Opening summary
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news lines over the next few hours.
We start with the news that James Comey, the former FBI director and one of Donald Trump’s most frequent targets, was indicted on Thursday on one count of making a false statement to Congress and one count of obstruction of a congressional proceeding, the latest move in the president’s retribution campaign against his political adversaries.
The indictment, filed in federal district court in Alexandria, Virginia, shows Comey’s charges centred on whether he lied and misled lawmakers during testimony in September 2020 about the Russia investigation.
Comey was expected to surrender and have his initial appearance in federal district court on Friday morning, according to a person familiar with the matter. Comey is expected to be represented by Patrick Fitzgerald, a former US attorney for the northern district of Illinois.
While the precise details were not clear in the sparse, two-page indictment, it appeared to reference Comey’s testimony that he had never authorized someone at the FBI to leak to the news media about the Trump or Hillary Clinton investigations – a claim prosecutors alleged was false.
“No one is above the law. Today’s indictment reflects this Department of Justice’s commitment to holding those who abuse positions of power accountable for misleading the American people,” Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, said in a statement on Thursday.
The indictment followed Trump’s instruction to Bondi to “move now” to prosecute Comey and other officials he considers political foes, in an impatient and extraordinarily direct social media post trampling on the justice department’s tradition of independence.
It also came less than a week after Lindsey Halligan was installed as the top federal prosecutor in the eastern district of Virginia, after Trump fired her predecessor, Erik Siebert, after he declined to bring charges against Comey over concerns there was insufficient evidence.
Halligan, most recently a White House aide and former Trump lawyer who has no prosecutorial experience, was also presented with a memo earlier this week laying out why charges should not be brought. But the justice department still pushed it through, people familiar with the matter said.
Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the US senate intelligence committee, said:
Donald Trump has made clear that he intends to turn our justice system into a weapon for punishing and silencing his critics.
Responding to the indictment, hours after it was filed, Comey said in a video statement posted on Instagram that he was innocent and welcomed a trial.
“My family and I have known for years that there are costs to standing up to Donald Trump, but we couldn’t imagine ourselves living any other way. We will not live on our knees, and you shouldn’t either,” Comey said.
Read the full story here:
In other developments:
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Authorities said on Thursday that the words of the suspect in the shooting on Wednesday at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detention facility in Texas were “definitively anti-Ice” but said that they did not find evidence that the suspect was a member of “any specific group or entity, nor did he mention any specific government agency other than Ice”.
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The Open Society Foundations (OSF), the major philanthropic group funded by George Soros, criticized the Trump administration for “politically motivated attacks on civil society” after a report that the justice department had instructed federal prosecutors to come up with plans to investigate the charity.
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Donald Trump issued a presidential memorandum on Thursday aimed at reining in what he has called a radical leftwing domestic “terror network” but which seemed likely to meet fierce legal pushback from critics depicting it as a licence for a broad crackdown on his political opponents.
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Donald Trump on Thursday announced a new round of punishing tariffs, saying the United States will impose a 100% tariffs on imported branded drugs, 25% tariff on imports of all heavy-duty trucks and 50% tariffs on kitchen cabinets. The US president also said he would start charging a 30% tariff on upholstered furniture next week.
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Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday outlining the terms of a deal to transfer TikTok to a US owner. Trump said he and China’s president Xi Jinping had come to an agreement to allow TikTok to continue operating in the US, separating the social media platform from its Chinese owner ByteDance. Trump said the deal complies with a law that would have forced the shutdown of the app for American users had it not been divested and sold to a US owner.
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A group of Disney investors is asking the company to turn over documents related to the company’s decision to temporarily suspend Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show, amid charges the media company may have been “complicit in succumbing” to media censorship.
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An impromptu statue of Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein holding hands was unceremoniously removed from the National Mall in Washington just a day after a group of anonymous artists erected it there.
Key events
Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday outlining the terms of a deal to transfer TikTok to a US owner.
Trump said he and China’s president Xi Jinping had come to an agreement to allow TikTok to continue operating in the US, separating the social media platform from its Chinese owner ByteDance. Trump said the deal complies with a law that would have forced the shutdown of the app for American users had it not been divested and sold to a US owner.
“I spoke with President Xi and he said, ‘Go ahead with it,’” Trump said at a press conference. “This is going to be American-operated all the way.”
Under the plan, US investors will take over the majority of TikTok’s operations and take charge of a licensed copy of the app’s powerful recommendation algorithm. American companies are expected to own about 65% of the US version of the spun-off company, while ByteDance and Chinese investors will own less than 20%. The new version of TikTok will be controlled by a seven-member board of directors made up of cybersecurity and national security experts, six of them Americans, according to the White House.
The new US company will be valued at $14bn, according to JD Vance, who also spoke at the press conference, a number far lower than the valuation for ByteDance overall, which is estimated to be around $330bn. By comparison, Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, is valued at $1.8tn.
The group of American TikTok investors is led by the US software giant Oracle, which will oversee TikTok’s US operations, provide cloud service for user data storage and get a license to take control of the app’s algorithm. White House officials have said ByteDance and Chinese officials will not have access to US user data.
