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Trump to visit Texas a week after deadly flooding
In about an hour, we expect president Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump to depart the White House for Kerrville, Texas, where scores of people have been killed and remain missing after catastrophic flooding hit the region last week.
While the Trump administration isn’t backing away from its pledges to shutter the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), it has lessened its focus on the topic since the July 4 disaster.
The president is expected to do an aerial tour of some of the hard-hit areas, according to the Associated Press. The White House also said he will visit the state emergency operations center to meet with first responders and relatives of flood victims.
Trump will also get a briefing from officials. Republican governor Greg Abbott, senator John Cornyn and senator Ted Cruz are expected to the visit.
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Yesterday, my colleague José Olivares reported that the death toll in Texas was plateaued at 120, signaling that rescuers have made little progress to find victims amid wreckage in the past 24 hours.
On Thursday morning, local officials in Kerr county, which was hit the hardest by the 4 July flash flood, announced that 96 people had died, the same number reported on Wednesday evening.
Thursday’s update comes a day after Kristi Noem, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, discussed plans to overhaul the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Weeks ago, Trump had promised to begin “phasing out” Fema in order to “bring it down to the state level”.
Trump to visit Texas a week after deadly flooding
In about an hour, we expect president Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump to depart the White House for Kerrville, Texas, where scores of people have been killed and remain missing after catastrophic flooding hit the region last week.
While the Trump administration isn’t backing away from its pledges to shutter the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), it has lessened its focus on the topic since the July 4 disaster.
The president is expected to do an aerial tour of some of the hard-hit areas, according to the Associated Press. The White House also said he will visit the state emergency operations center to meet with first responders and relatives of flood victims.
Trump will also get a briefing from officials. Republican governor Greg Abbott, senator John Cornyn and senator Ted Cruz are expected to the visit.
A recent ruling by the US supreme court cleared the way for the state department layoffs to start while lawsuits challenging cuts continue to play out.
The department formally advised staffers on Thursday that it would be sending layoff notices to some of them soon.
US secretary of state Marco Rubio said officials took “a very deliberate step to reorganize the State Department to be more efficient and more focused,” the Associated Press reported.
“It’s not a consequence of trying to get rid of people. But if you close the bureau, you don’t need those positions,” he told reporters. “Understand that some of these are positions that are being eliminated, not people.”
Rubio said some of the cuts will be unfilled positions or those that are about to be vacant because an employee took an early retirement.
State department firing more than 1,300 employees
The US state department is firing more than 1,300 employees in line with the Trump administration’s reorganization plan initiated earlier this year.
The department is sending layoff notices to 1,107 civil servants and 246 foreign service officers with domestic assignments in the US, a senior State Department official told the Associated Press.
Foreign service officers affected will be placed immediately on administrative leave for 120 days, after which they will formally lose their jobs, according to an internal notice obtained by the AP. For most affected civil servants, the separation period is 60 days, it said.
“In connection with the departmental reorganization … the department is streamlining domestic operations to focus on diplomatic priorities,” the notice says. “Headcount reductions have been carefully tailored to affect non-core functions, duplicative or redundant offices, and offices where considerable efficiencies may be found from centralization or consolidation of functions and responsibilities.”
The cuts have been criticized by current and former diplomats who say it will weaken US influence and its ability to counter existing and emerging threats abroad.
Tom Perkins
The Trump administration has killed nearly $15m in research into Pfas contamination of US farmland, bringing to a close studies that public health advocates say are essential for understanding a worrying source of widespread food contamination.
Researchers in recent years have begun to understand that Pfas-laden pesticides and sewage sludge spread on cropland as a fertilizer contaminate the soil with the chemicals, which then move into crops and nearby water sources.
Sludge is behind a still unfolding crisis in Maine, where 84 farms have been found to be significantly contaminated with Pfas, and some were forced to close. Advocates say farms across the nation are almost certainly contaminated at similar levels, but Maine is the only state with a robust testing program. The impacts on members of the public who eat from the farms in Maine and beyond is unclear.
“We have to do this research and take steps to not just make sure that our food supply is safe, but also ensure our farms and farmers are safe,” said Bill Pluecker, a Maine state representative and public policy organizer at Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association, which has advocated for stricter sludge regulations.
“As we’ve seen here in Maine, farmers are the most affected by the Pfas because they’re working the soil, eating the food and drinking from wells.”
Pfas are a class of around 15,000 compounds that are dubbed “forever chemicals” because they do not naturally break down, and accumulate in the human body and environment. The chemicals are linked to a range of serious health problems like cancer, liver disease, kidney issues, high cholesterol, birth defects and decreased immunity.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) did not respond to a request for comment.
Dharna Noor
The fossil fuel industry poured more than $19m into Donald Trump’s inaugural fund, accounting for nearly 8% of all donations it raised, a new analysis shows, raising concerns about White House’s relationship with big oil.
The president raised a stunning $239m for his inauguration – more than the previous three inaugural committees took in combined and more than double the previous record – according to data published by the US Federal Election Commission (FEC). The oil and gas sector made a significant contribution to that overall number, found the international environmental and human rights organization Global Witness.
The group pulled itemized inaugural fund contribution data released by the FEC in April, and researched each contributor with the help of an in-house artificial intelligence tool. It located 47 contributions to the fund made by companies and individuals linked to the fossil fuel sector, to which Trump has voiced his fealty.
On the campaign trail and in his inauguration speech, the president pledged to “drill, baby, drill”.
“We will be a rich nation again, and it is that liquid gold under our feet that will help to do it,” Trump said in his inaugural address, just hours before he signed a spate of executive orders to “unleash American energy” and roll back environmental protections. His administration has since worked to boost the oil industry, including by taking aim at city- and state-led fossil fuel accountability efforts, opening up swaths of land to extraction, and cracking down on renewable energy expansion.
