Katie Zacharia’s maiden briefing was excruciating – at least her predecessor had delivered her propaganda hot
Well, that was weird. Katie Zacharia, the new White House press secretary, made her debut on the podium on Tuesday with all the warmth, wisdom and political dexterity of an AI avatar.
Zacharia was all stilted delivery, nervous tics and lack of eye contact. With an eerie lack of emotion, she served up pro-Trump talking points, took only three questions and vanished after 14 minutes. It was like the West Wing had turned into uncanny valley.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, speaking about negotiations on Ukraine’s accession to the European Union, announced the opening of two clusters this week.
District judge Ana Reyes halts tree-cutting at the East Potomac golf course until 26 October, and now requires advance notice before making course changes
US district judge Ana Reyes on Tuesday ordered a halt to tree-cutting at the East Potomac golf course until 26 October, putting a further pause on work at the historic Washington DC course that has been part of Donald Trump’s plans to remake the country’’s capital city.
Reyes issued the order one day after a tense three-hour hearing in which she harshly criticized the government for having deceived her with its actions over the holiday weekend.
When asked about the decision to request US ambassador Kimberly Guilfoyle's resignation, Donald Trump told the press she 'was doing a good job' but that the administration 'didn't like what we were reading', referring to allegations that Guilfoyle had asked a Trump donor to pay her credit card bill. Guilfoyle, who was once engaged to Trump’s son, Donald Jr, was a longstanding political ally
Elon Musk has become the biggest political donor of the 2026 US midterm elections cycle, funneling about $366m into political groups and campaigns as he backs conservative candidates and rightwing causes. The world’s richest person has poured more than $276m into politics since July alone, some of the most rapid political spending in US history. He’s targeting key races that will determine which party controls the US Senate.
The New York Times first reported the spending numbers, which will be released in a federal filing on Thursday. Musk’s spending outpaces his 2024 presidential election contributions, in which he sunk nearly $300m into Donald Trump’s re-election campaign.
Democrats have described a raid on the home of Congresswoman Ilhan Omar as “deeply disturbing” and a “rogue abuse of power” by the Trump administration. The Democratic representative for Minnesota has long been a target of highly personal attacks by Donald Trump, who claims he was not involved in ordering the Justice Department raid. Omar criticised the raid as an attempt to “weaponize law enforcement” as part of a “campaign of political intimidation” against her. Lucy Hough speaks to Guardian US political reporter Shrai Popat – watch on YouTube
The Maga member believes the 2020 election was stolen and seemingly her new boss is saving the world from a cabal of satanic paedophiles. She’ll fit right in then
Poor Donald Trump. His (third) wife seemingly can’t bear to be near him and his (fifth) press secretary recently abandoned him to be with a baby she had only recently met.
“She decided she loved her children more than she loved Donald Trump,” the president lamented in August when Karoline Leavitt decided to step down a few months after giving birth. “I’m very upset about this. She has to go home and spend time with her children. That does happen on occasion with some people – when they love their children.”
The new press secretary made an embarrassing faux pas and then cut off the entire event after just a few minutes. It left some serious questions about whether she actually believes what she’s saying, writes Holly Baxter
Kimberly Guilfoyle is stepping down as US ambassador to Greece after weeks of reports that she sought payment from a Trump donor in exchange for access to administration officials.
The decision, announced by the White House on Tuesday morning, ends the diplomatic career of one of Donald Trump’s longest-standing political allies. It came after the US president and Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, were reported to have grown furious over the allegations.
Sean Duffy targets bike lanes and immigrant truck drivers while steering funds away from addressing lethal US roads
Barbara McCann may have been the first person to notice that the Federal Highway Administration had removed several safety policies from public view.
McCann worked on road safety policy at the US Department of Transportation (USDOT) for more than a decade across multiple administrations, retiring in January 2025 just before Donald Trump’s second term started. After Sean Duffy, the president’s ally and former Fox news host, took the wheel at USDOT, she became increasingly worried as the secretary appeared unmotivated to address pedestrian safety and regularly bashed bike infrastructure.
Author Natasha Lennard discusses how to disrupt the ‘certainties’ that don’t serve us and how to fight back
At the onset of the Covid pandemic in 2020, journalist Natasha Lennard started noticing a constant thrum of collective apprehension, epitomized in the phrase “in these uncertain times”. The expression acknowledged we didn’t have solutions for many of society’s problems: a globally spreading virus, the rise of the far right and stark “haves v have-nots” inequalities. In the years since, that “uncertainty” hasn’t gone anywhere, risking enabling paralysis – not knowing where to start to fix things and therefore giving up before trying.
In her new book, On Un/Certainty: The Uses of Doubt in Dangerous Times, Lennard, who also was an organizer in the 2011 Occupy Wall Street movement, deconstructs the problematic nature of giving in to uncertainty. She also uses the Austrian-British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s 1969 book On Certainty to question what is held as “certain” in today’s world, and who gets to make those calls.
