How the Pentagon Is Getting Into the Venezuelan Oil Business Under Trump

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© Adriana Loureiro Fernandez for The New York Times


© Adriana Loureiro Fernandez for The New York Times


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Comments signal president prepared to use dispute to push UK to raise defence spending and Nato contributions
Donald Trump has suggested he is reconsidering US support for Britain’s sovereignty over the Falkland Islands, in a move likely to strain the “special relationship” between Washington and London.
“I always review every position – that’s just one of many,” the US president told reporters in the White House, in response to a question about whether he was reviewing the US’s position over the South Atlantic islands, an archipelago whose status has long been disputed by Argentina, which claims sovereignty.
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Justices’ 5-4 ruling permits Trump administration appeal to block lower court order halting above-ground work
A divided US supreme court has permitted Donald Trump to continue building his controversial $400m White House ballroom despite legal challenges, raising the likelihood it will be completed.
In a 5-4 ruling, the justices permitted the Trump administration’s request to block a lower court order that had halted above-ground construction of the project while a lawsuit by a historic preservation group seeks to block it.
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© Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

© Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images


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Three-quarters of Americans said in a recent poll that they oppose datacenters being built next to their homes
Donald Trump has criticized communities pushing back against datacenter projects across the US amid a growing backlash, warning those that reject them risk becoming “backwards and poor”.
As controversy surrounding local datacenter plans continues to swirl around election campaigns nationwide ahead of November’s midterm elections, the US president declared Americans “will only have yourselves to blame” if they are canceled.
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© Photograph: Win McNamee/Getty Images

© Photograph: Win McNamee/Getty Images

The president’s deportation machine is creating a class of people inside the US who have fewer protections against the power of the state
Is the Trump administration creating a group in the US with fewer protections against executive power owing to their immigration status? Its often openly racist actions suggest so. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) claims to target “the worst of the worst” – undocumented migrants who commit violent crimes. Yet the Guardian reported that over half of those arrested in July had no criminal convictions or pending charges. That month, ICE made record arrests and deportations, apprehending 1,500 people and removing 1,100 daily.
When campaigning, Donald Trump falsely claimed that Haitians were “eating the pets”. In office, his administration moved to end temporary protected status (TPS) for Haitians. In June, the supreme court let the protection expire, leaving about 350,000 people at risk of deportation to a country gripped by violence and instability. The court’s decision means more than 1 million TPS holders from 13 nations previously considered too unsafe to return to are now at risk of deportation. Many have lived and worked legally in the US for years.
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This live blog is now closed.
Chris Hippensteel
We’re watching today as Scott Bessent, the US treasury secretary, and Kevin Warsh, the chair of the Federal Reserve, deliver their opening remarks at the G20 meetings in Asheville, North Carolina.
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© Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

© Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

US trade representative Jamieson Greer has a level-headed reputation but commerce secretary Howard Lutnick and White House adviser Peter Navarro also have key roles
Having reportedly read Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, in French, during a military tour of duty in Iraq, Jamieson Greer considered himself an unlikely target for accusations of francophobia.
But Donald Trump’s US trade representative, hitherto one of the president’s less high-profile cabinet members, found himself in that uncomfortable position amid the acrimonious collapse of bilateral trade talks with Canada that now threatens to degenerate into an all-out trade war between the two close trading partners whose economies are tightly intertwined.
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Richer countries might have more resources to deal with catastrophe, but this problem grips the entire planet, however much leaders may want to deny it
Climate breakdown is happening on one Earth, but two different worlds. In one, its impacts increasingly encroach on everyday life; longer periods of discomfort and shorter periods of sharp pain. Endless, hotter summers, and within them sudden wildfires, evacuations, homes burned to cinders in a matter of hours. In another, catastrophe. This summer has been a snapshot of that split-screen. The hottest day on record in parts of Europe, and a wave of water, mud and ice in Nepal that so far has claimed more than 750 lives. Thousands of people are still missing.
The difference is also one of resources. The climate crisis has an economic cost, but some places can absorb it better than others. Responses to this summer of wildfires in Europe included a rapid scrambling by the French government to provide everything from tax breaks for businesses affected by the fires to relocation costs and aid to rebuild homes. The UK government had deployed almost £100m before the summer to strengthen wildfire resilience.
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© Photograph: Prabin Ranabhat/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: Prabin Ranabhat/AFP/Getty Images

