Trump poised to send scores of federal agents to San Francisco
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I am Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news lines over the next few hours.
We start with the news that the Trump administration appears poised to send dozens of federal agents to the San Francisco Bay Area for a major immigration enforcement operation, prompting condemnation from California leaders.
Details of the deployment were still emerging, but it will reportedly involve more than 100 federal agents, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The agents are reportedly set to begin using the US Coast Guard base in Alameda, a city located across the bay from San Francisco. It remained unclear whether national guard troops would also be involved.
The deployment follows weeks of threats by Donald Trump to target the Democratic-run city. California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, criticised the move, calling it “right out of the dictator’s handbook”.
“He sends out masked men, he sends out border patrol, he sends out ICE, he creates anxiety and fear in the community so that he can lay claim to solving for that by sending in the [national] guard,” Newsom said in a video statement. “This is no different than the arsonist putting out the fire.”
Mia Bonta, the state assembly member who represents Alameda, denounced the arrival of federal agents in her district as “authoritarian theatrics”. “This is against our values as Alamedans to have our city used as a staging ground to inflict fear, terror and state-sponsored violence across the Bay,” she said.
San Francisco is the latest major city targeted by Trump’s campaign of mass immigration arrests. The deployment is expected to trigger a showdown between the administration and local leaders, who have pledged to block militarized immigration enforcement in the city.
San Franciscans have been readying for months for Trump to make good on repeated threats to send troops to the city. At a Wednesday afternoon press conference, San Francisco’s mayor, Daniel Lurie, reiterated that the city was prepared.
“For months, we have been anticipating the possibility of some kind of federal deployment in our city,” said Lurie, adding that he had taken further executive actions on Wednesday to “strengthen the city’s support for our immigrant communities, and ensure our departments are coordinated ahead of any federal deployment”.
Read our full story here:
In other developments:
-
Donald Trump said Vladimir Putin was not being “honest and forthright” in Ukraine talks, the US treasury chief has said. The sanctions against Rosneft and Lukoil came a day after a planned Trump-Putin summit in Budapest was shelved, with Washington expressing its disappointment at the lack of progress in ceasefire negotiations with Moscow.
-
Trump administration officials confirmed to various outlets on Wednesday that the White House’s East Wing will be demolished “within days”, a revelation given that the administration has not submitted plans for the new ballroom to the federal agency that oversees construction of federal buildings.
-
The president declared himself the arbiter of whether or not his own administration should pay him damages over past federal investigations, telling reporters that any such decision “would have to go across my desk”. Trump insisted on Tuesday that the government owed him “a lot of money” for previous justice department investigations into his conduct, while at the same time asserting his personal authority over any potential payout.
-
A small boat half-filled with brown packages is seen moving along at sea and then explodes and floats motionless in flames, in a brief video released by the US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth. The operation happened off coast of Colombia, marking the first such strike in the Pacific. Seven previous attacks in Caribbean killed at least 32 people.
-
The University of Virginia (UVA) has become the latest school to agree to the Trump administration’s demands concerning discrimination in admissions and hiring after significant pressure from the justice department.
-
Graham Platner, a Democratic candidate for the US Senate in Maine, said on Wednesday that a tattoo on his chest has been covered to no longer reflect an image widely recognised as a Nazi symbol.
-
Oregon Democrat Jeff Merkley spoke for nearly 23 hours on the Senate floor to press the case that Trump is acting as an authoritarian by prosecuting political enemies and deploying the military into Merkley’s home town of Portland.
Key events
Shutdown enters day 23 as Senate Republicans push bill to fund troops
The government shutdown entered its 23rd day, with little end in sight. On Wednesday the Senate failed, for the 12th time, to pass a House-passed stopgap funding bill.
Today, the upper chamber will also vote on legislation to continue paying federal workers who haven’t stopped working during the shutdown, as well as members of the military. The Shutdown Fairness Act is co-sponsored by Republican senator Ron Johnson, of Wisconsin.
The snag? It also needs 60 votes to advance, and Democrats look poised to hold out.
Donald Trump will be in Washington today, according to his official schedule. We’re set to hear from him at 3pm ET, when he makes an announcement in the state dining room.
Prior to that, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt will hold a briefing at 1pm ET. We’ll make sure to bring you the latest lines from both.
More than half of Americans, including about three in 10 Republicans, believe president Donald Trump is using federal law enforcement to go after his enemies, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll that also found growing concern about US political divisions nine months into his second term in office.
Some 55% of poll respondents in the six-day poll, which closed on Monday, agreed with a statement that the Republican president is using law enforcement to target his enemies, while 26% disagreed and the rest were unsure or did not respond.