The pre-midterm defenestration of ACA enrollees looks like political madness – but the president appears to believe hitting poor people might work for him
There is a manic quality to Donald Trump’s desperate dash to do something, anything, ahead of November’s midterm elections to convince beleaguered Americans that he can make the pressures his policies have imposed on their livelihoods go away.
The US president offered to lower barriers against beef imports to limit surging meat prices, only to consider backtracking under pressure from the cow lobby. He offered to stop diesel exports, only to find oil companies werenot interested. He weakened fuel efficiency standards, claiming this would trim the price of a new car (and forgetting to point out it will also raise spending on gas.) In early October he started mailing $500 checks to nearly a million people touting his healthcare “wins”. Oh, and he promised adult Americans a $5,000 check if Republicans maintain control of Congress. That, too, will go nowhere.
Ahead of her White House podium debut, Katie Zacharia reportedly monitored Donald Trump’s public schedule every day, and monitored his Truth Social, and made sure she was on-air when she assumed he might be watching, according to Politico, citing a person familiar with the matter.
That source noted that and a number of high-profile conservative anchors – including from Fox News, Newsmax and OANN – also backed Zacharia for press secretary. She is now set to the sixth person to hold the role throughout both of Trump’s terms in office.
Away from the public eye, deportation planes at Youngstown-Warren and Akron-Canton airports carry hundreds of immigrants daily amid Trump’s ICE crackdown
Just after 10.30am on a recent weekday morning, a Bombardier CRJ200 Air Wisconsin aircraft landed at Youngstown-Warren regional airport.
Having made the 75-minute flight from Milwaukee, the 50-seater came to a halt and its twin engines fired down next to another Air Wisconsin plane and a larger Eastern Air Express Boeing 737, planes that flew in the evening before from Alexandria, Louisiana.
Trump’s reform law that seeks to make coverage harder to get, and to keep, includes working 80 hours a month
It is a date keeping US healthcare providers up at night: 1 January 2027.
As the midterm elections loom, everyone from hospital leaders and to patient advocates are focused on the New Year, when Republicans scheduled the most controversial elements of their healthcare reform law to go into effect.
Though Democrats have a strong edge heading into the midterms, some races have openings for Republicans
While marquee races from Maine to Michigan get all the attention, and draw in a ton of money, a significant batch of lower-profile contests across the US could result in upsets.
Democrats have a strong edge heading into November’s US midterm elections, polls show. In recent days, election prognosticators have shifted even more races in favor of Democrats.
Pioneering computer scientist on why Trump is using ‘superintelligence’ wrong, whether AI could wipe out humanity – and how our biggest challenge will be accepting we’re not the only intelligent beings
Donald Trump is a “corrupt, senile felon” whose fixation on the term superintelligence proves he knows nothing about AI, said Geoffrey Hinton, “godfather” of the technology, in a wide-ranging interview where he doubled down on recent warnings that AI models pose an existential threat to humanity and scoffed at claims the industry could regulate itself.
The pioneering computer scientist, whose work helped lay the foundations of modern AI, has since become one of the technology’s most vocal critics. His latest remarks come after a tumultuous month during which a growing list of senior AI scientists and researchers havejoined Hinton in ringingthealarm about how the technology he helped create could ultimately escape human control, sparking an industry crisis, the hasty assembly of congressional meetings and a rare global consensus that something must be done.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has opposed the agreement between US President Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin on Russian diesel fuel supplies, saying that Europe should instead increase pressure on Russia.
The EU Foreign Affairs Council welcomes the idea of an energy ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia, but only on the condition that both sides respect it. Meanwhile, efforts to increase pressure on the aggressor state are continuing.
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 andreports inthe 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.
President Volodymyr Zelensky stated his readiness to work with the Verkhovna Rada on legislative changes to hold elections in Ukraine as soon as possible, provided that the U.S. reaches an agreement with Russia on a complete ceasefire lasting at least 60 days.
Russia responded to U.S. President Donald Trump’s announcement of an energy truce between Moscow and Kyiv with new attacks on Ukraine’s power grid; however, Ukraine is prepared for such a ceasefire and is sending the appropriate signals.
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.
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.”
Ukraine is keeping a cool head, while statements from the United States may be influenced by preparations for the November 3 midterm congressional elections.
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.
On Sunday, Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha discussed with his German counterpart, Johann Wadephul, the packed agenda for tomorrow’s European talks and key decisions on stepping up pressure on Russia.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has signed decrees enacting decisions of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine to impose sanctions on a number of additional individuals and legal entities.
During a phone call with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, President Volodymyr Zelensky reported Russian strikes on Ukraine's energy infrastructure that had been recorded after U.S. President Donald Trump's announcement of an energy ceasefire.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has announced meetings and other engagements with European leaders next week to consolidate support, as well as new aid packages.
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.
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