This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown is largely targeting people from the countries most vulnerable to displacement from climate-driven disasters, a Guardian analysis shows. As the Trump administration pushes policies to boost planet-heating fossil fuels, millions of people are being forced to flee their homelands due to […]
The Trump administration’s Epstein investigator is getting his shot at running U.S. national intelligence.The president’s nominating process to replace Tulsi Gabbard took a sudden right turn Thursday when he named Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, as his permanent director of national intelligence.“Few people anywhere in the Legal Community are respected at the level of Jay. I encourage the United States Senate to confirm Jay as soon as possible,” Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social.Clayton has previously worked as a partner at Sullivan & Cromwell, providing counsel on corporate crisis management. He was also an adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s law school. He was handed his role atop the Southern District of New York without any prosecutorial experience, and seemingly does not have any relevant experience to run America’s national security operation, either.The president had initially tapped Bill Pulte, a national real estate developer serving as the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, to temporarily serve in Gabbard’s stead. But Pulte—who similarly had no relevant experience for the job—became a point of contention with lawmakers, who argued that his appointment, even just as acting DNI, was effectively illegal as his résumé lacked requirements for the job that had been written into the law.To prevent Pulte becoming permanent DNI, Democrats blocked efforts to renew FISA Section 702, a statute that allows federal agencies such as the NSA and the CIA to surveil people without warrants, but that is set to expire Friday.It is not yet clear how Clayton will change opinions—or the written requirements. Why the White House singled him out as an exceptional candidate to satisfy the administration’s agenda is far less murky.Clayton has passed countless litmus tests proving his loyalty to the MAGA movement. He has seeded doubt in America’s election integrity, claiming as recently as Monday that there is a “deep problem with voting in America.” He has also defended Trump’s $1.8 billion taxpayer-bankrolled slush fund for the president’s aggrieved political allies, arguing with CNBC last month that Trump was entitled to “recourse” after a government contractor leaked his tax returns.“Anybody whose tax returns have been intentionally leaked should have recourse against the government,” Clayton said.And Clayton unquestioningly did the president’s bidding with regard to his appointment to the SDNY, probing Jeffrey Epstein’s social connections—so long as they tied back to former Democratic President Bill Clinton, former Obama administration adviser Larry Summers, and Democratic donor Reid Hoffman. Later, Clayton was handed an additional Trump administration priority in overseeing the investigation into Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, despite his dubious financial ties to the cases.It is not clear how quickly the Senate will move to confirm Clayton’s confirmation. Among other steps, Clayton still has to fill out a detailed questionnaire, undergo an FBI background check, and sit for a public hearing before the upper chamber conducts its final vote.This story has been updated.
A chorus of Senate and House Republicans broke sharply with President Donald Trump Thursday over his escalating threats to Iran, with one loyalist invoking the specter of Vietnam and others warning the conflict will cost them in the midterm elections.The complaints grew louder within hours after Trump threatened to seize Kharg Island, a critical Iranian oil hub, in the latest of a string of statements that have whipsawed allies and adversaries alike — and for many Republican lawmakers, it was a threat too far, reported CNN."I don't support boots on the ground. I don't think America has the stomach for that," said Rep. Nick LaLota (R-NY), who declined to rule out backing a formal congressional vote to refuse to authorize the conflict — a move that would put him on a collision course with party leadership.The sharpest warning came from Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA), one of Trump's most reliable allies on Capitol Hill, who said he was "worried" about the Kharg Island plan and offered a blunt historical parallel that few in his party have been willing to voice."This is how it started in Vietnam," Kennedy said, while also acknowledging the steep economic toll the conflict is already exacting on American households.That toll is rapidly becoming the central anxiety for Republicans facing voters in November. Gas prices and inflation are spiking again, and many lawmakers say the White House has badly mishandled its messaging — a frustration compounded by Trump's recent remark that he "loves" inflation, which drew open bewilderment from members of his own party."Makes absolutely no sense to me," said Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX). “The fact that we’re not talking about or focused on the things that most people care about at election time, kitchen table issues, I think, is a problem.”Even Republicans who support the war agree the president and his administration have not done a great job explaining why it's necessary, and that could hurt GOP congressional candidates this fall."People often vote their pocketbook," said Rep. Kevin Cramer (R-ND). "If people don’t feel secure financially, they oftentimes obviously respond by choosing somebody else.”
