to X in February to tell his millions of followers that he planned to attend Trump’s speech. “I’m gonna be in the gallery,” he wrote.
But he didn’t attend the event. “I guess people lost money,” he said on his podcast in March. “Some people made unexpected money. That’s to show you how fragile these markets are.”
He was also fined $35,000 and received a three-year trading ban from the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission last month for alleged market manipulation over the incident.
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Vance also said that Trump was sending a message to Iran with his AI-generated social media video, posted over the weekend, that shows the US bombing Kharg Island.
“The president likes to switch it up on social media a little bit. He would be the first to say he doesn’t make announcements about military actions on social media, but I think that he’s sending a message to the Iranians,” Vance said when asked about Trump’s post.
A US official said on Monday the military had not targeted Kharg Island in overnight strikes. An Iranian official dismissed Trump’s post as “laughable”.
Speaking to reporters before he took off for Detroit, JD Vance defended the Donald Trump’s earlier comments about Americans who oppose datacenter construction, but attempted to underscore the need for tech companies to subsidize the higher energy costs that come with the AI expansion.
“I think probably 99% of the backlash to datacenters has come in areas where building a datacenter means higher utility and higher electricity for the people on the ground,” Vance said. “If you build a datacenter – you should be putting power back into the grid, not taking it out. And if that is happening, I don’t think the datacenters are that controversial. It’s when the utility bills get so much higher that’s when it’s a real problem.”
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Chris Hippensteel
Bessent also briefly touched on the new Iran sanctions earlier this morning, before his opening remarks in Asheville.
Speaking to reporters, Bessent predicted that, under the latest round of sanctions, Iran’s economy could collapse within “weeks or months”. But he also suggested that a deal, not collapse, was the administration’s primary goal.
“The economy doesn’t have to collapse, we just have to have the regime come to their senses,” Bessent said.
Bessent accuses Carney of turning US-Canada trade fallout into 'political shouting match'
Chris Hippensteel
Asked on CNBC about the escalating US-Canada trade war with Canada, Bessent spoke dismissively of Canada’s ability to economically retaliate against US tariffs. “I don’t think you can be in a tit-for-tat with someone 13 times larger than you are,” Bessent said.
He also accused Canadian prime minister Mark Carney of turning a trade dispute into “a political shouting match”. This comes after Donald Trump signed an executive order ordering the US interior department to rename Lake Ontario as “Lake America” in response to the back-and-forth of tariffs between the two countries.
“[Carney] is doing what’s best for the Liberal party, what’s best for Mark Carney. And in the long run, the Canadian people are going to see through that,” Bessent said today.
“They were offered the best trade deal of any country on the globe,” Bessent added, “and he chose to walk away from it at the last minute.”
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Trump says 'only reason' Americans would oppose datacenters is if they 'want to end up being backwards and poor'
In another Truth Social missive today, Donald Trump has taken aim at the Americans who oppose the construction of datacenters – the power-demanding warehouses that tech companies use to house their computer servers and systems.
The president said that the “only reason” communities would not want datacenters is “if they want to end up being backwards and poor”.
“If they want to be successful and rich, with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place, let Data Reign,” Trump wrote. “The good news is that there are plenty of other places that want them. If we kill the Golden Goose, you will only have yourselves to blame.”
Across the country anti-datacenter animus has galvanized many areas – both Democratic and Republican. According to recent polling, 75% of Americans oppose a new datacenter being built near where they live.
Meanwhile, more than a dozen states have weighed temporary bans on new datacenter construction, and New York last month became the first to enact one. Progressive stalwarts Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio‑Cortez are now pushing for a national moratorium. And in Texas, even Governor Greg Abbott – a hard‑right Republican – has called for halting datacenter development in rural parts of the state.
Trump, for his part, is politically boxed in: he’s pushing to make the US a leader in artificial‑intelligence innovation – a goal that depends on rapid datacenter expansion – while also promising to bring down electricity costs for consumers, who are already facing higher bills.
