DHS secretary tears into Democrats at Oklahoma rally
On Thursday evening, the Department of Homeland Security secretary Markwayne Mullin primed a crowd of Oklahoma supporters awaiting Donald Trump with a conspiracy theory: Democrats are plotting a communist takeover of the nation.
“In order for them to take us to a socialist country and move us right into a communist country, they have to create chaos… they’ve got to change the demographics,” Mullin said, referring to the presence of undocumented immigrants.
“They’ve got to usher in chaos. And then they’ll come out and say ‘Hey look this government doesn’t work. You need us to take charge.’ And that’s how you end up with a communist country.”
Mullin spoke at the rally for about 15 minutes, urging the attendees to vote for what he framed as an existential battle over the nation’s future.
A federal law, known as the Hatch Act, is supposed to bar government officials from taking part in partisan campaign events, but the law is supposed to be enforced by the US Office of Special Counsel, which is currently run by a former staffer for the Republican chair of the Senate judiciary committee.
While complaints against Trump officials have been disregarded, the office recently announced sanctions against five officials who served in the Biden administration in 2024.
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Good news, at least for those of you wanting to hear more from Donald Trump tonight: his motorcade has arrived at the Choctaw Event Center in Oklahoma after speeding there from his last speech outside Dallas.
According to Ana Ceballos, a Los Angeles Times correspondent who is serving as the print pool reporter on the trip, the van she was in reached 98 mph at one point during the drive.
We are still waiting for Donald Trump’s second rally speech of the day, at the Choctaw Event Center in Durant, Oklahoma.
According to a reporter traveling with the president, the event has been delayed by bad weather, which has forced Trump to drive there from his previous stop in Denton, Texas, rather than fly by helicopter.
The two locations are at least 90 minutes apart by car, so we might be waiting a while for Trump to join Mike Mazzei, the Republican candidate for Oklahoma governor who has spoken already.
The rally crowd is currently being treated to a Guns N’ Roses cover of Live and Let Die, according to a local news station’s livestream of the rally. Trump’s White House was criticized for using that song at rallies in 2020, as he downplayed the threat of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Oregon governor's race neck and neck, new poll suggests
In what is shaping up to be a good midterm for Democrats in most of the US, the governor’s race in Oregon could prove to be an exception.
Republican state legislator Christine Drazan is backed by 46% of voters, according to a new poll commissioned by Oregon Public Broadcasting, as the Democratic incumbent governor Tina Kotek hovered close behind with 44%.
A Republican has not been elected to the state’s top office in over four decades.
Kotek defeated Drazan in the 2022 governor’s race, winning 47% of the vote to Drazan’s 43.5%, and making history as one of the first two openly lesbian governors elected that year, along with Maura Healey of Massachusetts.
That race, however, featured a prominent third candidate, Betsy Johnson, a conservative Democrat, who is not on the ballot this year and took 8.6% of the vote.
As OPB reports, in 2022, Drazan led most public polls through November, only to see her lead collapse in the final days of the contest.
In the current rematch, Drazan has taken Kotek to task over her inability to curb homelessness in Oregon and the recent exodus of major corporate hubs during her tenure. Meanwhile, Kotek has accused Drazan of being more loyal to Trump than to Oregonians.
Trump repeats familiar false claims about Venezuela, the Saudi king and Biden's favorite ice cream
Donald Trump’s remarks in Texas, weeks before the midterm elections his party is in danger of losing, have just concluded with the ritual playing of YMCA.
Trump’s speech veered very far away from a discussion of the virtues of the Republican Senate candidate he was there to praise, Ken Paxton, and devolved instead into a typical rally speech, in which the president recited a number of boasts and false claims that he has made previously.
Among other things unrelated to the Texas Senate race, Trump once again claimed that the Saudi king told him, during his visit to the kingdom in May 2025, that the United States was “dead” during the presidency of Joe Biden.
“American trucking is back. Two years ago, our country was dead. You know, this was said to me by the king, by the leader, by the crown prince of Saudi Arabia,” Trump said.
The president has made this claim, that the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, told him the US was “a dead country” before he returned and instantly made it ”the hottest country in the world”, dozens of times since he returned from Riyadh in early 2025. In fact, a review of video from Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia reveals that he made this remark to the Saudi crown prince in a televised speech, rather than the other way around.
Trump then repeated the complaint he has been making for at least six years: that reporters went so easy on Biden that they repeatedly asked him what his favorite flavor of ice cream was.
“They never used to ask him hard questions,” Trump told the crowd, before recreating what he claimed was a frequent interaction the press had with Biden. “You remember, they’d always say, how many times have you heard them say, ‘what’s your favorite ice cream’? That was the hardest question, ‘Mr President sir, sir, what’s your favorite ice cream’? ‘Vanilla’. ‘Thank you sir’”.
While Biden was frequently seen eating ice cream, and took criticism for dodging questions from reporters, particularly during his term in office, the idea that he was never asked uncomfortable questions by reporters is false – as is the claim Trump makes every time he tells this story, that Biden’s favorite flavor is vanilla.
During his 2020 campaign against Trump, Biden did share a letter sent to him by a young boy who asked what kind of ice cream he liked. Biden replied that the boy should enjoy some “chocolate chip ice cream, my favorite flavor”.
