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.

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.

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.

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.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

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• US supreme court allows Trump to keep building $400m White House ballroom

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

• Trump signs executive order to rename Lake Ontario as Lake America

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.

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.

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

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.

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.”

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.

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

US president says US will have ‘majority’ control of 65bn barrels of proven oil reserves

Donald Trump announced Friday a new US oil agreement with Venezuela’s interim president Delcy Rodríguez, saying the US will have “majority” control of 65bn barrels of proven oil reserves.

The terms of the agreement remain to be seen, but the US president said on his social-media platform that it had been brokered “through a partnership with ⁠private business” by his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and defense secretary, Pete Hegseth.

Nearly 600 days after the devastating 2025 fires, thousands of Los Angeles residents are still waiting for more than $15bn in federal funds to rebuild their communities

As thousands of residents in Spokane, Washington, begin to grapple with a long recovery after a destructive set of blazes that consumed hundreds of homes in the state’s second most populated city this month, victims of the Los Angeles firestorm broke a grim record – they have faced the longest delay in modern history for federal aid.

Nearly 600 days since a historic firestorm roared into communities across Los Angeles, reducing more than 16,000 structures to ash and toxic debris, the Trump administration has failed to appropriate more than $15bn in long-term recovery funds that are crucial to rebuilding. The delay in supplying the badly needed funds is months longer than the last record set when victims of the Maui fires had to wait 500 days to receive the support, LAist noted this week.

National Park Service, which backs the 250ft arch, says it is likely to disrupt historical significance of dozens of sites

A new National Park Service report backs Donald Trump’s proposed arch, despite what it says are adverse effects to the sightlines of a host of landmarks in Washington, including the Washington Monument and the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials.

The report released on Friday says the 250ft-tall (76-meter) memorial arch is likely to disrupt the historical significance of dozens of sites near its planned location adjacent to the Arlington Memorial Bridge.

Nevada-based Kingsbarn Realty Capital seeks to acquire land to construct private road to development outside park

The Trump administration is reportedly pushing to give a parcel of land inside Yosemite, the country’s first national park and one of its most popular, to a Nevada-based private developer.

Staff with the National Park Service have been exploring how the agency can give a quarter-mile parcel to a company operated by Kingsbarn Realty Capital, the news outlet Notus reported on Friday, citing agency documents and unnamed sources “directly familiar with discussions”.

President faces criticism over plan to import up to 300,000 metric tons of foreign beef without charging higher tariffs

Donald Trump has pledged to allow cattle ranchers and farmers to process their own food amid a backlash from the US agricultural sector over his decision to pause US tariffs on foreign beef.

The US president has been sharply criticized, including from members of his own party, since announcing the US will temporarily import up to 300,000 metric tons of foreign beef without charging higher tariffs in an effort to bring down prices.

Helipad relocation led in part to incident where Marine One, carrying the president, had close call with passenger jet

Safety officials say the relocation of a helipad amid Donald Trump’s multi-project White House reconstruction led in part to an incident earlier this month in which a military helicopter carrying the president came too close to a passenger jet.

A preliminary report published on Thursday by the National Transportation ⁠Safety Board (NTSB) blamed “communication issues” for the failure of the crew of Marine One, the presidential helicopter, to give the required three minutes’ notice to air traffic controllers that they were about to take off from the White House.

Terrified of being seen as a loser, Donald Trump is nonsensically lashing out – even against our old friend Canada

I’m still grieving Dolly Parton. I never met her and always wanted to. She was almost exactly my age and my height and had values I deeply admired. Her death leaves a hole in the firmament.

Which brings me to the person whose values are as far from Dolly Parton’s as any human could possibly be and still claim to be human. I’m referring, of course, to the current occupant of the Oval Office.

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• Trump arch will alter sightlines of many Washington DC landmarks, report says

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A reminder that we are covering the latest out of Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where Kevin Warsh – the new chair of the Federal Reserve – will deliver his first speech as the head of the US central bank at the annual economic policy symposium.

As my colleagues note, Warsh is under pressure to provide clarity on how the Federal Reserve should handle with inflation if price pressures don’t abate.

