Trump hosts GOP senators in Rose Garden amid White House construction work
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news over the next few hours.
We start with the news that president Donald Trump will host Senate Republicans for lunch in the White House’s Rose Garden later today as ongoing demolition work takes place on the building’s East Wing.
A GOP source confirmed the plan for the White House visit to Rollcall, as the president bulldozes on with plans for a new $250m ballroom. The visit also comes amid the partial government shutdown that shows no signs of abating.
Construction crews started demolishing part of the East Wing of the White House to make way for Trump’s planned ballroom, prompting widespread criticism on social media and beyond. One former lawmaker even called the renovation an “utter desecration”.
The Washington Post, which obtained and published photos of the demolition activity and cited two eyewitnesses, reported on Monday that demolition was under way, and shared an image showing construction in progress and parts of the exterior ripped down.
Other images, including ones seen in the New York Post, also show demolition of parts of the East Wing. The White House did not respond to a request for comment from the Guardian.
On his Truth Social platform on Monday, Trump said “ground has been broken on the White House” to build the new ballroom.
Read our full story here:
In other developments:
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President Donald Trump claimed a key victory in a US appeals court Monday as a divided three-judge panel decided he is allowed to deploy federal troops to the city of Portland, Oregon. Trump had claimed the right to send the national guard to the liberal stronghold for the purported purpose of protecting federal property and agents. The ruling marks an important legal victory for Trump as he continues to send military forces to Democratic-led cities.
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Oregon governor Tina Kotek, has called on a federal appeals court to review and overturn a decision made by a three-judge panel on Monday that would permit Trump to deploy federalized national guard troops to the streets of Portland against the wishes of state and local officials. Kotek said she hoped the full ninth circuit court of appeals vacates the panel’s 2-1 decision, as the dissenting judge, Portland-based Susan Graber, urged her colleagues to do.
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Former FBI director James Comey formally asked a federal judge to dismiss criminal charges against him, arguing he was the victim of a selective prosecution and that the US attorney who filed the charges was unlawfully appointed.
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The US government shutdown extended into its 21st day on Tuesday with no resolution in sight, as a prominent Republican lawmaker publicly broke ranks with party leadership over the decision of Mike Johnson, the House speaker, to keep Congress shuttered for weeks.
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Trump reposted an AI-generated video of him flying a fighter plane emblazoned with the words “King Trump” and dumping brown sludge onto protestors, in what appears to be a retort to the widespread No Kings protests that took place Saturday against his second presidency.
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Trump welcomed Australian PM Anthony Albanese to the White House, signing a rare earth minerals deal. It came amid rising trade tensions with China, which tightened its rare earth exports and is facing a 100% tariff threat from the US.
Key events
In a short while, we’ll hear from House Republican lawmakers as the government shutdown enters day 21, one of the longest on record.
There isn’t a vote scheduled in the Senate on the stopgap funding bill that has failed 11 times in the upper chamber.
However, Senate majority leader John Thune told reporters on Monday that it may be time for the House to consider returning to work in order to pass another resolution, considering the original bill would only keep the government funded until 21 November. “Every day that passes, we’ve got less time to fund the government,” Thune said.
Trump says ‘end to Hamas’ will be ‘fast, furious and brutal’ if fighting continues
In a post on Truth Social, the president said that several allies in the Middle East have told him they would “welcome the opportunity” at Trump’s request to go into Gaza “with a heavy force” and “straighten our Hamas” if they “continue to behave badly”.
This comes after the 11-day ceasefire in Gaza was seriously undermined on Sunday when Israel launched waves of deadly airstrikes and said it would cut off aid into the territory “until further notice” after a reported attack by Hamas, which the militant group denied being involved in.
“There is still hope that Hamas will do what is right. If they do not, an end to Hamas will be FAST, FURIOUS, & BRUTAL! I would like to thank all of those countries that called to help,” Trump wrote today, reiterating his threat on Monday, when he said that Hamas would be “eradicated” if they did not “behave”.
JD Vance meets with top envoys in Israel
Vice-president JD Vance touched down in Tel Aviv a short while ago. He then caught up with special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner for about two hours.
He is currently taking part in private briefings with members of the Israeli military, according to the press pool traveling with the vice-president.
