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Donald Trump is still trying to stiff E. Jean Carroll, according to the columnist’s attorney.Roberta Kaplan, Carroll’s lawyer, wrote in a court filing Tuesday that Trump’s legal representative had called her the day prior asking for another delay to the $5 million sum Trump owes the writer. Later Monday, Kaplan said she informed Trump’s team that “Carroll does not consent,” and asked whether Trump would comply with the immediate disbursement of funds.Carroll has a long and unfortunate history with the president. Trump was found liable by a jury in May 2023 for having sexually assaulted Carroll in the mid-1990s, for which she was awarded $5 million in damages. He subsequently lost his defamation case against her the following January, when a judge ruled that Trump had continued to defame the advice columnist by denying the assault on the basis that she wasn’t his “type,” and by accusing her of making up the allegations against him for the benefit of her book. A jury awarded Carroll $83.3 million in that case.But Carroll hasn’t yet seen a dime from either case. In May, a federal appeals court allowed Trump to continue staving off his payments until the Supreme Court decided whether or not to pick up the case. The court made their decision Monday, rejecting Trump’s challenge and allowing the verdict to stand.In a separate filing Tuesday, Kaplan asked a judge to implement an expedited payment schedule for the sum that Trump owes Carroll. She referred to a June 2023 filing in which both parties agreed that Carroll could collect if the Supreme Court refused to hear the case.Kaplan added that, by this point, the $5 million sum had accrued an additional $779,783 in interest, raising Trump’s initial debt to nearly $5.8 million.Nonetheless, Trump has continued to make a target out of Carroll. In May, the Justice Department opened a criminal investigation into the writer, probing whether Carroll committed perjury in her previous cases against Trump.
The New Republic · LeftThe legal arguments are clear. Now proponents need to start defending the practice on policy grounds.
The Atlantic · Center LeftFederal prosecutors to focus on issue despite court backing constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship. Plus: Greek priest whose metal music has become cult smashGood morning.The acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, has said federal prosecutors and law enforcement officers will focus on combating so-called “birth tourism” – which involves tourists, temporary visitors, or undocumented immigrants traveling to the US primarily to give birth and and secure birthright citizenship for their children.What did Blanche say? “There’s other things … the federal government can do in the visa process, and the application process, to try to minimize or limit the opportunity of folks coming here not to visit, and not to do what they’re saying they’re doing on the tourist visa, but just to have a baby that can then be a US citizen. What we have to do as Department of Justice is make sure our agents … and the FBI are focused on stopping that.” Continue reading...
US news | The Guardian · Center LeftThe same day as the Court's ruling, the DOJ told staffers that it will “prioritize the investigation and prosecution of birth tourism schemes.”
TIME · Center LeftPresident Donald Trump has received another setback in his ongoing quest to control U.S. elections. In a 5-4 split, the Supreme Court ruled that mail-in ballots do not need to be received by Election Day to be counted, as long as they were postmarked by then. Although a “rare victory for voting rights,” the conservative justices’ assertion that voting by mail is prone to fraud — a disproven theory that Trump blames his loss in the 2020 election for — is “very disturbing,” says Ari Berman, the national voting rights correspondent for Mother Jones. “My fear is that this is going to embolden Republicans to double down on their efforts to try to get rid of mail voting, including the SAVE America Act, Trump’s sweeping voter suppression bill, which he seems desperate to go to any lengths to try to pass,” says Berman, who also comments on the court’s decision to strike down a federal law limiting campaign spending.
Democracy Now! · Far LeftA celebration of what could have been if the 2024 election had gone differently
Salon.com · LeftOn the eve of July 4, President Trump extolled the nation’s founders while branding his opponents as “communists” in what seemed to be a warm-up for November.
