#trump + #politics

Donald Trump’s state department intends to allocate $12m to organisations in the UK founded by the prominent Conservatives

They include $7m for 878, a “leading British and American think tank” devoted to “the rediscovery of our ancient culture” and “ending mass immigration”.

On Wednesday, German chancellor Friedrich Merz responded to the prospect of grants to Maga-aligned groups in Berlin by saying: “I do not ‌want the American government or institutions close to the government to interfere in German ⁠elections.”

A state department spokesperson said that the DRL grants would “continue to undergo the Department’s standard and rigorous vetting process by grant professionals” and that decisions were still under “active deliberation”. They added: “Our foreign assistance programming is aligned to support our strategic priorities. “

The grants are part of a broader shift that has caused dismay among veterans of the state department. In interviews, five former officials suggested that there has been a months-long effort by Trump-aligned individuals in the state department to subvert normal funding procedures and allocate US taxpayer money to conservative and Maga-aligned causes in the UK and Europe.

A former US official who reviewed the allocations called the lack of procedure around them “outrageous and absurd”.

“Sole source awards require significant legal justification to avoid required competitive processes,” they said.

“They are usually given to entities with unique capabilities that are hard to find elsewhere. But in this case I would argue that these entities are being funded to subvert legal and competitive processes.”

Another said that the sole source grants laid out in the document amounted to “horrible stewardship of US taxpayer money.”

The plans are laid out in a congressional notification seen by the Guardian, which documents how the state department intends to spend a sum of money that was allocated last year to a branch of the state department called the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL).

878 has yet to list any specific initiatives, but says that it is focused on “mass migration”, “warfighting” and “rejuvenating energy abundance for urgent re-industrialisation”, as well as “Judeo-Christian culture”.

In the midst of a social crisis, Vance observed, Trump offered “an easy escape from the pain. To every complex problem, he promises a simple solution.” But, he argued, such promises were a cheap high. “He never offers details for how these plans will work, because he can’t. Trump’s promises are the needle in America’s collective vein.” Anne Applebaum: Trump’s anti-patriotic trap “Trump is cultural heroin,” Vance wrote. “He makes some feel better for a bit. But he cannot fix what ails them, and one day they’ll realize it.” “One day” is today. The trump presidency, while still quite dangerous, is also collapsing, cracking under the weight of its own choices. The main driver is the economy, which he sold as his strong point. We’re seeing tariff-driven price increases, gas prices that spiked from less than $3 to more than $4 a gallon during a 100-day war against Iran that America lost, wages failing to keep pace with the cost of living, and inflation ticking back up. Manufacturing jobs, which Trump promised to bring roaring back, are still being lost. Health care has gotten much more expensive on his watch, and millions have lost coverage. At the top of the nation’s health agencies sits Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who in a single year moved to cut the list of recommended childhood vaccines nearly in half, fired the government’s vaccine advisers and replaced them with skeptics, and presided over the worst measles outbreak in 30 years. The National Institutes of Health, the crown jewel of American biomedical science, has seen billions in research cut, clinical trials canceled, and labs closed, resulting in a “brain drain” that rival nations are racing to exploit. And the dismantling of USAID, along with the gutting of PEPFAR—the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, the bipartisan AIDS-relief program credited with saving more than 25 million lives—has, by credible estimates, already cost the lives of hundreds of thousands, most of them children, with projections of as ma

This is the context in which Americans are celebrating the nation’s 250th birthday. It’s not simply that things are going badly; it’s that their view of the United States is darkening. Pride in being an American has hit a new low. Nearly 80 percent of Americans believe the Founders would be disappointed with how the country has turned out.

Some of that sentiment reflects the fact that the president and those around him subvert the rule of law, decency, and democratic restraints. Many Americans believe the country is, in its current incarnation, betraying its ideals. They feel at odds with the nation they love.

Which brings me back to J. D. Vance. Ten summers ago he understood, better than most, the threat Trump posed to America. Vance, who described himself as a “Never Trump guy,” thought Trump was an “idiot.” He admitted to a friend at the time that he goes “back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he’s America’s Hitler.” But then ambition made its offer, and Vance, who had seen the danger so clearly, discovered he could see his way around it. The first stop was the Senate; the next was the vice presidency.

