Trump repeats his false claim that Iran, which has no nuclear weapons, could destroy Los Angeles or San Diego
Near the end of his speech in San Antonio on Wednesday, which has just concluded, Donald Trump repeated his false claim that the war he started with Iran in February was necessary to prevent Iran from destroying American cities like Los Angeles or San Diego in a nuclear attack.
“I am ensuring that Iran will never have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said. “We had no choice because we can’t let them have a nuclear weapon.”
What the president did not say is that US intelligence agencies wrote in March 2025, in an annual threat assessment provided to Congress, that Iran abandoned its pursuit of nuclear weapons more than two decades ago.
“We continue to assess Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and that [Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei has not reauthorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003, though pressure has probably built on him to do so,” the intelligence community reported last year. Three months later, in June 2025 , Trump ordered US military strikes on Iran’s main nuclear-enrichment facility, which, he said, had been “obliterated”.
Still, on Wednesday, Trump repeated his claim that the war on Iran he launched in February of this year with Israel had been necessary to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.
“You want to see trauma? You want to see problems?” Trump said in Texas on Wednesday. “And I said it the other day, ‘let them hit a missile into San Diego or Los Angeles’ … You want to see some bad things happen? You want to see a country that would be in free fall?”
“We’re not going to let that happen,” the president said of the supposed threat from a country that has not had a nuclear weapons program for 23 years and has no missiles capable of reaching any part of the US. “We protect our cities. We protect our country. We’re not letting that happen,” Trump said. “And they’d use it, too. They’d use it. They would use it.”
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In remarks in San Antonio, Texas, Donald Trump tried to channel the anti-Muslim racism that helped get him elected in 2016, by skipping straight from a dire warning that Iran would use a nuclear weapon if it had one to the wild, false claim that Barack Obama could have stopped the Ft Hood gunman, Nidal Hasan, but chose not to.
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Trump repeated his false claim that the war he started with Iran in February was necessary to prevent Iran from destroying American cities like Los Angeles or San Diego in a nuclear attack. In fact, US intelligence agencies assessed in 2025 that Iran had abandoned its pursuit of nuclear weapons in 2003.
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Trump’s midterm rally speech was disrupted up to a dozen times by protesters.
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The Democratic National Committee sued the Trump administration in federal court, asking a judge in Washington to stop the president from using taxpayer funds to air a series of ads promoting himself, arguing that the ads are illegal government-sponsored propaganda.
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In his remarks in San Antonio, Texas earlier on Wednesday night, Donald Trump tried to channel the anti-Muslim racism that helped get him elected in 2016, by skipping straight from a dire warning that Iran would use a nuclear weapon if it had one to the wild, false claim that Barack Obama could have stopped the Ft Hood gunman, Nidal Hasan, but chose not to.
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“We also recently announced that we’re going to deliver final justice to an evil killer, the Ft Hood shooter, Nidal Hasan, who murdered 14 innocent souls and wounded dozens more here in Texas, yelling ‘Allah Akbar’, ‘Allah Akbar’ while he was doing it,” Trump said of the Army psychiatrist who killed 12 soldiers and a retired guardsman in a gun attack in 2009.
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“And we just found out,” Trump added, falsely, “that President Obama had the emails from Hasan to a known terrorist murderer, well-known, saying he was going to wage jihad against his fellow soldiers. But Obama and his group did nothing about it.”
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As Trump made this false charge, his supporters jeered loudly.
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In fact, as was widely reported in 2009, US intelligence agencies did intercept over a dozen messages Hasan sent to Anwar al-Awlaki, a cleric at a mosque in suburban Virginia where Hasan worshiped. But some of those messages were gathered in 2008 before Obama was president, and there has never been any indication that the messages indicated plans for an attack, as Trump claimed, or that either president George W Bush or Barack Obama was ever briefed on them.
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According to a study of the messages published in 2018 by the program on extremism at George Washington University, Awlaki only replied to two of Hasan’s messages, sent to him through his website, and the subject of both was an essay contest Hasan wanted to establish. Awlaki never answered any of Hasan’s questions about Islam, the GWU researcher Katharine Poppe reported.
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Awlaki, who was considered a moderate figure duirng his time in Virginia, later developed a reputation as a radical cleric and an al-Qaida propagandist, and was killed in Yemen in 2011 in a drone strike ordered by Obama.
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Near the end of his speech at a midterm campaign rally for Republicans in San Antonio, Texas on Wednesday, Donald Trump announced that he was awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Roger Clemens, who retired as one of the greatest pitchers in Major League Baseball history, but has been denied admission to the Hall of Fame because of allegations that he used performance-enhancing drugs.
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Clemens, who had introduced Trump, thanked the president for the award, but made no comment on the doping allegations that have dogged him since he was named as a steroid user by George Mitchell, a former US senator. The allegations against Clemens, who has always denied drug use, were based on the testimony of his former trainer, Brian McNamee, who said he repeatedly injected Clemens with steroids and human growth hormone.
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When Clemens repeated those denials at a Congressional hearing in 2008, he was charged with perjury and obstruction of Congress by the federal government before eventually being acquitted by a jury in 2012.
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“It’s a ridiculous thing that you’re not in the Hall of Fame with that kind of a record,” Trump said of Clemens. “And by the way, people talk drugs: he never admitted to anything,” the president said. “He never admitted to anything. He’s just a physical monster, okay?”
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Near the end of his speech in San Antonio on Wednesday, which has just concluded, Donald Trump repeated his false claim that the war he started with Iran in February was necessary to prevent Iran from destroying American cities like Los Angeles or San Diego in a nuclear attack.
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“I am ensuring that Iran will never have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said. “We had no choice because we can’t let them have a nuclear weapon.”
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What the president did not say is that US intelligence agencies wrote in March 2025, in an annual threat assessment provided to Congress, that Iran abandoned its pursuit of nuclear weapons more than two decades ago.
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“We continue to assess Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and that [Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei has not reauthorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003, though pressure has probably built on him to do so,” the intelligence community reported last year. Three months later, in June 2025 , Trump ordered US military strikes on Iran’s main nuclear-enrichment facility, which, he said, had been “obliterated”.
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Still, on Wednesday, Trump repeated his claim that the war on Iran he launched in February of this year with Israel had been necessary to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.
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“You want to see trauma? You want to see problems?” Trump said in Texas on Wednesday. “And I said it the other day, ‘let them hit a missile into San Diego or Los Angeles’ … You want to see some bad things happen? You want to see a country that would be in free fall?”
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“We’re not going to let that happen,” the president said of the supposed threat from a country that has not had a nuclear weapons program for 23 years and has no missiles capable of reaching any part of the US. “We protect our cities. We protect our country. We’re not letting that happen,” Trump said. “And they’d use it, too. They’d use it. They would use it.”
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At the Republican midterm campaign rally in San Antonio, Donald Trump just vented his rage at Henry Cuellar, a Texas Democratic congressman he pardoned last year, for not switching parties.
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Trump claimed that he had made no deal with Cuellar before he signed a pardon that ended the federal government’s effort to jail the congressman and his wife on a dozen charges of bribery, money laundering and conspiracy.
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However, the president clearly indicated that he had expected the congressman to become a Republican out of gratitude.
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“So many considered this to be a tremendous act of disloyalty, and certainly showed him to be an extremely ungrateful kind of a person,” Trump said.