Trump also repeated his false claim that the former Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, had “emptied his prisons into the United States of America. All of his prisoners were emptied into Texas.” There is no evidence that any such thing happened, despite Trump’s repeated claims that it did.
Late in the speech, Trump again repeated his false claim that Paxton’s opponent, Democrat James Talarico, is a vegan – which he again mispronounced as ‘vaygan’.
Trump invents false story about James Talarico, insisting Democrat is a 'vaygan'
In his ongoing remarks in Texas, Donald Trump just told an entirely false story about James Talarico, the Democratic Senate candidate who is challenging Republican Ken Paxton.
As he has in the past, Trump asserted, falsely, that Talarico is a vegan, a word he continues to mispronounce as “vaygan”.
“We got to get this guy elected,” Trump said of Paxton, who is in the crowd. “You got a freak show that’s running against him.”
“You notice the way all of a sudden he’s eating meat,” Trump said of Talarico. “He doesn’t eat meat – he’s a vaygan,” the president said, meaning vegan.
“You know what a vegan is? Vegans don’t do well in Texas,” Trump went on.
“Okay, so now he goes to a barbecue, he eats meat,” Trump said, recounting an entirely imaginary tale for which there is no evidence. “You know what he does after he eats? He says, ‘excuse me’. He goes behind the tent and he throws up. He throws up, he gets rid of the meat. He doesn’t want meat.”
In Texas, Trump insists 'we’re doing great, but I can’t get the word out'
Donald Trump is speaking now at the Peterbilt Motors plant in Denton, Texas.
He just repeated his claim that the US economy under his stewardship is in great shape, even as fuel prices spike due to his war on Iran, and consumer sentiment craters as inflation persists.
The president repeated his claim that he is doing a great job as president but suffers only from bad public relations.
“We have the greatest numbers of any president in the history of our country, and I can’t get the word out,” Trump told autoworkers. He then ran through what he called statistics that point to his success.
“We have the best poverty numbers, the lowest numbers on poverty in the history of our country,” Trump said. “The stock market is through the roof. And why that’s good is your 401 K’s are higher than they’ve ever been before. And it’s never been close. So we’re doing great. But I can’t get the word out.”
Donald Trump has not taken the stage yet, but he arrived at the Peterbilt Motors plant in Denton, Texas about 20 minutes ago and has been touring the facility.
According to the print pool reporter who arrived just after the president, a handful of protesters were outside with signs, including two that read: “Release the Epstein files” and “$5,000 doesn’t buy my vote”.
'They love you there, Mr President,' conservative reporter tells Trump of Oklahoma
The White House refused to let CNN travel with Donald Trump to Texas and Oklahoma on Thursday, but the president did stop to take some questions from reporters who were permitted to fly with him on Air Force after landing in Texas.
The exclusion of CNN meant that video of the president’s brief exchange with reporters on the tarmac was posted on social networks by the White House and two outlets, Real America’s Voice and One America News, that are openly partisan in their support of Trump and were invited to cover him, alongside non-partisan journalists from Reuters, NPR and the Los Angeles Times.
When he approached the traveling press corps, Trump called on Taylor Mitchell of the far-right Real America’s Voice, which was created to host Steve Bannon’s podcast, to ask him the first question. She invited him to share his talking points about the economy.
The president then turned pointed to Alexandra Ingersoll, the far-right One America’s News White House correspondent, to ask the next question.
“Mr President, diesel prices have indeed started to trend downward even from last week,” Ingersoll said. “How do you plan to underscore the message of the growth that we’ve seen this term, in your in your remarks?”
“Thank you for the question, really, I appreciate it,” Trump replied. “The question is- I wish more people would ask that question. We have great numbers. We’re doing a great job”.
Later in the brief exchange, there was an even more obvious example of how soft the coverage of Trump can be when his aides pick the reporters who are allowed to ask him questions.
“What do you have to accomplish tonight in Oklahoma?” a reporter asked.
“Just a speech; we’re going to give a speech on how well we’re doing”, Trump replied.
“They’re excited to see you, Mr President,” a member of the pool told him. “You won every county in Oklahoma, 77 counties. You won all all of those counties in Oklahoma, all of them. They love you there, Mr President.”
The brief gaggle ended with one of the partisan journalists teeing Trump up to hit Democrats.
“Mr President, how deleterious will the Democrats be to the growth that we’ve seen in your term if they take the House and the Senate?” the correspondent asked.
“I think if the Democrats get in, we will end up in a financial depression. We will go into a depression the likes of which we’ve never seen before. It’ll be 1929,” Trump replied.
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South Korea disputes Trump's claim it agreed to fund $54bn Alaska pipeline – report
While we wait for the start of Donald Trump’s remarks in Texas, let’s pause for a moment to note that the government of South Korea on Thursday reportedly denied that it had agreed, as the president claimed with great fanfare on Wednesday, to spend $54bn to build a liquefied natural gas pipeline in Alaska.
In an Oval Office announcement on Wednesday, flanked by Dan Sullivan, a Republican senator facing a tough re-election battle, Trump said that South Korea had agreed to pay to build an 807-mile (1,299km) pipeline to carry natural gas from Alaska’s North Slope to a liquefaction facility on Alaska’s southern coast.