Some 85% of the poll respondents who identified themselves as Democrats agreed, as did 29% of the Republican poll takers.
Trump’s justice department in the past month has brought criminal charges against three prominent adversaries of the president, including former FBI director James Comey, New York state attorney general Letitia James and former national security adviser John Bolton. All three have denied wrongdoing.
The US justice department has historically kept an arm’s length distance from the president, seeking to protect prosecutorial independence. Trump campaigned ahead of the 2024 presidential election with pledges for retribution against his enemies.
He had particular disdain for Comey and James, who had led criminal probes against him that he contends were politically motivated. Trump has denied ordering the justice department to indict his foes, though last month he appeared to push federal prosecutors to charge Comey and James.
Marina Dunbar
New York City’s three mayoral contenders had a fiery debate on Wednesday night in their final televised face-off less than two weeks before voters decide the city’s next leader on 4 November.
Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani, independent Andrew Cuomo and Republican Curtis Sliwa participated in a tense and often chaotic discussion. The current mayor, Eric Adams, who dropped out of the race weeks earlier, once again did not attend.
“It’s us versus them,” Sliwa declared in his opening remarks, grouping Cuomo and Mamdani together despite their mutual disapproval of one another.
Mamdani opened by accusing both rivals of focusing more on urging each other to drop out than on offering new ideas. The former governor’s allies have urged Sliwa to withdraw to consolidate anti-Mamdani votes, though it is unclear how many conservatives would back Cuomo.
Cuomo claimed Mamdani “has no new ideas” and merely rehashed ideas from former mayor Bill de Blasio, prompting Mamdani to fire back: “I have plans for our future, my opponents only have fear.”
Beginning with the topic of ICE raids in New York, Cuomo said federal immigration agents should not focus on quality-of-life offenses like street vending, calling those a police matter. He added he would have personally called Donald Trump to rein in ICE.
Sliwa countered that, unlike Cuomo and Mamdani, he would “negotiate with Donald Trump and try to get the best deal possible”. Mamdani hit back, calling Cuomo “Donald Trump’s puppet”.
The two then sparred over which candidate Trump preferred. Cuomo claimed Trump wanted Mamdani elected so he could “come in and take over the city”, calling the progressive “Trump’s dream”.
The debate later turned to the city’s record 150,000 homeless students. Mamdani spoke about plans to double a program pairing shelter families with city workers for regular check-ins. Cuomo said the “homeless rate has more than doubled” since he left office, without clarifying his figures.
Maya Yang
Pregnant women have reported bleeding, miscarriages, being shackled and other instances of medical neglect while in US immigration custody, according to a group of prominent civil rights organizations.
The groups – which include the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and its Louisiana chapter, the National Immigration Project, Robert F Kennedy Human Rights, Sanctuary of the South and Sanctuary Now Abolition Project – sent a letter to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Senate committees on Wednesday, describing interviews with more than a dozen women.
“ICE has issued detainers, arrested, and taken pregnant individuals into custody, even after they have informed officers of their pregnancy, in violation of agency guidance,” the letter said.
It noted in particular that ICE had “detained several cases of pregnant individuals arising from domestic disputes. This practice endangers survivors of domestic violence, particularly pregnant individuals, who are more vulnerable to abuse and violence.”
Some of the pregnant women reported being shackled and held in other restraints during transport; detention in solitary confinement; delayed and substandard prenatal care; denial of prenatal vitamins; inadequate food; lack of interpretation and translation in medical encounters; medical care without informed consent; and medical neglect leading to dangerous infection after miscarriage, the letter said.
The letter specifically detailed the experience of six women held in two detention centers in Basile, Louisiana, and Lumpkin, Georgia.
Cy Neff
The New York state attorney general, Letitia James, rolled out a “Federal Action Reporting Portal” form urging New York residents to share photos and videos of federal immigration enforcement action across the state, just a day after a high-profile ICE raid rattled Manhattan’s Chinatown and prompted hundreds to come out in protest.
A US congressman revealed in a Wednesday press conference that four US citizens were arrested and held for “nearly 24 hours” after Tuesday’s raid. Protests broke out in New York on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings.
“Every New Yorker has the right to live without fear or intimidation,” James wrote in a statement announcing the portal.
“If you witnessed and documented ICE activity yesterday, I urge you to share that footage with my office. We are committed to reviewing these reports and assessing any violations of law.”
The form offers spaces to submit images and video footage of the raid, as well as a place to indicate location information. Before submitting, users must check a box that indicates that “the attorney general may use any documents, photographs, or videos I provided in a public document, including in a legal proceeding or public report or statement”.