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Urging voters to defeat Cuellar by voting for his Republican challenger, Trump said: “We’ll call that payback for a disloyal, ungrateful person. A person whose life has been saved only to go back into the clutches of the people that tried to destroy him. So Henry Cuellar is a guy who is considered low-life in Congress, not respected, and right now should be serving a long term prison sentence with his wife and a top level penitentiary.”
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In his speech to supporters in San Antonio, Texas, which is still in progress, Donald Trump has been repeating the same false claims about the US economy he has made again and again in recent weeks.
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Ignoring soaring inflation and fuel prices exacerbated by the war he started with Iran and has been unable to stop, Trump repeated his entirely imaginary claim that he has already secured $21tn in foreign direct investment in the US since returning to office lat year.
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In fact, as CNN reported last month, federal data shows that new foreign direct investment in the US was about $232bn in 2025, and Trump appears to be “counting trillions in vague investment pledges – pledges that were about “bilateral trade” or “economic exchange” rather than investment in the US – and “vague statements that didn’t even rise to the level of pledges.”
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Trump also repeated his false claim that tariff revenues have swelled federal coffers so much under his administration that he was able to pay a $1,776 bonus to military service members and would also cover the $5,000 checks to all US adults he is promising voters if they keep Republicans in the majority in the House and Senate.
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In fact, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center, the US has brought in just $236bn in revenue from gross tariff and other excise taxes in 2026.
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The $1,776 payments to troops that Trump first announced in December, which he said would be paid for by tariff revenues, were not funded by the import taxes Trump imposed. As the Associated Press reported at the time, the money was actually drawn from a congressionally-approved housing supplement – money service members were already set to receive.
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Donald Trump’s midterm rally speech in San Antonio, Texas has been disrupted by protesters at least six times so far.
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Television coverage of the rally showed that one of the protesters was violently assaulted by an older Trump supporter as he attempted to leave the arena.
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The interruptions seemed to momentarily derail the president as he repeated a lie about James Talarico, the Texas Democrat he claims is a vegan who only pretends to eat meat and secretly vomits every time he does. There is no evidence for this imaginary tale the president has repeated multiple times in recent weeks as Talarico has pulled ahead of the Trump-backed Republican candidate for the US Senate, Ken Paxton.
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Trump began his riff with the rare admission that he has been mispronouncing the word vegan, as “vaygan”.
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“He is a fake,” Trump said of the Democrat. “He’s a vegan. You know, my wife told me, ‘Sir, do me a favor. You have to do me just a little bit of a favor. It’s not vaygan; it’s vegan.’”
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As the president told this story about being asked to pronounce the word correctly, he appeared to get confused about who, exactly, had corrected him. Trump does not usually refer to his wife calling him “sir”. Moments later he said that the person who made this request of him was a man.
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“I don’t know about that stuff. I’m not into it. And he said: ‘It’s vegan! Please pronounce that word properly. I called it, vaygan, vaygan. I thought it – how the hell would I know? I like steak.”
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After as brief introduction from Roger Clemens, the disgraced former baseball star accused in a high-profile report of using performance-enhancing drugs, Donald Trump has taken the stage at a midterm campaign rally for Republicans at the Freeman Coliseum in San Antonio, Texas.
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}],”data”:{“alt”:”Donald Trump arrives to a campaign rally at the Freeman Coliseum in San Antonio, Texas, on 7 October.”,”caption”:”Donald Trump arrives to a campaign rally at the Freeman Coliseum in San Antonio, Texas, on 7 October.”,”credit”:”Photograph: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images”}},{“_type”:”model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement”,”html”:”
The president began by attacking the Texas Democrat James Talarico, using the nickname “Talafreako”, which the candidate has put on campaign merchandise.
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Trump then praised Republican Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general who is running for US Senate against Talarico, as “probably the greatest attorney general in the history of the state of Texas. He is tough. And he was with us all the way. And so I just want to thank him. He’s a fantastic – he’s a fantastic man and what a job he’s done.”
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Trump made no mention of the fact that Paxton was recently caught on audio revealing that he considers Trump’s unpopular war on Iran, and the resulting high gas prices, a drag on his campaign.
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We are now waiting for Donald Trump to arrive at a Republican campaign rally at Freeman Coliseum in San Antonio, Texas, where the embattled Senate candidate Ken Paxton finished speaking 30 minutes ago.
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Moments before Air Force One touched down at Kelly Field in San Antonio, Trump fired off a lengthy diatribe attacking Texas congressman Henry Cuellar, a Democrat he pardoned last year, attacking him as “ungrateful” for not becoming a Republican.
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n
I did the pardons, and made no deal, where a crooked politician would have, but I thought there would be a good chance that Cuellar, who was persecuted by Democrats because they didn’t like him, would have routinely gone over to the Republican Party — The people that saved him from years in prison. Shockingly, Cuellar announced, only a few days later, that he is going to remain a Dumocrat. Many considered this to be a tremendous act of disloyalty, and certainly, showed him to be an extremely ungrateful person … Henry Cuellar is a LOSER who, right now, should be serving a longterm jail sentence with his wife in a top level penitentiary.
n
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The federal lawsuit Democrats filed on Wednesday to stop the Trump administration from using millions of taxpayer dollars to air a series of pro-Trump ads includes details of another eight ads that have already been prepared for broadcast – all of which celebrate Donald Trump, and appear to violate a federal ban on the use of public money for “self-aggrandizement” or “purely partisan” messaging from the government.
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The Democratic National Committee says in the suit that “there are at least 13 campaign-style political ads in a Dropbox account controlled by LMD Agency Inc, the government contractor bringing the ads to air”. Each ad in the Dropbox account includes on-screen text saying that the ad celebrating Trump in the run-up to midterm elections his party is in danger of losing was “Paid for by the U.S. Government”.
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In addition to the five pro-Trump already broadcast since last month, the suit describes another four in detail:
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An ad titled “UFC 250”, which celebrates the fights staged at the White House on Trump’s birthday in June.
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An ad titled “King of the Jungle”, which shows a lion hunting in the wild and disparages Trump’s political enemies, including former president Barack Obama and other Democrats. In February, Trump shared a racist video on social media that portrayed him as a lion and Obama and his wife, Michelle, as apes.
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An ad titled “Resilience”, which includes images of Trump announcing his candidacy for the presidency in 2015; his mugshot from Fulton county, Georgia, in 2023, when he was charged with racketeering and a conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the state; video of the assassination attempt on him during the 2024 election campaign.
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An ad titled “God Made Trump”, a fan-created hymn of praise to Trump that was shown during the Republican midterm convention.
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According to CNN, which gained access to the Dropbox last week, another ad in the series features attacks on Joe Biden, including the mocking image of the former president as an autopen installed by Trump on an exterior wall of the White House.
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The Democratic National Committee sued the Trump administration in federal court on Wednesday, asking a judge in Washington to stop the president from using taxpayer funds to air a series of ads promoting himself, arguing that the ads are illegal government-sponsored propaganda.
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The ads promoting Donald Trump, including one recycled from his 2024 presidential campaign, have cost taxpayers more than $12m so far, according to the media tracking firm AdImpact.
