Donald Trump said in an interview yesterday that voters should treat the 2026 midterms as if he is on the ballot, while bringing up how he is going to make “transgender… end.”

Former Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), who is now a Fox News host, asked Trump on his show yesterday about the upcoming midterms, in which it seems likely that Republicans will lose ground in Congress.

“I think we’re gonna do very well,” Trump said. “I’m gonna take a lot of time, and I’m going to help people get elected, if I can.”

The president’s party historically loses seats in Congress during midterm elections, but Trump said that that will only happen because his name isn’t on the ballot. So he wanted voters to “pretend I’m on the ballot.”

“I see it all the time, that when Trump’s on the ballot, they win,” he said. “When he’s not on the ballot, the people don’t go to vote, and I’m asking the people … to get out and vote. Pretend I’m on the ballot.”

“Our country’s going to be in sad shape, because we’re gonna go through a lot of things,” he continued. “You’re going to have the taxes raised, you’re gonna have crazy things happening like the men in women’s sports will never end. None of this- Transgender will never end,” he told Gowdy.

“We’ve done a great job; we’re the most respected country right now in the world; we’re more respected than we ever were, and I think people wanna keep it that way, so I think we’re gonna win.”

Trump’s second administration has taken a harder line against transgender people’s rights than his first administration did, with him immediately ordering all federal agencies to stop acknowledging that trans people exist on his first day in office. He also ordered the military to kick trans service members out, issued an executive order to ban trans kids from participating in school sports as their gender, and started using all the investigative offices under his control to intimidate hospitals, school districts, and other institutions into rolling back trans rights and care.

His comments about ending transgender people echo comments he made in December 2024 at AmericaFest – after the 2024 elections but before his inauguration – where he said: “With the stroke of my pen on day one, we’re going to stop the transgender lunacy.”

“Under the Trump administration, it will be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female. Doesn’t sound too complicated, does it?”

He already signed those executive orders, though, and it’s not clear what more the federal government could do at this point to erase trans people’s identities.

While the right often says that their issues with trans people are sports and what kids are taught in school, they sometimes admit that they simply have a problem with trans people existing at all. In 2023, prominent right-wing pundit Michael Knowles said “transgenderism must be eradicated” but insisted he didn’t mean killing transgender people but eliminating them “ontologically.”

Transgender people have always existed and will continue to exist because being transgender is a natural part of human diversity. Conversion therapy has not been shown to change people’s gender identities, and oppressing LGBTQ+ people only causes them to hide their identities, not change them.

A 76-year-old man holding permanent US residency and grappling with stage four prostate cancer is reportedly being held in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention in Tacoma, Washington.

Federal immigration officials detained Loreto Javar during his US citizenship interview in Tukwila, Washington, in June. Javar, a Filipino national, moved to the US in 1995 and has lived in the country with his wife and daughter ever since.

According to court documents reviewed by the Seattle Times and reported on by the outlet on Monday, federal officials allege that Javar was involved in an altercation in the Philippines in the 1970s that left one person dead. Javar told officials at the time of his arrest in June that he had served about three years in jail in the Philippines before being released on parole, according to the documents cited by the Seattle Times.

Javar, a retired hotel worker, has renewed his permanent residency – or green card – several times without issue since moving to the US more than 30 years ago, including most recently in December, his daughter, Daisy Javar, told the outlet.

Loreto Javar applied for US citizenship in November 2025 and has no criminal history in the country, Daisy Javar added. Although her father had never told his family about his conviction before his detention by ICE, she said: “He’s been following all the rules, paying his taxes, everything.”

In a statement to the Seattle Times, an ICE spokesperson said Javar was arrested because he had failed to disclose a criminal conviction in the Philippines when he originally applied for a visa to move to the US in 1995 and join his father, who was already living in the country as a US citizen.

The ICE spokesperson said Javar’s disclosure would have made him ineligible to enter the US at the time of his original application, adding, “He is therefore ineligible to remain in the United States now,” the Seattle Times reported.

According to Daisy Javar, her father obtained police clearance from the Philippines’ National Bureau of Investigation as part of the process of securing his US visa at the time, the outlet also reported.

The Guardian has reached out to ICE for comment.

Javar as of Tuesday was being held at the Northwest ICE processing center in Tacoma, Washington. He was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer in January and is prescribed two oral medications, as well as other medications for conditions including high blood pressure, the Seattle Times reported.

Speaking to the outlet, Daisy Javar said her father’s meals were often delivered late, with lunch sometimes not served until 6pm and dinner at midnight. She said the delays have complicated his medication schedule.

Meanwhile, an online petition organized by the Filipino migrant advocacy group Tanggol Migrante Movement calling for Javar’s release said: “Before his detention, [he] was actively receiving treatment for his Stage 4 Prostate Cancer, but since being taken into ICE custody, that course of treatment has been interrupted.

“So far, he has missed two oncology appointments that occur on the 4th of every month and has recently developed a blood clot in his stomach. The appointments are crucial to conduct bloodwork and adjust his medication to prevent his cancer from further developing.”

The petition added: “Furthermore, the Seattle Philippine Consulate has yet to provide concrete support despite promising [Javar] that they would help … The Philippine government and their overseas extension, the Seattle Philippine consulate, repeatedly fails to protect their nationals when they face detention, exploitation, abuse, or deportation.”

According to the petition, the Philippines consulate visited Javar and “promised to help him and provide him with $300 for his commissary, but they have yet to fulfill that promise”.

