Closing summary
This concludes another week in the life of the second Trump administration. Here are the latest developments:
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Donald Trump claimed that Venezuela’s president, Delcy Rodríguez, agreed to put more than 65bn barrels of the nation’s oil reserves under “majority US control”.
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ICE arrested far-right activist Milo Yiannopoulos, a British-born provocateur who wrote for Steve Bannon’s Breitbart before serving as an intern for Marjorie Taylor Greene and arranging for the white supremacist Nick Fuentes to dine with Donald Trump and Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, at Mar-Lago in 2022.
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A new National Park Service report on Trump’s vast monumental arch acknowledges but downplays the importance of the fact that the 250ft-high structure will have adverse effects on a series of existing monuments, including views of the Washington Monument and the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials.
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Activists for Turning Point USA, the rightwing youth group founded by the late Charlie Kirk, were asked to stop creating viral videos of themselves heckling Democratic candidates at the Iowa state fair, in line with the fair’s regulations, according to the Iowa political reporter Laura Belin.
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In a fundraising email this week, the Republican candidate for the open Senate seat in Michigan, former congressman Mike Rogers, appeared to mislead supporters about his past by suggesting that he had played an active role in the killing of Osama bin Laden.
US military announces it raided and destroyed a boat linked to drug smugglers with no fatalities
US Southern Command announced on Friday that it had raided and destroyed what it called “a vessel operating as a floating refueling station in support of illicit at-sea drug trafficking operations in international waters of the Eastern Pacific”.
US marines and sailors, the military’s statement said, “interdicted, boarded, searched, and cleared the vessel without incident. Individuals removed from the vessel were safely escorted to Ecuador.” US forces then sank the vessel.
According to the statement, the operation was carried out “in coordination and collaboration with the Government of Ecuador”.
“Intelligence confirmed the vessel, previously identified and targeted under Department of the Treasury sanctions, was operating in support of the Los Choneros violent narco-terrorist organization,” the statement added.
Hours earlier, Donald Trump had boasted, in a phone call with the crew of the International Space Station, that US military operations to attack and kill “the drug people coming in by boat” was made possible by “all that information from space”.
Fact-checking Michigan Senate candidate Mike Rogers' claim: ‘I saw the dead body of Osama bin Laden with my own eyes’
In a fundraising email this week, the Republican candidate for the open Senate seat in Michigan, former congressman Mike Rogers, appeared to mislead supporters about his past by suggesting that he had played an active role in the killing of Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaida who was shot and killed in a US military raid on his compound in Pakistan in 2011.
“When I served as a U.S. Army officer and an FBI Special Agent, I swore a sacred oath to defend the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” Rogers wrote, according to a screenshot of the email shared online by Azi Paybarah, a former Washington Post reporter now with Straight Arrow News. “I dedicated my life to keeping our families safe-working in the shadows, hunting down terrorists, and standing on the frontlines of our national security.”
He then added, in a section of the email highlighted in bold type: “I saw the dead body of Osama bin Laden with my own eyes, knowing that together, we had delivered justice for America.”
Rogers, however, was not in Abbottabad, Pakistan on 1 May 2011, when bin Laden was shot and killed, nor was he in the White House Situation Room, where then president Barack Obama, and senior administration officials including Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton followed the raid in real time.
Instead, as Rogers told reporters the next day, and recounts in a campaign video, he was at home in Washington DC, where, as the chair of the House intelligence committee at the time, he was informed about the raid in a phone call from Obama’s CIA director, Leon Panetta.
While the Rogers campaign did not respond to requests to explain what the former congressman meant by his claim, Paybarah, who first reported the fundraising email sent by Rogers on Sunday, suggested that Rogers must have been referring to the fact that he was one of a select few US officials to have seen a photograph of Bin Laden’s dead body.
Days after the raid, Rogers said that the photograph he’d seen made it clear that Bin Laden was dead but supported Obama’s decision to not make the graphic images of the raid public. “The risks of release outweigh the benefits,” Rogers said in a statement at the time. “Conspiracy theorists around the world will just claim the photos are doctored anyway, and there is a real risk that releasing the photos will only serve to inflame public opinion in the Middle East.”
The week after the raid, Rogers explained that he had first been informed that the CIA suspected Bin Laden might have been hiding in Pakistan by Panetta four months earlier, when he became chair of the House intelligence committee in January 2011. “At that time”, Rogers recalled at a Council on Foreign Relations event, “it was, a 40 to 50% shot that that was who it was.”
As the intelligence got more solid, Rogers said, the CIA director “was very good about keeping us in the loop”. To support the mission, Rogers said, the congressional committee “had to move some money”.
In the years since, though, Rogers has frequently referred to his role as a congressman who helped provide funds for US intelligence agencies in vague terms that seemed to exaggerate his role.
In the trailer for a CNN series he hosted in 2017, for instance, Rogers introduced himself this way: “My name is Mike Rogers. I oversaw all 16 of our nation’s intelligence agencies”. While an on-screen graphic flashed up that identified him as a “former chair of the House intelligence committee”, a casual viewer might well have assumed that Rogers had directed those US intelligence agencies, rather than oversaw the budgets of those intelligence agencies as a congressman.
Since Abdul El-Sayed, a Muslim doctor and former public health official, became his opponent in the Senate race, Rogers has repeatedly cited his own role in the US war on Islamist terrorism in his campaign statements.
Abdul doesn’t represent a vision for the future. He’s leading a movement grounded in ideological fanaticism,” Rogers said the night that El-Sayed won the Democratic nomination. “I spent years hunting terrorists and bringing Osama bin Laden to justice. Never in a million years did I think that I would be running against someone who believes America deserved 9/11.”