Sam Levine
The Open Society Foundations (OSF), the major philanthropic group funded by George Soros, has criticized the Trump administration for “politically motivated attacks on civil society” after a report that the justice department had instructed federal prosecutors to come up with plans to investigate the charity.
The New York Times reported on Thursday that a lawyer in the office of Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, sent a memo to several federal prosecutors in attorney’s offices in California, New York, Washington DC, Chicago and Detroit, offering a range of charges to consider against the group. Those charges included racketeering, arson, wire fraud and material support for terrorism, the newspaper reported.
The push comes as Trump has ramped up efforts to deploy the justice department to target his enemies. He has pledged to crack down on leftwing groups in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s killing and has repeatedly singled out Soros, a major funder of liberal groups, as a target. “We’re going to look into Soros, because I think it’s a Rico case against him and other people,” Trump said on 12 September, using an acronym to refer to racketeering charges. “Because this is more than like protests. This is real agitation.”
In a statement, the OSF described the effort as “meant to silence speech the administration disagrees with and undermine the first amendment right to free speech”.
“The Open Society Foundations unequivocally condemn terrorism and do not fund terrorism. Our activities are peaceful and lawful, and our grantees are expected to abide by human rights principles and comply with the law,” it said in a statement.
Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook urged the US supreme court on Thursday to reject Donald Trump’s attempt to fire her, telling the justices the Republican president’s unprecedented move would destroy the central bank’s independence and disrupt financial markets.
Lawyers for Cook filed a written response opposing the justice department’s 18 September emergency request to lift a federal judge’s order that blocked Trump from immediately removing Cook, an appointee of Democratic former president Joe Biden, while her legal challenge continues.
Granting Trump’s request, her lawyers told the supreme court, “would dramatically alter the status quo, ignore centuries of history and transform the Federal Reserve into a body subservient to the president’s will”.
Washington-based US district judge Jia Cobb ruled on 9 September that Trump’s claims that Cook committed mortgage fraud before taking office – allegations that Cook denies – likely were not sufficient grounds for removal under the 1913 law that created the Fed.
The US court of appeals for the District of Columbia circuit in a 2-1 ruling on 15 September denied the administration’s request to put Cobb’s order on hold, ruling that Cook likely was denied due process in violation of the US constitution’s fifth amendment.
In Thursday’s filing, Cook’s lawyers said the Fed’s “unique history of independence” has helped make the US economy the strongest in the world. Siding with Trump, they wrote, “would signal to the financial markets that the Federal Reserve no longer enjoys its traditional independence, risking chaos and disruption”.
Cook, the first Black woman to serve as a Fed governor, sued Trump in August after the president announced he would remove her. Cook has said the claims made by Trump against her did not give him the legal authority to remove her and were a pretext to fire her for her monetary policy stance.
The White House is telling federal agencies to prepare large-scale firings of workers if the government shuts down next week in a partisan fight over spending plans – prompting the Democrats to accuse Donald Trump of intimidation tactics.
In a memo released on Wednesday night, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) said agencies should consider a reduction in force for federal programs whose funding would lapse next week, is not otherwise funded and is “not consistent with the president’s priorities”.
That would be a much more aggressive step than in previous shutdowns, when federal workers not deemed essential were furloughed but returned to their jobs once the US Congress approved a new financial plan.
A mass firing would eliminate employees positions, which would trigger yet another massive upheaval in a federal workforce that has already faced major rounds of cuts this year, leading with the dramatic intervention by Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) early in the second Trump administration.
When asked by reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday afternoon about the possibility of a government shutdown, Trump said: “Could be, yeah, because the Democrats are crazed. They don’t know what they’re doing.”
Asked whether he would agree to a request from Democrats for an extension of subsidies for the costs of healthcare plans under the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, on which millions of Americans depend for health insurance – which has become the sticking point in negotiations over the government funding bill – Trump simply repeated his false claim that Democrats are insisting on funding “to give the money to illegal aliens”.
Trump signs memo targeting ‘domestic terrorism’ amid fears of crackdown on the left
Robert Tait
Donald Trump issued a presidential memorandum on Thursday aimed at reining in what he has called a radical leftwing domestic “terror network” but which seemed likely to meet fierce legal pushback from critics depicting it as a licence for a broad crackdown on his political opponents.
Prompted by journalists, Trump suggested that George Soros, the billionaire Hungarian-born philanthropist who funds the Open Society Foundations, could be in his sights. He also identified Reid Hoffman, a billionaire venture capitalist, adding: “I hear about him. Maybe it could be him. It could be a lot of people.”
Earlier, the Open Society Foundations had hit back at reports that the justice department was planning to target the group and criticized the Trump administration for “politically motivated attacks on civil society”.
Hina Shamsi of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said in a statement: “After one of the most harrowing weeks for our first amendment rights, the president is invoking political violence, which we all condemn, as an excuse to target non-profits and activists with the false and stigmatizing label of ‘domestic terrorism’. This is a shameful and dangerous move.”
At a signing ceremony in the Oval Office, the memorandum was presented as aimed at “establishing a comprehensive strategy to investigate, disrupt and dismantle all stages of organized political violence and domestic terrorism”.