“China could not be happier with this anti‑Data Center movement,” Trump wrote in a social‑media post. “Actually, they can’t believe it is happening!”
As my colleague, Dharna Noor has reported, so far the president’s answer to this bind is the “Ratepayer Protection Pledge” – a voluntary agreement he says will prevent families from paying for the AI boom. Nearly 200 companies, utilities, datacenter developers and states have signed on, the administration announced last month. But several environmental groups have dismissed the pledge as “toothless”, noting that it carries no legal force.
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Chris Hippensteel
Scott Bessent told CNBC that he’d met the previous night with Pan Gongsheng, the governor of China’s central bank.
Their meeting – of which Bessent revealed few details – came amid speculation that the US would struggle to successfully isolate Iran under its latest sanctions without buy-in from China.
Bessent pushed back on those criticisms during his CNBC interview. He said that the US and China are largely aligned on their goals for Iran, including reopening the strait of Hormuz and keeping nuclear weapons out of the regime’s hands. But he also argued that the US could succeed in crippling Iran’s economy with or without China’s cooperation.
The treasury secretary declined to share details of his conversation with Pan Gongsheng, or to speak in any depth about what direction the US and China are trending in – be it toward cooperation or standoff – behind closed doors.
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Chris Hippensteel
Speaking with CNBC after his opening remarks in Asheville, Bessent said that the goal of the latest round of sanctions on Iran was to force the Iranian regime to the negotiating table.
Pressed on whether the hardline Iranian leadership could be moved by the economic strangulation of its people, Bessent appeared to suggest that the threat of popular uprising in response to those conditions might motivate the regime to make a deal.
“The main thing they care about is their head staying attached to their neck,” Bessent said.
Donald Trump previously expressed hope that the US’s initial strike on Iran, which killed the nation’s ageing supreme leader, would prompt such a revolt. That prediction has, so far, not come to pass.
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Today we’ll also be tracking vice-president JD Vance’s trip to Detroit, Michigan, where he’ll be speaking at a manufacturing facility and campaigning on behalf of several Republican nominees in key statewide races.
This includes Mike Rogers, who is running for Senate in a closely watched race against Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, and John James, a congressman who is running to replace Gretchen Whitmer in the governor’s race. James will face Jocelyn Benson, Michigan’s secretary of state, in the November general election.
Kevin Warsh, speaking briefly after Bessent in Asheville, described the current global financial landscape as one of surging investment and growth – with little mention of the headwinds facing the economy.
“The future is already here, but we’re all experiencing it somewhat different,” the new Federal Reserve chair said.
Last week at the Jackson Hole symposium, Warsh did not indicate where the Fed will take interest rates in the coming months, despite US inflation remaining stubbornly above the central bank’s 2% target amid the war in Iran.
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'We're going to hit them hard': Trump vows retaliation after Tehran targets US bases in Jordan
Donald Trump has told Fox News’s chief foreign correspondent, Trey Yingst, that the US will respond to Iran targeting US military bases in Jordan overnight.
“We’re going to hit them hard,” Trump told Fox News. “There will be a response,” he added, after Jordan’s army confirmed it had intercepted eight missiles early this morning.
In response to the US assault on Larak Island late on Sunday, the IRGC “targeted technical infrastructure, maintenance facilities and enemy fighter jet positions at the US-operated King Hussein and al-Azraq airbases in Jordan” with ballistic missiles, causing “heavy damage”, according to state TV.
In the interview with Fox News on Monday, Trump said all of the missiles were intercepted by American air defence systems, except one which was allowed to pass through the airspace because it was identified as not on course to hit anything “significant”, according to Yingst.
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Bessent thanks EU for support of US sanctions on countries continuing to trade with Iran
Chris Hippensteel
Before turning the microphone over to Kevin Warsh, Bessent thanked the European Union and the European Central Bank for their support of US plans to further isolate Iran from the global economy. That plan – dubbed Operation Economic Outcast – requires the US to win the cooperation of allies and adversaries alike, with a threat of punishment to states and companies that continue to do business with the regime.