The Korean investment, Trump said, was part of a $200bn package of US projects that South Korea agreed to in 2025 as part of a trade deal in exchange for lower US tariffs on South Korean cars, auto parts and other products.
The White House then released video of Trump touting the investment.
On Thursday, however, the Wall Street Journal reported, the South Koreans insisted that they did not “agree to a specific dollar figure—or even to invest at all.”
South Korea’s industry ministry said that the government had only agreed to “initiate a review” of the pipeline deal.
South Korea’s industry minister, Kim Jung-kwan, took issue with to Trump’s characterization of the country’s Alaska LNG investment. “Putting out figures, or using definitive language, goes far beyond what was agreed,” he said at a briefing for reporters.
Reuters reported that the South Korean industry minister also he had expressed regret to the US commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, over the White House announcement, since it went beyond what had been agreed.
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According to a live video feed from Reuters, a crowd is currently waiting for Donald Trump to arrive at a plant in Denton, Texas that manufactures diesel and electric trucks.
We are relying on the Reuters video because the White House on Thursday again refused to let CNN travel with him to carry out its designated pool camera duties.
The stage is adorned with large banners on either side of a podium that read “American Trucks” and “American Jobs”.
According to a local news report from Fox 4 Dallas, the company, Peterbilt, says that it plans to add more than 1,000 new jobs at the Denton facility as a result of tariffs Trump put in place on trucks made outside the US.
Among those seen on the feed waiting for Trump is Ken Paxton, the Republican Senate candidate who was recently caught on an audio recording admitting that Trump’s midterm convention in Dallas had hurt his campaign. In the audio obtained by the New York Times, Paxton was asked if Trump was “a little bit of a drag” on his campaign against Democrat James Talarico.
Paxton replied: “when we did that convention — it dropped our numbers. Everybody’s numbers dropped.”
Vance rallies Maga base in Florida, slamming Democrat Angie Nixon
Vice-president JD Vance rallied in Lakeland, Florida today, in a county that Donald Trump won by more than 20 points in 2024.
“I would say by the turnout today, it seems very obvious that Florida is Maga country,” Vance said, addressing the crowd and stumping for congressman Byron Donalds, the Republican nominee for governor, and incumbent GOP senator Ashley Moody who is facing a challenge from progressive Angie Nixon, who is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) – but hasn’t been endorsed by the group.
“When Angie Nixon calls herself a socialist, I think the right response is to say, ‘then get the hell out of here, you don’t belong in America,’” Vance said.
During his address, a protestor was removed as he shouted about the war in Iran, high prices and the Epstein files. Vance accused him of people a “clown” and a “Democratic plant”.
“We kicked him out just like we’re going to kick out the rest of the Democrats,” Vance said.
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The Trump administration broke the law when it pushed through a last-minute change to the form overseas citizens use to register and request absentee ballots, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) said in a lawsuit filed on Thursday.
Until recently, the form, the Federal Post Card Application (FPCA), gave overseas voters four options to choose from when describing their geographic location. Voters could say they needed an overseas ballot because they were on active military service, living outside the US with an intent to return, or living outside the US and uncertain about their return. The form also allowed voters to check a box if they were a US citizen who had never lived in the country (38 states and the District of Columbia allow citizens born abroad to vote in at least some elections even if they have never lived in the country).
In August, as the deadline to send out overseas ballots approached, the Pentagon – the agency that oversees the form – submitted two emergency requests to modify the form. Among the changes, the Pentagon sought to eliminate the option allowing voters to say they were citizens who never lived in the US. The requests were quickly approved by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). NPR first reported the changes earlier this week.
“Trump and Republicans are so desperate to hang on to power that they are trying to eliminate the way some American citizens abroad register to vote and request mail ballots. They know that Americans, both at home and abroad, are going to reject their destructive agenda, and they are scrambling to disenfranchise as much of the electorate as possible by any means necessary,” said Ken Martin, the chair of the DNC.
The Pentagon did not return a request for comment.
The changes could confuse and discourage US citizens who have never lived in the country from registering and casting a ballot, experts said.
Read the full report here:
Related: DNC sues Trump administration over last-minute changes to overseas voting form
While en route to a truck manufacturing facility in Denton, Texas, Trump issued another jab to the Biden administration, blaming the former president for high prices, that are the direct result of the war in Iran that Trump began.
He also claimed, falsely, that “prices are way down from what Biden and the Dumocrats left us,” using his pejorative nickname for the party. In fact, inflation is actually higher than when Joe Biden left office in 2025. “Prices are coming down, RAPIDLY. It’s the Dumocrats’ fault, not the fault of the Republicans — But we are fixing it!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
As he headed to Texas today, Donald Trump explained his decision to campaign in two Republican strongholds – Texas and Oklahoma with just over a month until the midterm elections.
“Well, I won all of them by a lot. I’m going there just to make sure,” Trump said, noting that his support for businessman, Mike Mazzei, in Oklahoma’s gubernatorial primary, catapulted him to victory over the state’s attorney general, Gentner Drummond.
The president was also asked about his daughter-in-law Lara Trump’s recent comments that the Iran war could “cost” Trump the midterms.