It was said to be part of an administration-wide response that would include the FBI’s joint terrorism taskforces, the Department of Justice and the Department of Treasury.
Trump says US will impose new tariffs on heavy trucks, drugs and kitchen cabinets
Donald Trump on Thursday announced a new round of punishing tariffs, saying the United States will impose a 100% tariffs on imported branded drugs, 25% tariff on imports of all heavy-duty trucks and 50% tariffs on kitchen cabinets.
The US president also said he would start charging a 50% tariff on bathroom vanities and a 30% tariff on upholstered furniture next week, with all the new duties to take effect from 1 October.
Drug companies warned earlier this year that Americans would suffer the most if Trump decided to impose tariffs on pharmaceuticals.
In 2024, the US imported nearly $233bn in pharmaceutical and medicinal products, according to the Census Bureau. The prospect of prices doubling for some medicines could send shock waves to voters as healthcare expenses, as well as the costs of Medicare and Medicaid, potentially increase.
Pascal Chan, vice-president for strategic policy and supply chains at the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, warned that the tariffs could harm Americans’ health with “immediate price hikes, strained insurance systems, hospital shortages, and the real risk of patients rationing or foregoing essential medicines”.
Opening summary
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news lines over the next few hours.
We start with the news that James Comey, the former FBI director and one of Donald Trump’s most frequent targets, was indicted on Thursday on one count of making a false statement to Congress and one count of obstruction of a congressional proceeding, the latest move in the president’s retribution campaign against his political adversaries.
The indictment, filed in federal district court in Alexandria, Virginia, shows Comey’s charges centred on whether he lied and misled lawmakers during testimony in September 2020 about the Russia investigation.
Comey was expected to surrender and have his initial appearance in federal district court on Friday morning, according to a person familiar with the matter. Comey is expected to be represented by Patrick Fitzgerald, a former US attorney for the northern district of Illinois.
While the precise details were not clear in the sparse, two-page indictment, it appeared to reference Comey’s testimony that he had never authorized someone at the FBI to leak to the news media about the Trump or Hillary Clinton investigations – a claim prosecutors alleged was false.
“No one is above the law. Today’s indictment reflects this Department of Justice’s commitment to holding those who abuse positions of power accountable for misleading the American people,” Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, said in a statement on Thursday.
The indictment followed Trump’s instruction to Bondi to “move now” to prosecute Comey and other officials he considers political foes, in an impatient and extraordinarily direct social media post trampling on the justice department’s tradition of independence.
It also came less than a week after Lindsey Halligan was installed as the top federal prosecutor in the eastern district of Virginia, after Trump fired her predecessor, Erik Siebert, after he declined to bring charges against Comey over concerns there was insufficient evidence.
Halligan, most recently a White House aide and former Trump lawyer who has no prosecutorial experience, was also presented with a memo earlier this week laying out why charges should not be brought. But the justice department still pushed it through, people familiar with the matter said.
Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the US senate intelligence committee, said:
Donald Trump has made clear that he intends to turn our justice system into a weapon for punishing and silencing his critics.
Responding to the indictment, hours after it was filed, Comey said in a video statement posted on Instagram that he was innocent and welcomed a trial.
“My family and I have known for years that there are costs to standing up to Donald Trump, but we couldn’t imagine ourselves living any other way. We will not live on our knees, and you shouldn’t either,” Comey said.
Read the full story here:
In other developments:
-
Authorities said on Thursday that the words of the suspect in the shooting on Wednesday at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detention facility in Texas were “definitively anti-Ice” but said that they did not find evidence that the suspect was a member of “any specific group or entity, nor did he mention any specific government agency other than Ice”.
-
The Open Society Foundations (OSF), the major philanthropic group funded by George Soros, criticized the Trump administration for “politically motivated attacks on civil society” after a report that the justice department had instructed federal prosecutors to come up with plans to investigate the charity.
-
Donald Trump issued a presidential memorandum on Thursday aimed at reining in what he has called a radical leftwing domestic “terror network” but which seemed likely to meet fierce legal pushback from critics depicting it as a licence for a broad crackdown on his political opponents.
-
Donald Trump on Thursday announced a new round of punishing tariffs, saying the United States will impose a 100% tariffs on imported branded drugs, 25% tariff on imports of all heavy-duty trucks and 50% tariffs on kitchen cabinets. The US president also said he would start charging a 30% tariff on upholstered furniture next week.
-
Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday outlining the terms of a deal to transfer TikTok to a US owner. Trump said he and China’s president Xi Jinping had come to an agreement to allow TikTok to continue operating in the US, separating the social media platform from its Chinese owner ByteDance. Trump said the deal complies with a law that would have forced the shutdown of the app for American users had it not been divested and sold to a US owner.
-
A group of Disney investors is asking the company to turn over documents related to the company’s decision to temporarily suspend Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show, amid charges the media company may have been “complicit in succumbing” to media censorship.
-
An impromptu statue of Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein holding hands was unceremoniously removed from the National Mall in Washington just a day after a group of anonymous artists erected it there.
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