Bessent said, without offering specifics, that the plan would lead to the toppling of the Iranian leadership, a goal that the Trump administration has been vowing to bring about since the war’s opening days.
Chris Hippensteel
Bessent opened his remarks by pointing to the host city of Asheville, North Carolina, as a beacon of economic recovery in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, before promptly pivoting to praise for Trump.
“Under President Trump, we are entering a new season of national strength,” Bessent told the assembled global leaders.
Bessent criticized the G20 as having lost its founding priorities in fostering economic growth, and said Trump was bringing the G20 back to that original purpose.
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Bessent delivers remarks at G20 summit
Chris Hippensteel
We’re watching today as Scott Bessent, the US treasury secretary, and Kevin Warsh, the chair of the Federal Reserve, deliver their opening remarks at the G20 meetings in Asheville, North Carolina.
The meetings are unfolding in the shadow of economic disruptions downstream of the war in Iran, which has choked global energy markets and driven up inflation around the world. Bessent is speaking first.
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House lawmakers return to Capitol Hill as Republicans hope to pass stopgap spending bill
The US House is back after a five-week recess. And this week, Republicans are focused a key legislative agenda item: passing a stopgap spending bill to stave off a possible government shutdown.
Currently, funding is guaranteed through 30 September, but after a year marked by record-breaking shutdowns, GOP House speaker Mike Johnson is hoping to advance a bill that would extend funding spending at its current levels until after the November midterms.
Johnson is expected to put a vote on the House floor this week, using a fast-track procedure that requires a two-thirds majority to pass.
Prior to the Senate heading home for their August recess, the upper chamber approved its own continuing resolution to keep the government until 11 December, this also included provisions like preventing political appointees having approvals over federal grants.
The House is set to leave Washington again at the end of this week for Labor Day recess, provided it can get through its to-do list.
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Trump says Iran is a ‘failed nation’ and ‘dead’ as fresh strikes are exchanged
Donald Trump has claimed that Iran is a “Failed Nation” and that the regime is “DEAD” in a post on Truth Social today.
This comes as Washington and Tehran exchange their first strikes in a month, after the US struck Larak Island in the strait of Hormuz, and Iran retaliated by targeting Jordanian airbases.
Trump, however, insisted that the country’s economic condition had rendered them powerless.
“They have no currency,” the president said, after the Iranian rial dropped to a record low last week. “They are not paying their soldiers or police, Inflation is at 300%, and their leadership is in total disarray and incapable of properly representing the country.”
Trump added that “the only thing” Iran has is “FAKE NEWS from the USA, a willingness to kill their protesters (now over 100,000 people dead. They must be tried for war crimes against humanity!), and a good line of “BULLSHIT”.
It’s worth noting that US prices are up 3.4% compared with a year ago in the US. The average price for gallon of fuel is also a dollar higher than this time last year, before the war with Iran started.
My colleagues are covering the latest developments out of the Middle East:
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Donald Trump is in Washington today. He’ll begin his day in closed-door meetings, but we’ll hear from the president at 3pm ET in the Oval Office, when he makes an announcement on healthcare affordability and prescription drug pricing.
We’ll bring you the latest lines as that gets under way.
The White House “border czar,” Tom Homan, denied on Sunday that deporting British far-right commentator Milo Yiannopoulos just a day after being arrested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) amounted to preferential treatment.
Homan said it was his understanding that Yiannopoulos, 41, had overstayed what he believed to be a visitor visa, had not appeared at an immigration hearing and was issued a final order of removal on 22 July.
“He didn’t show up,” Homan told CNN’s State of the Union. “The judge ordered him deported. So, once ICE gets an order of deportation from a federal judge, their job is to execute that order, and that’s what they did.”
He added: “He had his due process, ordered removed by a federal judge, and ICE removed him. It’s that simple.”