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}],”data”:{“alt”:”A screenshot from a pro-Trump ad the US government paid to broadcast in 2026.”,”caption”:”A screenshot from a pro-Trump ad the US government paid to broadcast in 2026.”,”credit”:”Photograph: White House”}},{“_type”:”model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement”,”html”:”
After a bipartisan backlash to the use of public money to promote the president during the final month of the midterm campaign season, the president claimed on Monday that he would direct the Maga Inc Super PAC he controls to pay for the ads instead. The next day, however, when the government unveiled a fifth ad in the series, celebrating the military intervention in Venezuela ordered by Trump, that new ad was also paid for by the public.
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The DNC complaint, filed in the US district court for the District of Columbia, alleges that the ads violate federal law, including a ban on congressionally appropriated money being used for “publicity or propaganda”.
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The complaint gets right to the point in its opening lines:
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The Trump administration is using taxpayer dollars to air political advertisements, a blatant violation of the statutory ban on the use of appropriations for ‘publicity or propaganda purposes’. President Trump personally directed this illegal activity. The White House office crafted the partisan campaign. The office of management and budget shifted $20m to pay for it. And US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has carried it out. These unlawful actions are ultra vires and violate the Administrative Procedure Act (APA).
n
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The suit also notes, as the Guardian reported last month, that the first ad in the series features an image of Fifa’s president, Gianni Infantino, awarding Trump the so-called ‘Fifa peace prize,’ to support its case that the ads all violate a prohibition on the use of taxpayer funds for “self-aggrandizement”.
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}],”data”:{“alt”:”A screenshot from a White House ad for Donald Trump, showing him accepting the Fifa peace prize.”,”caption”:”A screenshot from a White House ad for Donald Trump, showing him accepting the Fifa peace prize.”,”credit”:”Photograph: White House”}},{“_type”:”model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement”,”html”:”
The text of the complaint also references new polling from Reuters/Ipsos released on Tuesday which found that an overwhelming majority of Americans, 86%, called it inappropriate to use taxpayer funds for TV ads featuring the president around an election. The survey reported that 80% of Republicans called the ads inappropriate, with only 17% of the president’s party approving of them.
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According to the suit, the ads have been broadcast on ABC, NBC, MS Now, CBS, CNN, Fox News and Newsmax and appeared during a variety of programs, including popular NFL and college football games, and news and entertainment shows on which the president has been criticized, including Meet the Press, Jimmy Kimmel Live! and Saturday Night Live.
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Ken Martin, the DNC chair, said in a statement that Trump is misusing taxpayer dollars in “a last-ditch attempt to save Republicans in November”.
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“Americans deserve better than to have their hard-earned tax dollars used for Trump’s illegal schemes,” he added.
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Donald Trump said he has “no regrets at all” about endorsing Ken Paxton in the Senate race in Texas, after the Republican nominee reportedly complained about the impact of the Iran war and high gas prices on his precarious performance. According to an audio recording obtained by Axios, Paxton can be heard responding to questions about the main issues affecting his race at a fundraiser in Washington DC. “It’s not tariffs,” he said. “It’s the war, it’s gas prices, it’s diesel.” A number of polls have Paxton, also the Texas attorney general, trailing his Democratic rival, James Talarico, as Republican groups spend tens of millions of dollars to support his election bid.
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Meanwhile, the president is on his way toSan Antonio, Texas, where he’s set to hold another campaign rally to drum up support for Paxton. This is Trump’s second visit to Texas in the past week. He’s set to speak at 7pm ET.
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Trumpalsosaid today that he would “immediately” fire his political advisers Chris LaCivita and James Blair “if there’s a conflict,” following a New York Times report that the two political operatives visited the Russian-aligned Bosnian territory of Republika Srpska. In a Truth Social post, Trump noted that the two operatives “do not work for me, other than as outside consultants”, adding they are allowed to do “work for others, just like all consultant”. LaCivita was formerly a senior adviser on the president’s 2024 campaign, and Blair was formerly a White House adviser who took a temporary leave of absence to head up Maga Inc – the Trump-aliged Super Pac.
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Mike Rogers– the Republican nominee for the open US Senate seat in Michigan –is trying to show a bit of daylight between his platform and the Trump administration’s trade war with the state’s neighbor, Canada. “Here in Michigan, we know that Canada is not our enemy,” Rogers, a former congressman, says while perched at a sports bar drinking a Canadian beer. “We need to end this tariff war – now.” In the Oval Office, Trump, said he viewed the ad “as though [Rogers] wanted Canada to make a deal”, before launching into a familiar rant about how the country has been “ripping off” the US for “many, many years”.
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Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) investigated hundreds of non-profit groups that helped people register to vote, according to internal government documents obtained by legal non-profit Democracy Forward. Dozens of groups, from across the country, were investigated. Some of these non-profits partner with larger groups, like Voto Latino – which focuses on voter registration and get-out-the-vote efforts for Hispanic and Latino citizens.
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“,”elementId”:”b03b9daf-4f74-4029-87d0-ded99e144721″}],”attributes”:{“pinned”:false,”keyEvent”:false,”summary”:true},”blockCreatedOn”:1791400389000,”blockCreatedOnDisplay”:”15.13 EDT”,”blockLastUpdated”:1791401729000,”blockLastUpdatedDisplay”:”15.35 EDT”,”blockFirstPublished”:1791401730000,”blockFirstPublishedDisplay”:”15.35 EDT”,”blockFirstPublishedDisplayNoTimezone”:”15.35″,”title”:”Here’s a recap of the day so far”,”contributors”:[],”primaryDateLine”:”Wed 7 Oct 2026 22.31 EDT”,”secondaryDateLine”:”First published on Wed 7 Oct 2026 06.00 EDT”},{“id”:”6ac68d728f081f513dd81f48″,”elements”:[{“_type”:”model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement”,”html”:”
Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, welcomed back the crew of the USS Abraham Lincoln back to the US in San Diego today.
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A reminder, the aircraft carrier has been at sea for more than 300 days, after its deployment was extended in May, amid the ongoing Iran war.
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“You responded from minute one, constant combat operations, which Iran never expected-the kind of fire and fury that you were able to bring off this flight deck, along with other incredible Americans,” Hegseth said. “The only reaction the American people and the American media should have is pride.”
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However, time on the ship has been marked by controversy. According to Hung Cao, the acting US navy secretary, eight US navy personnel assigned to the Lincoln carrier strike group attempted suicide since the start of their lengthy assignment – the longest continuous period at sea without a port call.
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On Wednesday, Hegseth repeated his frequent critique of the media, and accused some members of the press of turning the record-breaking deployment into “some sort of symbol of dysfunction, or a symbol of low morale or a symbol of a failed mission”.
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Last week, Hegseth appeared to reference the mental health crisis on board while speaking to lower-ranking troops at the Marine Corps Base, insisting there are “disingenuous headlines about deployment lengths, patently false claims of low troop morale, or flat-out propaganda, as if it’s written by our adversaries”.
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MS Now also reported in August on alarming allegations of mold in the ship’s showers and dwindling supplies of food and soap, among other basic necessities. At the time, Hegseth dismissed reports about deteriorating conditions on board as “completely misrepresented”.
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My colleague, Anna Betts, has been speaking to families of crew members ahead of the Lincoln’s return. You can read her full report here:
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Donald Trump said he has “no regrets at all” about endorsing Ken Paxton in the Senate race in Texas.