The remedy, according to Lincoln, was a “political religion” based on reverence for the law and fidelity to America’s constitutional process. Lincoln was in turn relying on the wisdom of George Washington, and particularly Washington’s farewell address. America’s two greatest presidents shared an intense conviction: that a republic depends on some measure of virtue in its citizens and some measure of integrity in its leaders. Without them, the temple of liberty will fall. The past decade in America has been a lost decade. Far too many Americans have cheered on the men tearing at the temple. But Americans can now see, later than they should have, the cost of the damage. It is within our power to make it whole. What remains is to find the will. There is a name for those who do: renewers of ruined cities, repairers of the breach, restorers of streets in which to dwell.

Although instances of noncitizen registration and voting are rare, the SAVE America Act’s goal of ensuring that only citizens can register to vote is important. But there are easier, more cost-effective ways to improve citizenship verification that don’t create new barriers for eligible voters.

Registration and voting attempts by noncitizens are routinely investigated and prosecuted by the appropriate authorities, and there is no evidence that attempts at voting by noncitizens have ever been significant enough to impact any election’s outcome. In fact, there is ample evidence to indicate that registration and voting by noncitizens is few and far between.

Utah, for example, performed a citizenship review of its entire voter registration list from April 2025 through January 2026. After a time-intensive, multi-step review of more than 2 million registered voters, they identified only one confirmed instance of noncitizen registration and zero instances of noncitizen voting.

Additionally, many state election offices began using U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ (USCIS) Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program in 2025 to verify voter citizenship. Records from this program show that just 0.04% of voter verification cases are returned as noncitizens.

Many eligible citizens don’t have documentary proof of citizenship

According to the U.S. Department of State, examples of primary citizenship evidence include a birth certificate, a U.S. passport, a Consular Report of Birth Abroad, a Certificate of Citizenship, or a Naturalization Certificate. (While Real IDs are often assumed to be a reliable proxy for citizenship, they do not definitively establish citizenship.) 

Although at least one of these documents are in theory available to most citizens, not all voters have them readily available. According to recent studies:

9% of all eligible voters do not have, or do not have easy access to, documentary proof of citizenship. 52% of registered voters do not have an unexpired passport with their current legal name. 11% of registered voters do not have access to their birth certificate. Additionally, birth certificates often lack information that matches a person’s current identity. For instance, someone who has changed their name through marriage or court order may need to present a third document (such as a marriage certificate) to join their proof of citizenship (e.g., birth certificate) with their proof of identity (e.g., driver’s license), further decreasing the likelihood that a voter will have the appropriate documentation on hand to successfully register.

Even if voters were to provide documentary proof of citizenship, verifying the authenticity of those documents is an inherently complex task, one that election officials and motor vehicle departments often do not have the resources or training to perform.

Kansas offers a case study of how a documentary proof requirement would likely play out in practice. Before the law took effect, noncitizen registration in Kansas was exceedingly rare, accounting for about 0.002% of registered voters. After adoption, the documentary proof of citizenship requirement prevented roughly 31,000 eligible citizens, or 12% of all applicants, from registering to vote. In short, the law prevented far more citizens from registering to vote than noncitizens.

He said that although a prohibition on mail-in voting with exceptions and other requests made by Trump could be included, the “bigger reach” is to hone the bill to focus on providing proof of citizenship when registering to vote and the presentation of photo ID before casting a ballot — the core components of the bill. “That eliminates the problem, all the fraud and everything that everybody’s concerned about in our elections, particularly, frankly, in these blue states,” Johnson said.

There is a long and sorry history of political operatives trying to trick Americans out of voting. In 2008, these tactics were focused on voters in battleground states. In Philadelphia, fliers distributed and posted in a West Philadelphia neighborhood claimed that any violation as simple as an unpaid parking ticket would render people ineligible to vote and subject to arrest at the polls. In southern Virginia and at George Mason University in the northern part of the state, official-looking fliers “informed” voters that, because of projected high turnout, Democrats should wait and vote on November 5, the day after the election.