The Guardian has contacted James’s office for more information.
Vice-president JD Vance said on Thursday that president Donald Trump’s policy remains that the occupied West Bank won’t be annexed by Israel.
He told reporters in Tel Aviv that he “feels pretty good” about the Gaza ceasefire after his talks with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
White House East Wing will be torn down ‘within days’ even as no plans filed for Trump’s new ballroom
Lauren Aratani
Trump administration officials confirmed to various outlets on Wednesday that the White House’s East Wing will be demolished “within days”, a revelation given the administration has not submitted plans for the new ballroom to the federal agency that oversees construction of federal buildings.
In discussion with reporters in the Oval Office, Donald Trump was asked by Jeff Mason of Reuters to respond to the widespread surprise that the entire East Wing is being torn down. Trump said the wing he described as a separate building “was never thought of as being much; it was a very small building”.
“Rather than allowing that to hurt a very expensive, beautiful building,” he continued. “In order to do it properly, we had to take down the existing structure.”
Then, pointing at a model of the new ballroom on a table in front of him, and a new structure leading to the ballroom in the location where the East Wing used to be, Trump added: “The way it was shown, it looked like we were touching the White House. We don’t touch the White House.”
“That’s a bridge, a glass bridge going from the White House to the ballroom,” Trump said, of the new structure that will replace the East Wing.
Trump said the result is “going to be probably the finest ballroom ever built” and that the ballroom is “being paid for 100% by me and some friends of mine”.
The New York Times, citing a senior administration official, reported that the ballroom plans will mean the demolition of the entire East Wing. The official also said the demolition should be finished by this weekend.
Two Trump officials told NBC News similar information, saying the entire East Wing of the White House will be demolished “within days”.
Andrew Roth
The US has sanctioned Rosneft and Lukoil, Russia’s two largest oil companies, as the Trump administration increased pressure on the Kremlin to negotiate an end to its war against Ukraine.
The sanctions were the first against Russia since Donald Trump returned to the White House in January, and were targeted to cut key revenues from oil sales that finance the Russian war machine.
The move against Russia marks the latest swing of the pendulum under the Trump administration from coercing Kyiv to sue for peace to growing frustration with Vladimir Putin’s maximalist demands.
“Now is the time to stop the killing and for an immediate ceasefire,” said the treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, in a statement announcing the sanctions against Russia. “Given President Putin’s refusal to end this senseless war, Treasury is sanctioning Russia’s two largest oil companies that fund the Kremlin’s war machine. Treasury is prepared to take further action if necessary to support President Trump’s effort to end yet another war. We encourage our allies to join us in and adhere to these sanctions.”
The British government sanctioned Rosneft and Lukoil last week. The EU has sanctioned Rosneft, the Russian state-owned oil company, but not Lukoil, which is privately owned, largely due to exemptions for Hungary and Slovakia, which buy Russian oil.
Trump, speaking in the Oval Office with the Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, on Wednesday, also confirmed he had cancelled a planned summit with Putin in another sign of a breakdown in negotiations between Washington and Moscow.
“We cancelled the meeting with President Putin,” Trump said. “It didn’t feel right to me. It didn’t feel like we were going to get to the place we have to get so I cancelled it. But we’ll do it in the future.”
Hugo Lowell
The US military has for the first time attacked and destroyed two boats on the Pacific side of South America, as part of its controversial fight against what it says are drug-trafficking activities.
The strikes – on Tuesday night and then early on Wednesday – killed five people, according to the US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth. They came on top of at least seven other strikes in the Caribbean that have killed at least 32 people and raised tensions with Colombia and Venezuela.
Hegseth released a brief video of the Tuesday night strike, showing a small boat, half-filled with brown packages, moving along at sea. Several seconds into the video, the boat explodes and is seen floating motionless in flames.
In a post on social media, Hegseth took the unusual step of equating the alleged drug traffickers to the terror group that conducted the attacks on the US on September 11, 2001.
“Just as al-Qaida waged war on our homeland, these cartels are waging war on our border and our people,” Hegseth said, adding that “there will be no refuge or forgiveness – only justice”.
The Colombian president, Gustavo Petro, who is in the midst of a spat with Donald Trump over the boat strikes and tariffs, said: “The attack on another boat in the Pacific … killed people. It is murder. Whether in the Caribbean or Pacific, the US government strategy breaks the norms of international law.”
Venezuela is a major drug transit zone, but the eastern Pacific Ocean, not the Caribbean, is the primary area for smuggling cocaine.