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Paxton, the Republican nominee in one of the most anticipated competitions of this midterm cycle, reportedly complained about the impact of the Iran war and high gas prices on his precarious performance. A number of polls have Paxton trailing his Democratic rival, James Talarico, and Republican groups are spending tens of millions of dollars to support his election bid.
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“He was a great attorney general, I think he’ll be a great senator,” Trump told reporters today.
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According to an audio recording obtained by Axios, Paxton can be heard responding to questions about the main issues affecting his race at a fundraiser in Washington DC. “It’s not tariffs,” he said. “It’s the war, it’s gas prices, it’s diesel.”
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Paxton noted that the ability to end the conflict with Iran and ease prices is beyond his control, according to the audio shared with Axios. “So many factors in this federal race are uncontrollable,” the Republican nominee said. “I don’t make the decisions.”
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Donald Trump on Wednesday said he would “immediately” fire his political advisers Chris LaCivita and James Blair “if there’s a conflict,” following a New York Times report that the two political operatives visited the Russian-aligned Bosnian territory of Republika Srpska.
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The New York Times on Tuesday reported that LaCivita and Blair had visited the territory in Bosnia and Herzegovina ahead of elections there on Sunday, and were paid hundreds of thousands of dollars through a DC-based law firm, retained by the territory’s government.
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Trump had chosen the two to lead campaign operations ahead of the 3 November elections. LaCivita was formerly a senior adviser on the president’s 2024 campaign, and Blair was formerly a White House adviser who took a temporary leave of absence to head up Maga Inc – the Trump-aliged Super Pac.
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In a Truth Social post, Trump said the two advisers “do not work for me, other than as outside consultants,” adding: “They are allowed to do work for others, just like all consultants in Washington, D.C. I do not have any idea who else they work for but will, on reflection, ask them and, if there’s a conflict, I will terminate them, immediately!”
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Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) investigated hundreds of non-profit groups that helped people register to vote, according to internal government documents obtained by legal non-profit Democracy Forward.
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The documents show that the probes were conducted by Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). One of them reads: “Future [undercover] -related operations may involve utilizing [undercover agents] to target identified organizations and engage in communications with these entities to substantiate recruitment methods and activities related to illegal alien voter registration”.
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Donald Trump has repeated, relentlessly, that he wants to tackle rampant voter fraud and non-citizens casting ballots, when experts note that the practoce of non-citzens voting in elections is extremely rare.
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The document also said the covert efforts “will support broader investigative and enforcement actions, leveraging [undercover] findings to initiate prosecutions and dismantle illicit facilitation networks.”
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Dozens of groups, from across the country, were investigated. Some of these non-profits partner with larger groups, like Voto Latino – which focuses on voter registration and get-out-the-vote efforts for Hispanic and Latino citizens.
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Ken Paxton, aware of just how competitive his race for Senate is shaping up to be, acknowledged that high gas prices as a result of the ongoing Iran war appear to be hampering his campaign, according to an audio recording obtained by Axios.
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At a fundraiser in Washington DC, Paxton can be heard responding to questions about the main issues affecting his competition. “It’s not tariffs,” he said. “It’s the war, it’s gas prices, it’s diesel.”
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The embattled attorney general is currently trailing his opponent, Democratic state lawmaker James Talarico, in most polls leading up to the November election.
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At the closed-door meeting, Paxton acknowledged that affordability is “by far” his party’s “biggest problem”, according to the recording, and why his campaign is “having a hard time with numbers”.
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Paxton also noted that the ability to end the conflict with Iran, and ease prices is beyond his control, according to the audio from Axios. “So many factors in this federal race are uncontrollable,” the Republican nominee said. “I don’t make the decisions.”
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A reminder that another recording from this event was leaked to the New York Times last week, where Paxton said that Donald Trump’s midterms GOP convention “dropped our numbers” and many of his campaign’s directives were coming from Washington.
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Two-thirds of Republican candidates in competitive US House and Senate races have broken with president Donald Trump on policy or played down ties to him, a Reuters review found, revealing a widespread effort to distance themselves from the president as his unpopularity threatens the party’s hold on Congress.
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The review of voting records, public statements and campaign materials found candidates in 41 of 62 competitive congressional races seeking some distance from Trump ahead of the 3 November midterm elections.
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The candidates have largely criticized or diverged from Trump on individual issues rather than repudiated his broader agenda. The findings suggest an effort to attract independent voters while avoiding a direct break with their party leader.
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Policy differences were the most common point of divergence, appearing in 23 of the 62 races.
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In 12 contests, the split centered on the Iran conflict, with vulnerable Republicans either voting to curb Trump’s war powers or calling publicly for an end to the fighting that has raised gas prices and squeezed household budgets.
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Most US voters think Donald Trump’s administration and Congress are not taking the risks of AI seriously enough and want the government to write new regulations for the technology, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll.
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The six-day survey, which ended on Monday, showed that wide swaths of the electorate see AI as a major threat to American jobs, underscoring growing skepticism of the technology from voters across the political spectrum.
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The fast-advancing technology has become a matter of keen national interest amid reports of AI agents running amok and hacking into corporate computer networks, and warnings from prominent researchers that it could one day pose an existential threat to humanity.
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Noisy, power-hungry data centers that power AI also increasingly pose a nuisance when they pop up near neighborhoods while jacking up utility bills.
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Some 57% of registered voters in the poll – including a third of self-identified Republicans – said the Trump administration has not taken AI risks seriously enough or at all. Some 54% said the same about Congress.
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Secretary of state Marco Rubio is set to call for the nations of the west to return to their civilizational roots and restore the values that drove the rise of Europe and North America to global dominance for centuries, AP reports.
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In Athens to discuss deepening economic, energy and security cooperation with Greece, Rubio will deliver a speech later today overlooking the ruins of the Acropolis, a widely recognizable symbol of the city’s ancient civilization associated with the creation of popular participatory government and the social contract.
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Rubio intends to remind listeners of qualities he says were born in Greece and later defined the West, such as curiosity, courage, ambition and a restless spirit of exploration and discovery of the unknown.
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“It has become fashionable today to believe that enlightened foreign policy means prioritizing the ‘global community’ over one’s own people. Here, too, we have much more to learn from the men of Ancient Greece. They knew that there was nothing selfish or wrong about loyalty to your nation, nor in fighting to defend its interests above all else,” Rubio plans to say in the speech, excerpts of which were distributed by the state department.
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“Today, we find ourselves at a crossroads,” he will say, according to the excerpts. “The next decade will write the story of the next century. The course we take will determine whether the West maintains its place at the head of the world, or resigns itself to a future of atrophy, servitude, and decline. We will either choose to act now or lose the choice to act at all.”
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Susan Collins, the Republican senator for Maine, pointedly distanced herself from Donald Trump in a televised debate with Democratic challenger Troy Jackson on Tuesday, as she sought to present an image of independence in a state that has voted against Trump three times.
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Proclaiming herself as not the US president’s “favorite senator”, Collins made the highly unusual boast for a Republican that she had voted with Joe Biden, a Democrat, more than 90% of the time when he was president. She also emphasized her differences with her fellow Republicans, saying she voted against her own party more than any other senator.