A New York Times factcheck pointed out that the second part of Rogers’ “incendiary statement” was false: it was not El-Sayed, but one of his supporters, the Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, who once said that American deserved 9/11, before retracting and apologizing for that statement seven years before he endorsed El-Sayed.
For his part, El-Sayed has clearly denounced the 9/11 attacks for years. In a recollection of that day written in 2021, El-Sayed wrote:
I watched terrorists with names like mine attack my country in the name of my faith. Three thousand of my fellow Americans were killed in the craven terrorist attacks in New York, Washington, D.C. and Pennsylvania. The attack devastated me.
As many commentators have focused on the anti-Muslim sentiment of Rogers’ statement, the first part of what he said, that he’d “spent years hunting terrorists”, has gone largely unchecked.
When the Guardian asked a spokesperson for the Rogers campaign in a recent phone call what part of his career he was referring to, she said that he had been chair of the House intelligence committee and was a veteran of the US military and the FBI.
The spokesperson declined to provide any specific examples of counter-terrorism work Rogers had done that was not related to congressional oversight.
When reminded that Rogers had served in the US army from 1985-1989, when the US was not fighting the mujahideen in Afghanistan but arming them, and says on his campaign website that his work as an FBI agent in Chicago was focused on “organized crime and public corruption”, the spokesperson asked for more time. She then failed to provide any further information and stopped responding to requests for comment.
As a congressman, Rogers did play some role, behind the scenes, in encouraging the Bush administration to expand drone strikes against militants in Pakistan in 2008, after a visit to US base on the Afghan-Pakistan border, where was reportedly shown militants across the border loading rockets that could be fired at the base from across the frontier.
At that time, El-Sayed was pursuing a joint doctorate in medicine and public health at the University of Michigan, and was chosen as one of 32 American Rhodes scholars.
Pete Hegseth, the former Fox News weekend host now overseeing the US quagmire in Iran as Donald Trump’s “central casting” defense secretary, has denied that he is considering a run for the presidency in 2028, as NBC reported earlier on Friday.
In keeping with the dignity of his office, Hegseth issued his statement as a response to a social media post about the report from a betting app.
“100% false,” he wrote. “We told NBC that, but they just lie w/ anonymous ‘sources.’”
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Trump claims Venezuela has granted US 'majority control' of more than 65bn barrels of its oil reserves
Donald Trump claimed on Friday that Venezuela’s president, Delcy Rodríguez, had agreed to surrender more than 65bn barrels of the nation’s proven oil reserves to “majority US control”.
The terms of the agreement remain to be seen, but the US president said on his social-media platform that it had been brokered “through a partnership with private business” by his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and defense secretary, Pete Hegseth.
Trump promised that this “transaction” would double US oil reserves and “substantially lower Gas Prices for all Americans, long into the future”.
Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump administration was “in advanced talks with Venezuela for the U.S. to take a direct stake in more than a dozen oil fields that house nearly one-third of the country’s massive energy reserves”.
The discussion was reportedly over a US stake in Venezuela’s most promising oil-and-gas fields, with some 90bn barrels of proven reserves.
Trump might also be taking personal credit for new production deals that Chevron and other US energy companies are expected to sign next week in Caracas, according to the Journal.
Securing access to Venezuela’s oil reserves through military action would make good on one of Trump’s earliest governing ideas: to openly use American troops to “take the oil” from foreign nations dependent on the US military for security.
In 2011, when he was publicly considering a run for the presidency, Trump told the Fox host Bill O’Reilly that he was against withdrawing US troops from Iraq. “I like the old system better: You won a war, you stay there, and you keep the oil,” Trump said.
“You stay and protect the oil, and you take the oil and you take whatever is necessary for them and you take what’s necessary for us and we pay ourselves back $1.5tn or more,” Trump went on. “If you look at wars over the years – and I study wars, okay? My whole life is a war – you look at wars over the years: a country goes in, they conquer and they stay … So, in a nutshell, we go in, we take over the second largest oil fields, and we stay.”
Five months later, after a US-led air campaign forced Colonel Muammar Gaddafi from power in Libya – and Trump had decided not to challenge Obama for the presidency, after being mocked by him at the White House correspondents’ dinner – Trump argued on his YouTube channel that the administration should have waited longer to aid the Libyan rebels, to force them to agree to surrender half of their country’s oil reserves.
“What we should’ve done is, we should’ve asked the rebels when they came to us – and they came to us; they were being routed by Gaddafi, they were being decimated - we should’ve said, ‘We’ll help you, but we want 50% of your oil,’” Trump said. “They would’ve said, ‘How about 75%?’”
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Key event
Fresh from campaigning at the Iowa state fair for Republican congressman Zach Nunn, in apparent violation of federal law, US defense secretary and former Fox News weekend host Pete Hegseth has reportedly told close friends and associates that he is considering a run for the presidency in 2028, according to NBC News.
“Hegseth and his wife, Jennifer, have floated the idea of a presidential run for the past few months, believing he has some of the same attributes that have made Donald Trump popular with the MAGA movement,” two people described as familiar with the conversations said. “Trump’s core voters appreciate Hegseth’s toughness, defiance and conservative stance on social issues, the sources told NBC, in what sounded like the launch of a trial balloon to gauge sentiment.
A year ago, the same outlet reported that, according to two people, Hegseth had “privately discussed the idea of running for political office next year in Tennessee”, and had “specifically mentioned a possible campaign for governor in Tennessee”.
