Suspect Benny Caldera Jr held on bond as officials say they received ‘credible’ information about Austin threat

A 40-year-old man was arrested early Wednesday on suspicion of plotting to attack the Texas state capitol, authorities said.

The Texas department of public safety said in a statement that it received “credible information about an individual planning a violent attack” for Thursday in Austin.

Amid latest extraordinary attack on diversity, US defense secretary also suggests military is retaining service personnel at ‘record’ rates

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The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has confirmed plans to cut 20% of generals and admirals and declared “no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps” would be tolerated inside the country’s military.

Delivering his latest extraordinary attack on diversity, and dismissing reports of low morale within the US armed forces as “false claims”, Hegseth also suggested they were retaining service personnel at “record” rates.

A year after his explosive tenure at Doge, the SpaceX CEO is back in the Trump administration’s good graces

Pete Hegseth announced on Wednesday that Elon Musk will co-lead a government project to study the future of warfare, marking the SpaceX CEO’s first return to government since he ran the chaotic, so-called “department of government efficiency”, or Doge. Musk will be joined by Palmer Luckey, CEO of the defense tech company Anduril, and Newt Gingrich, the former Republican speaker of the House.

A defense department press release on the effort, called Project Meridian, described its goal as “identifying the capabilities required to achieve absolute technological dominance on the next-generation battlefield”. The project will run for 120 days and culminate in an unclassified public report of its recommendations.

Democrats block measure they say didn’t go far enough – and was bundled with ‘poison pill’ voter ID rules

The US Senate on Wednesday blocked a Republican bill restricting stock trading by members of Congress, after Democrats refused to advance a measure they said would let lawmakers keep their portfolios and was bundled with voter ID rules they called a “poison pill”.

The 53-47 vote fell seven short of the 60 needed to open debate on the Stop Insider Trading Act, which the Republican-controlled House passed in July. Every Democrat and independent voted no, and the failure comes five weeks before the 3 November midterms.

The charges are senior officials’ latest attempt to heighten voter fraud concerns amid midterm election campaigning

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The US Department of Justice indicted another 10 individuals on noncitizen voting-related charges on Wednesday as Donald Trump’s administration continues to pursue allegations of voter fraud raised by the president.

In the sixth announcement of its kind this month, the attorney general, Todd Blanche, and homeland security secretary, Markwayne Mullin, said 10 people in Minnesota were charged with making false claims about citizenship to vote, or voting as a noncitizen.

Noem cites irreconcilable differences in filing that comes after husband Bryon Noem involved in tabloid scandal

Kristi Noem, who was fired by Donald Trump after a rumbustious stint as homeland security secretary, is divorcing her husband, Bryon Noem, after 34 years of marriage, citing “irreconcilable differences”.

The divorce claim “for settlement purposes only” was disclosed in court records filed in Hamlin county, South Dakota, the state of which Noem was previously governor.

FBI accuses Chloe Freeman of federal misdemeanor in case of undocumented Mexican migrant arrested in Michigan

The federal government is charging a Michigan nurse accused of illegally helping an undocumented immigrant, who was being treated in a hospital, escape from immigration officials, court records unsealed this week show.

An FBI agent’s declaration submitted in a federal court accuses Chloe Renae Freeman, 33, of “instigating or assisting escape”, a federal misdemeanor, by helping a patient leave an Ann Arbor hospital while in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody in May. The patient, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, had been arrested about two hours earlier by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) border patrol agents.

Our politics and foreign policy reporters will answer your questions live in a Q&A on Tuesday 6 October

The war with Iran has had major implications for Americans’ wallets, government spending and US foreign policy. It’s also been key in reshaping the political landscape as it enters its seventh month before the 2026 US midterms.

We’ll be hosting a live midterm election Q&A on Tuesday 6 October 2026 at 12pm EDT on the Guardian US site, with a panel of our politics and foreign policy reporters to help readers understand the costs of the war and political consequences for Trump and candidates running in November.

The makeup of the Democratic party, plus key races to watch

Who are the groups financially backing the candidates in the midterms?

FTC move is first official US enforcement ⁠action on rogue AI agents, following surge in incidents first reported in July

The US’s main trade regulator is conducting an industry-wide investigation ⁠into Anthropic, OpenAI and other ⁠AI labs ​to uncover the potential dangers their technology poses to consumers.