The U.S. has a long history of mail voting. Large-scale use of mail ballots originated during the U.S. Civil War, when some soldiers were allowed to vote remotely after absentee voting laws were passed in their home states. Today, mail voting is widely used around the world, with more than 30 countries—including Switzerland, Germany, and South Korea—allowing voters to cast ballots by mail.

Mail ballots are widespread across the United States. For example, in 2024 alone, the U.S. Postal Service processed over 99.2 million mail ballots.

Several studies indicate that certain forms of mail voting can increase voter turnout. A 2009 study for the Pew Charitable Trusts found that no-excuse absentee voting increased voter participation by about 3 percentage points in comparison to states with excuse absentee voting, when controlling for other factors that may impact turnout.

First, we find that cases of fraud involving any form of mail ballots were very rare. Across the entire country, and utilizing a maximally inclusive estimate, between six and 46 cases of mail voting fraud were identified in each general election. To calculate the percentage of mail voting fraud in a given year, we divided the total number of mail voting fraud cases by the total number of mail votes cast for each general election. We find an average total mail voting fraud percentage across the 2016, 2018, 2020, and 2022 general elections of only 0.000043%, or about four cases of mail voting fraud out of every 10 million mail votes.

Although the database we utilized self-identified as “not…comprehensive,” we have reason to believe that this limited scope did not meaningfully distort our overall findings. The News21 database, which is among the most extensive databases of its kind currently publicly available, includes over 2,000 cases, of which we found 1,605 related to alleged voting fraud between 2000 and 2012. That averages to roughly 134 cases per year. Even if we assume this same case rate persisted for the four general elections examined, and assume the 134 cases of voting fraud were all mail voting fraud,8 that would still translate to only about 2.5 cases of mail voting fraud per 1,000,000 mail votes. This indicates that, even under assumptions that greatly inflate the frequency of mail voting fraud, the resulting probability of fraud remains negligible.

President Trump told a conservative podcaster this week that he wants Republicans to "take over the voting" in 15 states in order to "nationalize" the 2026 midterm elections, raising concerns that he may try to defy the Constitution and interfere in ways that would benefit his party.

"The Republicans should say, 'We want to take over,'" Trump declared in an interview with Dan Bongino, his former deputy F.B.I. director, on Monday. "We should take over the voting, the voting in at least many — 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting."

The president did not explain what he meant by 'nationalizing the voting," nor did he say which states he had in mind. But he went on to claim that it was necessary for the GOP to seize control because "people were brought to our country to vote, and they vote illegally."

"We have states that are so crooked," he said. "We have states that I won that show I didn't win."

All of Trump's allegations of widespread, result-altering election fraud — claims he has been making since he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton in 2016 — have been conclusively debunked, both in court and by GOP election officials. A 2024 audit by Georgia's Republican secretary of state, for instance, found that just 20 of the 8.2 million people registered to vote there were not citizens. Only nine of them had ever cast ballots.

Even an ongoing review of the 2024 election by Trump's Department of Homeland Security has so far "found little evidence of widespread voting fraud by noncitizens," according to the New York Times.

Yet a series of recent moves — including last week's FBI raid on an election center in Fulton County, Ga. — suggest that Trump's call to nationalize the 2026 midterms may be more than mere rhetoric.

"I don't know why the federal government doesn't do [elections] anyway," Trump added at an Oval Office event on Tuesday. "The federal government should get involved."

Trump then vowed to sign "an EXECUTIVE ORDER" to that effect. (For the record, only about four out of every 10 million mail votes is found to be fraudulent; the vast majority of Americans use paper ballots already; and voting machines are a faster, cheaper and more accurate way of tabulating those ballots than counting by hand.)

Donald Trump set off alarm bells earlier this week with comments that his administration should “take over the voting” in some states in the run-up to the 2026 midterms, which followed an unprecedented FBI raid on an election office in Georgia. Although election experts say it’s clear the president doesn’t have authority over elections, they warn the president’s corrosive rhetoric leaves little doubt about his intent.

