Category: US politics

True Donald Trump devotees who put down their $100 deposits are still awaiting the chance to receive one of his family’s $499 golden smartphones for “real Americans”.
But in the meantime, perhaps you'd like to buy a refurbished Apple or Samsung phone from several years ago, for up to $225 more than you could get on Amazon?
That's the astonishing deal now on offer from Trump Mobile, the patriotic phone vendor launched this June by the President's family business, the Trump Organization (currently run by his eldest sons Don Jr and Eric Trump).
There's still no update on the company's forthcoming T1, a “proudly American” Android handset retailing for $499 that was forced to remove its “MADE IN THE USA” branding after experts argued that the facilities to manufacture such devices wholly within the States simply do not exist.
That hasn't stopped the firm hawking refurbished Samsung S23s, S24s, and Apple iPhone 15s and 16s, which appear to have no specific Trump..

Donald Trump grinned from ear to ear as he took the gold medal that had been offered to him and placed it around his own neck.
He had finally claimed his peace prize.
Not the Nobel Peace Prize, mind you. Trump didn’t win that one this year, despite openly campaigning for it since returning to power ten months ago and embarking on a non-stop series of peace overtures meant to bring about the end to long-running, if obscure, world conflicts.
Instead, he had strode onto the stage at the Kennedy Center Opera House to accept an entirely new honor that had been made up by the head of the world soccer governing body after he was snubbed by the Swedish Nobel Committee in favor of Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado.
It was the FIFA Peace Prize, which the international football association had never awarded in its 121-year history, that Trump was there to accept at the start of a star-studded ceremony to determine the draw for the quadrennial tournament, which the U.S. will joint..

Republicans left Democrats on Capitol Hill frustrated this week after a pair of controversies surrounding Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth continued to dominate the headlines, but the president’s party was seemingly unwilling to hold Donald Trump’s Cabinet secretary to any public accountability.
Lawmakers from both parties on the committees overseeing the armed forces and intelligence sectors huddled with Adm. Frank Bradley and Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on Thursday. The briefing focused on a Sept. 2 military strike on a vessel the Trump administration says was ferrying drugs in the Caribbean. In that now heavily-scrutinized mission, Navy SEALs under Bradley’s direction conducted a second strike on the burning wreckage of the vessel as at least two survivors clung to it in desperation.
Committees in both chambers, led by Republicans who hold majorities in the House and Senate, announced plans to investigate the strike after news reports generated criticism fro..

The Supreme Court will let Texas use a new congressional map in next year’s crucial midterm elections that could determine the balance of power in Congress.
A redistricting war among states to maximize Republican victories in a Donald Trump-backed campaign to maintain control of Congress got a significant boost from the nation’s highest court Thursday, with the court’s conservative majority agreeing to temporarily block a lower-court order that found the map unlawful.
The map will remain in play while a legal challenge continues.
The court’s three liberal justices dissented.
In August, Texas Governor Greg Abbott approved a map drawn up by Texas Republicans that is expected to add up to five GOP seats in the House of Representatives, a move that sparked a gerrymandering arms race and legal battles among Republicans and Democrats across the country to reshape their states’ political boundaries ahead of the 2026 elections.
open image in galleryTexas Governor Greg Abbott approved a new con..

A California doctor has been sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison for selling ketamine to Friends star Matthew Perry — the first criminal conviction over the death of the actor, who was found dead in the hot tub of his Los Angeles home in October 2023.
Dr. Salvador Plasencia, 44, who ran an urgent-care clinic in Malibu, California, was one of five people federally charged after the 54-year-old Perry, who played Chandler Bing in the hit NBC show from 1994 to 2004, died of a drug overdose.
During an emotion-charged hearing on Wednesday, Plasencia turned to Perry’s family and directly apologized for his role in the star’s tragic end, telling them: “I am just so sorry.”
Plasencia repeatedly wiped his brow throughout, as he told the court how he would one day have to explain his role to his young son.
“I failed to protect a mother’s son. I failed Mr. Perry, I failed his family and I failed myself,” the disgraced doctor said.
open image in galleryMatthew Perry was found dead in the ho..

