Top House Democrats question the ‘corrupt weaponization’ of federal government against Trump’s adversaries

Ilhan Omar’s Democratic colleagues have condemned federal agents’ search of the Minnesota congresswoman’s home on Monday morning, describing it as “deeply disturbing” and emblematic of the Trump administration’s “corrupt weaponization” of the US government.

House Democratic leaders, including the minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, party whip Katherine Clark and caucus chair Pete Aguilar, issued a joint statement excoriating the president for the search.

Ana Reyes demands Trump officials explain East Potomac tree cutting saying it will probably cause ‘irreparable harm’

US district judge Ana Reyes on Monday ordered a 24-hour halt to tree cutting at the historic East Potomac golf course while she decides on an emergency order from plaintiffs concerned that Donald Trump’s plans for the course are moving forward despite a pending court case challenging them.

“Tree removal for routine maintenance is not exempt from this order,” Reyes wrote. “Plaintiffs are likely to suffer immediate and irreparable harm in the absence of preliminary relief.

Mayor calls for end to agency’s operations in city after agents shot and wounded man with five-year-old in car

The New York mayor, Zohran Mamdani, on Sunday compared US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)’s recent shooting of a man in the Manhattan enclave of Marble Hill to a mass shooting scene – and called for an end to the agency’s operations in his city.

Mamdani’s joined MS NOW’s Jacob Soboroff for his first media interview since ICE agents shot and wounded Oscar Belgal, 28, during an enforcement operation while he was in his car with his five-year-old child also inside.

JoAnna Mendoza draws on unique biography to connect with voters in Arizona battleground – can she flip a key swing seat?

On a recent morning, Tucson mayor Regina Romero knocked on a yellow door above a mat emblazoned with a cat’s silhouette and the words “go away, peasants”. A young man cracked the door open and stood there silently, a toothbrush dangling from his mouth.

After giving him a moment to finish brushing his teeth, the mayor introduced herself and asked if the man had heard of JoAnna Mendoza, the Democrat running to unseat Republican congressman Juan Ciscomani. Romero handed him a pamphlet and rattled off her candidate’s virtues. The young man stood stone-faced, until she mentioned that Mendoza had served for nearly two decades as a US marine.

UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham said Russia interfered in the 2016 referendum that took Britain out of the European Union, in podcast excerpts released on 11 October, the Associated Press reported. His remarks are believed to be the first time a British prime minister has publicly acknowledged such meddling.

Russia’s information war keeps running through Europe’s ballots. German security sources said in August that Moscow was escalating disinformation before state elections, and Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation found more than 200 Russian fake news sites aimed at France last year.

One question, one clear answer

Burnham told The Rest Is Politics podcast that he asked his advisers whether Russia had interfered in the 2016 vote. He asked after taking office in July.

“I’ve had the clear answer that yes, there was,” he said.

He argued that such things must now be put clearly on the record. He did not say how Russia interfered or offer evidence, and Moscow has long denied interfering in foreign votes.

Burnham said he had discussed Russian interference with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in Berlin the previous week. “You know he was saying to me that the AfD are clearly linked to Russia, funded I believe,” Burnham said, referring to Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany party. Putting such interference on the record would help “voters in Germany and France understand that some of this politics is instigated via our enemies, namely Russia,” he added.

Years of silence

In 2020, Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee found that the government had actively avoided investigating whether Russia meddled in the referendum. The report noted open-source signs of Russian attempts to sway the Brexit campaign. The government, it said, had never looked for hard evidence.

The government rejected the committee’s call for a review.

“We have seen no evidence of successful interference in the EU Referendum,” it said.

That same year, London said Russian actors had almost certainly tried to interfere in the 2019 general election. The government said they did it by amplifying leaked UK-US trade documents online.

From 2019 to 2016

Three weeks ago, Burnham stopped short of this. At the UN General Assembly on 22 September, he said the Kremlin spends around £1.3 billion each year on manipulating information. That is roughly $1.7 billion at recent exchange rates. He cited evidence that Russian agencies tried to interfere in the 2019 general election, but he did not mention 2016.

In the same speech, he said Britain had already helped Moldova protect its elections from Russian interference.