NYT > U.S. > Politics · Center Left
Today America turns 250 years old, and instead of a celebration of the republic those 56 men who signed the Declaration risked the hangman’s noose to create, we’re getting a MAGA rally.Donald Trump has taken the nation’s 250th birthday, the once-in-a-lifetime anniversary that belongs to all of us, and rebranded it as a tribute to himself. He shoved aside the bipartisan “America 250” commission that Congress created a decade ago, stood up his own White House-controlled operation ironically called “Freedom 250,” and steered our taxpayer money toward his own vanity celebration while the congressional commission was left begging for the funds it was promised. He staged a violent, brutal UFC cage fight on the White House lawn to satisfy his own bloodlust. He sent a fleet of eighteen-wheelers loaded with white supremacist PragerU’s cartoon versions of American history rolling across the country. And this weekend, on the same National Mall where Americans once gathered to mourn Lincoln and to hear Dr. King, he’s throwing what he actually called, in his own words, “the most spectacular TRUMP RALLY of them all.”Two hundred and fifty years ago we declared our independence from exactly this. From a man who conflated himself with the country. From a ruler who believed the government, the honor, the lives and sacrifice of generations were his personal property, to be used for his own personal glory and profit.When our nation’s Founders overthrew a king in 1776, they paid a huge price for it. Altogether, seventeen of the fifty-six signers of the Declaration of Independence were wiped out by the war they declared.The signers wrote in the Declaration, “we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor,” and it was a simple statement of fact. The day they signed that document, each legally became a traitor and was sentenced to death for treason by the ruler who controlled their lands and their homes.One the wealthiest of the signers was Thomas Nelson of Virginia, but a year after the signing the British had seized his home and lands. When he and George Washington attacked the British in Nelson’s hometown, he encouraged Washington to attack the Nelson homestead, which British General Cornwallis had taken as his headquarters, with cannons. The house was destroyed, and after the war Nelson, unable to repay loans he’d taken out against it to help finance the Revolution, lost his property; he died in poverty at the age of 50.The wealthy Philadelphia merchant, Robert Morris, lost 150 ships at sea in the war, wiping out his small fortune; he died destitute. Signer William Ellery of Rhode Island similarly lost everything, as did Virginia’s Carter Braxton and Benjamin Harrison, Pennsylvania’s George Clymer, New York’s Philip Livingston, Georgia’s Lyman Hall, and New Jersey’s Francis Hopkinson.The British destroyed New York’s Francis Lewis’ property and threw his wife into such a hellhole of a jail that she died two years later. Three of South Carolina’s four signers — Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., and Arthur Middleton — were captured by the British and held in a filthy, unheated prison and brutally tortured for a year before George Washington freed them in a prisoner exchange.New Jersey farmer John Hart’s wife died shortly after he signed the Declaration, and his thirteen children were scattered among sympathetic families to hide them from the British and conservative loyalists. He never saw them again, dying alone and wracked with grief three years later.New Jersey State Supreme Court Justice Richard Stockton took his wife and children into hiding after he signed the Declaration, but conservatives loyal to the crown turned them in. He was so badly beaten and starved in the British prison that he died before the war was over. His home was looted, and his wife and children lived the rest of their lives as paupers.Altogether, nine of the men in that room died and four lost their children as a direct result of putting their names to the Declaration of Independence. Every single one had to flee his home, and, after the war, twelve returned to find only rubble.They were all willing to fight and die for the idea of democracy in America. Every one of them.So on our 250th birthday — with draft-dodger “Corporal Bonespurs” and his lickspittle Republicans’ corruption and refutation of democracy so painfully obvious — it’s worth asking the question directly, the one this whole grotesque spectacle forces on us:Do the Redcoats (at least in philosophy) once again rule America?Does today’s America reflect the belief that all people “are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” as Hegseth purges our military of Black and female officers? As ICE terrorizes anybody whose skin isn’t white with their “Kavanaugh Stops”?
Guardian readers on celebrating on Independence Day every year – and especially this yearThis Fourth of July, the United States will mark the 250th anniversary of its independence from Britain, a milestone that the Donald Trump administration is commemorating with a series of events and celebrations across the National Mall.The anniversary arrives against a backdrop of civil rights rollbacks, immigration crackdowns and strained international relations. For some Americans, however, the date carries an added layer of significance: it is also their birthday. Continue reading...
US news | The Guardian · Center LeftDonald Trump has kicked off America’s 250th birthday weekend with an attack on the 'communist menace' in America. The US president spoke for half an hour on Friday night at Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, the latest stop on his tour celebrating the milestone anniversary of the US declaration of independence from BritainTrump launches America’s 250th birthday celebrations with partisan attack Continue reading...
US news | The Guardian · Center LeftThe Trump Administration says it will be the largest fireworks show ever
TIME · Center LeftNational Weather Service issued an extreme heat warning as high temperatures have paralyzed the east coastOrganizers of Saturday’s Independence Day parade in Washington DC abruptly canceled the event late on the eve of the event, with sweltering temperatures in the nation’s capital and on the east coast wreaking havoc on celebrations of America’s semiquincentennial.The event, hosted by the National Park Service (NPS), was scheduled to begin at 10.30am on Saturday. But organizers said they canceled the procession due to an extreme heart warning issued by the National Weather Service (NWS). Continue reading...