Paramount Global, the parent company of CBS News, settled a lawsuit filed against it by Donald Trump for $16m last week.
It came after Disney and Meta settled lawsuits with the president in similar ways.
Jonathan Freedland speaks to the Guardian US columnist Margaret Sullivan about why these companies are caving to Trump’s demands, and whether critics are right to be worried about what this means for the future of a free press…
Politics Weekly America
Why is the media paying millions to Trump? – podcast
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At least eight core members of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have left their positions in the last six months, Politico reported on Friday, citing internal records and sources familiar with the matter.
A senior White House official explained the departures by pointing to the fact that many DOGE staffers were special government employees, a designation that has a required end date, the report said.
Kremlin says it awaits 'major statement' from Trump
Russia is awaiting the “major statement” that president Donald Trump announced he would deliver on Monday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday.
Trump told NBC News on Thursday that he will make a “major statement” on Russia on Monday, without elaborating what it will be about.
In recent days, Trump has expressed frustration with Russian president Vladimir Putin over Russia-Ukraine conflict, Reuters reported.
When asked about the new Nato weapons deliveries to Ukraine, Peskov called it “just business” as Kyiv had already been receiving weapons prior to this development.
Rubio says 'high probability' that Trump and Xi will meet
Secretary of state Marco Rubio on Friday said there was “high probability” of a meeting between president Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, but no date has been discussed.
Rubio was speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a regional meeting in Malaysia.
Callum Jones
Brazil threatened to hit back against Donald Trump’s plan to introduce 50% tariffs on its exports with its own 50% tariff on US goods, setting the stage for a precipitous trade war.
“If he charges us 50%, we’ll charge him 50%,” Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the Brazilian president, told local news outlet Record, a day after Trump threatened to impose steep duties on Brazilian goods and accused the country of conducting a “witch-hunt” against its former president Jair Bolsonaro, who is facing a trial over his attempt to overturn his 2022 election defeat.
Brazil could appeal to the World Trade Organization, propose international investigations and “demand explanations”, Lula suggested. “But the main thing is the Reciprocity Law, passed by Congress,” he told Record, referring to recent legislation designed to defend Latin America’s largest economy from tariff attacks.
Trump’s claim that Brazil’s economic relationship with the US was “far from Reciprocal” was also “inaccurate”, Lula had said in a statement on Wednesday. US tariff hikes “will be addressed” by Brazil, he said.
Joseph Gedeon
Donald Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship suffered a courtroom defeat on Thursday as a federal judge in New Hampshire blocked the controversial executive order nationwide and certified a sweeping class-action lawsuit that could protect tens of thousands of children.
Ruling from the bench on Thursday, Judge Joseph LaPlante announced his decision after an hour-long hearing and said a written order would follow. The judge, an appointee of George W Bush, said a written order would follow later in the day, with a seven-day stay to allow for appeal.
The decision is a test case following a recent supreme court ruling that restricted nationwide injunctions, in effect making class-action lawsuits the primary remaining method for district court judges to halt policy implementation across large areas of the country. It delivers a legal blow to the administration’s hardline immigration agenda and ramps up a constitutional dispute that has continued through the first six months of Trump’s second term.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of a pregnant woman, two parents and their infants. It is among numerous cases challenging Trump’s January order denying citizenship to those born to undocumented parents living in the US or temporarily. The plaintiffs are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and others.
“Tens of thousands of babies and their parents may be exposed to the order’s myriad harms in just weeks and need an injunction now,” lawyers for the plaintiffs wrote in court documents filed on Tuesday.
Trump reportedly backs away from abolishing Fema ahead of trip to Texas
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I am Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you the latest news lines over the next couple of hours.
We start with news that president Donald Trump has backed away from abolishing the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), the Washington Post reported on Friday.
No official action is being taken to wind down Fema, and changes in the agency will probably amount to a “rebranding” that will emphasize state leaders’ roles in disaster response, the newspaper said, citing a senior White House official.
It comes as Trump heads to Texas on Friday for a firsthand look at the devastation caused by catastrophic flooding.
Since the 4 July disaster, which has killed at least 120 people, the president and his top aides have focused on the once-in-a-lifetime nature of what occurred and the human tragedy involved rather than the government-slashing crusade that’s been popular with Trump’s core supporters.
“Nobody ever saw a thing like this coming,” Trump told NBC News on Thursday, adding, “This is a once-in-every-200-year deal.” He’s also suggested he’d have been ready to visit Texas within hours but didn’t want to burden authorities still searching for the more than 170 people who are still missing.
The president is expected to do an aerial tour of some of the hard-hit areas. The White House also says he will visit the state emergency operations center to meet with first responders and relatives of flood victims.
Trump will also get a briefing from officials. Republican governor Greg Abbott, senator John Cornyn and senator Ted Cruz are joining the visit, with the GOP senators expected to fly to their state with Trump aboard Air Force One.
In other developments:
Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration seeking $20m in damages, alleging he was falsely imprisoned
A US district judge issued an injunction blocking Donald Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship, certifying a nationwide class of plaintiffs
Police in Scotland are bracing for protests against Trump before an expected visit later this month to his immigrant mother’s homeland, where he is spectacularly unpopular.
The US state department has announced that it plans to move forward with mass layoffs as part of the most significant restructuring of the country’s diplomatic corps in decades.
Senator Ruben Gallego introduced a one-page bill to codify into law the Federal Trade Commission’s “click to cancel” rule, one day after a federal appeals court blocked the rule.
Federal immigration officers, supported by national guard troops, used force against protesters, firing chemical munitions, during raids on two cannabis farms in California’s central coast area.
Trump nominated a far-right influencer to serve as US ambassador to Malaysia.