The Guardian has contacted the Philippine embassy and consulate general in Washington DC and Seattle, respectively.

Donald Trump’s administration has been pursuing a campaign of mass deportation throughout his second presidency. The president and his allies said the campaign would mainly target “violent criminals” and the “worst of the worst”. But a Guardian analysis of government records has found that the vast majority of people who entered deportation proceedings for the first during the first year of Trump’s second presidency had no criminal conviction.

A poll taken by PBS News, National Public Radio and Marist after immigration agents’ killings of US citizens Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis in January determined Americans largely disapproved of ICE.

Nearly two-thirds of those surveyed – 62% – said they believed ICE had gone too far in enforcing the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, the pollsters said.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent downplayed concerns over rising bond yields Tuesday as a global sell-off in bonds quickened amid resumed fighting in Iran.

“I don’t think we are in any kind of a dire situation,” Bessent said during a fireside chat with Fox Business host Larry Kudlow on the sidelines of the G-20 finance ministers meeting Tuesday.

By midday, the yield on 10-year U.S. Treasury notes, which influences mortgage rates and other borrowing costs, reached its highest mark since January 2025. The yield on 30-year bonds also inched up toward a 20-year high that it’s been flirting with for a few weeks.

“The U.S. has the best performing bond market. What happens over a month doesn’t matter. … Since President Trump came into office Jan. 20, 2025, it’s been the best performing bond market among major countries in the world,” Bessent said.

Investors on Tuesday sold bonds, partly over worries that an impasse in the Middle East will continue to fuel inflation around the world and force central banks to raise interest rates to help keep prices in check.

Rising fuel rates have plagued American consumers and businesses this year, after the war in Iran sent prices for gasoline and diesel surging. While Trump once pledged the conflict would be a short-lived, it has stretched for months, pushing up inflation and Americans’ angst about prices.

The U.S. bond market might be performing better than some other countries’ markets, but that shouldn’t give Americans much comfort, said Rebecca Patterson, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. It’s an “ugly beauty contest,” she said.

“If the yield is rising, what it means is that every financial instrument in the world anchored to a 10-yield rate goes up,” she said.

That rate influences a lot of things, including mortgages, auto loans and business loans.

Bessent spent Monday and Tuesday at a mountain resort in Asheville with other finance ministers from the world’s largest economies. He has argued that growth fueled by deregulation is the best way for members states, including the United States, to overcome their debt challenges.

A bombshell whistleblower report warns of serious flaws in the rush by the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) to implement President Donald Trump’s anti-mail voting order before November, including the potential for thousands of ballots to be rejected due to a single error.

“As presently designed, if even one bar code on one single ballot in a bulk-mailing of 10,000 ballots fails to properly scan during the verification process, the entire batch is rejected and sent back to the state – effectively stopping the ballots from being mailed to voters,” reads the report, which was made public Tuesday by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.).

It goes on to outline in detail how large numbers of voters could be disenfranchised, describing the USPS process as “entirely unforgiving.”

The report describes the whistleblower’s account as a “compelling warning of catastrophic failure which could derail the midterm elections.”

The report contends USPS has been secretly scrambling to build “new and untested” systems that under normal circumstances would take nine months to a year, or even more.

That has led to major problems with the systems’ technology, the whistleblower alleges.

“In the final days before the planned September 1 launch date, the Whistleblower is aware of multiple USPS officials describing the election ballot mail IT system development process as ‘a shit show,’” the report asserts.

Central to the scheme is the “Federal Ballot Mail Portal,” where states – under Trump’s order – would have to upload lists of people allowed to vote by mail. USPS has said it will refuse to deliver ballots if states don’t meet its standards, which also include new ballot envelope design requirements like the trackable barcodes.

“Nothing close to the extent and severity of this new USPS system and attendant processes seems to have existed before,” the whistleblower report reads.

The whistleblower, identified as an anonymous federal official, expressed concern that the “slapdash” software development process means the portal “will almost certainly have significant operating problems.”

“The Whistleblower also raises grave concerns that the administration has hidden the high likelihood that the new ballot mail verification processes will result in major disruptions in mail ballots ever getting delivered to voters,” the report states.

It also notes that USPS failed to include the “zero-percent failure policy” in its rule that was officially published on Aug. 26.

Trump’s order and the USPS rule implementing it are currently under a temporary restraining order as legal challenges play out in the courts. That order allows the agency to continue work on the portal so long as states are not required to take action.

If allowed to move forward, Trump’s order and the USPS rule would have enormous consequences on the mail voting process relied upon by 47 million Americans in the 2024 election.

“Potentially millions of American voters may not receive their mail-in ballot this election cycle in a timely manner, or at all,” the whistleblower report reads.

New York’s attempt to make fossil fuel-producing industries pay into a $75 billion fund to repair the damage wrought by climate change was struck down by a federal judge, who said the sweeping law reaches beyond a state’s responsibility and into an area of federal interest.

The law, signed in 2024 by Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul, was challenged in court by a range of fossil fuel interests, business associations including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 22 Republican state attorneys general and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

U.S. District Judge Brenda Sannes ruled Monday that the state’s climate law operated on territory governed by federal law for over a century and sought damages for the cumulative impact of conduct that has occurred nearly everywhere on Earth.

That, she wrote, conflicts with the need for a uniform national energy and environmental policy, and is otherwise not authorized by the federal Clean Air Act, which designates the EPA as the primary regulator of planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions.

Separately, trying to collect damages from foreign fossil fuel producers is preempted by foreign affairs doctrine, making it unconstitutional, Sannes wrote.