Trump’s threat comes after host described success record of candidates whom president had endorsed as ‘mixed’
Donald Trump on Sunday said NBC’s Kristen Welker – host of Meet the Press – should face “rebuke or punishment” from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
Welker, during a live segment for a local Washington DC affiliate, described the success record of political candidates whom the president had endorsed as “mixed”. The segment aired before Sunday’s edition of Meet the Press.
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© Photograph: Jim Bourg/Reuters

© Photograph: Jim Bourg/Reuters

Outsourcing the industry to China cannot continue, but Europe knows it can no longer count on the US for a solution
The alarm sounded 16 years ago. In 2010, China blocked exports of key rare earths to Japan in a row over disputed islands in the East China Sea. The critical minerals are essential to everything from advanced weaponry and iPhones to electric vehicle batteries and wind turbines, so the rest of the world took note. But it didn’t take much action. China still accounts for about 70% of rare-earth mining globally and 90% of separation and processing.
Then, last year, Beijing forced Donald Trump to back away from his trade war – not with its retaliatory tariffs, but the curbing of rare-earth exports. A scramble for new supplies began in earnest. The year-long trade truce is due to expire in November. The price of erbium, an element essential to communications infrastructure, has already jumped because of fears that export controls will soon be renewed.
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© Photograph: Imaginechina Limited/Alamy

© Photograph: Imaginechina Limited/Alamy


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Meanwhile, Trump posts video of himself kicking over a Lake Ontario sign and replacing it with Lake America sign
Donald Trump and Canada continued a verbal duel on Saturday over the US government’s administrative renaming of Lake Ontario, with the Ontario premier erecting a giant sign saying “Lake Ontario. Now and Always” – and the American president posting a video of him tearing down an avatar of that sign, erecting a replacement saying Lake America, and dancing to YMCA.
Rhetoric over the naming of Lake Ontario is the public face of an escalating trade dispute between the US and its northern neighbor involving a 50% US tariff on Canadian steel and retaliatory tariffs from Ottawa.
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© Photograph: Carlos Osorio/Reuters

© Photograph: Carlos Osorio/Reuters


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On Thursday, Trump signed an executive order demanding Lake Ontario be renamed to Lake America. At the signing of the order, he sat next to a big poster board map of the Great Lakes, with a big red arrow labeling Lake Ontario as "Lake America," with the words "Making the Great Lakes Even Greater."
The Canadian province of Ontario borders the north, west, and southwest sides of the lake, with New York State on the south and east.


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The Canadian province's premier, Doug Ford, installed a billboard-sized sign on the lake's shoreline after the US president signed an executive order on Thursday directing US federal agencies to change the lake's name on US maps, documents and databases to 'Lake America'. Ford told reporters that the lake's name, which is more than 400 years old, would remain unchanged. Trade talks between the US and Canada collapsed last week, with each side blaming the other for derailing three days of intensive negotiations
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© Photograph: The Canadian Press/AP