Instead, the president said the conflict “should help” because Iran “will not have a nuclear weapon”. This despite stalled negotiations, the increasing price of fuel in the US and low approval ratings for the administration’s handling of the war.
“Oil is going to come down very very soon,” Trump added. “Oil is coming down as soon as Iran is finished and they’re finished pretty much right now.”
Here's a recap of the day so far
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The supreme court today said it will review whether the Trump administration can enforce its policy of denying bond hearings for immigrants to determine whether they should remain detained while their cases are adjudicated. The novel move to impose mandatory detention is another feature of Trump’s hardline immigration crackdown during his second term in office, and has now made its way to the top court after several appeals court judges ruled that the policy violated federal law and fails to provide immigrants with due process. More here
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Meanwhile, in a wide-ranging interview with Time magazine, Donald Trump did not rule out the possibility of sending federal immigration agents to polling sites in the upcoming midterms. When asked, the president said: “Haven’t thought of it” and said that he “could” use the Insurrection Act to declare a national emergency. “A lot of people think I should use it sometimes,” he added. However, it’s worth noting that legal experts say the law – which would allow the president to deploy troops domestically – doesn’t override the constitution, which prevents them from interfering with elections and appearing at polling sites.
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The White House has, again, blocked CNN from covering Donald Trump as part of the rotating press pool. The outlet was scheduled to be a part of the group of media traveling to Texas and Oklahoma with the president today, but was removed from list of newsrooms in place for the trip, per the White House schedule. This comes as a Trump-appointed federal judge issued a temporary restraining order against the administration banning CNN, Politico and MS Now from the White House.
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In his Time interview, Trump insisted that he wasn’t defying the judge’s order by still preventing these outlets from covering the president at certain events. “I don’t have to go out of my way, these people write only bad stories,” he said. The White House communications director, Steven Cheung, added that the judge’s order required the president to restore the newsrooms’ access to the White House, “but that’s different than allowing the pool into the events in the Oval Office or on Air Force One”.
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The family of Renee Good, the woman killed by immigration agents in January in Minneapolis, have filed two federal lawsuits against the agent who shot her and several top officials in the Trump administration. In the lawsuits, Good’s partner, Becca Good, and her brother, Brent Ganger, alleged wrongful death and other violations of federal law, according to a press release issued by their lawyers. More here
Updated
Trump administration excludes UK, France and Baltic allies from Nato meeting in Poland - report
The Pentagon is set to host a meeting with several Nato members in Poland next month, however there are notable exclusions. Namely, the UK, France and several Baltic countries, according to Politico.
Citing six unnamed diplomats familiar with the planning, Politico reports that the gathering will be led by Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon’s policy chief, and will be a “working group focused on Nato’s future”.
Neither the White House or Pentagon responded to the Guardian’s request for confirmation or comment.
Along with the UK and France, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are also reportedly not included in the scheduled meeting, despite all of the countries spending significantly on military and defense.
The nations that are set to attend are Norway, Sweden, Finland, Poland, Germany and the Netherlands. Colby has held two similar meetings with the invitees earlier this year.
One of the diplomats interviewed by Politico said that splintering the alliance by hand-picking which countries to include could only add to the already fractious relationship with the US.
“If they try splitting Nato into the good ones and the bad ones, it is dangerous for the US,” they told the outlet. “But for Europe, this is existential.”
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Federal prosecutors in Washington DC can never again charge the former Olympic canoeist David Hearn over damage to the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool, a judge ruled on Thursday, closing a case the US attorney’s office had already conceded it should not have brought.
Judge Todd Edelman, of the DC superior court, dismissed the case with prejudice, siding with Hearn’s lawyers over the office of the US attorney Jeanine Pirro, which had wanted to keep the option of refiling.
Pirro, a Donald Trump ally, publicized the charges at a press conference in July. Later that month her office moved to drop the case, conceding that the damage resulted from flawed installation rather than anything Hearn did.
Trump, who had pressed for the prosecution, told reporters in the Oval Office on 3 August that Pirro had “choked” in abandoning the vandalism charges, and “folded like an umbrella”.
Edelman agreed to the dismissal in August but left open whether it would be with or without prejudice. Prosecutors argued for the latter, which would have allowed a future revival. Hearn’s lawyers countered that the case was politically driven and lacked factual support, and warned of a risk of “harassment and bad faith” if the door stayed open.
Related: Judge dismisses DC reflecting pool damage case against former Olympian
Donald Trump spoke to reporters briefly earlier, as he departed the White House for Texas and Oklahoma.
The president was asked about his comments to Time that Federal Reserve chair Kevin Warsh should’ve voted against the board of governors (which unanimously voted to raise interest rates earlier this month) and whether he had spoken to Warsh since the vote.
“No, I want him to vote the way he wants,” Trump told reporters, adding: “I personally would’ve voted against the raise because we’ve got inflation totally under control … The problem is interest rates will hurt our growth.”
In the Time interview, Trump was asked if he regretted nominating Warsh, to which he skirted: “Well, he’s controlled to a certain extent by the board.”