The president senses a crisis in his cult of personality. He believes the path to victory is through unwavering devotion

Donald Trump has framed his theme for the midterm elections. It has come to him as naturally and inevitably as staring into the mirror, beyond any logic or argument, his definitive answer to no specific issue, providing no understanding of any particular problem, but transcending all of them. His political theme is more primal than programmatic, more instinctive than analytical, a heartfelt expression to protect his greatest romantic attachment, his obsessive fixation, his idealized object: himself.

Trump’s campaign theme is unrequited love. Unlike the pollsters, media consultants and pundits, he alone has grasped the magnitude and the source of the existential crisis threatening his politics. He has identified the problem for the Republicans as the faltering measure of complete devotion to him. His demand has nothing to do with mutual affection. It is a ploy to reassert his slipping control, a manipulative test to prove loyalty to him, or else. There can be no absolute rule without an absolute ruler; no absolute ruler without absolute submission; no absolute submission without the expression of absolute love. His sadness at its fading gives way to anger, paranoia and greater acts of retribution. He equates the fear he instills as a form of love. Trump accepts subservience, from whatever motive, as affection or its closest equivalent. He cares nothing about sincerity, so it’s all in the show. The less love displayed, the more fear required. Yet there is no rebound, but only deeper rejection.

[L'article Le Québec se retrouve au cœur de la guerre commerciale  a d'abord été publié dans InfoBref.]

[L'article Aux États-Unis, Donald Trump a rebaptisé le lac Ontario a d'abord été publié dans InfoBref.]

Congressman Jamie Raskin asks president’s son to detail firm’s recent success after he joined 1789 Capital as partner

Democrats on a powerful US congressional committee have launched an investigation into a venture capital firm which has thrived since recruiting Donald Trump’s son.

Donald Trump Jr joined 1789 Capital as a partner just days after his father won a second term in office in November 2024. Congressman Jamie Raskin, ranking member of the US House of Representatives judiciary committee, has asked the president’s son to detail the firm’s recent success.

The US president signed order on Thursday amid growing trade war with Canada after the US enacted tariffs against its northern neighbor

Mark Carney rejects attempt to rename lake as did several US governors, with Tony Evers mocking the move

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Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday directing the federal government to rename Lake Ontario, making it Lake America, amid his escalating trade war with Canada.

The order directs federal agencies to adopt the name-change on US maps, documents and databases. But Trump has no authority to rename Canada’s portion of the lake, nor to compel Canada, international legal bodies, international mapmakers, or the rest of the world to adopt a new name.

Exclusive: Experts and former officials say accounts are running dry, and funding a war with no clear endgame is the main challenge

Donald Trump’s war on Iran has driven the US military into a severe financial crisis, with the US navy forced to transfer money from its payroll and other sources to cover the costs of combat, according to documents seen by the Guardian, and interviews with navy officials, contractors and defense analysts.

The US-Israeli operation, which has depleted US munitions stockpiles and prompted retaliatory Iranian strikes that have wrecked strategic bases across the Middle East, is piling pressure on budgets across the military.

Judge ruled Jeanine John Taele, discovered with firearm days before Trump visit, was unfit to face felony charge

A judge in California has suspended criminal proceedings against a man found with a loaded gun near Donald Trump’s golf course in Los Angeles, and instead ordered him to undergo a mental health evaluation.

Jeanine John Taele, 38, of Downey, California, was arrested for weapons violations days before the president spoke at a 5 August Republican fundraiser at the Trump National Golf Club in Rancho Palos Verdes.

Burnham has nothing to hide as he prepares to meet president he once called poisonous. It may actually win him more respect

It makes a pleasant change. Not so long ago, Keir Starmer was falling over himself in his efforts to keep things sweet with Donald Trump. Offering the US president a second state visit within minutes of meeting him. Everyone knows you should never put out on the first date: it only makes the other person think you’re a pushover. Sure enough, The Donald banked the marching bands and the Windsor silver service, made polite conversation for three days and then went back to trash-talking him.

Yet still, Starmer just sat there and took it. As if one word of criticism would be too much. Wittering on about the “special relationship” as if Trump gave a moment’s thought to the UK before he did anything. The rest of us wouldn’t have put money on the US president even being able to locate Britain on a map. It was only latterly, when The Donald chose to bomb Iran, that the penny finally dropped for Keir. And even then he looked pained by the apparent betrayal, as he resisted the calls of Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage to join in the war.