Climate change activists urged Hochul’s administration to appeal. A spokesperson for Hochul’s administration said “taxpayers shouldn’t have to foot the bill for damages caused by polluters” and that the administration was reviewing the decision to determine its next steps.

President Donald Trump’s administration previously challenged Michigan, Hawaii and Vermont over similar laws after he declared a “ national energy emergency ″ and ordered his attorney general to take action against states that may be illegally overreaching their authority in how they regulate energy.

In a statement, the Department of Justice said it is “delivering on President Trump’s order to protect American energy from state overreach.”

“New York’s law would have expropriated $75 billion from energy companies around the world during an energy emergency and in direct defiance of American foreign policy and federal law,” Adam Gustafson, a principal deputy assistant attorney general, said in a statement.

New York’s law had required companies responsible for substantial greenhouse gas emissions to collectively pay $3 billion a year over 25 years into a fund for infrastructure projects meant to repair or avoid future damage from climate change.

Lawmakers approved the bill to force big oil and gas companies to contribute to the cost of repairs inflicted by extreme weather events and to underwrite resiliency projects such as coastal wetland restoration and upgrades to roads, bridges and water drainage systems.

The biggest emitters of greenhouse gases between 2000 and 2018 were to be subjected to the fines.

A U.S. Postal Service official has alleged that the agency is moving forward with a “secretive, rushed” effort to implement President Trump’s order exerting federal control over mail voting, despite a court order blocking those plans.

The official filed a whistle-blower report, published on Tuesday morning by the office of Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, asserting that the “risky and haphazard” implementation of Mr. Trump’s order could lead to a “catastrophic failure” in the mail ballot system ahead of this year’s midterm elections. The report said that the agency had planned to complete the new digital system overseeing mail ballots by Sept. 1.

“Potentially millions of American voters may not receive their mail-in ballot this election cycle in a timely manner, or at all,” the official said in the report, which was prepared with the assistance of Whistleblower Aid, a nonprofit group that represents people seeking to expose potential lawbreaking.

Speaking to reporters by phone on Monday, Mr. Blumenthal said of the report that “the main takeaway for me is that the Postal Service has designed a system to disenfranchise millions of Americans. One-third of all Americans cast their ballots by mail, and the U.S.P.S. puts all of their votes at risk.”

A Postal Service official declined to comment on the record.

Voting by mail will become much more difficult, if not impossible, for tens of millions of Americans if the Postal Service is allowed to implement the restrictive rules governing mail voting that Mr. Trump has demanded.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly promoted false claims of widespread fraud through mail-in voting, which he has described as “cheating,” “corrupt” and “horrible,” even though he voted by mail in two elections this year. He has moved to restrict mail-in voting using a variety of procedural and legislative levers.

Those moves have led to a pileup of legal rulings and challenges surrounding the nation’s electoral system just two months before the midterm elections. The rules could especially affect states where some of the most competitive races for House, Senate and governor will determine control of Congress and state governments.

Michigan, where 37 percent of votes were cast by mail in 2022, would be one, with competitive statewide contests and multiple battleground House races. California, which mails ballots to all voters, is expected to be central to Democratic efforts to win control in the House.

The Supreme Court had allowed the Trump administration to move ahead with Mr. Trump’s mail ballot executive order, reasoning that a lawsuit challenging the order was premature because the administration had not started implementing its plans.

But days before the court ruled, the Postal Service formally published a new plan to comply with the executive order. Judge Indira Talwani, a Federal District Court judge in Massachusetts, reasoned that the stakes had changed with the new plan and temporarily blocked it, concluding that the agency’s plan appeared to overstep its legal mandate and could spark chaos by changing rules a little more than two months before an election.

The whistle-blower report provided specific details of the Postal Service’s effort to rapidly implement a new digital system for mail ballots, even as a federal appeals court had blocked the plan before the Supreme Court intervened. Work has also continued on the system even after Judge Talwani ordered the plan halted last week, the report said.

The official at the Postal Service raised “grave concerns” in the report that the verification process in the system could reject tens of thousands of ballots in a bulk-mailing batch if “even one bar code on one single ballot” failed to properly scan, and that the rushed, “slapdash” development of the system would significantly increase the chance of errors and other failures in the verification process.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has published a new webpage that will help carry out President Donald Trump’s plans to create a national voter registry and shape who can vote in the upcoming midterm elections.

It’s the latest sign that the administration is hurtling forward with plans to put Trump’s dangerous anti-voting March executive order into effect.

The order directed DHS and the Social Security Administration (SSA) to centralize data from across the federal government to create lists of eligible voters in all 50 states.

The new website, dubbed the “State Citizenship Lists Portal,” claims the lists are “coming soon.”

According to a memo it released in June, DHS plans to have the portal fully functional by Friday, Sept. 4.

Voting experts have said the federal government lacks the authority to create such lists, which could be used to challenge voters’ inclusion on state registration lists, and therefore their right to vote.

Combined, the lists sought by Trump would amount to a nationwide voter eligibility database managed by the federal government. No such thing has ever before existed because the U.S. election system is designed to be managed by states and localities, not the executive branch.

Privacy experts have also warned that the Trump administration would likely violate privacy laws in centralizing Americans’ personal data to compile the lists.

On Tuesday, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), a privacy advocacy nonprofit, filed a lawsuit against DHS and SSA, challenging the effort as an unconstitutional attempt to seize control of elections.

