US news | The Guardian

Republicans have ‘nothing to run on’ in midterms after Trump failures, Jeffries says

2 hours agoCenter Left

Top House Democrat says US president ‘failed to deliver’ on campaign promises to lower costs and avoid overseas warsDonald Trump’s Republican party has “nothing to run on” for the congressional midterm elections after the president broke promises to lower costs and avoid starting war overseas, Hakeem Jeffries has said.The House minority leader, a New York congressman, made those comments on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, exactly 100 days from the 3 November midterms, when Jeffries and his fellow Democrats are aiming to take control of the US House and Senate from their Republican opponents. Continue reading...

Read Full Story at Source

Compare Perspectives

Found 8 stories

Trump is right: Give Saudi Arabia nuclear tech before China does

Washington Examiner

11 minutes ago

Trump is right: Give Saudi Arabia nuclear tech before China does

The announcement of the proposed U.S. agreement to help build Saudi Arabia’s civilian nuclear energy program on July 22, in the midst of the U.S. war on Iran, indicates that both Washington and Riyadh have concluded, from the perspectives of their respective vital national interests, it’s time for a reset of the 80-year-old U.S.-Saudi strategic […]

Center Right

Read →

Trump Says He Believes in Giving People a 'Second Chance.' For 6,000 People, the Answer Was No.

Reason.com

17 minutes ago

Trump Says He Believes in Giving People a 'Second Chance.' For 6,000 People, the Answer Was No.

The administration this month denied thousands of clemency applications.

Center Right

Read →

GOP Louisiana Sen John Kennedy Says Bailing on Iran War Would Be A ‘Huge, Huge Mistake’

The Daily Caller

20 minutes ago

GOP Louisiana Sen John Kennedy Says Bailing on Iran War Would Be A ‘Huge, Huge Mistake’

‘I support the president in Iran. We all need to do a better job messaging’

Right

Read →

Trump's own DEA blows up his drug war claims as smugglers adapt

Raw Story

21 minutes ago

Trump's own DEA blows up his drug war claims as smugglers adapt

A previously unreported Drug Enforcement Administration assessment has undercut one of President Donald Trump's signature claims about his military campaign against drug traffickers.The Washington Post reported that the DEA assessment, as well as a closed-door congressional briefing and interviews with current and former officials, showed months of deadly strikes on suspected smuggling boats have done nothing to reduce the flow of cocaine into the United States.“Smugglers have adapted to the intensified pressure,” DEA analysts wrote. “Price and availability have not been noticeably affected.”Cocaine's price and purity in the U.S. have remained essentially unchanged since Operation Southern Spear began in September, the assessment found. Traffickers, rather than being deterred, have simply changed course — swapping go-fast boats for larger vessels that hug the coastline, leaning more heavily on clandestine aircraft routes through Colombia and Venezuela, and in some cases bribing officials for warning of U.S. ship movements.The findings directly contradict Trump's repeated assertion — made publicly more than a dozen times — that the strikes have slashed maritime drug trafficking by 97 percent to 98 percent. DEA analysts instead reported that early disruptions to smuggling routes reversed within months, with prices and availability returning to normal.At least 221 people have been killed in strikes on more than 67 boats since September, drawing criticism from legal analysts who call the attacks extrajudicial killings. The White House has defended the strikes as both lethal deterrence and a demonstration of resolve, while acknowledging traffickers have shifted tactics.“When you squeeze the balloon on one side, it always expands on the other side,” one DEA official told the Post on the condition of anonymity. “They always find the weak spots and exploit them.”A senior Colombian security official said the strikes have had only a limited effect, pushing more cocaine through legitimate ports and onto stockpiling ships instead.The strikes may also be undermining the U.S. government's own investigative capacity. Informants who once fed intelligence to build cases against trafficking networks are reportedly being pulled from the field, out of fear they could be killed in a strike.Meanwhile, the broader supply picture looks worse, not better. A recent United Nations report found global cocaine production at record highs, with cultivation and manufacturing having surged over the past decade. Research has tied that boom directly to rising U.S. overdose deaths — deaths that experts say are driven far more by production at the source than by what's intercepted at sea.Administration officials defended the strikes as necessary and effective.“These measures have not only eliminated narcoterrorists themselves, but also discouraged bad actors from trying to smuggle drugs into our country should they meet the same deadly fate,” said White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly. “President Trump is using every tool at his disposal to save lives from the scourge of illicit narcotics, and any suggestion that these efforts have not been effective are laughable.”

Far Left

Read →

Trump allies quietly advising GOP candidates to distance themselves from him as polls sink

Raw Story

44 minutes ago

Trump allies quietly advising GOP candidates to distance themselves from him as polls sink

Republican candidates are quietly getting advice from President Donald Trump's own circle ahead of November's midterms to break with the administration and stop talking about the Iran war the way he does, according to a report.MS NOW White House correspondent Jake Traylor reported the shift Sunday on "Alex Witt Reports," saying strategists close to the president are telling incumbents and challengers alike to create daylight between their message and Trump's. The president has insisted the nearly five-month conflict is going well, even as it drags on and he weighs whether ending it outright could blunt the political damage to his party."They're encouraged to actually put some distance and space between the way Trump talks about the war and the way they do," Traylor said, in remarks flagged by The Daily Beast. He pointed to consistently negative polling and the sense that Republicans lack a winning strategy on the war heading into the vote.A CBS News/YouGov survey taken July 22-24 found most Americans believe the conflict has been harder than the administration expected, and most say Trump makes the war sound better than it is. Approval of the military action stays underwater. With the midterms roughly 100 days out, the war has collided with rising gas prices and an economy that has become the number Republicans fear most.Fighting has paused in the region, asTrump halted strikes Friday after the top U.S. commander in the Middle East advised that the bombing campaign around the Strait of Hormuz had reached the limits of its effectiveness. Some House Republicans have already broken ranks with the president to rein in the war.One GOP strategist warned that a race that becomes a referendum on Iran is doomed to fail.

Far Left

Read →

Blanche-led DoJ likely to derail Epstein survivors’ pursuit of justice, experts say

US news | The Guardian

1 hour ago

Blanche-led DoJ likely to derail Epstein survivors’ pursuit of justice, experts say

Lawyers predict ‘more suppression and no active investigations’ but victims’ groups determined to continue fightAs Donald Trump’s former defense lawyer Todd Blanche appears poised for confirmation as attorney general, numerous Jeffrey Epstein survivors have sounded the alarm that a US justice department helmed by him would derail their pursuit of justice.In a letter urging Republican senators Thom Tillis and John Cornyn to reject his nomination, these survivors said that Blanche’s handling of the Epstein case as acting attorney general was characterized by misstep after misstep. Continue reading...

Center Left

Read →

Can a Progressive Win in a Purple State? Abdul El-Sayed Wants to Find Out.

NYT > U.S. > Politics

1 hour ago

Can a Progressive Win in a Purple State? Abdul El-Sayed Wants to Find Out.

Michigan’s Aug. 4 primary is a critical front in the fight between Democrats’ progressive and moderate flanks and a preview of the 2028 presidential primary.

Center Left

Read →