For months, the Trump administration has stoked doubts about the integrity of American elections largely through lawsuits designed to create the impression states aren’t doing enough to keep ineligible voters off the rolls. That effort escalated significantly last week when the FBI raided the election office in Fulton county, Georgia and seized ballots, along with other materials, related to the 2020 election. Shortly after the raid, Trump escalated his attack even further, saying the federal government should take over elections.

“The Republicans should say, ‘We want to take over,’” he said during a recent interview with Dan Bongino, the former deputy FBI director who has returned to hosting a podcast. “We should take over the voting, the voting in at least many – 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.”

In the summer of 2025, Congressional Republicans passed a reconciliation bill providing $170.7 billion dollars to the Department of Homeland Security for immigration enforcement related activities. According to Office of Management and Budget, of the $75 billion specifically for ICE, $63 billion remains unspent while of the $65 billion for CBP, $37 billion remains unspent.

Or, to put it another way, ICE and CBP, despite receiving no annual appropriations this year, still have $100 billion dollars in funding to spend.

So, obviously, what Congress needs to do this year is appropriate still more money to ICE and CBP (another $70 billion to ICE and CBP together through 2029). Last night, in a 52-47 vote, that’s just what the Senate did.

Judge Leo Sorokin decided those fees violated the Constitution and the Administrative Procedure Act. Twenty states filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over the fees. The judge agreed with the states that the fee is a tax, which the president cannot levy on his own. “The tax can only be levied by Congress, and so he crossed the line when he entered into this area of charging $100,000 for a particular type of visa,” Hing said.

The Trump administration has already said they plan to appeal this ruling. The district court is the lowest-level court in the federal system, with the next stop likely to be the court of appeals.

In the meantime, companies are not required to pay the fee.

As for the companies that have already paid the fee, they will likely seek reimbursement from the government. However, any refunds will likely have to wait until the appeals process is completed, which will take some time.

On March 21, 2026, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz announced that “all houses and villages near the Lebanese border will be destroyed, in accordance with the model used in Rafah and Beit Hanoun in Gaza.” That model, the systematic demolition of thousands of homes, including after the end of active hostilities and without discernible military justification, is being carried out using the D9 Armoured Bulldozer, manufactured by Caterpillar Inc. Within the Occupied Palestinian territories, the Palestinian population lives under military law, and the Israeli military utilizes Regulation 119, Defense (Emergency) Regulations (1945) which allows military commanders to order the demolition of any home or structure utilized by a convicted or suspected terrorist.

In 2002, B’tselem documented IDF D9s destroying 60 homes in the Rafah refugee camp, displacing over 600 Palestinians five years before Hamas took power.

Since October 2024, IDF D9 bulldozers, in controlled demolition, demolished 8,218 homes in Gaza, many after ceasefires and without military rationale.

A 2026 UN report documented the destruction as systematic, occurring in neighborhoods cleared of combatants and posing no ongoing military threat.

A New York Times report detailed 50 social media accounts of Israeli soldiers demolishing houses, schools and other civilian buildings.

September 2024: West Bank Raid

The IDF deployed D9s as collective punishment following the October 7th, 2023 attacks. In the West Bank IDF raids caused an estimated $135 million in damages: 20km of water, sewage, electricity, and communication networks were destroyed; 70% of the road network was demolished along with 40 residential buildings and 10 businesses being damaged.

Following the 2024 ceasefire in Lebanon, IDF D9s demolished entire villages and leveled cemeteries, obliterating headstones and burial markers.

The IDF demolished or heavily damaged at least 850 structures across refugee camps of Nur Shams, Jenin, and Tulkarem continuing acts of collective punishment. Resulting in the displacement of some 40,000 people in the largest mass displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank since the Israeli occupation began in 1967.

In November, it was reported that the Biden administration was holding up the sale of the D9 bulldozers due to the IDF’s use of them to raze homes in Gaza. The IDF has said the homes were used by Hamas and accuses the terror group of using civilians as human shields.