“No statute authorizes Defendants to share and centralize vast volumes of Americans’ sensitive personal data across government agencies to create and disclose the ‘State Citizenship Lists,’” the lawsuit, filed in federal court in Maryland, reads.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in the field are expected to have body cameras by the end of September, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said at a press conference in New York on Tuesday.

Asked by CNN whether the administration was still on track to distribute body cameras to the field, Mullin said: “We’re getting close. By the end of September, I’m pretty sure we will be there.”

“There’s also options we have. We have the permanent cameras that we’re trying to put on there,” he added.

The use of body cameras has largely garnered bipartisan agreement, particularly amid aggressive and sometimes deadly confrontations between federal agents and members of the public over the past year.

White House border czar Tom Homan has repeatedly said he supports agents having body cameras. “I’m a big proponent of cameras. I want the American people to see what the officer sees when he makes a decision,” Homan said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.

Motorola is working with DHS on the mics that agents use, according to Mullin. “Some of the technology with some of the mics that all of these guys already wear, already have on them, have the ability for cameras too.”

Mullin is meeting with the Motorola CEO this week as part of those discussions: “We’re talking about how we can activate those faster too.”

ICE previously told CNN in a statement that the agency had acquired devices to equip ICE officers and agents with body cameras, adding: “Training required to equip individual officers remains ongoing and we expect to complete this training soon.”

ICE had also previously said it expected all field officers to have body cameras by the end of August.

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday ‌that Pastor Darrell Scott will serve his administration as an adviser for tobacco ⁠health issues on a committee that advises the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"For far too long, tobacco-related ‌disease ⁠has taken an enormous toll on American Families, including Communities that have ⁠too often been overlooked and underserved," Trump said ⁠in a post on Truth Social.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been accused of “body shaming” a youth cadet instructor after posting her picture on social media.

Hegseth shared the image of an instructor from Vernon Cadet Training Center in British Columbia presenting a cadet with a medal, captioning it with an emoji of a Canadian flag and the words: “(this is real).”

The post met with an immediate backlash, with one Canadian veteran writing in response: “Wow. The Secretary of Defense is body shaming cadet groups. A youth group.

“This is not a military unit. They are kids looking for adventure, test themselves and align themselves with the values of service. Don’t be a Pete.”

Amy Coplan, a philosophy professor at California State University, Fullerton, asked the former Fox News host: “What is your point? You’re the Secretary of Defense, and our country is currently engaged in a war.

“Why are you posting what appears to be some sort of insulting tweet about teenagers in Canada? Is bullying Canadian teenagers more important than attending to our ever-deteriorating situation in Iran?

“Is bullying Canadian teenagers ever an appropriate activity for the Secretary of Defense? Or any rational adult?”

Ex-Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger agreed: “Literally they’re kids. This is a cadet program and our a** hat of a Secdef is making fun of children. MAGA males are betas who have to punch down to feel big.”

Others responded with an American flag emoji and a “(this is real)” caption to shots of a sweaty Hegseth clutching a bottle of champagne or running in an exercise drill.

The secretary previously stated his opposition to women serving in combat roles in the military and revealed an apparent fixation with troops’ personal appearances, railing against “fat” soldiers and dressing down top brass in Virginia a year ago for allowing servicemembers to cultivate long hair and beards.

Donald Trump has summoned oil groups to the White House on Tuesday as high petrol and diesel prices, triggered by his war in Iran, push up inflation across the US ahead of midterm elections.

Marathon Petroleum, Phillips 66, Chevron, Delek US Holdings, PBF Energy and Valero Energy are among the companies called to the meeting to discuss refining capacity and prices, according to people with knowledge of the event.

With less than three months until November’s midterm legislative elections, the US president is under increasing political pressure over an affordability crunch, with a recent FT poll showing voters now believe they are worse off under Trump.

Oil supply disruption caused by the Iran war and a loss of global refining capacity following Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian plants have helped keep average US petrol prices above $4 per gallon in August, an almost 30 per cent increase over the past year.

The price of diesel, critical to US industry and agriculture, is closing in on all-time highs of $5.80 per gallon.

“The president will meet with industry leaders to collaborate on the best ways to increase refining capacity, further unleash American energy dominance across the entire supply chain and bring down prices for the American people,” said White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers.

The summons to the refiners come as they post record profits, with the gap between the cost of diesel and crude oil, known as the “crack spread”, soaring to $100 a barrel.

In June, Trump accused Big Oil of price gouging and called for a justice department investigation over high petrol prices.

Crude prices rose again on Monday, with Brent settling about 2.7 per cent higher, at $90.49 per barrel, after the US and Iran exchanged more fire on Sunday and Trump on Monday vowed to hit the country “hard” with more strikes.

Tom Kloza, chief energy adviser at Gulf Oil, said he expected Trump to try to talk down fuel prices but warned that this could spark a backlash in the US oil sector.

“The president has been very successful, perhaps by accident, but certainly very successful in talking down the price of crude oil,” said Kloza. “If not for those verbal interventions on Truth Social, we’d be looking at triple-digit crude prices.”

“Whether they want to burn bridges with an industry that has been very pro-Trump, that’s a different matter,” he added.

Despite the White House meeting, analysts said the administration had little leeway to influence domestic fuel prices, with oil groups already operating plants flat out and deferring maintenance of facilities to keep churning out fuel.

As of the week ending August 21, US refinery utilisation had been at or above 95 per cent for 12 consecutive weeks, the longest streak since 2000, according to US Energy Information Administration data.