New York judge also orders administration to cancel remaining portion of a $20m advertising purchase

A federal judge has ordered Donald Trump’s administration to temporarily halt the broadcast of taxpayer-funded television ads promoting the president ahead of the 3 November midterm elections.

Effective as of 6.45pm ET on Sunday, US district judge Jennifer L Rochon of the southern district of New York issued a temporary restraining order aimed at the ads that is meant to stay in effect for at least 14 days.

A businessman wanted in the US for allegedly bribing top Venezuelan officials has been taken into custody

A businessman wanted for years in the US for allegedly paying bribes to top Venezuelan officials in exchange for lucrative state contracts in Venezuela has been taken into custody.

Alvaro Pulido was indicted in Miami federal court in 2019 and again in 2021 as part of an investigation into his longtime business partner, Alex Saab, a one-time ally of ousted Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro. The US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the state department had been offering a reward of up to $10m for information leading to his arrest.

Trump and key allies have accused Omar of immigration fraud, and have called to expel her from the country

Federal agents searched Representative Ilhan Omar’s home on Monday morning as part of a criminal investigation, according to the Department of Justice and reports in the Associated Press and Fox News.

In a social media post later on Monday, Omar criticized the raid as an attempt by the Trump administration “to target political enemies and weaponize law enforcement” and said she would “not be silenced”.

Children’s Health Defense and RFK Jr publicly dispute recent measles deaths to ‘distract’ from damage caused and question vaccines, experts say

The six-year-old girl at the children’s hospital in Lubbock, Texas, burned with fever and struggled to breathe. Doctors soon put her on a ventilator, snaking a thick tube down the child’s throat so a machine could breathe for her; they placed IVs to rehydrate her tiny body and they prescribed antibiotics for any bacterial infections that may have taken hold in the weeks she had spent at home battling measles.

But it was too late. Within a day of being ventilated, the child went into shock, her blood pressure crashed and she went into cardiac arrest. She could not be resuscitated. Her family, and the nation, mourned: she was the first child to die of measles in the US in a decade.

Gwinnett county is home to many immigrants and other newcomers, and how it votes could be decisive for Congress

Johanna Park might just be an ambassador for Gwinnett county, Georgia, one of the 10 most ethnically diverse counties in the United States.

Park owns Cafe Amico at Suwanee Town Center, one of her three Italian coffee shops in the area just north of Atlanta. She was born in Korea and lived much of her life in Argentina and Peru. She’s been in Gwinnett for more than 20 years, part of an early wave of Korean immigration that’s built Korean American car dealerships, banks, insurance agencies, supermarkets and restaurants like her own. It’s also a population that’s increasing in influence and not just numbers.

From restaurants to farms to healthcare, the US president’s hardline policies have reshaped Americans’ daily lives

If there is one campaign promise that Donald Trump has kept, it is his pledge to deliver “mass deportations”.

Two years later, voters are living uneasily with the consequences.

Ukrainian leader says he was surprised by Trump’s ‘energy ceasefire’ announcement, posted as Russian drones hit Kyiv

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has vowed to respond to Russia’s continuing attacks on the Ukrainian power grid as European leaders rally around Kyiv amid a feud with Donald Trump over Ukraine’s strikes on oil refineries.

Speaking to a gathering of European security officials in Warsaw on Monday, the Ukrainian president said Kyiv would retaliate if strikes on its power grid continued: “If Russia does not agree to an energy ceasefire this winter, we will respond.”

In a recent visit to Greece, the secretary of state suggested that Europe must rediscover the values of conquest and expansion

They had obviously worked hard on the backdrop – and it was magnificent. On 7 October, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, delivered a major speech in Athens, outdoors, with the Acropolis behind him. The sun was setting, bathing the ancient scene, including the Parthenon, in the light of the golden hour.

The golden hour, but yet not quite the golden age. This was not Pericles defending democracy. Instead, Rubio offered a haunting vision of the choices facing the west, arguing that the US and Europe must rediscover the values of exploration and conquest that once drove centuries of expansion, or face decline and irrelevance.