As the US president struggles to end his Iran war, and approval ratings hit new lows, he leans on a familiar gambit

Donald Trump knows the power of an image – of himself, with everyone from Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un to Kim Kardashian. How about George Washington?

As the US president struggles to end his war with Iran, and with his approval ratings hitting the lowest levels of his second term, he has in recent weeks posted a series of AI-generated images of himself alongside key historical American figures.

The senator’s remarks reflect a turning point in Democrats’ attacks on the president. What should we make of them?

Apparently, he likes to say her name with a French accent. “Na-tah-lee!” the president cries out, in that affected tone of faux-formality that one might use with a person they love but do not quite respect, and she comes running, her thin legs teetering on her heels.

Natalie Harp, Trump’s 35-year-old “executive assistant”, was an odd recurring character in the latest blockbuster Trump administration book, Regime Change, by the New York Times’ Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan. In the book, Harp features like a silent sentinel, ever present but eerily quiet as Trump rants and raves. It’s not exactly clear what the scope of her responsibilities is; though, as Jamelle Bouie points out, the fact that she evidently helps run the president’s social media accounts, which can sway markets and influence his foreign counterparts, makes her one of the most powerful people in the federal government.

President denies visit was to gain support for Iran sanctions or due to fears that Putin plans to ‘test Nato resolve’

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Donald Trump has downplayed a visit to Moscow by the CIA director, John Ratcliffe, as “semi-routine” after he turned up in the Russian capital unannounced, triggering a wave of speculation about the reasons for his trip.

Ratcliffe was reported to have flown to Moscow on a government transport plane on Tuesday in a rare visit after taking off from the Andrews air force base in Maryland.

The US president expected Ottawa to bow to tariff demands, but Canada is striking back – and it could cost Americans

• This was originally published in This Week in Trumpland. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Wednesday

Earlier this year, a survey found that Canada, along with Switzerland, was the best-liked country in the world. We all know this kind of polling is about as scientific as a high school popularity contest, but at least anecdotally, Canadians have a reputation for being friendly and welcoming, respectful and polite. Many people would find it difficult to dislike Canadians.

But not Donald Trump, who in a “hold my beer” moment this week demonstrated that he, at least, finds it easy to resent Canadians. The US president called the country “difficult and unreasonable”, and in a particularly hysterical moment, threatened to rename a lake, after trade talks collapsed.

In this episode of Guardian Australia’s US politics podcast Decoding America, co-hosts Jonathan Yerushalmy and Reged Ahmad explore why datacentres in the US have provoked such anger – and whether that could harm Republicans in the midterms given Donald Trump is such a supporter of the growing industry.

They also look at why the US and Canada are fighting over tariffs. The Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, is pushing back and both countries could be on the cusp of a full-blown trade war.

Finally: why does the Trump administration’s secretary of transportation, Sean Duffy, have his very own YouTube show – and is he the only one?

Read more:

Canada announces retaliatory tariffs on wide range of US goods

Trump-backed Ken Paxton unveils ‘Texas first’ datacenter plan aimed at ‘negative impact’

They should ask the question Reagan asked at the end of his debate against Jimmy Carter: ‘Are you better off now than you were before this presidency?’

The midterm elections are already upon us, and every Democrat and independent running against a Republican should ask voters the question Ronald Reagan asked on 28 October 1980, at the end of his televised debate against Jimmy Carter: “Are you better off now than you were before this presidency?”

Unless you’re very, very rich, the answer is obviously: “No, I’m worse off.”

Energy bills have increased three times faster than the rate of inflation while Trump has been president. The national average monthly utility bill reached $280 in early 2026, a 12% increase since the end of 2024, just before the second Trump administration took office.

Administration moved away from high-profile raids that defined immigration enforcement approach last year but still deported record number of people

The Trump administration arrested and deported a record number of immigrants in July, according to newly released government data – apprehending an average of 1,500 people and removing 1,100 people daily.

This latest data confirms what attorneys and immigrant advocates have been seeing across the US – although the administration has moved away from the high-profile, militarized raids that came to define its immigration enforcement approach last year, it is quietly ramping up its operations.