Some analysts warned the stretched system left the market vulnerable to more disruption and further price increases unless Trump ended his confrontation with Iran. Refineries near the Gulf of Mexico, for instance, could suffer an outage due to a hurricane, driving prices higher, analysts said.

“Seasonal stocks of diesel and home heating oil are at historic lows, while planned maintenance at several major refineries — including the sprawling St John refinery in north-east Canada — are likely to pull prices up even higher, absent de-escalation in the Middle East,” said political risk consultants Eurasia Group in a recent note.

Joe DeLaura, a global energy strategist at Rabobank, said Trump could consider banning fuel exports from the US.

“He’s got to do something to get gasoline prices down but he is also not going to just walk away from the war,” said DeLaura. “It is the only card to pull.”

A Brown University tracker shows that since the conflict began in late February, Americans have paid $51.9bn more for gas than they would have done if prices had remained at their prewar level. They have also paid an extra $43.1bn for diesel.

Brown University estimates the cost of the fuel price surge for the average American household at $725.25 and rising.

“As consumers, Americans are paying higher prices [for] gasoline and diesel,” said Jeff Colgan, a professor of political science at Brown. “As voters, we’ll find out how they like that in November.”

DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin got into a testy exchange with a reporter who questioned the Trump Administration’s push to deport illegal immigrants, including those she said have “no criminal convictions.”

Mullin scoffed at the journo during a Monday news conference and told her all illegal immigrants have committed a crime.

“Should we not enforce laws?” he asked the female reporter.

“I said earlier… regardless if you’re a criminal or not, if you entered this country and you cheated — you didn’t come in the legal way because there are people who enter this country every single day legally — does that not make you a criminal?” Mullin shouted. “Did you not break the nation’s laws? We don’t pick and choose which law we’re enforcing, we’re going to enforce the law regardless.”

He then asked the reporter if she was “glad” ICE had arrested illegal immigrants who did have a prior criminal record.

“Do you want to live among those criminals?” Mullin continued.

Their back-and-forth comes a few days after The New York Times reported illegal immigrants with “a past violent criminal conviction fell to less than four percent” in July. President Donald Trump made securing the Southern border and deporting illegal immigrants a key aspect of his 2024 presidential campaign, and he recently vented his administration has done such a good job on the issue the public doesn’t seem to remember or care about it now.

“Even my speechwriters, they say, ‘Sir, nobody wants to hear about the border anymore. You’ve done it, it’s an incredible job you’ve done, but nobody wants to hear about it,’” Trump said earlier this month. “I should’ve taken a couple of years to do it.”

Trump said it would’ve been a shrewd political move, since the public often has a “two-week memory” when it comes to accomplishments.

On Tuesday, Mullin scoffed again when the reporter said there had been an “increasing number” of children rounded up by immigration agents, accusing her of warping the truth.

“We’re not targeting children — like you wanna use that. We target the parents,” he said. “If the parents have children and we’re deporting them, we let the parent decide if they want to be deported with their children, or leave it with a trusted, vetted individual that we know aren’t going to traffic the individuals. We do something quite different than the Biden Administration.”

The House cleared a stopgap funding patch Tuesday to keep cash flowing to federal agencies until mid-December — preventing a government shutdown before Election Day and setting up two major policy battles at year’s end.

The 370-48 vote takes care of Speaker Mike Johnson’s last must-pass bill before the midterms. But swift passage comes at a cost for House GOP leaders, who are now managing blowback from Republicans angry about the contents of the funding patch Senate leaders crafted and President Donald Trump endorsed.

The legislation would fund the government beyond the October start of the new fiscal year, keeping federal agencies running on current budgets through Dec. 11. It also allows incumbents to campaign for reelection without the threat of a government shutdown feeding into political messaging about dysfunction in Washington.

“We want to get a longer-term deal. But at a minimum, let’s ensure that we can continue to see government properly funded and functioning,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise told reporters Tuesday, noting the “chaos” and “uncertainty” of last year’s record-breaking shutdown.

Besides funding the government through mid-December, the bill would temporarily block the White House from finalizing a rule to put political appointees in charge of approving federal grants.

It would also delay a ban set to kick in next month on intoxicating hemp products — to the dissatisfaction of House hard-liners, who threatened to vote Tuesday afternoon against teeing up debate on other bills this week and potentially block any significant House floor action between now and November.

Maryland Rep. Andy Harris, chair of the Freedom Caucus, was among the Republicans who voted no on the funding patch and said he would oppose moving forward with debate on other bills too. He scoffed at the last-minute pressure campaign from the White House and hemp industry leaders promising to regulate intoxicating products in lieu of proceeding with the ban lawmakers enacted last November.

“They had 10 months,” Harris said in an interview this week, knocking the Trump administration for not taking action sooner to crack down on the products currently sold in the U.S. without age restrictions or other regulations. “There are profiteers who are making money on basically the health of our children, and I object to that.”

Trump is expected to sign the funding patch, which the White House endorsed last month ahead of Senate passage — even though it blocks the Office of Management and Budget from finalizing its controversial rule to overhaul the federal grantmaking approval process.

That Senate-added language, as well as a prohibition on new funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol, drove significant support from House Democrats.

“This critically stops the OMB rule from proceeding forward that many of us have been pushing against,” House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) said Tuesday, cheering other “incredibly helpful” additions to the bare-bones stopgap House Republicans initially passed earlier this summer.

Democrats also hope to regain control of the House and Senate in the November elections and increase their leverage in December negotiations on government funding for the rest of the fiscal year.