Hegseth did not launch that bid and the Republican nominee for Tennessee governor is the US senator Marsha Blackburn.
“Secretary Hegseth is not running for president, and his main priority is leading the War Department,” chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a statement to NBC. “All other speculation is foolish”.
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Iowa state fair asked Turning Point USA activists to stop heckling Democrats – report
Activists for Turning Point USA, the rightwing youth group founded by the late Charlie Kirk, were asked to stop creating viral videos of themselves heckling Democratic candidates at the Iowa state fair, in line with the fair’s regulations, according to the Iowa political reporter Laura Belin.
Belin, who runs the well-regarded Bleeding Heartland blog, explained on her Substack and on a radio show she co-hosts on KHOI in Ames that the fair’s organizers told the Turning Point activists that the heckling of Democrats, including Rob Sand, the state auditor and Democratic nominee for governor, violated rules for groups that register booths at the fair against interfering with the public or other vendors.
Other targets of the heckling included the Democratic nominee for the Senate, Josh Turek, and Senator Mark Kelly, an Arizona Democrat and potential 2028 presidential candidate.
Belin’s report was illustrated by video shot by a 19-year-old Turning Point activist of herself and a 29-year-old colleague (who is a Republican party official in Wisconsin) trailing Sand and loudly shouting: “You’re a socialist! Boo!” and: “Soy boy! Soy boy!” at him as he attended the fair earlier this month.
After Sand spoke at the fair, he told reporters: “They’re kids,” before adding that his message to his own supporters was: “Don’t behave like the kids from Turning Point USA.”
“There will always be people who shout things at politicians walking around the fair, but what the Turning Point activists were doing was kind of on a different level,” Belin noted.
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National Park Service report admits Trump's arch will have 'adverse effects' on existing monuments but not enough to stop it
A new National Park Service report on Donald Trump’s vast monumental arch acknowledges but downplays the importance of the fact that the 250ft-high structure will have adverse effects on a series of existing monuments, including views of the Washington Monument and the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials.
The 133-page report released on Friday says the memorial arch is likely to disrupt the historical significance of dozens of sites near its planned location at the Arlington Memorial Bridge, near what the service calls National Historic Landmarks (NHLs), but describes those impacts as manageable.
The adverse-effect findings for NHLs are driven primarily by “visual, spatial, and night-time effects, rather than direct physical alteration”, the report says. “The affected NHLs are generally those with identified contributing views toward the Monumental Core, the Potomac River corridor, Arlington National Cemetery, or Washington, D.C.’s symbolic landscape. The analysis treats the Arch’s height, visibility, and illumination as the basis for adverse effects where those changes would alter contributing views, vistas, setting, feeling, or association.”
While the parks service says that it “acknowledges that the proposed undertaking would result in adverse effects to certain” landmarks, the law “does not require that all harm be eliminated where avoidance would defeat the purpose of the undertaking”.
Instead, the parks service argues, the law just “requires the agency to undertake planning and actions necessary to minimize harm to the maximum extent possible”.
The report also notes that the height of the planned arch, “an approximately 250-foot-tall reinforced concrete structure clad in granite and ornamented by a central winged figure and two eagles, positioned above each Arch leg”, creates problems, but was deemed essential to its “purpose and need”.
During and prior to the design process, various smaller Arch heights were evaluated to avoid, minimize, or mitigate impacts on historic properties, including NHLs. The smaller Arch heights were ultimately dismissed because they would have had greater impact on the cultural landscapes, specifically the views between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery. The smaller designs fully obstructed this view, instead of framing it, and did not create any new viewing opportunities, by contrast to the proposed Arch, which would allow a less obstructed view through its central opening and provide new viewing opportunities. In addition, because the Arch is intended to celebrate 250 years of American independence, the smaller heights were not considered representative of this milestone, unlike the 250-foot Arch proposed in the undertaking.
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DHS confirms ICE arrest of far-right activist Milo Yiannopoulos
The Department of Homeland Security confirmed that ICE has arrested far-right activist Milo Yiannopoulos.
Yiannopoulos is a British-born provocateur who wrote for Steve Bannon’s Breitbart before serving as an intern for Marjorie Taylor Greene, the former Maga congresswoman, and took credit for arranging to have the white supremacist Nick Fuentes dine with Donald Trump and Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, at Mar-Lago in 2022.
A DHS spokesperson said in a written statement sent to the Guardian:
On August 27, ICE arrested Milo Yiannopoulos, an illegal alien from the United Kingdom, at the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport (MSY) in Kenner, Louisiana. Yiannopoulos legally entered the country on May 14, 2019, through New York City, New York. He chose to overstay his welcome in violation of our nation’s laws.
Yiannopoulos was issued a final order of removal by an Immigration Judge on July 22, after failing to show up for his immigration hearing. He will remain in ICE custody pending removal.
DHS reversed the horrendous Biden-era policy that allowed aliens in our country illegally to jet around our country. Under President Trump, DHS will no longer tolerate this. This administration is working diligently to ensure that aliens in our country illegally can no longer fly unless it is out of our country to self-deport.
Being in detention is a choice. We encourage all illegal aliens to take control of their departure with the CBP Home App. The United States is offering illegal aliens $3,000 and a free flight to self-deport now. We encourage every person here illegally to take advantage of this offer and reserve the chance to come back to the U.S. the right legal way to live the American dream. If not, you will be arrested and deported without a chance to return.
The DHS then posted a version of this statement on social media, with a photograph of Yiannopoulos in detention.