Should a desperate Donald Trump sign off on the latest deal with Iran that led him to call off a major attack late Thursday, he would suffer a “major humiliation” based on leaked details.That is according to Insider editor Michael Weiss, who appeared on MS NOW’s “Morning Joe” on Friday morning and claimed that the president has come to the realization that he was duped into the whole endeavor.Pointing out that the president has announced an imminent deal is at hand countless times, co-host Joe Scarborough asked, “Why do we keep hearing the same thing over and over and over again when the Iranians have rejected this deal time and again, and hardliners in America have rejected this deal?”Weiss replied, “I mean, I just want to read you — Iran's Mehr News Agency put out their version of this deal. Now, again, underscore we ... don't know if this is going to be the memorandum of understanding. But in their version of the deal they get $300 billion in reconstruction money, $24 billion in a cash infusion, half of which will come before the negotiations begin.”“Remember, this isn't a deal, this is an agreement to keep talking and an extension of a cease-fire. There's nothing new in here,” he elaborated. “Again, the Iranian version that talks about the missile program or financing or arming terrorist proxies like Lebanese Hezbollah.”“I mean, this would be an utter humiliation. I could see why Trump would want JD Vance to go to a signing ceremony instead of Donald Trump,” he laughed.He continued, “If this is any pale shade of what this thing is going to look like — look, I think he knows he's being had. He knows he's been abased by a regime that shouldn't exist by his lights, right? We were going in to do regime change. The Israelis certainly thought we were going to do regime change. We were going to arm the Kurds. We were going to install Ahmadinejad, a Holocaust-denying former president, as our preferred satrap."All of these plans came to dust, and he just wants out of it. I think [MS NOW’s] Jonathan [Lemire] is right: he's got buyer's remorse. He thinks he's been sold a bill of goods. He probably has been. And he just wants this thing over and done with. He's already looking at Cuba.” - YouTube youtu.be
President Donald Trump is planning to hassle Congress to expunge his impeachments.The president is trying to get Republican lawmakers to remove his impeachments from the record even though legally such a move is impossible, reported The Wall Street Journal’s Annie Linskey, Olivia Beavers and Natalie Andrews on Thursday.“It should be done because I did nothing wrong,” Trump told the Journal. “It was a rigged deal—it was a whole rigged situation.”The Journal noted that this could backfire, saying “Any move to attempt to erase the two impeachments, in 2019 and 2021, would open up a debate about Trump’s past behavior in office, forcing GOP lawmakers to relitigate charges of abuse of power, obstruction of Congress and inciting an insurrection. Facing the prospect of losing their majority in the House, Republicans are trying to shift focus to the economy and high costs, the issues that voters care about most.”Yet even though “the measure likely wouldn’t be considered until after the November election,” the issue could still become a political lightning rod. “Trump has posted news clips about voiding the impeachments on his Truth Social account,” the Journal reported. “But this week, he played down his own role in the effort. ‘If they want to do it, I’m honored by it,’ the president said.”The Journal added that House Speaker Mike Johnson (R—LA) has discussed the resolution with Trump. He has also discussed it with Harvard law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz“I think it makes a lot of sense the more the evidence comes out, the more we know they really were sham impeachments,” Johnson told the Journal, later adding that “we were saying it at the time, now we know. And they make a very compelling case that it should be expunged from the record, because it was a hyperpartisan attack job.”Speaking with this journalist for Salon in 2019, Dershowitz — who later defended Trump during one of his impeachment trials — denied that he would ever refuse to step down if he lost an election, which is what prompted the impeachment at which Dershowitz did not represent Trump.“No president will refuse to step down if his opponent is elected in his place,” Dershowitz told Salon. “It just will not happen, and the American public would never tolerate it.”Discussing the Wall Street Journal, CNN’s correspondents agreed that Trump’s attempt to scrub the impeachment is both purely symbolic and likely to resurrect the Ukraine coercion and election denying scandals that prompted those impeachments in the first place. - YouTube youtu.be