“That’s the huge intervening event,” House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole said this week about the election. “And it will impact whatever comes after it, no matter what anybody thinks. So it’s not like we’ll go back and pick up exactly where we left off.”

The Oklahoma Republican traveled to Ukraine and other European countries last month with his counterpart across the aisle, top committee Democrat Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut.

The two top appropriators are motivated to strike a year-end deal to fund federal agencies with updated budgets, Cole said, rather than clearing another short stopgap or resorting to a lengthy patch that keeps programs on autopilot through next September

“We both are pretty adamant that we need to get these bills done before the end of the calendar year,” Cole said, adding that he and DeLauro will be “working really hard once we know who the players are on the other side” of Election Day.

The US government awarded a lucrative contract to a crypto analytics firm without putting it up for competitive bidding, sparking a legal fight and opening a new avenue for criticism over the Trump administration’s tendency toward no-bid deals.

The Department of Homeland Security agreed in July to pay TRM Labs Inc. $95 million for software that traces cryptocurrency movements, as well as manpower to analyze the underlying data, according to a document posted on a government website. The contract is part of the White House’s effort to combat a surge in crypto scams targeting Americans, and the amount is large for a firm like TRM.

ICE officers and agents arrested roughly 50,000 people in August, according to a senior Department of Homeland Security official familiar with the preliminary arrest data.

That number is on par with July’s number, which was the highest single monthly arrest total during the second Trump administration.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is in the midst of a nationwide arrest surge that is not as visible as aggressive enforcement efforts from earlier in the year when Border Patrol was going city by city culminating in the shooting deaths of two American citizens in Minneapolis.

Arrests fell sharply in February and March but then began to rise in May. June and July both had record ICE arrests according to ICE arrest data.

In June, the Republican-controlled House narrowly passed a roughly $70 billion package to fund ICE and the Border Patrol through the end of President Donald Trump’s term. The sweeping tax and spending bill made ICE the wealthiest law enforcement agency in American history.

That pool of money has been used to purchase new “turnkey” facilities for immigration detention, as well as the planned purchase of immigration enforcement tools such as electric gloves and robot dogs.

ICE has also moved forward with some additional detention capacity including the recent signing of a new contractor to manage the operations of a new ICE warehouse in San Antonio, Texas, for $17 million, according to government contracting records.

The Trump administration failed in its bid to strike down California’s policy allowing students to participate on sports teams that align with their gender identity.

Even assuming Title IX requires funding recipients to determine eligibility based on biological sex, California “lacked clear notice of that requirement as a condition of federal spending,” the US District Court for the Central District of California said Monday.

The spending clause of the US Constitution therefore bars the federal government from enforcing that interpretation against California’s Department of Education and Interscholastic Federation, Judge Cynthia Valenzuela said, dismissing the case with prejudice.

The US Supreme Court in June ruled that Title IX allows schools to determine eligibility for female sports teams based on biological sex, but didn’t hold that schools are required to do so. The justices also declined to rule on whether Title IX permits transgender girls to play on female sports teams.

Title IX says nothing about whether the participation of a transgender girl on a female sports team constitutes discrimination on the basis of sex, and the related athletics regulations don’t require schools to exclude transgender girls from female teams based on biological sex, Valenzuela wrote.

Read together, Title IX and its implementing regulations allow sports teams and facilities to be separated based on biological sex and require equal treatment for both genders. But they don’t clearly communicate the Trump administration’s asserted rule that “biological sex must control every eligibility and facilities decision regardless of gender identity,” Valenzuela said.

Various court rulings over the last few years also didn’t “cure the lack of clarity,” Valenzuela said. Decisions related to the Biden administration’s interpretation of Title IX — that the statute’s protections extend to sexual orientation and gender identity — didn’t hold that the statute and its athletics regulations required schools to exclude transgender girls from female sports teams or facilities, the judge said.

The history of varying interpretations of Title IX over the last several administrations also confirms that the statute and its regulations didn’t provide clear notice. Federal officials “repeatedly gave materially different answers to how Title IX applies to transgender students,” Valenzuela said.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin provided more details Tuesday about the kinds of operations which would see immigration agents enter polling places, as Democrats have worried the Department of Homeland Security could seek to interfere in November’s midterm elections.

Speaking to reporters in New York City, the Homeland Security secretary said that “ICE isn’t there to patrol the polling places. We’re there to enforce specific threats.”

He added, however, that reports of specific undocumented immigrants at a location could be a reason for ICE to deploy.

“The only reason why we would be at polling places is if there is a threat to that polling place or we’re serving a warrant on someone that we have been actively tracking down,” he said. “ICE’s job is immigration, customs enforcement. That’s their job … if we’re serving a warrant we will be where we need to be.”

Those comments offer some of the most specificity DHS has provided to date about the kind of circumstances where immigration agents would approach a polling site. At Mullin’s confirmation hearing in March, Democrats pressed their then-colleague to clarify when ICE agents could be deployed to a polling site. At the time, Mullin said the “only reason why my officers would be there is if there was a specific threat for them to be there, not for intimidation.”

When asked for more clarity on Mullin’s comments Tuesday, DHS said in a statement that “ICE is not planning operations targeting polling locations. ICE conducts intelligence-driven targeted enforcement, and if an active public safety threat endangered a polling location, they may be arrested as a result of that targeted enforcement action.”

DHS also directed POLITICO to Mullin’s comments in March.

Democrats in recent months have raised the alarm about comments from Trump allies calling for the deployment of ICE officers to polling places, warning that such efforts could be intended to intimidate voters in states with House, Senate and gubernatorial elections this November.