A former ally of Yiannopoulos, the far-right influencer Laura Loomer, took credit on social media for getting him arrested.
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'He's lazy and doesn't raise money': Cornyn slams Paxton campaign as competitive Texas Senate race inches closer
John Cornyn, the incumbent Republican senator from Texas, slammed Ken Paxton – the attorney general who won the GOP primary earlier this year.
“Paxton’s a poor campaigner,” Cornyn told the Texas Tribune. “He’s lazy and doesn’t raise money. And he basically is not offering a very compelling case for his election. He’s making this harder than it needs to be. But so be it – we are where we are.”
Paxton received Donald Trump’s endorsement before beating Cornyn in a runoff election, after neither candidate received 50% of the vote in the initial primary. The scandal-plagued nominee was impeached in 2023 after being accused of corruption, and reported to the FBI. He was later acquitted in a trial in the Texas senate, where his wife was a state senator but not allowed to cast a vote.
Paxton was also indicted on charges of felony securities fraud that could have led to a prison sentence, but the case was dismissed after a 2024 pre-trial diversion agreement. And last year his wife of 38 years, Angela Paxton, filed for divorce “on biblical grounds”, citing adultery.
He’ll now face Democratic upstart and state lawmaker James Talarico in the November general election. Cornyn told the Texas Tribune that he was still “a good Republican” and does not support Talarico’s policies, but lamented how competitive the match-up had become according to recent polling. “This is unfortunately shaping up to be a close and I hope not disastrous election,” Cornyn told the Tribune. “But it ain’t looking good right now.”
The outgoing senator said that he was tapping into his vast donor base to raise money in competitive races across the country, instead of focusing it on Paxton’s race in Texas.
“What I’m doing is I’m raising money to help in places like New Hampshire and Michigan and Alaska, and some of these other states where I think we’ve got close races,” he told the outlet, suggesting that Trump could use the vast resources of his Super Pac – Maga Inc – to help Paxton’s campaign.
“He [Trump] could write a check if he wanted Paxton to be the nominee, with all his wrinkles and warts – then it’s a simple solution to that,” Cornyn added.
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Here's a recap of the day so far
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Donald Trump said today that he will authorize cattle ranchers and farmers to process their own food. The president has faced backlash in recent days from his own party for suspending higher tariffs on 300,000 metric tons of foreign beef to lower grocery store prices. Several Republicans and industry groups say this is a short-term solution that will hinder cattle ranchers from building out their herd, amid a 75-year low. Trump’s latest move comes after his interview with conservative commentator Glenn Beck this week – where the radio host implored Trump to “look at the meat processing cartel” and suggested easing regulations for ranchers to slaughter their own cattle. More here
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Kevin Warsh, the chair of the Federal Reserve, warned that there are concerning signs that US inflation is running too high, meaning the central bank may have “work to do” unless price pressures ease. In his speech to the Jackson Hole symposium today, Warsh pointed to signs that some prices are rising rather faster than the central bank’s 2% target. He indicated that he is more concerned about inflation, than the labor market, declaring that “the Fed’s predominant focus right now should be on prices.” More here
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Meanwhile, a federal judge has denied Trump’s attempt to erase his hush-money conviction in New York again. Judge Alvin K Hellerstein rejected the president’s third bid to move the state court case to federal court and have it dismissed on presidential immunity grounds. Hellerstein said in a ruling that the reasons Trump cited for renewing his request were “neither new nor legally sufficient”.
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The president also posted an update on his botched – and never-ending – renovation of the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool – quoting a message he received from an interior department official saying it would be open in a few weeks. Though Trump said that the message and the pictures were from this morning, as far as we can tell, the partial refilling of the pool referred to in the message was carried out two weeks ago, on Friday 7 August. Indeed, pictures of the pool from this morning, when a March on Washington rally took place, show it very much empty again. Workers have been trying to patch up the sealant, which is still peeling off.
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Hegseth considering summoning top military officials to Quantico for second time – report
Keely Aouga
Defense secretary Pete Hegseth is considering inviting senior military personnel back for an address at Marine Corps Base Quantico this year, according to the Wall Street Journal (paywall).
Last September, Hegseth summoned military commanders to Quantico, where he delivered an astonishing keynote speech addressing a department-wide initiative to reform its so-called “woke” narrative.
“We became ‘the woke department’,” Hegseth said last year. “Not any more. We’re done with that shit.”
Among the many targets Hegseth attacked in his speech, he declared the end of “race- and gender-based promotions”, fat-shamed US troops and told them they couldn’t have beards, and said that if women could pass his “highest male standard” physical tests, “excellent. If not, it is what it is.”
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A conservative strategist called for ‘getting rid of Trump’ three years ago. Could he be his next press secretary?
In 2016, a month before the presidential election that Donald Trump would win, the longtime Republican strategist Scott Jennings described him as “a vulgar, crude, braggadocious, desperate-to-impress playboy who tends to view most everything through a sexual lens”.
After Trump’s loss in the 2020 election, Jennings excoriated Trump’s conduct during the January 6 Capitol insurrection, saying he “clearly violated his oath of office to preserve, protect and defend the constitution to the best of [his] ability”.
When Trump was in the political wilderness in 2022, Jennings said the party “[needs] a new nominee”, later encouraging the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, to launch a primary challenge. “There’s only one strategy for getting rid of Trump: it’s to beat his ass,” he said the following year.
So why exactly is the 48-year-old conservative TV pundit being considered “an early favorite” to serve as Trump’s top spokesperson, replacing the departing Karoline Leavitt as White House press secretary?