Vance will hold a press conference at 11am ET/6pm local time. And tomorrow he’s set to meet with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
My colleagues, who are covering the latest developments in the Middle East, report that Gaza’s health ministry said in its latest update that the bodies of 13 people were brought to hospitals across the territory in the last 24 hours. It said eight people had been injured over this time period.
This means that at least 68,229 Palestinian people have been killed and 170,369 others injured in Israeli attacks on Gaza since 7 October 2023.
Republican senators indicate they won’t confirm Paul Ingrassia to special counsel role
Some Republican senators have said they don’t support Paul Ingrassia’s nomination to lead the Office of Special Counsel, ahead of his confirmation hearing on Thursday.
A reminder, Politico reported on Monday that Ingrassia told other Republicans he “has a Nazi streak” and that holidays commemorating Black people should be “eviscerated,” in a private group chat.
Senate majority leader, John Thune, told Politico that Ingrassia is “not gonna pass”. While Republican senator Rick Scott of Florida, told reporters that he would not support the 30-year-old Trump ally.
Politico also reported that James Lankford, the Republican senator from Oklahoma, has “tons of questions” for Ingrassia, adding he “can’t imagine supporting that”.
Donald Trump will be in Washington today. At 11am ET, he’ll take part in a ceremony for the Richard Nixon Architect of Peace Award. This will be in the Oval Office and closed to the press, but we’ll let you know if that changes.
Then, he’ll host a lunch in the Rose Garden, where we can expect Senate Republicans to attend. This, on day 21 of the government shutdown.
At 4pm ET, the president will take place in a Diwali celebration also in the Oval Office, before hosting another function in the Rose Garden at 7pm ET.
A retired member of the US navy who alleges to have lost thousands of dollars meant for his dying dog when the Donald Trump-freed George Santos defrauded him says he now views the president as a “walking middle finger”.
Richard Osthoff’s emotional comments on Monday on MSNBC’s Chris Jansing Reports came three days after Trump commuted Santos’s seven-year, three-month prison sentence, which was given to the former New York representative in connection with federal fraud charges.
Osthoff has previously accused Santos of raising $3,000 on the GoFundMe platform in 2016 to benefit the military veteran’s dying service dog, Sapphire. But Osthoff said Sapphire ended up dying after Santos kept the money for himself – accusations that never led to criminal charges.
Santos has previously called “reports that I would let a dog die … shocking and insane” and denied wrongdoing in a text to the outlet Semafor.
Santos made history in 2022 as the first out LGBTQ+ Republican elected to Congress. He was later exposed for having lied prolifically about his biography, and a House ethics committee detailed how Santos used campaign funds for personal travel, cosmetic treatments and luxury goods.
He ultimately was expelled from Congress, pleaded guilty to wire fraud and identity theft, reported to a federal prison in New Jersey in July, and served three months of the sentence given to him before Trump commuted the punishment on Friday. The commutation from Trump – who won a second presidency in 2024 despite a criminal conviction of falsifying business records – set the stage for Santos to be released from prison on Saturday.
“He lied like hell,” Trump said of his fellow Republican to Newsmax. “But he was 100% for Trump.”
CIA playing ‘most important part’ in US strikes in the Caribbean, sources say
Aram Roston
The Central Intelligence Agency is providing the bulk of the intelligence used to carry out the controversial lethal air strikes by the Trump administration against small, fast-going boats in the Caribbean Sea suspected of carrying drugs from Venezuela, according to three sources familiar with the operations.
Experts say the agency’s central role means much of the evidence used to select which alleged smugglers to kill on the open sea will almost certainly remain secret.
The agency’s central role in the boat strikes has not previously been disclosed. Donald Trump confirmed last Wednesday that he had authorized covert CIA action in Venezuela, but not what the agency would be doing.
The sources say the CIA is providing real-time intelligence collected by satellites and signal intercepts to detect which boats it believes are loaded with drugs, tracking their routes and making the recommendations about which vessels should be hit by missiles.
“They are the most important part of it,” said one of the sources. Two sources said that the drones or other aircraft actually launching the missiles used to sink the boats belong to the US military, not the CIA.