Yiannopoulos’s removal one day after his arrest, when many others who have been deported had first endured lengthy detention center incarcerations, has prompted questions about whether he received preferential treatment in that respect. Homan said the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE, was trying to speed up the deportation process.
The US treasury department is likely to unveil weekly new secondary sanctions aimed at increasing economic pressure on Iran, with an initial focus on banks, treasury secretary Scott Bessent told Reuters.
After imposing penalties on the United Arab Emirates branches of Egypt’s Banque Misr on Friday over alleged financial links to Iran, Bessent said in an interview that the next step may be cutting off an institution entirely from the dollar-based financial system.
“You’re going to see a lot more of these every week,” Bessent said ahead of a Group of 20 finance leaders meeting. “We’re starting with the banks, and we’re telling the banks it’s not OK to have Iranian money and to aid the regime.“
Bessent said he intends to drive the message home to G20 finance ministers and central bank governors to cut economic ties to Iran, or face secondary sanctions. The Treasury launched the effort, dubbed Operation Economic Outcast, last week.
“There can be no leakage,” Bessent said. “You’re either with us or you’re with the Iranians.“
The Trump administration is shuttering two of the three US Department of Agriculture research projects studying cyclospora after the foodborne parasite has sickened tens of thousands of Americans during the summer, Politico reported on Sunday.
The two projects were defunded by Congress earlier in the year, while the third is due to be moved in coming months from Maryland to Iowa as part of a broader USDA reorganization, according to the report.
Although the third project remains funded, all scientists working on the parasite have declined to relocate to Iowa, Politico reported, citing people familiar with the plans and internal documents.
Reuters could not immediately verify the report.
“None of the research has been disrupted, and research will continue without disruption,” a USDA spokesperson said, while pointing to Congress over the funding cuts.
Congress did not appropriate funding for the two research projects that were being undertaken at the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center outside Washington DC for the 2026 fiscal year in the Agriculture Appropriations Act, the spokesperson said in an emailed statement. The spokesperson added that the Agricultural Research Service is working with research leaders to ensure an orderly transition of the programs.
Having reportedly read Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, in French, during a military tour of duty in Iraq, Jamieson Greer considered himself an unlikely target for accusations of francophobia.
But Donald Trump’s US trade representative, hitherto one of the president’s less high-profile cabinet members, found himself in that uncomfortable position amid the acrimonious collapse of bilateral trade talks with Canada that now threatens to degenerate into an all-out trade war between the two close trading partners whose economies are tightly intertwined.
An apparent pending deal between Washington and Ottawa aimed at avoiding damaging tit-for-tat tariffs broke down at the last minute, with Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, claiming his country had come “under attack” from the US.
Among the multiple and complex points of disagreement was a Canadian accusation that US negotiators had pressed for a weakening of legal protections for the French language, which is most heavily spoken in the province of Quebec.
Canadian provisions include legislation that mandates streaming and online video companies to invest in and promote Canadian content and promote the French language. Carney cast US objections to such regulations as a deal breaker, and said they amounted to “threats to French language and culture”.
For Greer, a fluent French speaker who once served as a Mormon missionary in Belgium, France and Luxembourg, the charge was too much. “I speak French, too,” he told CNBC, dismissing the claims as “a funny, fake story”.
Donald Trump on Sunday said NBC’s Kristen Welker – host of Meet the Press – should face “rebuke or punishment” from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
Welker, during a live segment for a local Washington DC affiliate, described the success record of political candidates whom the president had endorsed as “mixed”. The segment aired prior to Sunday’s edition of Meet the Press.
Trump “is going to loom large over these midterms,” Welker remarked on that live shot. “He, of course, has endorsed a slate of candidates in the primaries. He’s had some mixed results.”
But Welker went on to mention Trump’s endorsement of appointed interim US senator Darline Graham, sister of her late predecessor Lindsey Graham, who was successful in her primary battle.