The answer can be traced to Jennings’s virtuosic ability to pivot (or shape-shift, as some critics might suggest) to land on the right political side.
As soon as it became clear that Trump would in fact win the Republican nomination, in early 2024, Jennings became a bigger supporter than ever. And over the last few years, Jennings has emerged as a star in his own right: CNN’s in-house Maga gladiator who is always game to appear on television and beat up any liberals that challenge him.
Highlighting his transformation, Jennings appeared onstage with Trump in 2025, telling a rally crowd: “Michigan, we were flying in here today and I said: ‘Look at these farms. I got to get a farm in Michigan, because when you own as many libs as I do, you gotta [get] a place to put them all.”
Jennings’s bombastic performances have made him a target of hatred for Democrats but won him praise – and, most importantly, attention – from conservatives, including those in Trump’s circles, even as the president still reportedly holds some reservations about picking him as press secretary.
Read Jeremy’s full analysis here:
Treasury department proposes revoking Iran's access to UAE banks
Keely Aouga
The treasury department has proposed a rule that would revoke Iran’s access to UAE banks with ties to US financial institutions.
In a statement released today, treasury secretary Scott Bessent confirmed the US’s goal to cut Iran’s economic lifeline, under so-called Operation Economic Outcast.
“Treasury promised to sever every economic lifeline Tehran has left and finally end the threat of the Iranian regime,” said Bessent.
“We also warned that Iran’s enablers cannot continue to enjoy access to the US dollar and the global financial system. Banque Misr UAE decided to find out the hard way, and today, we are taking the first step in holding it accountable for its continued, egregious support of the Iranian regime,” he added.
According to the department, the Emirati branches of Banque Misr, Egypts second-largest bank, play a critical role in Iran’s access to US dollars.
The treasury estimates that between January 2024 and June 2026, Banque Misr UAE processed approximately $1.8bn for 103 companies that are potentially part of Iranian shadow banking networks.
The Central Bank of Egypt confirmed that the rule does not affect any other Egyptian bank, according to a statement obtained by the Associated Press. Similarly, it does not extend to the Banque Misr’s operations inside Egypt or to any of its overseas branches.
The sanctions come as Trump’s war against Iran passes surpasses its six-month mark, with no formal negotiations currently taking place.
Trump posts update claiming Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool will open 'in a few weeks'
This morning, Donald Trump posted an update on his botched – and never-ending – renovation of the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool (which has now cost over $16m), quoting a message he received from an interior department official alleging that it was “coming out great!” and would be open in a few weeks.
In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump quoted Greg Wischer as saying: “I visited the Reflecting Pool this morning, and pictures are included below of the pool reflecting and the American Flag Blue color.”
Wischer, according to Trump’s post, added: “Will be opening in a few weeks. Will be a beauty. NO VANDALS PLEASE.”
He also apparently said that the pool has been partially refilled so that National Park Service staff and contractors can flush its piping system. “After years of neglect by previous administrations, more than half of the 58 water supply ports were so clogged that they were deemed nonfunctioning. This work is ongoing,” Trump’s post quotes Wischer as saying.
Though Trump said that the message and the pictures were from this morning, as far as we can tell, the partial refilling of the pool referred to in the message was carried out two weeks ago, on Friday 7 August.
Indeed, pictures of the pool from this morning, when a March on Washington rally took place, show it very much empty again. Workers have been trying to patch up the sealant which is still peeling off.
Trump has repeatedly claimed that the pool was “vandalized”, but a recent filing from US attorney Jeanine Pirro – an ally of the president – said the damage was caused by a “botched installation” from a contractor rather than vandalism. Trump has doubled down on his vandals claims nonetheless.
If you’re keen for more on this, my colleague Edward Helmore has this timeline of the saga.
Federal judge denies Trump’s third bid to move hush money case to federal court
Keely Aouga
A federal judge has denied Donald Trump’s attempt to erase his hush-money conviction in New York again.
A reminder that Trump was found guilty in May 2024 on all 34 counts of falsifying business records as part of a scheme during the 2016 campaign to conceal extramarital affairs.
Judge Alvin K Hellerstein rejected the president’s third bid to move the state court case to federal court and have it dismissed on presidential immunity grounds.
Hellerstein said in a ruling that the reasons Trump cited for renewing his request were “neither new nor legally sufficient’”.
Trump’s initial requested to transfer the case before trial was denied in July 2023. In September 2024, following Trump’s conviction, Hellerstein denied Trump’s bid again.
Updated
As we reported earlier, Fed chair Kevin Warsh indicated today that the US Federal Reserve is not done fighting high inflation, emphasizing, in his first major speech in the role, that it was “the Fed’s job to deliver stable prices”.
Warsh didn’t 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 Donald Trump’s war against Iran. But his speech was taken by markets as a signal that rates may rise in the coming months, a move that may put him at odds with the president, who has aggressively called for rates to be cut.
My colleague Gaya Gupta has the story:
Trump announces he will sign an order to create a US Space Academy
In his remarks, Donald Trump said he will sign an executive order to create a US Space Academy, a new institution modeled on West Point and other top US military service academies.
“It’s clear that we need to educate and train an entire generation of skilled service members, engineers, civil operators,” Trump said during a visit to Nasa’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, “and that’s why in a few moments we’re going to get an executive order to begin the process of creating a new national academy. It’s called the US Space Academy.”
He went on:
You think of West Point, and you think of Annapolis, and you think of the Air Force Academy, and you think of the Coast Guard Academies. Great, they’re all great, but we’re going to have now the Space Force. We’re going to have an academy for what the people in this room love the most.
