President signed the legislation championed by late senator Lindsey Graham last month but has waived the restrictions as they were due to come into effect
Donald Trump has put on hold a sweeping new sanctions package targeting the Russian economy, telling Congress the pause on the legislation passed by both chambers was in the national interest.
In an executive order on Friday, the US president said he was waiving many sanctions, restrictions and duties on Russia, in a move that comes as he has been publicly criticising Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, including suggesting that Ukraine needs a new leader.
Justice department warns election officials of prosecution if they ‘knowingly tabulate ballots’ cast by noncitizens
The Trump administration is escalating its fight with California ahead of next month’s midterm elections, warning that local officials who process and tabulate ballots submitted by suspected noncitizen voters are putting themselves at risk of criminal investigation and potential prosecution.
The letter on Friday from senior justice department officials and obtained first by the Associated Press is the latest salvo in an ongoing tussle with heavily Democratic California, coming just a day after the Trump administration sued the state to prevent it from counting mail-in ballots from people the federal government has identified as “likely” noncitizens until their immigration status can be confirmed.
The president reportedly chose Zacharia after seeing her on television, but her first press briefing and disastrous interviews sealed her fate
And so Katie Zacharia joins the mayfly ranks of Liz Truss, Anthony Scaramucci, New Coke, CNN+ and Quibi. To say she burned twice as bright and half as long would be too kind. She went out like a firework on a soggy night.
The White House confirmed on Friday that Zacharia was leaving her role as press secretary after just five days on the job. No one was surprised after a lacklustre press briefing debut and scrutiny over her legal credentials.
Her abrupt firing after just five days reopened the contest for one of the Trump administration’s most prominent roles
The White House is without a press secretary again after the ousting of Katie Zacharia, just five days into her appointment as Donald Trump’s spokesperson.
Zacharia’s departure comes just months after Karoline Leavitt unexpectedly resigned as the White House press secretary to focus on her family.
Zacharia hosted widely panned first briefing on Tuesday and faced scrutiny after admitting she didn’t pass bar exam
Donald Trump’s new press secretary, Katie Zacharia, was fired on Friday, just five days after she assumed the role, according to a White House official.
Zacharia confirmed her departure from the White House on Friday evening.
In an interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity, the new White House press secretary, Katie Zacharia, admitted that she did not pass the bar exam, after facing scrutiny about her legal career before becoming the top spokesperson for Trump. Zacharia had previously said she practiced law before entering politics, and Trump had described her as an attorney. Zacharia earned a law degree from Pepperdine University in 2011, according to the school. Nearly all licensed US lawyers first obtain a law degree, but law school graduates cannot legally practice law in the US without being admitted to a state bar. In China, the law requires practicing lawyers to be Chinese nationals. Foreign staff can advise and consult on legal matters but not practice law.
Donald Trump has urged Katie Zacharia, his new White House press secretary, to “reconsider” taking the job after she faced intense scrutiny from news outlets, including the rightwing cable network Fox News.
Speaking with reporters outside the White House on Friday, the US president said Zacharia had been “treated very badly by the media” after she stumbled through a 14-minute press conference on Tuesday and questions arose over her legal credentials.
The old certainties have gone. We will have to spend whatever it takes to protect ourselves in this new and dangerous world
Donald Trump must find it oddly frustrating. He keeps showing the world exactly who he is, and yet the world keeps refusing to believe it. As clearly as he can, he is announcing that he is not the leader of the free world, that he is not even a reliable member of the democratic west, that he is in fact an ally of its enemies – but the west, including Britain, either doesn’t fully get the message or can’t quite bring itself to draw the obvious conclusion.
Trump had another go this week, finding multiple ways to declare that in the war between Russia and Ukraine, he is no mediator or peace broker but a partner of Vladimir Putin. In fairness to him, the US president had loudly issued that declaration within weeks of his return to the White House when, in February 2025, he delivered an on-camera dressing down of Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, seeking to humiliate the Ukrainian leader by telling him “you don’t have the cards”, even as JD Vance demanded their visitor show gratitude. That should have made Trump’s position sufficiently plain, but in the past few days he has all but put it up in lights.
Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist
US midterms: Trump, war and America’s future
On Thursday, 5 November join Jonathan Freedland, Devika Bhat, Professor Adam Smith in London and David Smith and leading US commentator Tara Setmayer live from the US to discuss the results and their implications for the future of Trump, the US and global politics.
Book tickets here or at guardian.live
Attorneys and experts are raising the alarm that immigrants at Camp East Montana, the sprawling desert detention camp on the Fort Bliss military base in west Texas, face a risk of serious injury or death because of ongoing, extreme health and safety hazards there, according to a fresh court filing, the Guardian can reveal.
The allegedly dangerous conditions persist at the tent jail, the largest immigration detention facility in the US, despite regular reports from inside and outside the federal government that it has violated dozens of official standards since it opened last year.
The US vice-president is following the Donald Trump playbook, attacking the Democrats, attempting to make jokes and even swearing more. Jonathan Freedland talks to Arwa Mahdawi about why Vance is making such an effort to court voters
In Maine, Troy Jackson, the Democratic nominee for US Senate, and Susan Collins, the five-term Republican incumbent traded barbs on Thursday in their final debate ahead of the November midterms.
This was the fourth showdown between the pair. Collins has tried to cast Jackson as an inexperienced state lawmaker, and attempted to yoke him to the former nominee, Graham Platner, who dropped out of the race earlier this year following allegations of rape and sexual assault (which he still denies). Meanwhile, Jackson accused his opponent of corruption, and castigated her for her “moderate” persona in Congress.
Thousands of vetted and approved refugees are suffering as Trump restricts quotas and prioritizes white South Africans
Donald Trump plans to once more severely restrict the number of refugees admitted to the US, announcing a limit of just 17,500 people in fiscal year 2027 – and that, again, those let in will be “primarily” white South Africans.
Refugee rights groups are alarmed and infuriated at the decision last month by the US president to exclude almost every other demographic.
Donald Trump has called Ukraine’s renewed strikes on Russian oil refineries “a disgrace” and criticised Volodymyr Zelenskyy after an energy ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine failed to take hold.
Ukraine resumed strikes on Russian oil refineries after Zelenskyy said Kyiv was abandoning a ceasefire unilaterally declared by Trump on Sunday, having briefly halted its attacks to demonstrate its readiness for peace talks. Russia had continued its strikes on Ukrainian power plants.
The mixed martial arts organization has had links to the US president for years. Now it could be involved in training federal agents
In the lead-up to UFC Freedom 250 – the cagefighting spectacle that took place on the South Lawn of the White House to mark Donald Trump’s 80th birthday this past summer – the FBI announced that a handful of UFC fighters would visit the bureau for an exclusive training seminar for federal agents.
Taking place at the FBI Special Agent Academy in Quantico, Virginia, the March seminar put roughly 300 federal agents and academy students through specialized hand-to-hand combat training with seven past and current UFC fighters, including former middleweight champion Chris Weidman, who was pictured giving attendees advice on warding off attackers.
Connexion