The quiet-spoken Canadian prime minister has spoken unutterable truths

Is it perhaps a sign of the times that Mark Carney, the prime minister of Canada, has become a thrilling orator? A sober banker, he speaks calmly, without many vocal inflections. We expect Canadians to be somewhat flat; even a little boring, and yet Carney has already delivered two remarkable speeches in 2026, and the year is far from over.

The first, at Davos, described a “rupture in the world order”, and “the end of a pleasant fiction”. By that, he meant that the world could no longer depend on the United States to lead the Pax Americana that has largely kept the peace since the end of the second world war.

Paper products among hardest-hit sectors after trade negotiations broke down, with 25-50% tariffs estimated

• Are you a Canadian boycotting US products? We’d like to hear from you

Using the bathroom or having a cry is about to become more expensive for North Americans as the US and Canada enter a full-fledged trade war that threatens to flush away decades of peaceful trading between the two nations.

After trade negotiations broke down between the two countries last weekend, Mark Carney, the Canadian prime minister, vowed to match US tariffs “dollar for dollar” and unveiled a list of nearly 900 American goods that will face 25% to 50% tariffs starting on 8 September.

Everyone can see that the Iran war has been a strategic disaster for the US, while a failing president pretends he is winning

Now is the twilight of Donald Trump’s supremacy. The US is still the richest and most heavily armed nation on Earth. That status is secure. The current president, contemptuous of law and indulged in lawlessness by a supine Congress, enjoys even greater power than the constitution allows.

With those advantages it takes a special talent for incompetence to look as thwarted and impotent as Trump does with more than two years of his second term still to run.

Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist

[L'article Riposte canadienne aux tarifs douaniers américains – voici l’essentiel  a d'abord été publié dans InfoBref.]

US president’s lawyers in court filing say Washington arts complex must undergo repairs or risk demolition

The John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts could be demolished if repairs are not carried out, the Trump administration warned in a court filing on Monday.

Lawyers for the US president said the national arts complex in Washington DC must undergo a $250m renovation or risk facing the wrecking ball.

Cristy Maryori Villafranca-Trejo, deported to Honduras, is latest military spouse to face removal amid Trump 2.0

The wife of an active-duty US soldier was deported on Monday to her native Honduras, according to her family and the federal Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Cristy Maryori Villafranca-Trejo is at least the seventh spouse or parent of an active-duty US soldier to be deported under the immigration crackdown during Donald Trump’s second presidency.

House minority leader is under attack from his own party for ‘affordability crisis’ meeting with president’s son-in-law

• Democrats incredulous over Hakeem Jeffries and Jared Kushner meeting

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Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic minority leader in the US House of Representatives, has defended his meeting with Jared Kushner and claimed it was arranged at the request of Donald Trump’s son-in-law.

Jeffries, who has come under attack from Democrats since the New York Times reported on Sunday that the two met privately to discuss common ground on issues like housing, immigration and the high cost of living, said he agreed to the meeting “to discuss the affordability crisis” in the US.

Tariffs on Canada, threats against Iran’s partners and bond market intervention show a president weaponising US power while making Americans poorer at home

Three moves in the last week have exposed the limits of Donald Trump’s economic bullying. The US slapped 50% tariffs on another $20bn of Canadian goods – then threatened the same rate on the cars, trucks, parts and steel that America Inc depends on. On Monday, the Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, menaced Iran’s trading partners with exclusion from the US financial network, hoping that coercion can deliver what months of war have not. And as the costs of war, tariffs and pro-billionaire tax cuts helped send US bond yields higher, the Treasury stepped in to tame long-term rates. These are not contradictory policies but a gamble: that US economic power can be repeatedly weaponised without reducing others’ willingness to depend on it.

The Trump administration’s “D-day” sanctions are potentially the most consequential because they expose the scaffolding of American financial power. While markets shrugged off the immediate threat, that calculation might change were the US to target a major Chinese refinery or bank. Such an escalation could spark a trade war with Beijing. The US has leverage. But China has pressure points – especially farmers in Republican states – that make using it costly. In the long run, there is a price to pay. Nations hold one another’s currencies partly because they trust the political relationship. Mr Trump is testing what happens when they don’t.