Eric Berger
The University of Virginia (UVA) has become the latest institution to agree to the Trump administration’s demands concerning discrimination in admissions and hiring following significant pressure from the justice department.
The deal, which the department announced on Wednesday, comes after the president of the esteemed public university resigned in June to resolve a justice department investigation into UVA’s diversity, equity and inclusion policies.
If the president, Jim Ryan, had stayed in the job, he was told “hundreds of employees would lose jobs, researchers would lose funding, and hundreds of students could lose financial aid or have their visas withheld”, according to Mark Warner, a Democratic senator from Virginia.
The deal means the justice department will end its investigation into the school, while the school agreed “not engage in unlawful racial discrimination in its university programming, admissions, hiring or other activities. UVA will provide relevant information and data to the Department of Justice on a quarterly basis through 2028,” the announcement states.
The University of Pennsylvania, Columbia and Brown had already reached agreements with the Trump administration to have federal funding, which had been cut, restored in exchange for settlements concerning claims of alleged antisemitism. They also agreed to demands such as adopting the administration’s definitions of male and female.
Trump poised to send scores of federal agents to San Francisco
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I am Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news lines over the next few hours.
We start with the news that the Trump administration appears poised to send dozens of federal agents to the San Francisco Bay Area for a major immigration enforcement operation, prompting condemnation from California leaders.
Details of the deployment were still emerging, but it will reportedly involve more than 100 federal agents, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The agents are reportedly set to begin using the US Coast Guard base in Alameda, a city located across the bay from San Francisco. It remained unclear whether national guard troops would also be involved.
The deployment follows weeks of threats by Donald Trump to target the Democratic-run city. California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, criticised the move, calling it “right out of the dictator’s handbook”.
“He sends out masked men, he sends out border patrol, he sends out ICE, he creates anxiety and fear in the community so that he can lay claim to solving for that by sending in the [national] guard,” Newsom said in a video statement. “This is no different than the arsonist putting out the fire.”
Mia Bonta, the state assembly member who represents Alameda, denounced the arrival of federal agents in her district as “authoritarian theatrics”. “This is against our values as Alamedans to have our city used as a staging ground to inflict fear, terror and state-sponsored violence across the Bay,” she said.
San Francisco is the latest major city targeted by Trump’s campaign of mass immigration arrests. The deployment is expected to trigger a showdown between the administration and local leaders, who have pledged to block militarized immigration enforcement in the city.
San Franciscans have been readying for months for Trump to make good on repeated threats to send troops to the city. At a Wednesday afternoon press conference, San Francisco’s mayor, Daniel Lurie, reiterated that the city was prepared.
“For months, we have been anticipating the possibility of some kind of federal deployment in our city,” said Lurie, adding that he had taken further executive actions on Wednesday to “strengthen the city’s support for our immigrant communities, and ensure our departments are coordinated ahead of any federal deployment”.
Read our full story here:
In other developments:
-
Donald Trump said Vladimir Putin was not being “honest and forthright” in Ukraine talks, the US treasury chief has said. The sanctions against Rosneft and Lukoil came a day after a planned Trump-Putin summit in Budapest was shelved, with Washington expressing its disappointment at the lack of progress in ceasefire negotiations with Moscow.
-
Trump administration officials confirmed to various outlets on Wednesday that the White House’s East Wing will be demolished “within days”, a revelation given that the administration has not submitted plans for the new ballroom to the federal agency that oversees construction of federal buildings.
-
The president declared himself the arbiter of whether or not his own administration should pay him damages over past federal investigations, telling reporters that any such decision “would have to go across my desk”. Trump insisted on Tuesday that the government owed him “a lot of money” for previous justice department investigations into his conduct, while at the same time asserting his personal authority over any potential payout.
-
A small boat half-filled with brown packages is seen moving along at sea and then explodes and floats motionless in flames, in a brief video released by the US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth. The operation happened off coast of Colombia, marking the first such strike in the Pacific. Seven previous attacks in Caribbean killed at least 32 people.
-
The University of Virginia (UVA) has become the latest school to agree to the Trump administration’s demands concerning discrimination in admissions and hiring after significant pressure from the justice department.
-
Graham Platner, a Democratic candidate for the US Senate in Maine, said on Wednesday that a tattoo on his chest has been covered to no longer reflect an image widely recognised as a Nazi symbol.
-
Oregon Democrat Jeff Merkley spoke for nearly 23 hours on the Senate floor to press the case that Trump is acting as an authoritarian by prosecuting political enemies and deploying the military into Merkley’s home town of Portland.