Information the agency gathers against any of the alleged smugglers – dead or alive – is likely to remain classified and out of public view. That is in spite of the worldwide public interest and debate over the killing of civilians.
The agency’s intelligence, unlike information gathered by the DEA or the Coast Guard, which used to handle maritime interdiction operations against smugglers, is not designed as legal evidence.
Peter Stone
US district and appeals courts are increasingly rebuking Donald Trump’s radical moves on tackling crime, illegal immigration and other actions where administration lawyers or Trump have made sweeping claims of emergencies that judges have bluntly rejected as erroneous and undermining the rule of law in America.
Legal scholars and ex-judges note that strong court pushback has come from judges appointed by Republicans, including Trump himself, and Democrats, and signify that the administration’s factual claims and expanding executive powers face stiff challenges that have slowed some extreme policies.
Among the toughest rulings were ones this month by Judge Karin Immergut in Oregon and Judge April Perry in Chicago. Both district judges sharply challenged Trump’s plans to deploy national guard troops to deal with minimal violence that Trump had portrayed as akin to “war” zones, spurring the judges to impose temporary restraining orders.
Immergut, whom president Trump nominated for the court in his first term, rejected Trump’s depiction of Portland as “war-ravaged”, and in need of saving from “Antifa and other domestic terrorists” concluding that the “president’s determination was simply untethered to the facts”. But a court of appeals ruled on 20 October that Trump could send national guard troops to the city.
Elsewhere, district judge William Young in Boston issued a scathing 161-page ruling last month calling some of Trump’s deportation policies illegal efforts to deport non-citizen activists at colleges in violation of their first amendment rights “under the cover of an unconstitutionally broad definition of antisemitism”. Young was nominated by Ronald Reagan.
Some former appeals court judges say that the district courts and courts of appeals are responding appropriately to a pattern of unlawful conduct by Trump and his top deputies.
Rachel Leingang
A Donald Trump nominee who is scheduled for a confirmation hearing this week told other Republicans he “has a Nazi streak” and that holidays commemorating Black people should be “eviscerated,” according to a report based on a private group chat.
Trump nominated Paul Ingrassia to serve as special counsel of the United States, a role charged in part with safeguarding federal whistleblowers from retaliation. His confirmation hearing is set for Thursday.
Politico reported on Monday that Ingrassia told other Republicans in a group chat that the Martin Luther King Jr holiday, which celebrates the civil rights icon, should be ended.
“MLK Jr was the 1960s George Floyd and his ‘holiday’ should be ended and tossed into the seventh circle of hell where it belongs,” Ingrassia wrote in the messages from early 2024, Politico reports. He also wrote that holidays commemorating Black people, such as Black history month or Juneteenth, should all be “eviscerated”, though he used an Italian slur for Black people.
His comment about a “Nazi streak” came amid a discussion of a Trump campaign staffer who wasn’t being deferential enough to the founding fathers being white, Politico reported. Another participant said Ingrassia “belongs in the Hitler Youth”, to which Ingrassia responded: “I do have a Nazi streak in me from time to time, I will admit it.”
Donald Trump has strongly endorsed the Aukus pact and praised prime minister Anthony Albanese as a “great” leader, but the president’s navy secretary says the US may seek to “clarify some ambiguities” in the nuclear submarine deal.
Trump and Albanese also signed a multibillion-dollar agreement for Australia to supply the United States with critical minerals, amid a deepening trade war as China threatens to cut its supply of rare earth elements. But the president also downplayed any prospect of cutting tariffs on Australian goods.
“We do actually have a lot of submarines. We have the best submarines in the world, and we’re building a few more currently under construction, and now we’re starting we have it all set with Anthony [Albanese],” Trump said.
“We’ve worked on this long and hard, and we’re starting that process right now. I think it’s really moving along very rapidly, very well … we have them moving very quickly.”
In a wide-ranging 35-minute press conference at the White House before his first formal meeting between the pair, Trump assured the future of Aukus and said America had no better friend than Australia, but told ambassador Kevin Rudd “I don’t like you” after his former comments about the president were brought up.
In comments nearly entirely positive about Australia and his relationship with the prime minister, Trump did not repeat previous demands for Albanese’s government to raise defence spending, and Albanese suggested Trump visit Australia for the President’s Cup golf tournament to be held in Melbourne in 2028.
