babysandpiper

Former president makes thinly veiled swipe at US president’s cuts to HIV and aids initiative

George W Bush has issued a rare critique of Donald Trump over his shuttering of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

The former president joined Barack Obama and U2 singer Bono in an emotional video call farewell with staff at the agency on Monday when it officially ceased operations.

After six decades, the humanitarian organisation created by former president John F Kennedy to promote US national security by boosting prosperity and goodwill abroad, is being absorbed into the State Department under the supervision of Marco Rubio.

Donald Trump continued on Tuesday to float his idea, which some legal experts say is unconstitutional, to deport U.S. citizens who commit crimes.

Speaking to the press during a tour of a migrant detention center in the Florida Everglades, the president repeated claims that there are many immigrants who are now citizens and have been committing serious crimes.

"They're not new to our country. They're old to our country. Many of them were born in our country. I think we ought to get them the hell out of here, too, if you want to know the truth," he said. "So maybe that will be the next job."

Republican Alaskan Senator Lisa Murkowski said Tuesday that despite voting in favor of the sweeping tax and spending package, she wants the House to return the "One Big Beautiful Bill" to the Senate for further work.

"My hope is that the House is gonna look at this and recognize that we're not there yet," Murkowski told reporters today.

Murkowski's vote was pivotal in the Senate's razor-thin 51–50 passage of the bill. The Alaska senator had been the focus of intense lobbying by GOP leaders, including Senate Majority Leader John Thune, to secure her support amid concerns over Medicaid cuts and food assistance reductions. The bill now heads to the House, where its future remains uncertain.

Trump’s immigration crackdown has made many immigrant farm workers scared to go to work

Lisa Tate is a sixth-generation farmer in Ventura county, California, an area that produces billions of dollars worth of fruit and vegetables each year, much of it hand-picked by immigrants in the US illegally.

Tate knows the farms around her well. And she says she can see with her own eyes how raids carried out by agents from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) in the area’s fields earlier this month, part of Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, have frightened off workers.

“In the fields, I would say 70% of the workers are gone,” she said in an interview. “If 70% of your workforce doesn’t show up, 70% of your crop doesn’t get picked and can go bad in one day. Most Americans don’t want to do this work. Most farmers here are barely breaking even. I fear this has created a tipping point where many will go bust.“

Move comes after rightwing Republican accuses New York City mayoral candidate of concealing support for ‘terrorism’

The Trump administration has raised the possibility of stripping Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic mayoral candidate for New York City, of his US citizenship as part of a crackdown against foreign-born citizens convicted of certain offences.

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, appeared to pave the way for an investigation into Mamdani’s status after Andy Ogles, a rightwing Republican representative for Tennessee, called for his citizenship to be revoked on the grounds that he may have concealed his support for “terrorism” during the naturalization process.

Mamdani, 33, who was born in Uganda to ethnic Indian parents, became a US citizen in 2018 and has attracted widespread media attention – and controversy – over his vocal support for Palestinian rights.

"We need to stop trusting the experts," Kennedy told Tucker Carlson.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appeared on the latest episode of Tucker Carlson’s podcast on Monday and it’s filled with the ramblings of a man completely detached from reality.

Kennedy falsely suggested vaccines cause autism, more or less endorsed the idea that Anthony Fauci should go to prison, and says that AI will allow the FDA to approve new drugs very quickly. It’s quite a mess.

These absolutely unhinged ideas wouldn’t be such a problem if this were any other fringe lunatic appearing on the podcast of a racist former Fox News host. But Kennedy happens to be the Secretary of Health and Human Services, a man who’s been given enormous power over America’s entire healthcare system thanks to Donald Trump.

Senate Republicans on Tuesday passed the largest cuts to Medicaid since the program began in the 1960s, a move that would erode the social safety net and cause a spike in the number of uninsured Americans over the next decade.

The tax and spending bill is projected to cost more than $3 trillion during that time, but it would be partially paid for with about $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid.

Almost 12 million lower-income Americans would lose their health insurance by 2034, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

It still needs to pass the House again, where some moderate Republicans have expressed concerns about the cuts.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Tuesday that the U.S. central bank would have eased monetary policy by now if not for Donald Trump’s tariff plan.

When asked during a panel if the Fed would have lowered rates again this year had Trump not announced his controversial plan to impose higher levies on imported goods earlier this year, Powell said, “I think that’s right.”

“In effect, we went on hold when we saw the size of the tariffs and essentially all inflation forecasts for the United States went up materially as a consequence of the tariffs,” Powell said at European Central Bank forum in Sintra, Portugal.

This year marks the first time that local NWS offices have stopped round-the-clock operations in the agency’s history

More than 60 people have died due to this year’s tornadoes, most of which have centered on the Mississippi River valley – about 500 miles east of the traditional heart of “tornado alley” of Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. That unusual eastward shift may also be making tornado outbreaks more dangerous, bringing them in closer proximity to more people than the relatively sparsely populated plains states.

Cuts to the weather service by Trump and DOGE have left NWS local forecast offices critically understaffed throughout this year’s heightened severe weather. In April, an internal document reportedly described how cuts could create a situation of “degraded” operations – shutting down core services one by one until it reaches an equilibrium that doesn’t overtax its remaining employees.

The changing climate is also making simultaneous weather disasters more likely, such as overlapping tornadoes and flash floods – creating emergency preparedness difficulties and compounding the effects of funding cuts.

Immigration enforcement operations on farms have left crops rotting and farm operations disrupted in major agricultural states including California, Texas, and Pennsylvania.

Farm owners and industry representatives report that up to 70 percent of workers stopped reporting to work following Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) actions, resulting in significant crop losses and financial strain.

"We do not have enough workforce in the United States to do manual work, to do those jobs that other people are not qualified to do and do not want to do it," Alexandra Sossa, CEO of Farmworker and Landscaper Advocacy Project, told Newsweek. "For example, we are running into a problem where we do not have enough farm workers to grow the food we eat every day.

The ocean around Antarctica is rapidly getting saltier at the same time as sea ice is retreating at a record pace. Since 2015, the frozen continent has lost sea ice similar to the size of Greenland. That ice hasn’t returned, marking the largest global environmental change during the past decade.

This finding caught us off guard – melting ice typically makes the ocean fresher. But new satellite data shows the opposite is happening, and that’s a big problem. Saltier water at the ocean surface behaves differently than fresher seawater by drawing up heat from the deep ocean and making it harder for sea ice to regrow.

The loss of Antarctic sea ice has global consequences. Less sea ice means less habitat for penguins and other ice-dwelling species. More of the heat stored in the ocean is released into the atmosphere when ice melts, increasing the number and intensity of storms and accelerating global warming. This brings heatwaves on land and melts even more of the Antarctic ice sheet, which raises sea levels globally.

Former political allies Donald Trump and Elon Musk have been bickering late at night again.

Hell hath no fury like a social media platform-owning billionaire scorned. In another round of late-night jabs between Donald Trump and Elon Musk, the U.S. president suggested that Tesla magnate’s government subsidies and contracts could come under threat.

“Elon may get more subsidies than any human being in history, by far, and without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social website.

Trump went on to suggest that DOGE, which Musk was instrumental in setting up, could be turned against the world’s richest man.

According to an estimate by the Washington Post, Musk and his businesses have received at least $38 billion in government contracts, loans, subsidies and tax credits over the years.