While the Trump administration has downplayed any suggestion it’s planning such operations, the U.S. government — and DHS — have deployed considerable federal resources toward combating voter fraud. Immigration agents are reviewing states’ voter rolls to identify whether any immigrants who are not naturalized U.S. citizens have voted in recent elections.

“We will scrub all election records, looking for illegal aliens and those who are ineligible to vote, including those that somehow voted, yet they were deceased,” Mullin said in July.

The Federal Aviation Administration said on Tuesday it is proposing special flight rules near Trump International Airport in Palm Beach, Florida, citing ‌security concerns about U.S. President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence.

The FAA is proposing restrictions on flights in a one-nautical-mile radius and up to 2,000 feet around the Palm Beach residence, which is close to the airport.

The U.S. Secret Service sought the restrictions, citing adverse threat intelligence, and said the moves ⁠would "greatly increase the ability to mitigate the persistent risks posed by unauthorized aircraft and unmanned aircraft systems," the FAA said.

The FAA imposes expanded restrictions when the president or vice president travels outside Washington, and will continue to impose broader restrictions when Trump is at Mar-a-Lago.

The FAA will allow commercial airplanes into the airspace as long as they follow the established rules. Without the exception, it would essentially make the primary runway at ‌the ⁠Palm Beach airport unusable.

The FAA will also allow emergency, lifesaving and law enforcement aircraft access. For those operations, pilots would need to remain in two-way radio communication with air traffic control and have received authorization to enter.

In July, ⁠Palm Beach International Airport was officially renamed President Donald J. Trump International Airport, the latest in a series of buildings and government programs named after the president.

The ⁠FAA has previously prohibited the operation of aircraft in the vicinity of seven presidential and vice presidential residences, most recently in 2001 near ⁠of Crawford, Texas, where former president George W. Bush owns a ranch. Those restrictions remain in effect, though their boundary was reduced in 2010.

The U.S.-Canada trade standoff is threatening to stretch past the midterm elections. The White House is shrugging off the threat.

With a week to go before Canada imposes its retaliatory tariffs — aimed at key industries in states like Ohio and Texas with competitive Senate elections — tensions between Washington and Ottawa are at a steady simmer, with no sign of de-escalation.

Trump administration officials are united in the posture that the U.S. has the upper hand in the trade war, and risks exponentially less economic fallout than Canada. And they are signaling that the Canadian government, led by Prime Minister Mark Carney, will have to be the one to offer concessions to restart talks.

Privately, Trump officials are telling industry groups that the offer Canadian negotiators rejected on Aug. 21 is now moot, and they are no longer willing to make the same concessions on steel and aluminum tariffs, in particular.

The Canadians, meanwhile, have drawn a red line at key U.S. demands, like maintaining a 25 percent tariff on medium and heavy duty trucks. And Carney’s decision to stand up to Trump after months of rhetorical attacks and threats have helped produce a surge of Canadian patriotism and support for his Liberal Party, evidenced by their clean sweep of three special by-elections Monday.

The prime minister has little reason to back down ahead of votes in October in two provinces with strong separatist factions, who could challenge his political coalition.

As a result, both governments are digging in and readying for a longer trade war, all but guaranteeing the standoff bleeds into the fall campaign season.

Asked how Washington and Ottawa can find their way back to the table, a person familiar with the talks said, “You’ve got to get past the local elections in Canada.”

In the U.S., many Republicans fear the trade war will cut the other way, hurting the president’s party in the November congressional elections. House Republicans requested a meeting with U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer later this week to discuss Trump’s new tariffs on Canada, amid rising unease in Congress.

The White House doesn’t believe the tariff tit-for-tat with Canada will really be a factor in the elections, however. Greer argued in an interview Monday with POLITICO Playbook that the duties are too small to move the U.S. economy, adding they are “more [Canada’s] emergency than ours.”

But polls show Trump’s trade policies are increasingly unpopular, and Democrats are determined to make them an issue over the next two months, particularly in border states with economies that are tightly intertwined with their Canadian neighbors’. Michigan Democrats launched new attacks Monday on Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers for refusing to denounce the tariffs, with Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed calling Trump an “asshole” for launching the trade war.

“They’re very damaging politically,” said Mike Madrid, a Republican strategist and vocal Trump critic, referring to Trump’s tariffs. “They’re hurting his base vote and the voters that he needs the most.”

There is still plenty of time between now and November, however, for negotiators to return to the table. Carney’s “dollar-for-dollar” retaliation goes into effect on Sept. 8 and Trump’s counter-counter measure — a threatened 50 percent tariffs on autos and auto parts — won’t go into effect until New Year’s Day, a sign both sides want to give space to negotiate a future truce.

And despite Trump’s weekend Truth Social tirade against Canada and his decision last week to rename Lake Ontario as “Lake America,” the president has shown a willingness to back down from his threats when presented with a good deal.

“Four months is, as you know, like an eternity for this president on tariffs. And so he gave them a lot of runway here to make their way back,” said one trade lobbyist, granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive talks.

In Ottawa, the political boost Carney is enjoying for standing up to Trump and pulling his negotiators out of talks last month will likely start to ebb as the economic impacts of the trade war deepen.

The tariffs Trump imposed on Canada hit $20 billion worth of imports, only about 5 percent of what the U.S. imports from Canada annually. Canada’s tariffs on the US, likewise, hit the same value. But the figure lands far harder north of the border, since the U.S. takes nearly three-quarters of Canada’s exports.