US news | The Guardian · Center LeftNo presidential distinction rivals having one’s likeness carved onto Mt. Rushmore — an honor destined to elude Donald Trump, though his allies have pushed for it.
NBC News Politics · Center Left
Severe weather threatened to put a damper on Friday on President Donald Trump's plans to speak near Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, prompting amusement from internet critics who said it seemingly indicated "god is angry."Trump was flying to South Dakota as part of a broader July 4 and America-250 trip, planning to visit the iconic American landmark for an Independence Day fireworks celebration. But Mother Nature, it seems, had other plans. A severe thunderstorm warning was in effect until 7:30 p.m. Eastern Time for the area, with quarter size hail that could damage vehicles reported by the National Weather Service. "Seek shelter inside a well-built structure and stay away from windows. This storm is capable of producing large hail," an alert on the weather service read.The weather alert forced Fox News to scramble, with host Bret Baier telling viewers they had breaking news."They just said there is severe weather on the way. In fact, they said hail could be coming, and they are urging everybody to get inside," said Baier, adding: "We're going to get to shelter."The setback prompted mockery from onlookers, with Ron Filipkowski, editor-in-chief of the progressive MeidasTouch news outlet, quipping on X, "God is angry."Dan Koh, a Massachusetts Democrat running for Congress, chimed in on X, "Considering Trump wants to cut the National Park Service budget by 40% and Mount Rushmore has a $57m repair backlog, you better run."The progressive influencer account known as Polly Sigh added: "Calamitous weather seems to follow Trump around these days. Mother Nature is so over him."Writer Joe Flood joked, "damn antifa!"Trump has had mixed luck with weather in recent weeks, with scorching temperatures and rain derailing his Great American State Fair.Fox at Mount Rushmore: They just said there is severe weather on the way. In fact, they said hail could be coming and they are urging everybody to get inside. We're going to get to shelter. pic.twitter.com/hyfc0nPghU— Acyn (@Acyn) July 3, 2026
Raw Story · Far LeftIn a speech at Mount Rushmore on Friday evening, the US president claimed a resurgent ‘communist menace’ posed a severe threat the countryDonald Trump has kicked off America’s 250th birthday weekend with an extraordinary partisan attack on what he called the “communist menace” in America, framing its supporters as “the enemy of July 4th, 1776”.The US president spoke for half an hour on Friday night at Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, the latest stop on his tour celebrating the milestone anniversary of the US declaration of independence from Britain. Continue reading...
US news | The Guardian · Center LeftAn unfinished ode from 1876 offers a lesson for America’s 250th.
The Atlantic · Center LeftTrump also called on Congress to end the filibuster and pass the SAVE America Act, a voter suppression bill.
Truthout · Far LeftPardons issued to nine people charged with violating Clean Air Act as extreme heat smothers much of USDonald Trump on Friday issued pardons to 11 men – two convicted fraudsters and nine charged with having violated the federal Clean Air Act by disabling or otherwise modifying trucks’ emissions controls.Those executive pardons – coming amid US semiquincentennial celebrations blanketed in extreme heat exacerbated by greenhouse gas emissions – were among a broader wave of acts of clemency from Trump during his second presidency, chiefly for those he considers to be aligned with him. Continue reading...
US news | The Guardian · Center LeftA heat wave in Washington, D.C., is making attendance at President Trump’s July 4 festivities even worse.U.S. Capitol Police have already restricted Thursday night’s rehearsal for “A Capitol Fourth Concert” to essential personnel, posting on X that they came to the decision after consulting with the Capitol’s Office of the Attending Physician.“For safety reasons, the public will not be able to attend tonight’s rehearsal concert,” the post read. “Everyone is sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused. The National Weather Service is forecasting an extreme heat watch with temperatures exceeding 100 degrees.”The post added that an update will come Friday by 10 a.m. on the status of the full concert, which is scheduled to take place from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. Friday night.Similar warnings are hitting the Great American State Fair; organizers have already had to cancel a rodeo demonstration scheduled for Thursday night. Attendance at the fair overall has been depressed, and some visitors are complaining about the weather. U.S. Trade Representative Jameson Greer had an audience of maybe 25 people when he spoke about tariffs on the main stage Thursday afternoon.Many booths at the fair don’t have air conditioning, leading at least one visitor to overheat. She told a reporter she finally found relief at a baptism tent, where she took a dip to cool down.Great American State Fair goer tells our @JenDelgadoFOX many of the booths she went to today didn't have air conditioning, she overheated, said she saw stars and needed medical attention -- found the baptism tent and took a dip to cool down pic.twitter.com/Smufj0GN8g— Homa Bash (@HomaBashNews) July 2, 2026Even without the heat, the fair is coming across as tacky, with empty booths and a lack of energy. The food is expensive, reviews are abysmal, and people aren’t coming, enraging the president. When it hasn’t been hot, it’s been raining. America’s 250th anniversary was already going poorly thanks to Trump, and now the weather may cement the once-in-a-lifetime event’s status as a failure.