Nonetheless, the president then took verbal aim at Welker with a social media post deriding her as the “Unpopular ‘Hostess’ of … Meet the Fake Press,” accused her of “purposeful inaccuracy” and warned that she would “be reported to the FCC for rebuke or punishment”.
The post also said that Trump hoped his appointed FCC chair Brendan Carr – and Carr’s colleagues on the commission – “take this Threat to our Country very seriously”.
Once Meet the Press actually started on Sunday, a guest analyst on the show said “the single most important factor in who the Republican nominee will be in [the presidential election of] 2028 will be who Donald Trump endorses”.
House Democrat plans to introduce bill to nullify Trump's 'Lake America' executive order
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.
As House representatives return from the summer recess, one Democrat has already set in motion a plan to nullify Donald Trump’s latest conceited executive order.
The president signed an executive order on Thursday directing the federal government to rename Lake Ontario, making it Lake America, amid his escalating trade war with Canada.
“We have a gulf and we have a lake – now all we need is an ocean. Maybe we’ll have to change the name of the Atlantic and/or the Pacific,” he told reporters, sitting at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office. “Maybe we’ll change them both.”
But House Democrat Debbie Dingell said she plans to introduce a bill later today to nullify the name change, titled the “Hands Off Our Great Lakes Act”.
“People do not understand how intertwined our two countries are,” Dingell told Politico, adding: “And this is insane, this naming Lake Ontario ‘Lake America.’”
Dingell said she had accrued more than 100 signatures from fellow House Democrats in a letter to the president, urging the Trump administration “to change its diplomatic approach with our closest ally, Canada, and recognize the importance of the United States-Canada relationship”.
“I grew up in a small town called St Clair, and when I got up and looked out my bedroom window every day, I didn’t see America. I saw Canada,” Dingell said. “We lived that close. Canada was as close to us as [the Cannon House Office Building] is to the Capitol.”
Trump’s order directed federal agencies to adopt the name-change on US maps, documents and databases. Google Maps has changed Lake Ontario’s name to Lake America for US users to reflect the president’s executive renaming order.
Meanwhile, the president posted overnight on his Truth Social website:
For many years, the USA has been losing more than 60 Billion Dollars a year with Canada. Why??? Our long ago stolen businesses are now coming back to America in order to avoid paying tariffs. They are lining up, just like the rest of the World!!!
In other developments:
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Trump and Canada continued a verbal duel on Saturday over the US government’s administrative renaming of Lake Ontario, with the Ontario premier erecting a giant sign saying “Lake Ontario. Now and Always” – and the American president posting a video of him tearing down an avatar of that sign, erecting a replacement saying Lake America, and dancing to YMCA. Rhetoric over the naming of Lake Ontario is the public face of an escalating trade dispute between the US and its northern neighbor involving a 50% US tariff on Canadian steel and retaliatory tariffs from Ottawa.
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The White House “border czar,” Tom Homan, denied on Sunday that deporting British far-right commentator Milo Yiannopoulos just a day after being arrested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) amounted to preferential treatment. Homan said it was his understanding that Yiannopoulos, 41, had overstayed what he believed to be a visitor visa, had not appeared at an immigration hearing and was issued a final order of removal on 22 July.
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Trump on Sunday said NBC’s Kristen Welker – host of Meet the Press – should face “rebuke or punishment” from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Welker, during a live segment for a local Washington, DC, affiliate, described the success record of political candidates whom the president had endorsed as “mixed”. The segment aired prior to Sunday’s edition of Meet the Press.
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Michigan’s Democratic US senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed apologized to the state’s Jewish Democratic Caucus on Saturday for comments he made after an attack on a synagogue in March, which he tied to Israel’s actions in the Middle East. “My comments may have been misconstrued to justify something I did not mean to justify,” El-Sayed told reporters after he addressed the caucus at a party convention in Lansing. “To anyone who feels like my comments might have been hurtful, I’m really sorry. That was not my intention.”