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Collins’ defensiveness came amid a determined onslaught from Jackson, 58, a veteran former state legislator who was getting his first chance to present himself to a broad audience since replacing Graham Platner as the Democratic candidate in a contest that could be vital to the party’s hopes of winning the Senate.
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Platner, a former harbor master, was forced to withdraw from the race in July after facing sexual assault allegations, which he denied, leaving Democrats racing against the clock to replace a candidate who had built up momentum campaigning on a populist progressive platform.
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Jackson painted Collins as a Trump loyalist, saying she voted with the president 96% of the time. He also doggedly focused on her 2018 vote for the conservative supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh, tying it to the court’s subsequent overturning of Roe v Wade, which had for half a century guaranteed the national right to abortion.
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“Tonight is about who you stand with when it matters,” Jackson said in a pithy opening statement. “Eight years ago today, Maine women went to DC and begged Senator Collins not to confirm Brett Kavanaugh, but she did it anyways.
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“He helped overturn Roe v Wade, and today she says she has no regrets. Would you trust her to pick the next supreme court justice?”
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Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.
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Donald Trump was accused of “dangerous, if not treasonous” behaviour after his comments suggesting he could “let [Iran] take out” Los Angeles or San Diego.
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California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, has since directed the state’s emergency preparedness center to “actively monitor” possible threats to the state.
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“Donald Trump’s remarks were dangerous – if not treasonous – putting a target on two of our biggest cities and one of America’s largest naval hubs,” Newsom said in a post on X, adding that the state’s threat-assessment center would be on heightened alert “in the event that foreign actors interpret the president’s remarks as an invitation to target California”.
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The president has faced a chorus of condemnation from Democratic leaders in California after his comments at a rally in Nebraska on Monday night, which the White House has suggested were being taken out of context.
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At the president’s rally in Grand Island, Nebraska, Trump claimed that high prices due to the war with Iran are a “small price to pay for keeping the world safe – keeping our country safe”.
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He went on:
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n
They can take out a city. Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego.
n
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Xavier Becerra, the Democratic nominee for governor vying to succeed Newsom, said he wasn’t surprised by the president’s comments.
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“Donald Trump is a known commodity – you know how he acts, you know how he behaves,” Becerra told reporters at a campaign event in Los Angeles on Tuesday. But he took a jab at Republicans who “profess that they should be the leaders of our state” but aren’t willing to “stand up to Donald Trump”.
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Meanwhile, San Diego mayor Todd Gloria said in a statement that “the most fundamental responsibility of a president is to protect the American people – all of them.”
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He added:
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No American city, regardless of its politics or geography, should ever be described as expendable or an acceptable price to pay.
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But the White House insisted that Trump was being willfully misinterpreted.
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Steven Cheung, its director of communications, posted on X:
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The media freakout over President Trump’s comments is not rooted in reality. He was clearly stating U.S. cities would have been threatened if a nuclear Iran hadn’t been stopped. America is safer because of the President. Iran has no nuclear, no navy, no air force, and no money.
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But one Republican House candidate, Jim Desmond, who is running in a competitive San Diego-based seat, pushed back.
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“America must stand up to Iran and defend our interests, but the first responsibility of our commander in chief is to protect the American people and our homeland,” Desmond, a former mayor of San Marcos, said in a statement.
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In other developments:
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The Cook Political Report has revised its predictions for the November midterm elections, saying “A Senate Majority is Squarely in Democrats’ Sights”. Cook amended its prediction for the Kansas Senate race from “Lean Republican” to “Toss Up” – a shocker for a state where no Democrat has won a Senate election since 1932.
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Donald Trump announced a massive new shipyard, which will be funded by a combination of federal and private dollars, at Tradepoint Atlantic in Sparrows Point. Anduril Industries, which is owned by Trump’s friend and donor Palmer Luckey, plans to invest $3.7bn in the shipyard and the US Navy will contribute an additional $2.9bn.
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The USS Lincoln will dock in San Diego tomorrow, completing a nearly year-long deployment that sparked controversy over living conditions aboard the aircraft carrier as it supported military operations in Iran. Defense secretary Pete Hegseth is expected to greet the crew when they arrive.
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Trump ordered the FBI to investigate protesters in Los Angeles who were demonstrating against the president’s immigration crackdown, according to a whistleblower complaint that was submitted to the Senate judiciary committee. Jill Fields, a former supervisory intelligence analyst in the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office, made the complaint following the federal response to anti-ICE demonstrations around the city’s federal buildings, and in residential area, early last year.
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Key events
Closing summary
Trump stokes anti-Muslim racism with false accusation that Obama chose not to stop Ft Hood gunman Nidal Hasan
Trump announces that Presidential Medal of Freedom for Roger Clemens, baseball pitcher dogged by doping allegations
Trump repeats his false claim that Iran, which has no nuclear weapons, could destroy Los Angeles or San Diego
Trump vents anger at Texas Democrat Henry Cuellar for not becoming a Republican after he pardoned congressman accused of bribery
Trump repeats false claims of booming US economy and invented investment figure, ignoring inflation and spiking fuel prices
Trump rally speech in San Antonio interrupted by multiple protesters as he repeats lie about Talarico
Trump showers praise on ‘fantastic’ Ken Paxton, the Texas Senate candidate caught on audio calling Trump a drag on his campaign
Trump lashes out at ‘ungrateful’ Texas Democrat he pardoned for not becoming a Republican
Federal lawsuit from Democrats says eight more pro-Trump ads are ready to air, including attacks on Biden and Obama
Democrats sue Trump administration, asking judge to declare Trump ads paid for with taxpayer dollars illegal propaganda
Here’s a recap of the day so far
Hegseth welcomes USS Abraham Lincoln crew back to US after record-breaking deployment
Trump says he has ‘no regrets’ about endorsing Ken Paxton amid leaked recordings
Trump says he will fire top political advisers ‘if there’s a conflict’ following reported trip to Russia-aligned Bosnian territory
ICE investigated voting rights non-profits, internal documents show
Leaked audio shows Ken Paxton blaming high gas prices and Iran war for uphill battle in midterms – report
Republicans running for election distance themselves from Trump, Reuters review finds
Voters say Trump and Congress not taking AI seriously enough, poll finds
Rubio to call for west to restore founding democratic principles and values
Susan Collins distances herself from Trump in Maine debate
Trump’s LA and San Diego comments ‘dangerous, if not treasonous’, say critics
Closing summary
This concludes our live coverage of the second Trump administration for the day. Here are the latest developments:
In remarks in San Antonio, Texas, Donald Trump tried to channel the anti-Muslim racism that helped get him elected in 2016, by skipping straight from a dire warning that Iran would use a nuclear weapon if it had one to the wild, false claim that Barack Obama could have stopped the Ft Hood gunman, Nidal Hasan, but chose not to.
Trump repeated his false claim that the war he started with Iran in February was necessary to prevent Iran from destroying American cities like Los Angeles or San Diego in a nuclear attack. In fact, US intelligence agencies assessed in 2025 that Iran had abandoned its pursuit of nuclear weapons in 2003.
Trump’s midterm rally speech was disrupted up to a dozen times by protesters.
The Democratic National Committee sued the Trump administration in federal court, asking a judge in Washington to stop the president from using taxpayer funds to air a series of ads promoting himself, arguing that the ads are illegal government-sponsored propaganda.