The investigation by the Federal Trade Commission is the first official US enforcement ⁠action that delves into rogue AI agents, following a surge in incidents first reported in July that have stoked fears among the public that uncontrolled AI could one day ⁠harm humans.

Trump criticized $2.4bn rehab amid attempts to pressure then Fed chair Jerome Powell into lowering interest rates

An internal watchdog said the Federal Reserve mismanaged costs associated with a $2.4bn renovation of its Washington DC headquarters, but noted that no criminal violations occurred, according to a report released on Wednesday.

For over a year, Donald Trump has centered his attacks against the Fed and former chair Jerome Powell around the renovations, including a months-long Department of Justice criminal investigation that was dropped in April.

Republicans supported legislation although Democrats said it wouldn’t effectively address energy consumption

Senate Democrats on Wednesday blocked legislation intended to offset the impact of datacenters on consumer electricity bills, calling it a “toothless” attempt to address a top voter concern ahead of November’s midterm elections.

The Ratepayer Protection Act failed by a 57-to-43 vote, falling just shy of the 60 votes necessary to advance through the Republican-controlled chamber. Four Democrats – Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and both Georgia senators, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock – joined Republicans in support of the measure.

Donald Trump and six tech executives voluntarily signed the document, which included a misspelling, committing to safely developing AI

The White House misspelled “United States” under the signature of Donald Trump on an accord he signed with AI executives on Tuesday.

At the bottom of the accord on “Super Intelligence”, the term Trump has used to rebrand artificial intelligence, the president’s signature appeared as “President of the Unites States”.

Late-night hosts weighed in on Trump’s relationship with tech leaders and the White House’s new AI-powered site

On Tuesday night, late-night hosts discussed a Maha summit in Washington DC, the White House’s new AI-powered website and Donald Trump once again falling asleep on live TV.

Senator Jim Justice of West Virginia criticizes immigration crackdown as ranchers’ associations condemn ICE activity

A close political ally of Donald Trump has broken from the administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement agenda and recommended it “step back” to evaluate what it could do better.

“To get better, the first thing you got to do is admit you’re doing something wrong,” Jim Justice, a Republican senator of West Virginia, told Politico. “And in this situation, with all that’s going on and all the stuff, we probably got to step back from it and say: ‘Maybe we’re doing something wrong here or there,’ and then adjust to that.”

Twelve years after US mission against IS began, Trump hails ‘great day for America’ and calls Iraq war ‘a quagmire’

The Pentagon has announced it has formally completed its withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, two years after the withdrawal was agreed to and 12 years since the US mission to fight the Islamic State started.

After the announcement, Iran and its allies celebrated the departure as a victory, while Iraqi security experts worry that the withdrawal could give IS and others a chance to recover.

Head of foreign policy at the New Eurasian Strategies Centre called on the government to ‘step up’ its response to Russia

Steve Hilton’s long-shot campaign for governor is courting Golden state voters with unapologetically populist message

Steve Hilton stands almost no chance of becoming California’s next governor, but that isn’t stopping him from campaigning as though he was just one step away from pulling off the impossible.

The former Downing Street political adviser and Fox News host refuses to be daunted by the rancid political environment for Republican candidates this year, or by opinion polls that tell him he is lagging 20 percentage points or more behind his Democratic rival, Xavier Becerra.

‘The era of writing blank checks to international bureaucracies is over,’ state department spokesperson says

The Trump administration has withdrawn the United States from the Council of Europe’s anti-corruption monitoring body, arguing that paying to belong to the multilateral group no longer serves US interests.

The US formally notified the Strasbourg-based organization on Monday that it was leaving the Group of States against Corruption, known as Greco – the latest step in a broader effort by the administration to pull back from international bodies it regards as inefficient, overreaching or out of step with its priorities.

Burundi joins several other African nations in accepting people deported under Trump’s hardline policy

Burundi has agreed to join a clutch of ⁠other African nations in receiving migrants from other countries deported from the US under ⁠Donald Trump’s hardline ⁠immigration ​policy.

However, Burundi will only accept those not accused of crime or terrorism links, said ⁠Nancy Ninette Mutoni, a spokesperson for the country’s president, Évariste Ndayishimiye. Tuesday’s announcement gave no details of numbers, timing or financial ⁠details.

Arab communities on both sides of the border grapple with ongoing tensions as US-Canada relations continue to sour

In Dearborn, Michigan, home to the largest community of Arab Americans in the US, one industry has risen above all others in recent years: Yemeni cafes.