Roger Marshall says he has ‘no idea how this happened’ and repaid bill double for 2020 election watch party treats

The Republican US senator Roger Marshall says he has finally paid off a bakery debt – after six years and repeated collection attempts reported by a Kansas business that had supplied a large order of treats for a 2020 election watch party.

“We have absolutely no idea how this happened”, the Kansas senator wrote in a social media post containing a screenshot of the payment on a $678.75 invoice from Holly’s Sweet Treats as well as his $1,300 payment. “And we have repaid the bill … double.”

The latest attack by Houthi rebels on Saudi Arabia may prove to be more calamitous for the region than the world imagines

On Saturday, Houthi rebels launched a shocking and deadly attack on Saudi Arabia’s capital city, Riyadh. At the time of writing, the missile strike on King Khalid international airport has killed at least 13 people and left 300 injured, marking a significant turn in a regional conflagration that is only getting more intense. It was the single most deadly attack on any Gulf country since the US and Israel launched their war on Iran in February. In Saudi Arabia, a country that is unaccustomed to such fatalities, the death toll is bewilderingly high and likely to prompt a bloody response.

Over the past year, the Gulf has entered a new era of instability that is not temporary and cannot be reversed. This may feel like an overstatement – casualties have been relatively low, after all, compared with Gaza and Iran – but the gradual erosion of peace and security in places such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE has changed the region more dramatically than its leaders would like to acknowledge.

Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist

Senior official says president and US secretary of state are ‘extremely pissed off’ by conduct of US envoy to Greece

Donald Trump and Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, are considering firing US ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle after a series of reports alleging she has engaged in improper and possibly illegal conduct before and during her tenure in Athens.

A senior US official said Sunday that Trump and Rubio are “extremely pissed off” by Guilfoyle’s reported conduct and would likely decide on what action to take this week after Monday’s federal holiday.

Democratic Senate candidate’s remarks come as Trump has long baselessly claimed his 2020 election loss was stolen

Democrats must “win by massive numbers” during November’s federal midterm elections because Donald Trump and his Republican allies are bound to try to sow doubt about the integrity of the results, Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan said on Sunday.

El-Sayed’s comments on NBC’s Meet the Press came with the Democrats favored to win control of the House of Representatives during the 3 November midterms – and polls show that the party could also win Senate seats in states that traditionally elect Republicans and gain a majority there, too.

A fuel deal with Vladimir Putin, and sanctions against the legal institution, ram home the president’s belief that might is right

On Friday, Donald Trump drove home his belief that might is right and the rule of law is an obstacle rather than an essential foundation stone of international order. First came the escalated assault on the international criminal court (ICC), sanctioning the body itself. Then he announced a deal with Russia to buy diesel.

The US has long chafed at the notion of being bound by the rule of law that it espoused publicly. That hypocrisy now appears as a lesser vice. The president has declared that “my own morality” is all that constrains him. His brazen flouting of the law, embrace of dictators and rhetorical attacks all undermine global standards.

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Analysts say fuel will take weeks to ship and quantity is too small to affect prices, while full deal is unlikely to be met given damage to Russian refineries

• Trump announces partial ceasefire but Zelenskyy says deal is ‘news to me’

Donald Trump’s deal with Vladimir Putin to temporarily lift sanctions on US imports of Russian diesel will have little “meaningful” effect on motorists and businesses in the US and overseas, energy and foreign policy analysts have predicted.

The US president infuriated Volodymyr Zelenskyy when he announced the deal on Friday, writing on Truth Social that the agreement with his Russia counterpart to supply millions of tonnes of diesel was essential to reduce fuel prices in the US, which have soared after his decision to go to war against Iran.

Parra-Hernandez suffered a broken leg and taken to a hospital after being hit by car during an ICE operation

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent driving a vehicle struck a man on Saturday while trying to pursue him and someone else in the Houston area, according to authorities.

The federal agency had been trying to pull over and arrest Jose Mendoza-Cervantes in north-west Harris county, Texas, when he and the victim, Miguel Parra-Hernandez, exited the vehicle, officials said.

Comments were among the most direct overtures by Trump to woo Democratic senator into his Republican party

Donald Trump on Saturday openly encouraged Democratic US senator John Fetterman to switch parties and become a Republican just weeks before the federal midterm elections could reshape control of Congress.