Asked if he still had confidence in Warsh, the president added:
We have a lot of people on [the Fed board of governors] that would love for our country to do badly. It’s become very political. I don’t blame you, Kevin. I think it’s too bad. Not fair. Look, our nation is going through a growth explosion like no nation’s ever seen. We’re blowing through the interest rates. But if we didn’t have to, it would be great.
Compared to his frequent personal attacks on Warsh’s predecessor, Jerome Powell, over the Fed refusing to cut interest rates, Trump has so far refrained from publicly criticizing his handpicked chair, and instead directed his ire towards the Fed “board” more generally.
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Family of Renee Good sues ICE agent who shot her and top Trump officials
The family of Renee Good, the woman killed by immigration agents in January in Minneapolis, have filed two federal lawsuits against the agent who shot her and several top officials in the Trump administration.
In the lawsuits, Good’s partner, Becca Good, and her brother, Brent Ganger, alleged wrongful death and other violations of federal law, according to a press release issued by their lawyers.
Good was a US citizen and mother of three who, on 7 January, joined her wife in protesting against the deployment of thousands of ICE agents in their city as part of the Trump administration’s mass deportation policy.
The 37-year-old was shot and killed in her car by an agent who claimed he acted in self-defense and the Department of Homeland Security claimed that she had engaged in “an act of domestic terrorism”. Multiple video clips of the encounter, however, show that Good was steering her vehicle away from the agent as she tried to drive away.
Her death and that of Alex Pretti, an American nurse who was also shot and killed by an immigration agent during Minneapolis protests two weeks later, sparked outrage and a wave of anger across the country.
Shortly after Good’s killing, Todd Blanche, then deputy attorney general, said he saw no grounds for opening a civil rights investigation. Days later, the justice department opened an investigation into the relationship between Becca Good, the deceased’s partner, and protest groups. At least 10 prosecutors resigned following the fatal shootings.
Now, these lawsuits have become some of the first major civil lawsuits filed against Trump’s deportation campaign in Minnesota.
In one of them, the attorneys for Good’s wife and brother allege wrongful death and seek damages for the “immense suffering Renee endured in the final moments of her life and for the profound and permanent losses that her death has inflicted upon her family”.
“The complaint also seeks to recover for Becca Good, who was standing feet from the couple’s vehicle when Ross fired three rounds into it, and she watched her partner die,” the complaint says.
“Peaceful assembly, speech and even dissent are protected rights. However, the government has distorted the exercise of these rights as violence against our republic and acted with extreme and unconstitutional force, causing egregious harm. Many of these illegal uses of force resulted in death – including the death of an American mother of three, Renee Good […] Today’s legal actions demand accountability for countless violations of the law, the Constitution and the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) own rules governing the use of force,” the lawsuit says.
The other lawsuit alleges a conspiracy to interfere with civil rights by senior federal officials and federal immigration enforcement agents, and names Jonathan Ross, the immigration officer who shot Good, the former homeland security secretary Kristi Noem, the White House deputy chief of staff and architect of hardline US immigration policies, Stephen Miller, and former US border patrol officer Gregory Bovino, among others, for their “roles in Renee Good’s death”.
Related: Family of Renee Good sues ICE agent who shot her and top Trump officials
Trump refuses to commit to not demolishing Kennedy Center
Donald Trump also refused to rule out demolishing the Kennedy Center without the consent of Congress. Amid the ongoing high-stakes legal battle over the institution’s name and proposed renovations, the president told Time: “I’m not committing to anything. We’re going to see how it plays out in court.”
He added: “But if I build it, and if I agree that for the rest of my life, I’m going to be putting up $100 million to have it open to people … then I think the Trump administration should be recognized.”
A reminder that Trump has threatened to block proposed renovations to the Kennedy Center and suggested it could be demolished after courts ruled against his bid to rename it the “Trump-Kennedy Center” without congressional approval.
Per my colleague David Smith, Trump has no legal right to demolish the facility, which was established by Congress. Critics say he is acting out of spite because he cannot get his way. Kerry Kennedy, JFK’s niece , said: “Like a child who can’t play with a toy, he wants to stomp on the toy. But this is not a toy. This is the living memorial to a slain president.
“It would be like adding the Trump name to the Trump-Lincoln Memorial or the Trump-Jefferson Memorial or Trump-Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The courts have spoken, he cannot demolish it, he cannot put his name on it and he should be focused instead on his job.”
Trump also said earlier in the Time interview that he would be “willing to save it, but it’s in terrible, terrible shape.”
Attacking the judge who ordered his name to be removed from the facade of the building as a “radical-left Trump hater”, the president added:
Well, why would I want to stick with something that’s going to lose hundreds of millions of dollars, and I’m not even recognized? It’s not me; it’s the administration.
The Trump-appointed board voted for the closure of the facility for two years earlier this month, citing the need for $257m of repairs and renovations. But as David notes in his piece, Democratic congresswoman Joyce Beatty and senator Sheldon Whitehouse have alleged that the proposed closure is a “pretext” to hide a financial “death spiral” caused by artist boycotts and dwindling ticket sales following Trump’s takeover of the center when he returned to office.
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The president remained convinced that Republicans chances of retaining control of Congress this midterm cycle remain strong.