At the forefront is Qahwah House, a powerhouse in the burgeoning Yemeni cafe world with 32 branches open across the country. Three of those are here in Dearborn, with more on the way, and they attract people from near and far.

Support such as for white Afrikaners and anti-communism reveals how US is redefining what qualifies as human rights

With hours left before the funding expires, the Trump administration is pushing to direct more than $175m of the state department’s flagship human rights fund to a slate of awards that includes a huge $40m grant for an anti-communism fund, support for a group advancing white Afrikaner rights in South Africa, a campaign against Brazil’s supreme court and programs that would reward ideological allies in Europe who protect “western civilizational norms”.

On Wednesday, the state department obligated the funds to the grantees hours before the deadline despite congressional concerns and requests not to do so, according to a source familiar with the negotiations. The state department declined to comment on questions from the Guardian specifically on whether it had obligated the funds and had “blown” holds from Congress due to concerns about the money’s use.

After switching tactics, federal agents are detaining and deporting record numbers of people from the US

When federal agents fatally shot US citizen protesters Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis in January during the nation’s largest immigration-enforcement operation ever, it marked a turning point for the second Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign.

Donald Trump in his second term had sparked outrage and huge protests with federal immigration officers descending en masse to one Democratic-run city after another in what some leaders called militarized “invasions”. Los Angeles, Chicago, Charlotte, New Orleans, then Minneapolis saw lines of masked and armored officers swaggering into town to conduct street arrests, ambushes of day workers waiting in Home Depot car parks for hire, and neighborhood sweeps. Adults and kids were whisked off to detention and protests met with aggressive deployment of chemical spray, teargas, fists and batons. The killings in Minneapolis were the culmination of what appeared to many to be a federal shock force increasingly out of control while being defended by federal leaders – and public opinion broadly turned against this violence.

Cross-partisan support in Washington on issues like pesticides and food additives pose a threat to the industry’s bottom line

Some of the biggest food and agriculture corporations in the US are funding a campaign that pays social media influencers to combat elements of Robert F Kennedy Jr’s Make America Healthy Again platform, according to an investigation by the Guardian and Documented, an investigative watchdog and journalism project.

The ascension of RFK Jr to secretary of health and human services has boosted his putative campaign to end chronic illness in the US, which he believes is primarily caused by processed foods and dyes, exposure to certain chemicals, and poor farming practices, along with an overuse of what he falsely claims are dangerous vaccines. The “Maha” movement blends long-running mainstream concerns about food and farm safety with conspiracy theories about everything from medicine to milk. A Maha “summit” in Washington this week will feature JD Vance and several members of Trump’s cabinet.

The Texas Senate candidate rose to power as a culture warrior. His record is a marriage of hypocrisy and cynicism

Ken Paxton’s political career, more than that of any other Republican candidate campaigning in this cycle, charts the arc of the religious right. The most influential of its activists and donors engineered his rise as a culture warrior at each of its phases from his creation through every disgrace. His race for the Senate, the culmination of his ambition, has become not only his last stand, but also the Alamo for Christian nationalists in Texas.

Paxton’s rap sheet explains his Christian identity politics as a shield to distract from the liability of his own record of financial and sexual scandals scrolling back decades. The 20 articles of impeachment against Paxton, adopted by the Republican-controlled Texas house of representatives in May 2023, were double the Ten Commandments that Paxton insists should be displayed in every Texas classroom.

White House has labeled ads ‘public service announcements’ and has responded defiantly to criticism

Federal regulators have been urged to stop the broadcast of White House advertisements promoting Donald Trump that critics say amount to government propaganda and violate laws against using public money to promote partisan causes.

Public Citizen, an advocacy group, called on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to intervene and block further airing of three ads it said were “designed to boost the image and character of Donald Trump” as part of the Republicans’ campaign for November’s midterm elections.

Deepfakes and misinformation driven by artificial intelligence have become a point of deep concern for legislators, advocates and the public

An image of Bianca Motley Broom, the mayor of College Park, Georgia, kissing a man – who was not her husband – in a bar spread far and wide on Facebook. The fact that it’s fake is spreading faster, now, but only after it had been seen by thousands of people.

“I think this is a sad commentary about where we are in our democracy, and where we are in our political discourse,” Motley Broom said. “It also seeks to reinforce really tired stereotypes about women in leadership.”