“I’d love to see him as a Republican,” the presidents told reporters at Joint Base Andrews as he returned to Washington DC from a rally in Tennessee. “He does better as a Republican than he does as a Democrat.”

Guardian staff contributed reporting

Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ spending cuts will be fully felt next year, but hospitals are already feeling the squeeze

Maternity wards across the United States are facing a wave of closures as cuts to federal Medicaid funding take effect, experts have warned.

According to analysis by the non-profit Protect Our Care, 52 maternity wards have closed since the HR1 bill was announced in July 2025, with a further eight having announced their upcoming closure.

The Michigan candidate for US Senate seat is running without directly acknowledging specific constituent groups

Abdul El-Sayed has an impressive résumé: Rhodes scholar, professor of epidemiology at Columbia University, executive director of the Detroit health department. And, at 41, the Michigan Democratic senatorial candidate represents a new generation of politicians, a shift that he also embodies sartorially. Whereas casual dress for many politicians is a tieless dress shirt with rolled up sleeves, El-Sayed has embraced a post-corporate, digital nomad-ish uniform: fitted black T-shirt, slim jeans and sneakers.

His progressive politics are having a moment among liberals, and he remains unswervingly disciplined about his message: “Money Out of Politics, Money in Your Pocket, Medicare for All.” On paper he appears well-aligned to Democratic sensibilities in this moment, and he is competitive in the polls. But his support is softer than overall Democratic sentiment would dictate, especially among Black voters.

As raw milk industry experiences record growth, experts say it might contain pathogens that can sicken people

As raw milk becomes increasingly popular among Americans, there have been several recent disease outbreaks tied to the product, alarming public health officials.

Last week, the American Academy of Pediatrics called for a ban on sales of unpasteurized milk in the United States.

Darializa Avila Chevalier criticizes NYPD’s ‘inaction’ in protecting Marble Hill protesters after ICE shot a man

Democratic congressional candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier believes that the New York police departments’ conduct towards protesters after an ICE agent shot and wounded a man in the district she is running to represent violated “the spirit, if not the letter” of the city’s sanctuary laws.

These rules ban local police from helping federal immigration authorities in civil immigration enforcement operations.

‘Even if AI supercharged the economy, its impact on the government’s finances would be muted’

Back through political history to the age of Ronald Reagan, Republicans have repeatedly promised the US public that tax cuts would pay for themselves, firing up economic growth and filling the government’s coffers.

The promise never really panned out. From the Gipper’s day on, the Republicans’ tax cuts inevitably increased the budget deficit. Despite its failure, though, the promise is back, coated in a fine new layer of artificial intelligence pixie dust. It will fail again.

Rev Dr Frederick Douglass Haynes III is reclaiming a faith-based politics to counter Trump-allied white evangelicals

It was that point in the evening: dinner plates were cleared; speeches had run long; people were chatting, milling or eyeing the exit. But then the Rev Dr Frederick Douglass Haynes III took the stage. Bald, bearded, bespectacled and dressed in black, he delivered a mix of fiery sermon and performance poetry. Soon the guests were back in their seats – rapt, listening, clapping and whooping.

Haynes’s rolling cadence was evocative of the pulpit but the political message was far from kumbaya. Aiming to succeed Democratic star Jasmine Crockett in Texas’s 30th congressional district, he danced like a butterfly with references to the boxer Muhammad Ali and rapper Tupac Shakur. But he also stung like a bee, branding Donald Trump as “President Pickpocket” and Republicans as the authors of racist gerrymandering and voter suppression.

Republican Christopher Paul is running unopposed for seat despite allegations he raped two girls 20 years ago

A candidate for police chief in a small Louisiana town candidate is on course to be elected unopposed despite two charges of child rape pending against him, leaving his community to weigh whether to convert the position into an appointed office rather than one determined at the ballot box.

Christopher Paul, a Republican who on 6 August signed up to run for chief of police in the south-western Louisiana village of Elizabeth, was arrested on 8 September on allegations that he raped two girls in 2005 and 2006.

UK can play peacemaker after US President’s shock call to oust Ukraine’s leader Zelensky, says defence secretary