Trump stokes anti-Muslim racism with false accusation that Obama chose not to stop Ft Hood gunman Nidal Hasan
In his remarks in San Antonio, Texas earlier on Wednesday night, Donald Trump tried to channel the anti-Muslim racism that helped get him elected in 2016, by skipping straight from a dire warning that Iran would use a nuclear weapon if it had one to the wild, false claim that Barack Obama could have stopped the Ft Hood gunman, Nidal Hasan, but chose not to.
“We also recently announced that we’re going to deliver final justice to an evil killer, the Ft Hood shooter, Nidal Hasan, who murdered 14 innocent souls and wounded dozens more here in Texas, yelling ‘Allah Akbar’, ‘Allah Akbar’ while he was doing it,” Trump said of the Army psychiatrist who killed 12 soldiers and a retired guardsman in a gun attack in 2009.
“And we just found out,” Trump added, falsely, “that President Obama had the emails from Hasan to a known terrorist murderer, well-known, saying he was going to wage jihad against his fellow soldiers. But Obama and his group did nothing about it.”
As Trump made this false charge, his supporters jeered loudly.
In fact, as was widely reported in 2009, US intelligence agencies did intercept over a dozen messages Hasan sent to Anwar al-Awlaki, a cleric at a mosque in suburban Virginia where Hasan worshiped. But some of those messages were gathered in 2008 before Obama was president, and there has never been any indication that the messages indicated plans for an attack, as Trump claimed, or that either president George W Bush or Barack Obama was ever briefed on them.
According to a study of the messages published in 2018 by the program on extremism at George Washington University, Awlaki only replied to two of Hasan’s messages, sent to him through his website, and the subject of both was an essay contest Hasan wanted to establish. Awlaki never answered any of Hasan’s questions about Islam, the GWU researcher Katharine Poppe reported.
Awlaki, who was considered a moderate figure duirng his time in Virginia, later developed a reputation as a radical cleric and an al-Qaida propagandist, and was killed in Yemen in 2011 in a drone strike ordered by Obama.
Trump announces that Presidential Medal of Freedom for Roger Clemens, baseball pitcher dogged by doping allegations
Near the end of his speech at a midterm campaign rally for Republicans in San Antonio, Texas on Wednesday, Donald Trump announced that he was awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Roger Clemens, who retired as one of the greatest pitchers in Major League Baseball history, but has been denied admission to the Hall of Fame because of allegations that he used performance-enhancing drugs.
Clemens, who had introduced Trump, thanked the president for the award, but made no comment on the doping allegations that have dogged him since he was named as a steroid user by George Mitchell, a former US senator. The allegations against Clemens, who has always denied drug use, were based on the testimony of his former trainer, Brian McNamee, who said he repeatedly injected Clemens with steroids and human growth hormone.
When Clemens repeated those denials at a Congressional hearing in 2008, he was charged with perjury and obstruction of Congress by the federal government before eventually being acquitted by a jury in 2012.
“It’s a ridiculous thing that you’re not in the Hall of Fame with that kind of a record,” Trump said of Clemens. “And by the way, people talk drugs: he never admitted to anything,” the president said. “He never admitted to anything. He’s just a physical monster, okay?”
Trump repeats his false claim that Iran, which has no nuclear weapons, could destroy Los Angeles or San Diego
Near the end of his speech in San Antonio on Wednesday, which has just concluded, Donald Trump repeated his false claim that the war he started with Iran in February was necessary to prevent Iran from destroying American cities like Los Angeles or San Diego in a nuclear attack.
“I am ensuring that Iran will never have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said. “We had no choice because we can’t let them have a nuclear weapon.”
What the president did not say is that US intelligence agencies wrote in March 2025, in an annual threat assessment provided to Congress, that Iran abandoned its pursuit of nuclear weapons more than two decades ago.
“We continue to assess Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and that [Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei has not reauthorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003, though pressure has probably built on him to do so,” the intelligence community reported last year. Three months later, in June 2025 , Trump ordered US military strikes on Iran’s main nuclear-enrichment facility, which, he said, had been “obliterated”.
Still, on Wednesday, Trump repeated his claim that the war on Iran he launched in February of this year with Israel had been necessary to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.
“You want to see trauma? You want to see problems?” Trump said in Texas on Wednesday. “And I said it the other day, ‘let them hit a missile into San Diego or Los Angeles’ … You want to see some bad things happen? You want to see a country that would be in free fall?”
“We’re not going to let that happen,” the president said of the supposed threat from a country that has not had a nuclear weapons program for 23 years and has no missiles capable of reaching any part of the US. “We protect our cities. We protect our country. We’re not letting that happen,” Trump said. “And they’d use it, too. They’d use it. They would use it.”
Trump vents anger at Texas Democrat Henry Cuellar for not becoming a Republican after he pardoned congressman accused of bribery
At the Republican midterm campaign rally in San Antonio, Donald Trump just vented his rage at Henry Cuellar, a Texas Democratic congressman he pardoned last year, for not switching parties.
Trump claimed that he had made no deal with Cuellar before he signed a pardon that ended the federal government’s effort to jail the congressman and his wife on a dozen charges of bribery, money laundering and conspiracy.
However, the president clearly indicated that he had expected the congressman to become a Republican out of gratitude.
“So many considered this to be a tremendous act of disloyalty, and certainly showed him to be an extremely ungrateful kind of a person,” Trump said.
Urging voters to defeat Cuellar by voting for his Republican challenger, Trump said: “We’ll call that payback for a disloyal, ungrateful person. A person whose life has been saved only to go back into the clutches of the people that tried to destroy him. So Henry Cuellar is a guy who is considered low-life in Congress, not respected, and right now should be serving a long term prison sentence with his wife and a top level penitentiary.”
Trump repeats false claims of booming US economy and invented investment figure, ignoring inflation and spiking fuel prices
In his speech to supporters in San Antonio, Texas, which is still in progress, Donald Trump has been repeating the same false claims about the US economy he has made again and again in recent weeks.
Ignoring soaring inflation and fuel prices exacerbated by the war he started with Iran and has been unable to stop, Trump repeated his entirely imaginary claim that he has already secured $21tn in foreign direct investment in the US since returning to office lat year.
In fact, as CNN reported last month, federal data shows that new foreign direct investment in the US was about $232bn in 2025, and Trump appears to be “counting trillions in vague investment pledges – pledges that were about “bilateral trade” or “economic exchange” rather than investment in the US – and “vague statements that didn’t even rise to the level of pledges.”
Trump also repeated his false claim that tariff revenues have swelled federal coffers so much under his administration that he was able to pay a $1,776 bonus to military service members and would also cover the $5,000 checks to all US adults he is promising voters if they keep Republicans in the majority in the House and Senate.
In fact, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center, the US has brought in just $236bn in revenue from gross tariff and other excise taxes in 2026.
The $1,776 payments to troops that Trump first announced in December, which he said would be paid for by tariff revenues, were not funded by the import taxes Trump imposed. As the Associated Press reported at the time, the money was actually drawn from a congressionally-approved housing supplement – money service members were already set to receive.
Trump rally speech in San Antonio interrupted by multiple protesters as he repeats lie about Talarico
Donald Trump’s midterm rally speech in San Antonio, Texas has been disrupted by protesters at least six times so far.