President Donald Trump is obsessed with undoing two of the biggest public humiliations that still haunt him from his first term and is demanding Congress act on it, but according to one political expert who spoke with The i Paper, it will be a pointless win if successful.Trump is the only president in U.S. history to have been impeached twice: once in 2020 for attempting to extort Ukrainian leaders for dirt on the Biden family, and again in the final days of his first term in 2021 for his part in inciting the Jan. 6 Capitol riots. While he was acquitted by the GOP-controlled Senate each time — meaning that he was not removed from office and was not barred from seeking reelection — these impeachments still weigh heavily on his mind, and he remains anxious about a third impeachment should Democrats regain power in Congress in the upcoming midterms.This week, reports emerged that Trump and his administration are pushing Congress, where Republicans control both chambers for now, to pass a measure that would attempt to void his two impeachments, with a White House spokesperson calling them "sham efforts" and "shameful."“I think it makes a lot of sense the more the evidence comes out, the more we know they really were sham impeachments,” House Speaker Mike Johnson told the Wall Street Journal about the idea. “We were saying it at the time, now we know. And they make a very compelling case that it should be expunged from the record, because it was a hyperpartisan attack job.”Despite this push, experts have stressed that this measure, if it somehow managed to pass, would be a purely symbolic and largely pointless endeavor, as Trump can never erase the fact that he was impeached twice. Dr. Carla Winston, a senior lecturer on international relations at the University of Melbourne in Australia, said as much in a conversation with The i Paper, noting that it is especially useless, given that Trump was never convicted in the Senate."A repeal of the impeachment vote might be legally possible, but it wouldn’t alter the original impeachment happening in the first place," Winston explained. "The actual practical effect of an impeachment by the House is to set up a trial in the Senate … but since the trial did not end in a conviction, there really is no legal effect to void or nullify."She noted further that this whole push from Trump is just another part of his obsession with building his legacy president, which has also led him to slap his name on famous buildings and remodel Washington D.C., in his own image."Trump’s approval rating is already near historic lows, and voters are not enamored of his other efforts to build his legacy,” Winston added. “These include the destruction of the East Wing of the White House for a ballroom, illegally adding his name to the Kennedy Center, the proposed ‘victory arch’ in Washington DC and putting his signature and possibly face on money.”
The White House quietly installed a "babysitter" to keep Robert F. Kennedy Jr in check amid terror the vaccine-sceptic is about to help tank the GOP's midterm performance, a report claimed Friday.The secretary of health and human services' most powerful aide has been installed to keep Kennedy from going off the rails, several Democrats told Politico.Chris Klomp was elevated to chief HHS counselor in February, effectively becoming Kennedy's second-in-command with authority over both personnel and policy at the Department of Health and Human Services. "Klomp's speaking role at White House events and his presence behind the secretary at every hearing would seem to bear that out," a Democratic Senate aide told Politico about claims that Klomp was actually installed as a minder.The aide added that several senators suspect Klomp was promoted "to babysit RFK because the White House doesn't trust him" and because Kennedy's vaccine policies and other unorthodox beliefs are unpopular.Klomp has directly overseen major personnel decisions — including selecting a pro-vaccination doctor to lead the CDC over Kennedy's preferred anti-vaccine pick. He's the one who told Trump about the CDC nomination. He negotiated 17 drug-pricing deals that earned him a personal shoutout from the president, and he sat behind Kennedy at every one of seven congressional hearings in April.One Kennedy ally didn't mince words, telling Politico that Kennedy "is more of a figurehead," while Klomp functions as the real chief operating officer."Chris Klomp has been unbelievable, a real star," the president said in April. "You don't know his name as much as some of the others, but he's a real star of the group."But not everyone is impressed. A former senior HHS official told Politico that Klomp was undermining Kennedy and making unilateral personnel calls. "He's out of control trying to fire people," the former official said, claiming Kennedy wasn't even aware of some of his moves.Trump's chief of staff Susie Wiles is reportedly "mesmerized by Klomp" after Dr. Oz — his first boss at HHS — vouched heavily for him. "Oz would say he's a genius," the former official said.HHS pushed back on the figurehead characterization, calling it "demonstrably false" and insisting Kennedy "is actively engaged in the decisions shaping HHS." An administration official told Politico Klomp "doesn't make decisions without the secretary's sign-off."
Trump canceled new Iran strikes and signaled that a peace deal could come soon, but Iran says it hasn't been finalized. And, the U.S. men's soccer team plays its first 2026 World Cup match today.