US President Donald Trump, upon entering office, walked back on several measures by the previous administration meant to curb arms sales to Israel.

Since the beginning of the war on October 7, 2023, the Defense Ministry says, 870 transport planes and 144 ships have delivered more than 100,000 tons of armaments and military equipment to Israel, mostly from the US.

For 2026, across 312 insurers participating in the ACA Marketplaces from the 50 states and the District of Columbia, this analysis shows a median proposed premium increase of 18%, which is about 11 percentage points higher than last year. This is the largest rate change insurers have requested since 2018, the last time that policy uncertainty contributed to sharp premium increases.

key factor driving costs in 2026. Insurers cite increasing cost and utilization of high-priced drugs as well as general market factors, such as increasing labor costs and inflation, as contributing to premium increases.

In addition to rising healthcare costs, the majority of insurers are also taking into account the potential expiration of enhanced premium tax credits in their premium rate increases for the next year. The expiration of enhanced tax credits will lead to out-of-pocket premiums for ACA marketplace enrollees increasing by an average of more than 75%, with insurers expecting healthier enrollees to drop coverage. That, in turn, increases underlying premiums. Other federal policy changes, like the implementation of tariffs and the ACA Marketplace Integrity and Affordability rule were also discussed, though to a lesser extent.

Enrollment in the Affordable Care Act continues to erode as some customers struggle to make premium payments, with the declining numbers churning market uncertainty for insurers. In response, insurers are likely to raise rates again next year, following this year’s larger-than-typical hikes.

A KFF analysis released May 19, for instance, found that the average ACA plan deductible saw the steepest increase in history — growing by 37%, or over $1,000, from $2,759 in 2025 to $3,786 in 2026 as enhanced premium tax credits expired.

Those rising costs pose a political challenge for President Donald Trump and the broader GOP, which has opposed enhanced subsidies to help people purchase Obamacare coverage. Republican lawmakers also passed a spending package last year — enacted as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — that included provisions expected to reduce ACA enrollment and was cited among factors fueling higher premiums this year.

How about you give me my share and let me invest it myself?

In 2024, the Republicans narrowly retained control of the House with 220 seats to the Democrats' 215, the slimmest majority since 1930. That razor-thin margin is why the redistricting battle matters so much.

Every 10 years after the US census, the country’s 435 House seats are reapportioned based on population shifts, triggering a nationwide redrawing of congressional districts. The number of seats in the House has been 435 since 1912, and the only exception was made in 1929 to allow the admission of Alaska and Hawaii into the US.

The most recent census was in 2020, and states completed their redistricting by 2022. Since 2024, however, several states have redrawn their congressional maps again - some successfully, some blocked by the courts - with accusations of gerrymandering.

Gerrymandering is the practice of drawing electoral district boundaries to favour one political party over another. The tactic exists in many countries with district-based voting systems but is most closely associated with the US.

Florida’s new congressional map is expected to strengthen Republican control of the state’s 28 House seats and could help the party gain up to four additional Republican-leaning districts before the midterms.

Texas Republicans redrew congressional districts before the midterms as Democrats fled the state, leaving lawmakers missing during key votes. The new map added five more seats for the Texas Republicans.

Missouri Republicans redrew congressional maps before 2026, aiming to gain one extra House seat for their party.

In October, the North Carolina Senate approved a new congressional map that is expected to make one more US House seat Republican-leaning by reshaping several previously competitive or Democratic-leaning districts.

California voters approved a new Democratic-backed map under Proposition 50, known as the Election Rigging Response Act, in a 2025 special election.

The new boundaries are designed to help Democrats protect and potentially expand their existing 43-seat majority in the state.

Ohio was once considered a major presidential swing state, but Republicans now hold 10 of its 15 House seats, and the redraw is expected to further strengthen the party’s advantage.

Trump's second presidency was described by political commentators as having fewer prohibitions on business activity and guardrails against potential conflicts of interest than his first, and for having more opportunities to directly influence Trump.[567][568] Trump repealed and rolled back anti-corruption measures and ethical standards for himself and his allies, dropped corruption charges against political figures with ties to him, and fired inspectors generals investigating fraud and abuse.