Television coverage of the rally showed that one of the protesters was violently assaulted by an older Trump supporter as he attempted to leave the arena.
“You know, many of these protesters are paid,” Trump said, repeating a baseless claim he has been making for a decade. “These are paid protesters. They’re paid by enemies of our nation. Now, I’m telling you, they pay them for this.”
The interruptions seemed to momentarily derail the president as he repeated a lie about James Talarico, the Texas Democrat he claims is a vegan who only pretends to eat meat and secretly vomits every time he does. There is no evidence for this imaginary tale the president has repeated multiple times in recent weeks as Talarico has pulled ahead of the Trump-backed Republican candidate for the US Senate, Ken Paxton.
Trump began his riff with the rare admission that he has been mispronouncing the word vegan, as “vaygan”.
“He is a fake,” Trump said of the Democrat. “He’s a vegan. You know, my wife told me, ‘Sir, do me a favor. You have to do me just a little bit of a favor. It’s not vaygan; it’s vegan.’”
As the president told this story about being asked to pronounce the word correctly, he appeared to get confused about who, exactly, had corrected him. Trump does not usually refer to his wife calling him “sir”. Moments later he said that the person who made this request of him was a man.
“I don’t know about that stuff. I’m not into it. And he said: ‘It’s vegan! Please pronounce that word properly. I called it, vaygan, vaygan. I thought it – how the hell would I know? I like steak.”
Trump showers praise on ‘fantastic’ Ken Paxton, the Texas Senate candidate caught on audio calling Trump a drag on his campaign
After as brief introduction from Roger Clemens, the disgraced former baseball star accused in a high-profile report of using performance-enhancing drugs, Donald Trump has taken the stage at a midterm campaign rally for Republicans at the Freeman Coliseum in San Antonio, Texas.
The president began by attacking the Texas Democrat James Talarico, using the nickname “Talafreako”, which the candidate has put on campaign merchandise.
Trump then praised Republican Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general who is running for US Senate against Talarico, as “probably the greatest attorney general in the history of the state of Texas. He is tough. And he was with us all the way. And so I just want to thank him. He’s a fantastic – he’s a fantastic man and what a job he’s done.”
Trump made no mention of the fact that Paxton was recently caught on audio revealing that he considers Trump’s unpopular war on Iran, and the resulting high gas prices, a drag on his campaign.
Trump lashes out at ‘ungrateful’ Texas Democrat he pardoned for not becoming a Republican
We are now waiting for Donald Trump to arrive at a Republican campaign rally at Freeman Coliseum in San Antonio, Texas, where the embattled Senate candidate Ken Paxton finished speaking 30 minutes ago.
Moments before Air Force One touched down at Kelly Field in San Antonio, Trump fired off a lengthy diatribe attacking Texas congressman Henry Cuellar, a Democrat he pardoned last year, attacking him as “ungrateful” for not becoming a Republican.
I did the pardons, and made no deal, where a crooked politician would have, but I thought there would be a good chance that Cuellar, who was persecuted by Democrats because they didn’t like him, would have routinely gone over to the Republican Party — The people that saved him from years in prison. Shockingly, Cuellar announced, only a few days later, that he is going to remain a Dumocrat. Many considered this to be a tremendous act of disloyalty, and certainly, showed him to be an extremely ungrateful person … Henry Cuellar is a LOSER who, right now, should be serving a longterm jail sentence with his wife in a top level penitentiary.
Federal lawsuit from Democrats says eight more pro-Trump ads are ready to air, including attacks on Biden and Obama
The federal lawsuit Democrats filed on Wednesday to stop the Trump administration from using millions of taxpayer dollars to air a series of pro-Trump ads includes details of another eight ads that have already been prepared for broadcast – all of which celebrate Donald Trump, and appear to violate a federal ban on the use of public money for “self-aggrandizement” or “purely partisan” messaging from the government.
The Democratic National Committee says in the suit that “there are at least 13 campaign-style political ads in a Dropbox account controlled by LMD Agency Inc, the government contractor bringing the ads to air”. Each ad in the Dropbox account includes on-screen text saying that the ad celebrating Trump in the run-up to midterm elections his party is in danger of losing was “Paid for by the U.S. Government”.
In addition to the five pro-Trump already broadcast since last month, the suit describes another four in detail:
An ad titled “UFC 250”, which celebrates the fights staged at the White House on Trump’s birthday in June.
An ad titled “King of the Jungle”, which shows a lion hunting in the wild and disparages Trump’s political enemies, including former president Barack Obama and other Democrats. In February, Trump shared a racist video on social media that portrayed him as a lion and Obama and his wife, Michelle, as apes.
An ad titled “Resilience”, which includes images of Trump announcing his candidacy for the presidency in 2015; his mugshot from Fulton county, Georgia, in 2023, when he was charged with racketeering and a conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the state; video of the assassination attempt on him during the 2024 election campaign.
An ad titled “God Made Trump”, a fan-created hymn of praise to Trump that was shown during the Republican midterm convention.
According to CNN, which gained access to the Dropbox last week, another ad in the series features attacks on Joe Biden, including the mocking image of the former president as an autopen installed by Trump on an exterior wall of the White House.
Democrats sue Trump administration, asking judge to declare Trump ads paid for with taxpayer dollars illegal propaganda
The Democratic National Committee sued the Trump administration in federal court on Wednesday, asking a judge in Washington to stop the president from using taxpayer funds to air a series of ads promoting himself, arguing that the ads are illegal government-sponsored propaganda.
The ads promoting Donald Trump, including one recycled from his 2024 presidential campaign, have cost taxpayers more than $12m so far, according to the media tracking firm AdImpact.
After a bipartisan backlash to the use of public money to promote the president during the final month of the midterm campaign season, the president claimed on Monday that he would direct the Maga Inc Super PAC he controls to pay for the ads instead. The next day, however, when the government unveiled a fifth ad in the series, celebrating the military intervention in Venezuela ordered by Trump, that new ad was also paid for by the public.
The DNC complaint, filed in the US district court for the District of Columbia, alleges that the ads violate federal law, including a ban on congressionally appropriated money being used for “publicity or propaganda”.
The complaint gets right to the point in its opening lines:
The Trump administration is using taxpayer dollars to air political advertisements, a blatant violation of the statutory ban on the use of appropriations for ‘publicity or propaganda purposes’. President Trump personally directed this illegal activity. The White House office crafted the partisan campaign. The office of management and budget shifted $20m to pay for it. And US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has carried it out. These unlawful actions are ultra vires and violate the Administrative Procedure Act (APA).
The suit also notes, as the Guardian reported last month, that the first ad in the series features an image of Fifa’s president, Gianni Infantino, awarding Trump the so-called ‘Fifa peace prize,’ to support its case that the ads all violate a prohibition on the use of taxpayer funds for “self-aggrandizement”.
The text of the complaint also references new polling from Reuters/Ipsos released on Tuesday which found that an overwhelming majority of Americans, 86%, called it inappropriate to use taxpayer funds for TV ads featuring the president around an election. The survey reported that 80% of Republicans called the ads inappropriate, with only 17% of the president’s party approving of them.