The president added: “A nation cannot be first on Earth if we’re going to be second in space. Just not going to happen. Somehow, it just doesn’t work that way.”
Trump also said Nasa has begun work on what he called the first nuclear-powered interplanetary spacecraft, which he said was expected to launch on a mission to Mars in 2028. He said the vessel could be the first in a larger US fleet aimed at making space travel more routine.
Updated
Donald Trump is in Houston, Texas, today. He is about to present the four Nasa Artemis II crew members with the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.
We’ll bring you the latest lines.
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Anti-vaccine activists are trying to track down the families of two people, including at least one newborn, who died after contracting measles in Pennsylvania, as Governor Josh Shapiro tangles with Robert F Kennedy Jr over his “inaccurate and misleading claims”.
Kennedy, the secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), suggested late on Wednesday that the deaths in the state may have been “fabricated” after a Republican coroner – an elected political office in Lancaster county – claimed one of the measles-associated deaths was unrelated to the virus, although the given cause would be consistent with measles.
Brian Hooker at Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine organization that until recently was led by Kennedy, said in a recent video that the organization is “trying to get boots on the ground” and “do outreach” in Pennsylvania.
Kennedy is “an anti-vaccine activist in the role of the most powerful public health person in this country”, said Paul Offit, an infectious diseases physician at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “It’s like the world’s turned upside down.”
It would be helpful to know the deceased patients’ ages and more information about their deaths, he added. “By not having that information, it allows fertile ground for the kind of conspiracy theory that RFK Jr puts out there, where he said in some posts that these weren’t measles deaths.”
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in a Thursday post on X that it was “working to determine what actually occurred”, including “whether the two reported deaths were caused by measles”. The HHS did not respond to the Guardian’s questions about whether Kennedy recommends the vaccine or whether the newly confirmed CDC director, Erica Schwartz, would make a statement about the outbreak and the need for vaccination.
Tom Tiffany, the Republican nominee for Wisconsin governor, pushed back on the president’s executive order to rename Lake Ontario as “Lake America”.
“The Great Lakes are Great Lakes, and we should leave them that way,” Tiffany, who currently serves as a congressman and was endorsed by Donald Trump in his gubernatorial race, said at a campaign event in Green Bay.
A reminder that on Wednesday Trump signed an order directing the federal government to rename Lake Ontario, making it Lake America, amid his escalating trade war with Canada. However, Trump has no authority to rename Canada’s portion of the lake, nor to compel Canada, international legal bodies, international mapmakers or the rest of the world to adopt a new name.
Over the weekend, negotiations between Washington and Ottawa collapsed and the US imposed a 50% tariff on several Canadian imports, with Trump threatening another round of 50% duties on Canadian steel, trucks, cars and auto parts to take effect in the new year. Carney hit back with 25-50% tariffs on hundreds of US goods.
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Trump to forego visit to ground zero for 25th anniversary of 9/11 - report
Donald Trump will mark the 25th anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks by delivering remarks at the Pentagon instead of visiting ground zero, according to a report by CNN.
Citing two unnamed sources briefed on the plan, CNN reports that the president is not attending the ceremony at the World Trade Center, in part, because he wants to speak on the occasion, and there is a longstanding policy that politicians are not permitted to speak at the anniversary event in New York.
Trump will be at the Pentagon, which was the site of another attack on the same day, while vice-president JD Vance will attend the memorial in Manhattan, according to CNN’s sources.
Autism groups and researchers have reacted with alarm to a federal research roadmap drawn up by advisers handpicked by the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, fearing it will promote unproven fringe therapies at the expense of promising genetic research.
A slew of scientific bodies and groups within the autism community are warning that the 336-page plan risks deflecting federal dollars away from potentially groundbreaking genetic research in favor of unreliable alternative therapies.
There is little or no evidence, they say, that many of the proposed treatments work, or that they even fit the definition of autism.
“So much of the plan is fringe science that is absolutely not ready for prime time,” said Helen Tager-Flusberg, an emeritus professor at Boston University and founder of the Coalition of Autism Scientists.
Alliances of autistic people are especially worried that the plan could make it easier for them to be sent to institutions. The plan calls for government agencies to try out “supported-living models” such as “farmstead or campus-based communities”, which the groups fear could revive forms of institutional confinement.
The strategic plan is the work of the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC), a body that for 25 years has advised US health secretaries on federal efforts related to autism.
In January, Kennedy overhauled the panel, replacing prominent experts with several anti-vaccine advocates who have promoted dangerous remedies for autism including the heavy-metal removal process known as “chelation therapy” and the use of industrial bleach.
The strategic plan completed its public consultation last week, inviting comments from the autism community, researchers and clinicians. Those comments will now be considered before a final version is crafted.
Warsh says Fed will have 'work to do' on high inflation unless prices ease
Kevin Warsh has warned that there are concerning signs that US inflation is running too high, meaning the Federal Reserve may have “work to do” unless price pressures ease.
In his speech to the Jackson Hole symposium today, the chair of the Federal Reserve pointed to signs that some prices are rising rather faser than the central bank’s 2% target.
Warsh indicated that he is more concerned about inflation, than the labor market, declaring that “the Fed’s predominant focus right now should be on prices.”
My colleagues are covering the latest here:
Agriculture secretary commits to 'waiving red tape' to allow ranchers to process and sell their own beef
Brooke Rollins, the president’s agriculture secretary said there would be “big announcements” next week in order to facilitate Donald Trump’s pledge to allow ranchers and farmers the ability to process their own food and avoid the “nasty monopoly” of large processing plants.