“I think we’ll do OK if I campaign, and I intend to. If I campaign … you don’t give me enough credit. When I campaign, I give people a lot,” Trump told Time. “If I campaign for people, those people are going to win.”
At the GOP midterm convention last month, the president implored voters to “pretend I’m on the ballot”, in an effort to boost turnout. However, many Republican candidates running in battlegrounds where the president’s approval rating has cratered due to animus around Trump’s handling of the economy and ongoing war in Iran.
Trump doesn't rule out sending ICE agents to polls in upcoming midterms
In his interview with Time magazine, Donald Trump did not rule out the possibility of sending federal immigration agents to polling sites in the upcoming midterms.
When asked, the president said: “Haven’t thought of it” and said that he “could” use the Insurrection Act to declare a national emergency. “A lot of people think I should use it sometimes,” he added.
However, it’s worth noting that legal experts say the law – which would allow the president to deploy troops domestically – doesn’t override the constitution, which prevents them from interfering with elections and appearing at polling sites.
Nonetheless, the administration has hinted at the idea of sending militarized federal agents to polls in recent months. In September, homeland security secretary Markwayne Mullin said that ICE officers could be deployed to polling sites across the country “to enforce specific threats”.
“The only reason why we would be at polling places is if there is a threat to that polling place or we’re serving a warrant on someone that we have been actively tracking down,” Mullin said. “ICE’s job is immigration, customs enforcement. That’s their job … if we’re serving a warrant we will be where we need to be.”
Supreme court says it will review whether Trump administration can detain immigrants while they challenge deportation
The supreme court today said it will review whether the Trump administration can enforce its policy of denying bond hearings for immigrants to determine whether they should remain detained while their cases are adjudicated.
The novel move to impose mandatory detention is another feature of Trump’s hardline immigration crackdown during his second term in office, and has now made its way to the top court after several appeals court judges ruled that the policy violated federal law and fails to provide immigrants with due process.
However, those decisions conflict with rulings by the fifth and eighth circuits – which ruled that immigrants accused of illegally entering and remaining in the US must be detained while their deportation cases are pending.
The case that will be part of the supreme court’s docket for the 2026-27 term focuses on Ricardo Aparecido Barbosa da Cunha, a citizen of Brazil, who authorities say he entered the US illegally two decades ago and applied for asylum in 2016 and was granted a work permit.
He sought a bond hearing after an immigration judge determined that his detention was mandatory after his September 2025 arrest. After Barbosa da Cunha sued, a federal judge ordered that be provided a hearing or released. An immigration judge found that Barbosa da Cunha did not present a flight risk or danger to persons or property, and ordered him released on bond. The administration appealed against the decision.
The number of people in immigration detention has shot up since Trump returned to office. It was more than 65,000 in July 2026, up from about 40,000 at the end of Joe Biden’s administration.
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Donald Trump also claimed that “today” was the first he had heard of reports that Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, was warned prior to 7 October 2023 that there would be a likely attack by Hamas.
When Time pushed back, noting that Trump has “access to the highest intelligence”, the president dismissed concerns that Egypt and the United Arab Emirates altered Netanyahu in late September of that year that Hamas was planning a major operation.
“I can’t imagine this,” Trump said. “I don’t think so … I think if he would have known, he would have done something about it. Certainly, he would have had people at least alert.”
However, the president failed to give a clear answer on whether Netanyahu should serve for another term, ahead of Israel’s October elections.
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Trump says that it’s ‘possible’ that strikes on Iran will increase after the midterms
Donald Trump defended the ongoing war with Iran, which appears to have little end in sight after the president rejected the latest ceasefire proposal from Tehran, which he described in his Time interview as “not good enough”.
When asked whether he plans to ramp up bombings on Iran after the midterms, Trump said it was “possible”. The president also dismissed concerns from the Pentagon about munitions shortages as the war enters its seventh month.
“I would say it was mostly fake news,” Trump said. “Some forms of ammunition are a little bit lower than other forms. We have that middle grade and upper middle grade, which is very powerful, which is stronger than it’s ever been before. There is ammunition that President [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy wouldn’t take, but it’s very powerful ammunition.”
Capping off his tirade against the media during his interview with Time magazine, the president made sure to insult CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins, one of the many female reporters Trump has taken aim at during his second administration.
“I can name 100 great things I’ve done. I never get good press. I never get fair press. Doesn’t have to be good. All it has to be is fair,” he told Time. “So at a certain point, you say, ‘what’s the purpose of like this crazy Kaitlan Collins?’ She’s a very average person. She’s the most unhappy young person I’ve ever seen.”
In that same interview, Trump insisted that he wasn’t defying the judge’s order by still preventing these outlets from covering the president at certain events.
“I don’t have to go out of my way, these people write only bad stories,” he said. The White House communications director, Steven Cheung, added that the judge’s order required the president to restore the newsrooms’ access to the White House, “but that’s different than allowing the pool into the events in the Oval Office or on Air Force One”.
If you recall, there is ongoing litigation about the Associated Press’ access to these so-called “intimate spaces” after Trump banned the outlet from them last year for refusing to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America”.
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Trump continues to take aim at media in wide-ranging Time interview
Donald Trump doubled down on his attacks on the outlets he’s trying to ban from the White House in a wide-ranging Time magazine interview.