Joseph Gedeon
One of the longest government shutdowns in US history just got longer after the Senate again failed to pass a funding resolution after a majority of Democrats continued their pressure campaign after the No Kings nationwide weekend protests.
The Senate vote fell for the 11th time with a vote of 50 to 43, with no new defectors from the Democratic side.
Mike Johnson, the House speaker, has for weeks kept the House shuttered on an extended recess, and defended his strategy as necessary to push Senate Democrats into passing the House’s continuing resolution without policy additions. But Democrats have refused to support the measure without provisions addressing healthcare subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, which are set to expire at the end of the year.
Johnson, in a Monday morning press conference flanked by other Republican congressional leaders including Andy Harris, the House freedom caucus chair, said the reason for the shutdown was to appease Democratic voters, particularly putting blame on the No Kings rallies.
“It is exactly why Chuck Schumer is pandering, in this whole charade. We’ve explained from the very beginning, the shutdown is about one thing and one thing alone: Chuck Schumer’s political survival,” Johnson said.
The stuffed vote also came after a prominent Republican lawmaker, representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, on Monday morning criticized Johnson’s strategy, calling on the House to return to session immediately.
Sam Levine
Former FBI director James Comey has formally asked a federal judge to dismiss criminal charges against him, arguing he was the victim of a selective prosecution and that the US attorney who filed the charges was unlawfully appointed.
“The record as it currently exists shows a clear causal link between President Trump’s animus and the prosecution of Mr Comey,” Comey’s lawyers wrote in their request to dismiss the case, calling a 20 September Truth Social post in which he disparaged Comey and called for his prosecution “smoking gun evidence”. They continued: “President Trump’s repeated public statements and action leave no doubt as to the government’s genuine animus toward Mr Comey.”
Comey’s lawyers attached an exhibit to their filing on Monday, which contains dozens of public statements from Trump criticizing Comey.
Comey was indicted on 25 September with one count of making a false statement and one count of obstructing a congressional proceeding. The charges are related to Comey’s September 2020 testimony before Congress, and are connected to Comey’s assertion he had never authorized anyone at the FBI to leak information. The precise details of the offense have not been made public and Comey has pleaded not guilty. He has forcefully denied wrongdoing.
Charges were filed against Comey even though career prosecutors in the justice department determined that charges were not warranted. Trump forced out Erik Siebert, the US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia, in September and installed Lindsey Halligan, a White House aide. The Comey charges were filed days later.
US appeals court could reconsider ruling in Trump’s favor on Portland troop deployment
Victoria Bekiempis
A decision in Donald Trump’s favor by a three-judge panel issued on Monday, which lifted a block on his planned deployment of Oregon national guard troops to Portland, could be reconsidered by a new, larger panel of federal appeals court judges.
Hours after the three-judge panel decided, 2-1, that Trump has the legal authority to deploy federalized troops to Portland, a judge on the ninth circuit court of appeals formally requested “a vote on whether this case should be reheard” by a larger panel of judges.
That triggered a formal order for lawyers for the state of Oregon and the city of Portland to submit written briefs arguing for a rehearing, and lawyers for the Trump administration to argue against it, by midnight on Wednesday.
After those briefs are submitted, all 29 active judges on the appeals court, the country’s largest, will vote on whether or not to rehear the case.
Oregon’s governor, Tina Kotek, said that she hopes the full ninth circuit court of appeals vacates the panel’s 2-1 decision, as the dissenting judge, Portland-based Susan Graber, urged her colleagues to do.
“I’m very troubled by the decision of the court,” Kotek told reporters. “I still urge the Trump administration to send all the national guard members home.”
If the vote for a new hearing wins, legal journalist Chris Geidner said, the case will be heard again by 11 judges, including the court’s chief judge, Mary Murguia, an Obama nominee, and 10 randomly assigned judges.
Americans blame Republican lawmakers more than Democratic lawmakers for a partial government shutdown, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll that also showed Republican president Donald Trump’s approval rating increasing slightly.