Rollins said it was a “matter of national security” that the US is able to “feed and fuel ourselves”. She outlined that her department would waive “red tape in processing” and expand ranchers ability to “sell across state lines”, as well as other measures.
The agriculture secretary previously defended the president’s decision to pause higher tariffs on 300,000 metric tons of foreign beef.
Earlier this week she called the move “a very short-term fix” to “get lower cost beef on to American plates” in an interview with Spectrum News. However, Rollins admitted that she did not know where the beef would be imported from. “I am actually not part of any of those conversations, so I am not sure what that looks like. I think we’ll know very soon,” she said.
A reminder that we are covering the latest out of Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where Kevin Warsh – the new chair of the Federal Reserve – will deliver his first speech as the head of the US central bank at the annual economic policy symposium.
As my colleagues note, Warsh is under pressure to provide clarity on how the Federal Reserve should handle with inflation if price pressures don’t abate.
A reminder that inflation in the US cooled slightly in July as the annualized inflation rate dipped down to 3.4%, though prices still remain higher than levels seen before the war with Iran. Price increases hit a three-year high in May, with annual inflation reaching 4.2%.
More than 400 endangered animal and plant species could face accelerated extinction after the Donald Trump administration’s decision to rescind a rule that has protected old-growth forests for more than two decades.
According to a new report from the Center for Biological Diversity, the rollback of the Bill Clinton-era “roadless rule” could put 7.4m acres of endangered-species habitat and nearly 1,800 miles of protected rivers and streams at risk, while opening more than 45m acres of national forests to roads, drilling and logging.
The Trump administration moved last week to rescind the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, citing “outdated restrictions [that] have kept tens of millions of forested acres off-limits to the very treatments that improve forest health and reduce wildfire risk to our communities”.
Conservationists have criticized the decision. “Our national forests are home to some of America’s most iconic animals, from grizzlies to hellbenders. These forests provide clean drinking water to countless communities. Bulldozing more roads through them will mean dirtier water, fragmented wildlife habitat and greater wildfire risk,” said Randi Spivak, public lands policy director at the Center for Biological Diversity.
Read more:
Trump to authorize ranchers and farmers to process their own food amid backlash over foreign beef imports
Donald Trump said today that he will authorize cattle ranchers and farmers to process their own food.
This comes after the president’s interview with conservative commentator Glenn Beck, in which he implored Trump to “look at the meat processing cartel” and suggested easing regulations for ranchers to slaughter and sell their own cattle. The president has faced backlash in recent days from his own party for suspending higher tariffs on 300,000 metric tons of foreign beef to lower grocery store prices. Several Republicans and industry leaders say this is a short-term solution that will hinder cattle ranchers from building out their herd, amid a 75-year low.
“I have heard that they have had a tremendous problem with the Big Processors, who many say are a nasty Monopoly,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “There are, essentially, 4 of them, a very non competitive number, and they make life miserable for our wonderful Farmers and Ranchers, and I can’t let that happen.”
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Donald Trump is still in Houston, Texas. Today, he’ll present the congressional Space Medal of Honor at 11am ET, and then he’ll call the International Space Station at 12pm ET, before traveling back to Washington.
We’ll bring you the latest lines as that gets under way.
How did Trump get so rich? - podcast
In this week’s edition of our Politics Weekly America podcast, Jonathan Freedland speaks to Dan Alexander of Forbes about how Donald Trump made so much money last year at the same time trade wars, military wars and a rising national debt hurt the US economy.
Listen/watch here:
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Every day $1bn worth of goods crosses the river dividing Detroit, Michigan, and Windsor, Ontario, two largely blue-collar US and Canadian cities that have come to act as one in the creation of North America’s auto industry.
News this week of Donald Trump’s escalating trade spat with Canada has everyone worried. Political and economic leaders and observers labeled the move an act of “hubris”, blamed Trump’s “ego”, and called the escalation “insanity”.
“We don’t need Canada, they need us,” Trump declared.
But many are hoping that Trump’s plans to impose 50% tariffs on Canadian goods from 1 January, covering everything from automobiles to honey to hockey sticks, will prove another empty threat and cite the upcoming midterm elections as a pivotal reason the plan may be scrapped.
Control of the US Congress hangs in the balance and will almost certainly be decided by several close Michigan races. It also comes just two months after polling highlighted Michiganders’ fatigue with and opposition to the president’s unprecedented tariff program.
By a 63%-31% margin, residents here oppose tariffs on Canadian goods, according to a June Epic-MRA poll, including 35% of Republicans. Meanwhile, nearly 75% of Michiganders said the tariffs are fueling high prices.
US civil rights leaders and politicians to march on Washington for voting protections
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and senator Bernie Sanders are due to take part in the 63rd anniversary of the March on Washington later today.
The original march, in 1963, was to advocate for social justice and civil rights for Black Americans, culminating in Martin Luther King Jr’s I Have a Dream speech.
This year’s event is due to focus on voting rights in the wake of the United States supreme court’s decision to overturn section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, with attendees also expected to include Al Sharpton, Martin Luther King III, Arndrea Waters King and congressional black caucus chair Yvette Clarke.
“Defending the vote means defending the foundation of our democracy,” Martin Luther King III said in a statement to the Associated Press. “Sixty-three years after my father stood at the Lincoln Memorial, we are called to march again, not only in remembrance, but in action.”