“I believe in an honest press, but I don’t believe in fake news,” he said, without providing any evidence about the areas of coverage he believes to be incorrect.
The president also said that Timothy Kelly, the federal judge who temporarily blocked the president’s ban on CNN, Politico and MS Now, was “very anti-Trump”. However, Trump actually appointed Kelly during his first term in office. When the Time interviewer reminded the president of this fact, he simply replied: “Yeah, he was. He was. It’s one of those things.”
White House blocks CNN from press pool again, despite judge’s block on ban
The White House has, again, blocked CNN from covering Donald Trump as part of the rotating press pool.
The outlet was scheduled to be a part of the group of media traveling to Texas and Oklahoma with the president today, but was removed from list of newsrooms in place for the trip, per the White House schedule.
This comes a Trump-appointed federal judge issued a temporary restraining against the administration banning CNN, Politico and MS Now from the White House. That block is in place until 8 October, despite officials still preventing CNN from traveling on Air Force One to provide pool coverage over the weekend.
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It’s also worth noting that after wrapping up its legislative agenda yesterday, the Senate is now officially on midterm recess, meaning lawmakers won’t be back on Capitol Hill until after the November elections.
Speaking to Politico, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer projected confidence going into the final stretch of campaigning.
“We have lots of different paths to victory, and we’re not going to turn any of them down,” he told the outlet. Before they left Washington, Democrats also blocked two key Republican bills, one that attempted to introduce a way for datacenters to bear the brunt of high energy costs in their local communities, and another that would ban sitting members of Congress and their families from buying stocks in publicly traded companies.
Democrats pushed back on both pieces of legislation, saying they did not go far enough.
On that note, Donald Trump will begin his day in Washington in closed-door meetings. He’ll then start his day of campaigning to Republican strongholds. First up, the president will be in Denton, Texas, where he’ll tour the Peterbilt truck manufacturing facility at 4pm ET. Then heads to Durant, Oklahoma – which sits just north of the Texas border – to give a speech at 7pm ET.
Trump and Vance hit the campaign trail to support midterm candidates
President Donald Trump and vice-president JD Vance will both hit the campaign trail on Thursday, but they will be heading to heavily Republican areas to shore up lagging enthusiasm in their party ahead of next month’s midterm elections.
Trump will continue his outreach in Texas and Oklahoma today, kicking off what the president said will be a 32-day campaign blitz. Meanwhile, Vance will rally in Florida. Both events mean that the top GOP officials will be stumping in parts of the country where the party would expect glide paths to victory for their candidates – but are now facing tougher races.
Republicans have expressed growing pessimism about their chances in the election, which will determine control of Congress, as the president has repeatedly dismissed concerns about high costs and gas prices as his unpopular war in Iran drags on.
According to Trump, his party’s headwinds are merely a matter of poor public relations about a job he says is well done. “We’re not getting the word out,” he told reporters on Wednesday. “I mean, we’re just not getting it.”
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Democratic senators have accused Donald Trump’s administration of worsening the country’s childcare crisis, warning that rising costs and daycare closures are leaving families with fewer affordable options.
In a letter seen by the Guardian and addressed to Alex Adams, assistant secretary of the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), senators led by Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts argue that federal cuts and changes to childcare programs like Head Start are destabilising an already fragile system.
Childcare costs rose faster than overall inflation in 2025, the letter notes, while the cost of daycare and preschool increased by 3.5% in the year to May 2026.
“American families face skyrocketing child care costs,” the senators write, asserting that rising prices for food, supplies, insurance, rent and utilities are forcing providers to choose between increasing tuition fees and closing.
The letter says more than 400 daycare centres have closed in Oklahoma since November, while more than 300 programmes have shut in Indiana since September last year.
The senators also criticise the administration’s handling of Head Start, the federal programme providing early education and other services to low-income children.
“The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) unlawfully froze program funding for grantees mere weeks after President Trump took office – which forced some Head Start programs to temporarily close and left thousands of the country’s most vulnerable families’ child care with uncertainty – and withheld funding from grantees until they complied with the administration’s rigid requirements,” the letter says.
The letter also highlights an ACF decision in January to freeze $2.4bn in Child Care and Development Fund grants for five states. The freeze was subsequently rescinded after legal challenges, but the senators warned that a similar move could happen again.
Related: Democratic senators accuse Trump administration of worsening childcare crisis
Christa Pike, convicted of murdering a classmate three decades ago, survived Tennessee’s effort to execute her by means of an unprecedented two lethal injections, prison officials said.
This was the state’s first attempted execution of a woman in 200 years. “At one point … she said, ‘my arm feels like it’s about to burst open’,” said Tori Gessner, a news anchor for ABC affiliate WKRN, who witnessed the attempted execution, before adding “then she smiles really big”.
Other journalists present described Pike snoring, exhaling loudly and gasping.
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Xavier Becerra and Steve Hilton, the candidates running to be California’s next governor, clashed Wednesday over taxes, immigration and regulating artificial intelligence in a testy debate held days before voters begin receiving their ballots in the heavily Democratic state.
Hilton, the former Fox News host endorsed by Donald Trump, used the hourlong matchup, hosted by CNN, to argue that Becerra, a former congressman who served as health and human services secretary during the Biden administration, was not actively campaigning and instead taking voters for granted.