The six-day poll, which closed on Monday, showed Trump’s approval at 42%, up two percentage points from earlier in the month, within the poll’s two-point margin of error. Trump’s rating has held between 40% and 44% since early April.
The poll found that 50% of respondents see the Republican congressional leadership as deserving the most blame for the shutdown, while 43% see top congressional Democrats as the main culprits. The third-longest government shutdown in US history entered its 21st day on Tuesday.
The shutdown started on 1 October and has left hundreds of thousands of federal workers on furlough, hitting a sliver of the workforce in what economists see as a tiny drag on economic growth, though many Americans are feeling the shutdown via a wave of air traffic delays.
About one in five poll respondents said they have been financially impacted by the shutdown, while two in five said they know someone who is feeling the pinch, Reuters reported.
President Donald Trump’s hopes for a quick summit in Budapest with Russian president Vladimir Putin stalled after a preparatory session between the leaders’ top foreign-policy aides this week was put on hold, CNN reported on Monday.
Citing sources familiar with the matter, CNN said the reason for postponing the meeting between US secretary of state Marco Rubio and Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov was unclear. One source cited differing expectations about ending Russia’s war in Ukraine, CNN said.
Rubio and Lavrov may talk on the phone again this week, CNN reported, after the two held a call on Monday that Moscow called “constructive.”
Russia’s foreign ministry could not immediately be contacted outside business hours.
The anticipated meeting between Rubio and Lavrov was considered to be the key preparatory step for the second summit this year between Trump and Putin. The two leaders agreed in a phone call last Thursday to meet soon in Budapest, Hungary.
Trump hosts GOP senators in Rose Garden amid White House construction work
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news over the next few hours.
We start with the news that president Donald Trump will host Senate Republicans for lunch in the White House’s Rose Garden later today as ongoing demolition work takes place on the building’s East Wing.
A GOP source confirmed the plan for the White House visit to Rollcall, as the president bulldozes on with plans for a new $250m ballroom. The visit also comes amid the partial government shutdown that shows no signs of abating.
Construction crews started demolishing part of the East Wing of the White House to make way for Trump’s planned ballroom, prompting widespread criticism on social media and beyond. One former lawmaker even called the renovation an “utter desecration”.
The Washington Post, which obtained and published photos of the demolition activity and cited two eyewitnesses, reported on Monday that demolition was under way, and shared an image showing construction in progress and parts of the exterior ripped down.
Other images, including ones seen in the New York Post, also show demolition of parts of the East Wing. The White House did not respond to a request for comment from the Guardian.
On his Truth Social platform on Monday, Trump said “ground has been broken on the White House” to build the new ballroom.
Read our full story here:
In other developments:
-
President Donald Trump claimed a key victory in a US appeals court Monday as a divided three-judge panel decided he is allowed to deploy federal troops to the city of Portland, Oregon. Trump had claimed the right to send the national guard to the liberal stronghold for the purported purpose of protecting federal property and agents. The ruling marks an important legal victory for Trump as he continues to send military forces to Democratic-led cities.
-
Oregon governor Tina Kotek, has called on a federal appeals court to review and overturn a decision made by a three-judge panel on Monday that would permit Trump to deploy federalized national guard troops to the streets of Portland against the wishes of state and local officials. Kotek said she hoped the full ninth circuit court of appeals vacates the panel’s 2-1 decision, as the dissenting judge, Portland-based Susan Graber, urged her colleagues to do.
-
Former FBI director James Comey formally asked a federal judge to dismiss criminal charges against him, arguing he was the victim of a selective prosecution and that the US attorney who filed the charges was unlawfully appointed.
-
The US government shutdown extended into its 21st day on Tuesday with no resolution in sight, as a prominent Republican lawmaker publicly broke ranks with party leadership over the decision of Mike Johnson, the House speaker, to keep Congress shuttered for weeks.
-
Trump reposted an AI-generated video of him flying a fighter plane emblazoned with the words “King Trump” and dumping brown sludge onto protestors, in what appears to be a retort to the widespread No Kings protests that took place Saturday against his second presidency.
-
Trump welcomed Australian PM Anthony Albanese to the White House, signing a rare earth minerals deal. It came amid rising trade tensions with China, which tightened its rare earth exports and is facing a 100% tariff threat from the US.
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