For nearly four decades, the murder of 30-year-old Rhonda Marie Fisher in the foothills outside Denver went unsolved.
A passing motorist had discovered Fisher's body on April 1, 1987, at the bottom of an embankment in rural Douglas County, south of the Colorado capital. Yet despite suspects, the killer was never found.
Now Douglas County police say they have identified the culprit as “one of Colorado's most prolific serial killers”, based on 38-year-old DNA evidence from the inside of a paper bag.
The county sheriff's office announced Wednesday that cold case investigators had found a match with convicted murderer Vincent Darrell Groves, who is believed responsible for at least 12 homicides and possibly more than 20.
Groves targeted numerous women between 1978 and 1988, both before and after a five-year sentence for second-degree murder. He was finally put away for good in 1990, only to die of liver failure in prison in 1996.
Left: Rhonda Marie Fisher. Right: Vincent Gro..

Vanity Fair editor Olivia Nuzzi has trashed her scorned ex-fiancé Ryan Lizza for publishing what she calls harmful “revenge porn.”
The pair of high-profile journalists has recently made headlines as they unraveled their messy personal lives.
Ahead of the publication of Nuzzi’s new book, American Canto, Lizza released a series of Substack posts for his independent publication Telos News, claiming his former partner cheated on him with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and former South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford.
In the first part of the series, Lizza detailed a “love letter” Nuzzi, now 32, had supposedly sent to Sanford in March 2020. Nuzzi had covered the 2020 presidential election cycle in which Sanford was a candidate.
“If I swallowed every drop of water from the tower above your house,” Lizza quoted the letter. “I would still thirst for you.”
open image in galleryVanity Fair editor Olivia Nuzzi has trashed her scorned ex-fiancé Ryan Lizza for publishin..

Leer en EspañolPresident Vladimir Putin has said Russia is ready to fight a war with Europe if it is provoked, as he accused leaders of sabotaging US-led efforts to end the war in Ukraine.
“We are not planning to go to war with Europe, but if Europe wants to and starts, we are ready right now,” he said on Tuesday. “They are on the side of war.”
He said Europe had made demands on a possible peace settlement for Ukraine, which he said Russia found “absolutely unacceptable”.
Putin suggested European powers were hindering President Donald Trump’s efforts to broker a peace deal in order to accuse Russia of not wanting peace.
The Russian leader was speaking at a plenary session of the VTB Russia Calling Investment forum in Moscow, ahead of talks with Mr Trump’s special envoy and son-in-law – Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.
Last month, Russia and the US agreed to a 28-point plan – widely condemned by European governments – that would force Ukraine to give up land, cut its army and cease it..

Far-right influencer and outside Trump adviser Laura Loomer officially has a desk and credential at the Pentagon, after virtually all mainstream news organizations covering the Defense Department handed in their badges in October rather than agree to a new set of rules restricting their coverage to pre-approved information.
“The Washington Post and Dan Lamothe used to occupy this desk inside the Pentagon Press room,” Loomer wrote on X on Monday. “Now it’s mine!”
Reporters from other newly welcomed outlets including RedState and Fearless Media soon were also claiming to be using Lamothe’s old desk, sharing photos of what appeared to be different spaces inside the Pentagon press offices.
The mix-up prompted mockery and corrections from the recently exiled Defense Department press corps.
On X, Lamothe said he actually gave up the desk in March, well before the new crop of reporters came in, and joked that he had now “lost count” of how many alleged desks he had at the military HQ.
open..

Costco has sued the Trump administration over its flagship tariffs policy, joining a growing list of companies vying in court to ensure they are refunded if the Supreme Court strikes those tariffs down.
In a complaint filed last week before the U.S. Court of International Trade, lawyers for Costco asked the Supreme Court to rule Trump's 'emergency' tariffs illegal and to order the full refund of all such tariffs it has already paid.
Other companies which have brought such lawsuits include the American cosmetics titan Revlon and the Japanese motorbike and motor maker Kawasaki Motors.
Three lower courts have already ruled against President Donald Trump's use of emergency powers to impose tariffs on imports from across the world, and now the Supreme Court is hearing arguments for a final decision.
But if the nation's highest court also rejects the tariffs, lawyers for Costco — the nation's biggest warehouse club retailer and the third biggest retailer in the ..