Given the economic risk, U.S. officials believe Carny has another, non-economic motive — using the tension with the U.S. to influence two key votes in October. In Alberta, home to Calgary, voters will decide on Oct. 19 whether to hold a referendum to secede from Canada. In Quebec, the secessionist party, Parti Quebecois, is in prime position to gain seats in the province’s legislative body on Oct. 8.

In one of Monday’s special by-elections, however, the candidate from Carney’s Liberal party edged out a Quebec separatist in a district hit hard by U.S. tariffs, giving the prime minister and his government new confidence ahead of the fall votes.

Separatist leader of the Parti Québécois Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, meanwhile, has vowed to not hold a referendum until Trump has left office to protect the issue from being “hijacked by the ups and downs of American politics.”

“Carney walked away for a reason,” said the trade lobbyist. “He’s going to continue to try to take advantage of this politically before maybe the concern about that very significant kind of ratcheting up of the economic pain on steel and autos could force him back to the table.”

Quebec’s French heritage has already emerged as a key sticking point in the trade negotiations with the U.S., with Carney’s government suggesting the U.S. tried to force Canada to back off a law that would require streaming platforms to promote French-language content in Canada.

Greer disputed that, saying the issue was really about Canada imposing its own regulations on U.S. companies and told the CBC “there is no way we would let a good deal go by for something like this.”

Canadian Minister for Trade with the U.S. Dominic LeBlanc said he “welcomed” the U.S. “withdrawing” its position on French language and culture requirements.

And Carney told reporters in Ottawa Tuesday morning that he viewed the offer the Trump administration made in August to lower some of its tariffs in exchange for trade concessions in Canada as unfinished work, not a done deal. “There were elements of that mutually beneficial deal that we were moving towards, which is why we were still at the table. But we never viewed that we had that deal, and it diverged towards the end,” Carney said.

“In my way of looking at it, both sides have opened the crack in the door to get back to the negotiating table,” said David Cohen, the U.S. ambassador to Canada under former President Joe Biden.

But the U.S. has also been clear that the original deal is now off the table — including a proposal to lower some metal tariffs from 50 percent to 25 percent, according to two people close to the administration, who were granted anonymity to discuss details that have not been made public. The domestic metals sector lobbied hard against that part of the tentative deal Trump announced on Aug. 18 — blowback that contributed to the deal unraveling days later.

In the meantime, Trump has continued to hammer the Canadians on Truth Social and in media appearances, suggesting the country has “ripped off” the U.S. for years.

Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association President Flavio Volpe, a member of Carney’s Advisory Committee on Canada-U.S. Economic Relations, predicted there would be more of that rhetoric before the two countries can restart talks.

“The [Trump] administration will need to get its Canada bashing campaign out of its system first,” Volpe said.

Carney echoed that in his remarks in Ottawa Tuesday, while adding that a mutually beneficial trade deal is still possible. “When the Americans stop doing memes, stop throwing shade, stop trying to be tough and start being serious about having those discussions, we can have those discussions.”

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent dismissed the importance of the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday, saying the crucial waterway for Persian Gulf energy that's been controlled by Iran during the recent conflict will be bypassed by oil pipelines.

"That will be bypassed in two years," Bessent said in a fireside chat with Larry Kudlow on the sidelines of a gathering of global finance chiefs in Asheville, North Carolina. "In two years, the Strait of Hormuz will be like a worthless piece of water."

The U.S. military said it was carrying out strikes on Iranian targets Tuesday amid an escalation in fighting over the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. strikes came after Iran attempted to attack commercial ships and U.S. servicemembers in the Middle East, according to U.S. Central Command.

Fighting has picked back up this week as the U.S. and Iran battle over control over the strategic waterway. On Sunday, Iran fired missiles at U.S. bases after the U.S. struck Iranian launchers that it said were preparing to fire rockets loaded with sea mines into the strait.

Several ships were struck by projectiles in recent days, according to the United Kingdom Maritime Operations. Iran has continued to attack ships that are coordinating with the U.S. military to quietly enter and exit the Persian Gulf, U.S. officials say. At the same time, the U.S. has maintained its blockade of Iranian ports to try and choke off trade to Iran.

A judge criticized the Department of Health and Human Services for citing nonexistent scientific evidence or potentially AI-generated citations to support sweeping changes to federal teen pregnancy prevention programs.

The Trump administration had said money Congress appropriated for such programs should avoid encouraging teen sexual activity and be used only for programs that promote abstinence and “body literacy.” The administration’s changes were challenged after HHS cut tens of millions in grants.

In his opinion granting a preliminary injunction as the lawsuit continues, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper called the changes “likely arbitrary and capricious” and said the government had failed to provide sufficient evidence for its policy. He wrote that grant solicitations for the program “(remarkably) reference public health studies that appear either not to exist or not to support the propositions for which they are cited — a hallmark of AI-generated citations.” In seven cited articles, two appeared to be entirely made up and three others did not exist in the journals they were attributed to, according to Cooper, a judge who was appointed to the federal court in Washington, D.C., in 2014.

Last year, The Washington Post revealed that citations in the White House’s sweeping “MAHA Report” had been generated using artificial intelligence, resulting in numerous garbled scientific references and invented studies.

The decision is the latest in a lawsuit filed in July by a coalition of two counties in Minnesota and Washington, a sex education advocacy nonprofit and Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, which spans Iowa, Nebraska and nearby states.

The plaintiffs are challenging new funding conditions, including abstinence-only mandates and prohibitions on “gender ideology.”