His second presidency was described as breaking with decades of ethical norms,[570] and raising substantial corruption concerns.[571][572] Congressional Republicans largely downplayed or ignored the concerns.[573][570]

Federal judges found many of the administration's actions to be illegal and unconstitutional,[13][14][15] and by mid-July, a Washington Post analysis found he defied judges and the courts in roughly one third of all cases against him, actions which were described by legal experts as unprecedented for any presidential administration.[16] His defiance of court orders and a claimed right to disobey the courts raised fears among legal experts of a constitutional crisis.[574] By August 2025, several grant terminations and spending freezes were found by judges and the Government Accountability Office as being illegal and unconstitutional.[575][576]

The Department of Justice formally announced the fund in a filing on May 18, 2026.[30] The fund, known as the Anti-Weaponization Fund, would compensate individuals who claim that the Department of Justice had been weaponized against them, and is set to end in December 2028. As part of the settlement, Trump dismissed complaints filed against the government over the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago and the Mueller special counsel investigation. According to the Justice Department, Trump and his sons would receive a formal apology, but not monetary payment or damages[31], though the publicly available terms of the fund do not prohibit Trump or his family from receiving payments from it, according to some legal observers.

The following day, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche gave Trump and his family permanent immunity from inquiries into their taxes.[33] According to The New York Times, the settlement likely eliminated a dispute over a US$72.9 million tax refund Trump claimed as the host of The Apprentice (2004–2017).

In response to the settlement, Brian Morrissey, the general counsel for the Department of the Treasury, resigned.[40] The settlement fund was met with skepticism from Maine senator Susan Collins and Kansas senator Jerry Moran, who oversee the Senate Committee on Appropriations.[41] Senate Majority Leader John Thune cast doubt on the fund.

The justice department announced on Monday it was creating a loosely controlled and secretive $1.776bn fund to compensate Donald Trump allies as part of an agreement in which Trump and his sons dropped a $10bn longshot lawsuit against the IRS.

The money, which critics said was essentially a slush fund, will be overseen by five commissioners – four of whom would be appointed by the attorney general and removable by Trump – who would oversee the body’s work. A fifth commissioner will be appointed “in consultation” with congressional leadership. The fund also has the power to issue “formal apologies” and will send a quarterly confidential report to the US attorney general outlining who has been paid from the fund. There is no requirement that the fund’s work be made public.

There did not appear to be any restrictions on who can seek compensation from the fund. A copy of the agreement released on Monday evening says that claims will be evaluated based on a number of factors, including “the strength of the claim and supporting evidence, the claimant’s actions, any time the person making the claim spent in prison, attorney’s fees, and “other factors the Anti-Weaponization Fund deems just and appropriate”.

Any money left in the fund at the end of Trump’s term would be returned to the federal government.

The agreement was signed by Stanley Woodward, the associate attorney general, and number three official at the justice department. Woodward represented January 6 defendants as well as many Trump allies who came under scrutiny for their efforts to overturn the 2020 election and in the classified documents case.

“I don’t actually see any legal precedent for that. We are a nation of laws, you can’t just make up things whole-piece,” Cassidy told reporters when asked about the legal compensation fund for Trump allies who were prosecuted or investigated by the Biden Justice Department. The administration announced the creation of the compensation fund after Trump withdrew his lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service demanding $10 billion in damages for an IRS contractor leaking his tax returns to media outlets. “Somebody explained it to me this way, an attorney. … It is as if somebody sued themselves and agreed upon a settlement with themselves that’s going to be funded by the rest of us. If that’s the case: What?!” he said. “Wait a second, I just came off the campaign trail. People are concerned about making their own ends meet, not about putting a slush fund together without a legal precedent. We’re a nation of laws,” he added. “If there needs to be a settlement, let’s consider it and Congress should come together and decide on that.”

“I voted to uphold the Constitution. When I die, if that’s put in my obituary: He voted to uphold the Constitution, it’s going to be better obituary,” he said.