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As Americans face an affordability crisis and war with Iran, the president is focused on … changing the names of things
Is it a key policy move which will “recognize the extraordinary contributions of the American people”? Or “real foolishness”?
Whatever the impact of Donald Trump unusual decision to retitle Lake Ontario as Lake America, days after Canada’s prime minister refused to be cowed by Trump’s punitive tariffs, it has certainly divided opinion – but perhaps it shouldn’t have come as a surprise.
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© Photograph: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Inside the US state department, critics are still attacking a shuttered office established to counter foreign propaganda. Now, some of its work is also being resumed
A botched leak of purportedly explosive government files to a prominent conservative online personality was supposed to offer proof of what the Trump administration and its allies have long alleged: that a little-known office inside the US state department, created to fight foreign propaganda, had secretly become a tool for domestic censorship.
Two former high-ranking officials at the Global Engagement Center (GEC), a target of Republican ire that lost its funding in 2024 and was disbanded after Donald Trump’s return to office in 2025, say the documents show nothing of the kind.
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As with its approach to Hormuz, the US has mistaken applying pressure for an actual strategy. But Tehran has chips of its own to play
Donald Trump has found a new way to promise victory over Iran. After months of war have failed to force Iran’s capitulation or collapse, his administration has unveiled what the US Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, calls Operation Economic Outcast: an effort to cut it off from what remains of the global economy and threaten foreign governments, banks and companies with sanctions if they continue doing business with Tehran.
There is no question that Iran is vulnerable. Its economy has been battered by years of sanctions, war and a months-long US naval blockade. Iranian officials acknowledge that oil exports and access to foreign currency have been severely constrained. Ordinary Iranians are already enduring high inflation, currency depreciation and worsening living standards. Further economic strangulation will inflict significant additional hardship.
Sina Toossi is a senior non-resident fellow at the Center for International Policy, where his work focuses on US-Iran relations, US policy toward the Middle East and nuclear issues
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© Photograph: Mark Schiefelbein/AP


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Commodity Futures Trading Commission said Gabriel Perez wagered on Kalshi about words president used in speeches
A White House teleprompter operator who left his post amid accusations that he used inside knowledge to make bets on Donald Trump’s speeches on an online prediction market has been fined $172,000, according to federal regulators.
Gabriel Perez illicitly exploited “material, nonpublic information” that he gathered through his work for the president in order to place wagers on the Kalshi platform “for his personal benefit”, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) maintained in a news release on Friday.
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© Photograph: Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images

© Photograph: Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images

In deep red South Carolina, the president helped stoke apprehension of a deeper red surge ahead of November’s US midterm elections
After casting his vote in South Carolina, a man who introduced himself as Chestnut was unwilling to give his full name. “You don’t have a need to know,” the air force veteran declared. He was, however, happy to share his views.
“I’m a true American. I believe in the USA,” said the man, outside Christ the Servant Lutheran church in Conway. “And I don’t believe in communism or socialism.”
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© Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

There’s little optimism about treasury secretary’s ability to handle Trump’s tariffs, Iran sanctions and colossal US debt
History remembers Gen Dwight Eisenhower, the supreme commander of the allied forces in Europe during the second world war, for his role in the D-day invasion of Normandy. Whether Scott Bessent will achieve similar posterity as the face of the “economic D-day” in Iran remains to be seen.
The US treasury secretary, already trying to manage a $40tn national debt pile, this week took charge of Donald Trump’s effort to reverse-engineer his war of choice. Whereas the US would typically take on an adversary with diplomacy, sanctions and military force, in that order, the US president started with a six-month bombing campaign and now hopes that economic isolation can finish the job.
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© Photograph: Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP

© Photograph: Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP

Ignore Iran, the Epstein files, and your wallet – not to mention Trump’s plummeting approval ratings
Don’t mention the war! Or the economy, for that matter. Or the Epstein files. Or Natalie Harp. Or “affordability”, which, as Donald Trump recently said at a rally, is a word that was “never used” by the media before he took office. Best not to talk about anything that affects ordinary people or embarrasses the president, really. Instead, let’s all rejoice in Trump’s latest triumph: renaming Lake Ontario, which is shared by Canada and the US, as Lake America.
On Thursday, Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to America-fy the lake’s name on US maps and documents, which is an excellent use of time and resources. I suppose we can at least be thankful that the president, who is trying to slap his own name on everything from airports to the Kennedy Center, didn’t decree that the body of water be called Lake Trump.
Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
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© Photograph: Al Drago/Pool/Al Drago - Pool/CNP/Shutterstock


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