In April, the supreme court struck down Louisiana’s congressional map and substantially rewrote section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, dismantling key protections against racial gerrymandering.
Campaign organisers told the AP that the decision had intensified a long-running fight over Black political representation. They describe the 28 August action as part of “the same call our elders answered” more than 60 years ago on their campaign website, and have planned a symbolic return to the Lincoln Memorial where King addressed voters during the peak of the civil rights movement.
“We return to the ground where a quarter million Americans once stood for jobs and freedom, and we carry their unfinished work into a new generation,” organisers said.
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Pentagon’s blacklisting of Anthropic was unlawful, US judge rules
A US federal judge ruled Thursday that sanctions imposed in February by the Trump administration against AI giant Anthropic were illegal, finding that the government had punished the artificial intelligence company for publicly criticising the Pentagon.
“The empty invocation of national security is not a blank check to punish and retaliate against government critics,” Judge Rita Lin said in a 59-page decision.
She barred the federal agencies named in the lawsuit from enforcing President Donald Trump’s order to stop using the tools of Anthropic – creator of the Claude AI models – and overturned defense secretary Pete Hegseth’s designation of the company as a “supply chain risk”, a status previously reserved for foreign firms.
The ruling makes permanent the temporary suspension of sanctions ordered by the judge in March and takes effect immediately. The government may appeal.
“We welcome the court’s ruling that this supply chain risk designation was unlawful,” an Anthropic spokesperson said.
Hegseth’s unprecedented move, which followed Anthropic’s refusal to allow the military to use AI chatbot Claude for US surveillance or autonomous weapons, blocked Anthropic from certain military contracts. Anthropic executives have said it could cost the company billions of dollars in lost business and reputational harm.
Trump had lashed out at the company after its refusal, describing it in a February social media post as “a radical left, woke company” and “out-of-control”.
Trump official faces inquiry over claims he diverted wildfire resources to his own property
Donald Trump’s administration is facing calls to launch an investigation into allegations that Michael Boren, a senior official who oversees the US Forest Service, pressed agency staff to deploy additional resources to fight a fire burning near his Idaho ranch.
Three Democratic senators accused Boren of “inappropriate interference” in a letter seen by the Guardian, demanding answers from Brooke Rollins, US agricultural secretary. Boren serves as undersecretary of agriculture for natural resources and environment.
Senators Ron Wyden, Amy Klobuchar and Martin Heinrich expressed “serious concern” over reports that Boren used his federal government position in July to remove firefighting personnel and resources from active fires elsewhere to tackle a fire near his private ranch in Idaho.
“We request a full investigation into the nature and extent of Boren’s involvement in response to the Cabin Creek Fire and a detailed accounting of the safeguards the agency has implemented or plans to implement to prevent political interference and conflicts of interest in wildfire response,” they wrote.
Their letter follows a report from the Washington Post earlier this month, in which several forest service officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that Boren – who reportedly owns a 480-acre ranch in the Sawtooth national recreation area – contacted forest service officials multiple times in mid-July to question why more aircraft were not being used to fight the Cabin Creek fire in Idaho, which spread across several acres in Idaho’s Sawtooth national forest.
Judge again blocks Trump mail ballot executive order in ruling likely to be appealed
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.
A federal judge has halted, at least temporarily, attempts to implement Donald Trump’s executive order limiting mail voting.
The president’s directive stalled for a second time about a week before the first mail ballots are due to be sent out for the rapidly approaching midterm elections.
In the US district court, judge Indira Talwani placed a 14-day hold on the government implementing the order in a case that could be headed back to the supreme court, which on Monday overturned an earlier ruling of hers that had blocked Trump’s order from taking effect.
Talwani wrote in her ruling:
Plaintiff states have neither time nor funds to design new mail ballots, seek approval of the new designs, order production of mail ballots, update their own election management systems, train election officials to use the USPS portal and upload citizen data to the portal, all before the midterms.
The latest ruling came in advance of a 3 September hearing after Democrats and voting rights groups refiled their lawsuits to comply with the recent supreme court decision.
The high court’s conservative majority did not rule on the legality of Trump’s executive order. Still, it said the legal challenges against it that led Talwani to initially freeze it were filed too soon. Since then, the administration has issued a formal rule intended to govern whether the US Postal Service will deliver states’ mail ballots – effectively restarting the legal fight.
The president has long targeted mail voting, which he falsely blames for his 2020 election loss even though he himself uses it to cast his ballot. A report by the Brookings Institution published in 2025 found that mail voting fraud occurred in only about four cases out of every 10 million mail ballots cast.
The legal battle has major ramifications for the midterms. Nearly one-third of Americans vote by mail and election officials contend there is not enough time to revise their systems to comply with the new postal service directives.
Read the full story here:
In other developments:
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Documents obtained by the Guardian and interviews with military leadership show the war in Iran has depleted the US Navy’s budget.
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A senior Democratic senator is calling for a criminal investigation into the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, following reporting by the Guardian that indicated he lied during Senate confirmation hearings last year.
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Trump called the media into the Oval Office to watch him sign an executive order to rename Lake Ontario “Lake America”.
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“The name Lake Ontario comes from the Wendat word Ontari’io, which, appropriately, means ‘the lake is beautiful, the lake is big’, Canada’s prime minister Mark Carney noted. “The name is more than 400 years old, predating both the Confederation of Canada and the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America.”
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Three journalists who were fired by the Pentagon from a US government-funded news outlet sued the US Department of Defense in federal court in Washington DC on Thursday arguing that their dismissals were illegal and violated their first amendment rights to free speech.