“He wasn’t even supposed to be the candidate,” Hilton, 57, said, referring to Becerra’s unexpected success after an unusually wild primary campaign. “I just want to ask every Californian: Aren’t you tired of that?”
Becerra, 68, pitched his experience as an asset, vowing to tackle the state’s punishing cost of living crisis while being a bulwark against the Trump administration’s policies. He accused Hilton of owing loyalty to Trump – and not the state that roundly rejected the president in each of the last three presidential elections.
“If you listen closely, you can hear Donald Trump in that response,” Becerra said of Hilton’s reply to a question about regulating the development of AI.
Related: Steve Hilton, Xavier Becerra clash in testy California governor’s race debate
Americans are unhappy with Trump's economy and rising prices, new poll finds
Americans are deeply frustrated with president Donald Trump’s handling of the economy and rising prices, with most panning his performance and blaming his policies as higher costs threaten his party’s chances in November.
A new poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that only 17% of US adults approve of the Republican president’s handling of the cost of living. Just 26% approve of his handling of the economy overall, marking a new low.
A majority, 65%, of US adults now blame Trump’s policies for persistently high costs more than factors outside of his control, signaling growing weariness over his aggressive use of tariffs and continued unhappiness with the war with Iran.
The dismal numbers come just weeks before midterm elections that will determine whether Republicans maintain control of Congress and while Trump is hitting the campaign trail with an aggressive schedule of rallies.
But Trump - who has asked voters to pretend that he is on the ballot as he tries to bolster turnout - remains deeply unpopular, with even many Republicans faulting him for failing to deliver on promised relief.
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Trump officials abandon effort to investigate election threats, experts warn
The Trump administration has abandoned key security bodies meant to investigate direct threats to US elections by foreign actors and domestic terrorists, according to former officials and a recent report.
While administration officials have been actively focused on unsubstantiated claims of widespread voter fraud by noncitizens, other credible election threats appear to have been overlooked, the officials say.
Between 2021 and 2024, the justice department’s election threats taskforce prosecuted 21 cases, like that of Solomon Peña, a failed candidate for the New Mexico house of representatives who organized shootings at the houses of election officials, or Quintez Brown, who shot up a campaign meeting of Louisville’s mayor.
Democrats and Republicans faced prosecution for harassing, intimidating and threatening elections workers, noted Nikki Fisher, former chief election security officer for the Oregon secretary of state, now the executive director of the Oregon District Attorneys Association.
Since then, the taskforce seems to have gone quiet.
“While officials are being trained to handle threats, the federal deterrent meant to punish the people making them appears to have gone quiet,” Fisher said. “To date, no new cases have been prosecuted, and the DoJ’s election threats taskforce appears to be defunct in practice.”
Related: Trump officials abandon effort to investigate election threats, experts warn
Tennessee governor halts executions after second botched lethal injection attempt this year
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.
Tennessee governor Bill Lee has halted the state’s remaining executions for the rest of the year after officials were unable to put Christa Gail Pike to death yesterday.
Pike, 50, was alive and loudly snoring after the attempted lethal injection and taken by ambulance from the prison, her attorneys said. She was being treated at a hospital, but they said they hadn’t been told about her condition.
She had been scheduled for execution at 10am on Wednesday for the killing she committed at age 18 and would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years.
Governor Lee said that he was halting the one remaining execution for the rest of 2026 and ordered a “comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred.”
“Carrying out a lawfully imposed sentence is among the State’s most serious responsibilities, and the people of Tennessee expect it to be done in a manner that is not only legal and constitutional, but is effective,” Lee said in a statement.
The Tennessee Department of Correction said in a statement that they “followed every step of the State’s lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General’s Office.”
Officials gave Pike two doses of pentobarbital, her attorneys said in court filings late Wednesday. The state’s execution protocol calls for a secondary set of drug syringes to be administered “if the inmate is not deceased” after the first set. It does not spell out what happens if the subject is alive after the second set.
It was the second time this year that Tennessee has been unable to carry out an execution. In May, state officials called off the lethal injection of Tony Carruthers, who was convicted of kidnapping and killing three people in 1994, after executioners tried and failed for over an hour to place an IV to administer pentobarbital.
In other developments:
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The latest in a series of pro-Trump ads the Trump administration is using taxpayer funds to air on television in the run-up to the the midterm elections is a 1-minute spot that celebrates his decision to go to war with Iran.
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Pete Hegseth announced that Elon Musk will co-lead a government project to study the future of warfare, with Palmer Luckey, CEO of the defense tech company Anduril, and Newt Gingrich, the former Republican speaker of the House.
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An internal watchdog said the Federal Reserve mismanaged costs associated with a $2.4bn renovation of its Washington DC headquarters, but noted that no criminal violations occurred, according to a report released Wednesday.
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Trump said South Korea plans to invest about $54bn in a natural gas project in Alaska.
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Xavier Becerra and Steve Hilton, the candidates running to be California’s next governor, clashed Wednesday over taxes, immigration and regulating artificial intelligence in a testy debate held days before voters begin receiving their ballots in the heavily Democratic state.