The New Republic · Left
In its 6-3 Trump v. Slaughter ruling released on Monday, June 29, the U.S. Supreme Court's GOP-appointed supermajority decided that President Donald Trump enjoys considerable power when it comes to his ability to fire members of independent regulatory agencies. The ruling rejected the High Court's Humphrey's Executor v. United States precedent of 1935, and Peter M. Shane — a scholar at the New York University School of Law — views Trump v. Slaughter as a major "triumph" for a "radical" far-right doctrine known as the "unitary executive theory."The unitary executive theory, promoted by many MAGA Republicans, favors a very powerful executive branch for the federal government. But critics of the theory, including conservative New York Times columnist David French, see it as unconstitutional and anti-checks and balances.The "Slaughter" in Trump v. Slaughter was Rebecca Slaughter, who Trump fired from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The High Court ruled that Trump was well within her right to fire her.Shane is highly critical of the Robert Court's Trump v. Slaughter ruling, which he sees as a recipe for presidential overreach."In the words of Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote for the majority, the FTC 'unquestionably exercises executive power, and must therefore be controlled by the Chief Executive, in whom such power is vested,'" Shane explains. "As a result, he said, Rebecca Slaughter 'served as the President's subordinate at the FTC — and that the President was entitled to cut her tenure short.' In so concluding, the Court explicitly overruled the unanimous 1935 decision Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, which held exactly the opposite with regard to the same agency…. The Court's decision extends to all independent regulatory agencies, not just the FTC. Its central premise is that the president is constitutionally entitled to control all exercises of executive power — the 'unitary executive theory.'"Shane continues, "Roberts defined 'executive power' as broadly as is possible: 'When an agency executes a congressional mandate against private parties,' he wrote, 'it exercises executive power — no ifs, ands, or quasis about it.' Because all of the regulatory agencies created by Congress issue rules and orders that affect private parties, they all would appear to exercise executive power within the Roberts definition."Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a Barack Obama appointee, was among the three dissenters in Trump v. Slaughter — and Shane shares her concerns. "It is not hard to imagine how a creative president could use his newfound control over all agencies," Shane writes. "As (Justice Neil) Gorsuch points out, giving presidents unfettered control over the specialized agencies allows a retributive chief executive to launch attacks on his opponents from multiple directions…. A Court tilted against regulation has positioned itself as the ultimate, nondeferential arbiter of when legal challenges to the president are even permissible and whether those challenges have merit. The Court can also tell Congress if measures the legislative branch thought 'necessary and proper' to constrain the executive went too far."Shane continues, "Justice Sonia Sotomayor is certainly correct in stating that 'the result' of Slaughter 'is a President who emerges with far greater power than ever before.' One might, however, say the same about the Roberts Court itself."
Last year, The Atlantic reported that President Donald Trump had queried advisers about putting the delicate original copy of the Declaration of Independence on display in the Oval Office. “Trump’s request alarmed some of his aides, who immediately recognized both the implausibility and the expense of moving the original,” The Atlantic’s Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer wrote. “Displayed in the rotunda at the National Archives Building in Washington, D.C., it is perhaps the most treasured historical document in the U.S. government’s possession.”Trump eventually settled for displaying a copy, but the document has clearly been on the administration’s mind—perhaps predictably so, given the semiquincentennial celebrations Trump will soon preside over. It was announced in April, for instance, that a limited edition of passports this year would feature John Trumbull’s iconic painting of the draft declaration’s presentation to Congress alongside the text of the declaration—with Trump’s portrait overlaid on top of it, naturally.Trump has spent much of his second term symbolically grasping for the kind of monarchical deference most Americans believe the declaration was written to reject. In February 2025, for instance, the White House posted on social media an image of Trump wearing a crown and captioned it “LONG LIVE THE KING.” But substantively, the depravity of this administration’s policies has mattered more and angered more. And in surveying them, more than a few commentators, some here at The New Republic, have noted that the transgressions of Trump’s presidency bear an uncanny resemblance to the very grievances against Britain listed in the declaration. Trump’s unilateral demolition of federal agencies and programs, the biographer Stacy Schiff and Mother Jones’s David Corn and Tim Murphy have written alike, certainly recall the declaration’s charge that King George III had “refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.” The charge that George III had “endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners” also