#trump

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”.

“Go out and buy a Dell computer,” Trump said. It wasn’t the first time he’s made that pitch. He did so in May when lauding Dell CEO Michael Dell and his wife, Susan, who have pledged to donate more than $6 billion to the “Trump Accounts,” program, which launched July 4.

Trump, who has disclosed actively trading Dell shares, said he wants the couple to make back the money they’re giving to the accounts.

“We’re going to get him that money back one way or the other — and then I’ll ask for another $6 billion ... We’ll start the whole process all over again,” Trump said.

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.

Trump reported another $635 million from the sale of his Trump meme coins. The news underlines how crypto has transformed the president's fortunes. In his disclosure a year ​ago, opens new tab, for example, the president reported $57.35 million from token sales at World Liberty, which then leaped nine-fold in this year’s filing. Reuters recently estimated the Trump family has made at least $2.3 ​billion from crypto-related projects since Trump returned to the White House in 2025. On taking office, Trump began to put in place policies and initiatives that ⁠the industry saw as beneficial, from implementing federal rules for stablecoins to dialing back policing of the industry by the U.S. Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

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.”

The Senate on Tuesday approved a House-passed resolution directing President Trump to withdraw U.S. armed forces from hostilities against Iran after four GOP senators broke ranks and voted to undercut Trump’s authority as commander-in-chief. The Senate voted 50 to 48 to approve the resolution, which passed the House 215-208 earlier this month.

It does not need Trump’s signature because it is a concurrent resolution. But it does not have the force of law, even though it’s been approved by both chambers. It directs Trump under the 1973 War Powers Act to remove U.S. troops from hostilities against Iran except for elements of the armed forces that would be necessary to protect U.S. assets or allies from imminent attack.

Four Republicans voted for the measure: Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Lisa Murkowsi (R-Alaska) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.).

Zoom in: Newsom said that the probe resembles investigations into Former FBI Director James Comey, NY Attorney General Leticia James and Sen. Adam Schiff.

Prosecutors were unable to secure an indictment in James' case and a court dismissed one of the cases against Comey.

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.

It comes after Trump ordered U.S. strikes in response to the downing of an American military helicopter.

Iran has not claimed responsibility for shooting down the American helicopter. Tehran accused the U.S. of acting under a “false pretext” and warned that any further U.S. attacks would be met with what it called “devastating and more wide-ranging strikes.” Despite the latest exchange, Trump has maintained that efforts to reach a peace agreement remain on track.

Trump wrote on Truth Social that Iranian leaders have "taken too long to negotiate a deal". US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said Iran had been given a chance to make a deal but had not taken it, adding that bombs would be "dropping on key facilities" in the country. The US president added that Iran would be attacked again if no peace deal was secured.

As part of the August deal, Alt5 acquired $1.5 billion worth of crypto tokens from World Liberty Financial, the crypto company co-founded by Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., among others, in 2024. The president and undisclosed members of his family were entitled to roughly $500 million in proceeds from the crypto sale, according to disclosures by World Liberty Financial.

Alt5 closed at $8.97 on Aug. 8, the last trading day before the World Liberty deal was announced. Since then, AI Financial ’s stock — originally trading under the ticker ALTS, now AIFC — fell to 66 cents a share at the June 8 close, a 93% loss, according to FactSet data.

World Liberty was founded in 2024 as a private company by Eric, Donald Jr., and Barron Trump, sons of the president; Zach and Alex Witkoff, sons of Trump Middle East negotiator Steve Witkoff; and business partners Zak Folkman and Chase Herro, according to a company document. Disclosures on World Liberty’s website in early June show that “approximately 38% of the equity interests” in World Liberty’s parent company are owned by “an entity affiliated with Donald J. Trump and certain of his family members.”

Alt5 announced the World Liberty deal on Aug. 11. It had two parts. Alt5 traded shares and stock warrants in itself to World Liberty in exchange for $750 million worth of WLFI tokens, and Alt5 sold $750 million in stock to investors at $7.50 a share. The $750 million in proceeds, minus some fees, was given to World Liberty in exchange for WLFI tokens. All told, Alt5 received nearly 7.3 billion WLFI tokens, which it initially valued at about $1.5 billion. Zach Witkoff, World Liberty’s CEO, became chair of Alt5′s board.

The Trump family is entitled to 75% of the proceeds from World Liberty’s crypto token sales, according to disclosures made in a document World Liberty published in 2024 describing its token offering, and repeated in fine print at the bottom of its website. That would put the Trump family’s direct gains from the August Alt5 transaction at roughly $500 million after fees and other expenses.

Some of these issues, such as the court filing and auditor issue, should have been revealed to investors more swiftly, Canter said. “I started my ethics career at the SEC, and I think they would have started investigating this for just one or two of these failures to disclose,” Canter said.

One potential wrinkle in the investigative process, Canter said, is the Trump family’s recent “anti-weaponization” settlement with the Internal Revenue Service. Under the settlement, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche issued an order releasing Trump from ongoing audits. The settlement’s language is vague and is written in a way that could be interpreted to apply to regulators’ potential investigations of companies related to the Trump family, such as AI Financial, Canter said.

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.