works as a précis of the administration’s immigration policy. “Cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world,” “imposing Taxes on us without our consent,” “transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences”—as Schiff writes, “for many who read the litany today, the resonance is unmistakable.”The text of the declaration is the arena we return to, time and again, to debate America’s purpose and American identity. In recent decades, its self-evident truths have been flattened into truisms—innocuous clichés, available to all, that commit our leaders to vanishingly little.True as all this may be, one needn’t refer to the Declaration of Independence for reasons why Trump is unfit to govern. And the declaration did more than separate us from the impetuous king about whom it offered a handy list of complaints. Exactly how much more, of course, has been contested throughout our history—the text of the declaration, it might be said, is the arena we return to, time and again, to debate America’s purpose and American identity. In recent decades, its self-evident truths have been flattened into truisms—innocuous clichés, available to all, that commit our leaders to vanishingly little. Those who signed it 250 years ago understood the possibility that they had condemned themselves to death. Today, the Declaration of Independence is the safest, most sterile ground in American rhetoric. But it needn’t be. The declaration and its history are instructive because they offer us reasons not only to resist would-be kings, but to make our own claims against the systems that foist would-be kings upon us. The declaration, even today, can be read as an invitation to a task that presses upon us as or more urgently than the cause of independence did: to “alter or to abolish” the systems destroying our country and our world.As the conflict that would eventually be called America’s Revolutionary War began—and as many Americans today would likely be surprised to learn—the overwhelming consensus even among America’s patriot leaders, a radical minority of the Colonial population, was that British parliamentary monarchy remained the greatest system of government ever devised, and that King George III bore little to no responsibility for the Colonial policies that had angered them. It was wayward parliamentarians, “wicked Ministers and evil Counsellors,” John Jay had written to mainland Britons on the First Continental Congress’s behalf in the fall of 1774, who had trampled on the colonists’ rights as British subjects, and the remedy was a return to the British constitutional order as the colonists understood it, not a break from it.And in a pattern that seems to recur throughout American history, delegates were sent to the Continental Congress with explicit and futile instructions to heal the growing divide any...
The couple had an array of celebrity guests, including Gigi Hadid and Bradley Cooper, and Adam Sandler officiated their nuptialsTaylor Swift and Travis Kelce are officially wed. The couple hosted their wedding celebration on Friday in New York City, nearly three years after first meeting.The ceremony was officiated by Adam Sandler, a Swift spokesperson said in a Friday statement confirming the nuptials. Continue reading...
US news | The Guardian · Center LeftMy adrenaline was pumping, and I had more or less learned how to use my ejector seat, but the flight was really a reminder of France’s role in securing American independence 250 years ago.
NYT > U.S. > Politics · Center LeftThe first American-born Pope urged the U.S. to continue "welcoming, protecting and assisting immigrants."
TIME · Center LeftAmerica's 250th birthday is nothing like its bicentennial
Salon.com · LeftAttendance had been thin to Trump’s ‘unbelievable’ event before an increase on Friday – and then the high temperatures swept inEven by Trumpian standards, the event was promoted with intense hyperbole: nothing short, the US president suggested, of the “the most unforgettable birthday party any country has ever seen”.“It’s gonna be great,” Donald Trump proclaimed on the opening night of the Great American State Fair, the centerpiece of the US 250th anniversary celebrations. “It’s gonna be unbelievable.” Continue reading...
US news | The Guardian · Center LeftChristina Aguilera, Chris Stapleton and Jelly Roll — real stars — headline July Fourth parties in liberal towns
Salon.com · LeftIn a speech marking America’s 250th anniversary, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani rejected President Donald Trump’s view of the nation, and especially its immigrants, without naming him directly.
NBC News Politics · Center LeftThe US superstar golden couple Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are finally tying the knot in a rumoured major event in New York’s Madison Square Garden. The couple – who got engaged 10 months ago, announced via an Instagram post that received 14m likes in its first hour online – held an intimate rehearsal dinner at MSG with a rumoured guest list of 1,000 for today’s ceremony and construction of a custom-made fairytale castle inside.But with tight security, NDAs and New York streets on lockdown – what do we know? Lucy Hough speaks to Guardian writer Elle Hunt Continue reading...
US news | The Guardian · Center LeftThe couple were married in a star-studded ceremony at Madison Square GardenFull report: Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce marry at New York City’s Madison Square Garden Continue reading...
US news | The Guardian · Center Left