According to the suit, the ads have been broadcast on ABC, NBC, MS Now, CBS, CNN, Fox News and Newsmax and appeared during a variety of programs, including popular NFL and college football games, and news and entertainment shows on which the president has been criticized, including Meet the Press, Jimmy Kimmel Live! and Saturday Night Live.
Ken Martin, the DNC chair, said in a statement that Trump is misusing taxpayer dollars in “a last-ditch attempt to save Republicans in November”.
“Americans deserve better than to have their hard-earned tax dollars used for Trump’s illegal schemes,” he added.
Helena Smith
Reporting from Athens
In a speech heavy on symbolism and historic reference, Marco Rubio urged Europe from the rugged hill where democracy was first experienced in Athens to remain faithful to the traditions that have kept the west alive.
With the Acropolis behind him, illuminated by the last light of day, the US secretary of state called for a renewal of the western spirit.
“Today, we find ourselves at a crossroads. The next decade will write the story of the next century,” he said before a crowd of politicians and diplomats gathered at the ancient Pnyx hill, where popular assemblies first met. “The course we take will determine whether the west maintains its place at the head of the world, or resigns itself to a future of atrophy, and servitude, and decline. We will either choose to act now or lose the choice to act at all.”
In echoes of the blistering speech JD Vance gave at the Munich security conference last year, Rubio reminded his audience that the Trump administration had decided to “choose the unapologetic pursuit of national power”.
He added: “It has become fashionable today to believe that enlightened foreign policy means prioritizing the ‘global community’ over one’s own people. And I think here, too, we have much more to learn from the men of ancient Greece. They knew that there was nothing selfish or wrong about loyalty to your nation, nor anything selfish or wrong about fighting to defend its interests above all else. Under President Trump, the United States has made its choice. We choose the unapologetic pursuit of national power.”
Greek security services pulled out “all the stops” to ensure that the speech could go ahead, the Guardian has learned. For the duration of the two-night stopover, Athens has been thrown into enforced lockdown amid draconian security measures, with rallies and large gatherings banned.
Rubio, widely seen as a leading contender in the Republican nomination to succeed Trump in 2028, insisted he be given the opportunity between leading the sixth round of US-Greece strategic dialogue – talks that saw several significant cooperation agreements signed – and meeting the Greek prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, this evening.
Applause for the address was far from rousing, however, with leftwing opposition MPs and media going so far as to call it “provocative” and accusing the center-right government of pandering to the Trump administration.
Senator Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat, has slammed the Trump administration’s move to block the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) from observing the midterm elections.
This will mark the first time in more than 20 years that the group, the world’s largest regional security organization, would not be present to monitor the elections in the US.
“The Trump Administration’s failure to continue this practice is yet another step that risks undermining public trust in America’s safe and secure election system,” Shaheen said.
A reminder that monitors do not interfere with the voting process itself, but observe it.
“I was an official election monitor in the country of Georgia in 2012 and most recently in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2022, so I know first-hand the importance of showing up for allies and partners to improve the public’s confidence in election integrity,” said Shaheen, an outgoing senator from New Hampshire who is also the top Democrat on the foreign relations committe.
Russia and Belarus are the only other countries who have excluded OSCE observers in nationwide elections.
The move comes as Trump’s justice department has pledged to send 1,000 election monitors to polling sites across the country in November. In response, the NAACP filed a lawsuit to block the administration’s effort, noting that their presence could “interfere with the right of voters to participate in the election free from intimidation”.
Here’s a recap of the day so far
Donald Trump said he has “no regrets at all” about endorsing Ken Paxton in the Senate race in Texas, after the Republican nominee reportedly complained about the impact of the Iran war and high gas prices on his precarious performance. According to an audio recording obtained by Axios, Paxton can be heard responding to questions about the main issues affecting his race at a fundraiser in Washington DC. “It’s not tariffs,” he said. “It’s the war, it’s gas prices, it’s diesel.” A number of polls have Paxton, also the Texas attorney general, trailing his Democratic rival, James Talarico, as Republican groups spend tens of millions of dollars to support his election bid.
Meanwhile, the president is on his way toSan Antonio, Texas, where he’s set to hold another campaign rally to drum up support for Paxton. This is Trump’s second visit to Texas in the past week. He’s set to speak at 7pm ET.
Trumpalsosaid today that he would “immediately” fire his political advisers Chris LaCivita and James Blair “if there’s a conflict,” following a New York Times report that the two political operatives visited the Russian-aligned Bosnian territory of Republika Srpska. In a Truth Social post, Trump noted that the two operatives “do not work for me, other than as outside consultants”, adding they are allowed to do “work for others, just like all consultant”. LaCivita was formerly a senior adviser on the president’s 2024 campaign, and Blair was formerly a White House adviser who took a temporary leave of absence to head up Maga Inc – the Trump-aliged Super Pac.
Mike Rogers– the Republican nominee for the open US Senate seat in Michigan –is trying to show a bit of daylight between his platform and the Trump administration’s trade war with the state’s neighbor, Canada. “Here in Michigan, we know that Canada is not our enemy,” Rogers, a former congressman, says while perched at a sports bar drinking a Canadian beer. “We need to end this tariff war – now.” In the Oval Office, Trump, said he viewed the ad “as though [Rogers] wanted Canada to make a deal”, before launching into a familiar rant about how the country has been “ripping off” the US for “many, many years”.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) investigated hundreds of non-profit groups that helped people register to vote, according to internal government documents obtained by legal non-profit Democracy Forward. Dozens of groups, from across the country, were investigated. Some of these non-profits partner with larger groups, like Voto Latino – which focuses on voter registration and get-out-the-vote efforts for Hispanic and Latino citizens.
Trump again acknowledged the reporting that two of his top political advisers, Chris LaCivita and James Blair, spent time in the Balkans last week, in the Russian-aligned Bosnian territory of Republika Srpska.
The New York Times reported that the pair were paid hundreds of thousands of dollars through a DC-based law firm, retained by the territory’s government. Earlier, Trump said he would “terminate” the operatives “if there’s conflict”.
However, as he left the White House for Texas, the president appeared more unfazed: “They’re allowed to do this. They have a lot of clients in this. I’m a client of theirs. They have a consulting firm, as all people in Washington do. That’s pretty common.”
Hegseth welcomes USS Abraham Lincoln crew back to US after record-breaking deployment
Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, welcomed back the crew of the USS Abraham Lincoln back to the US in San Diego today.
A reminder, the aircraft carrier has been at sea for more than 300 days, after its deployment was extended in May, amid the ongoing Iran war.
“You responded from minute one, constant combat operations, which Iran never expected-the kind of fire and fury that you were able to bring off this flight deck, along with other incredible Americans,” Hegseth said. “The only reaction the American people and the American media should have is pride.”
However, time on the ship has been marked by controversy. According to Hung Cao, the acting US navy secretary, eight US navy personnel assigned to the Lincoln carrier strike group attempted suicide since the start of their lengthy assignment – the longest continuous period at sea without a port call.
On Wednesday, Hegseth repeated his frequent critique of the media, and accused some members of the press of turning the record-breaking deployment into “some sort of symbol of dysfunction, or a symbol of low morale or a symbol of a failed mission”.
Last week, Hegseth appeared to reference the mental health crisis on board while speaking to lower-ranking troops at the Marine Corps Base, insisting there are “disingenuous headlines about deployment lengths, patently false claims of low troop morale, or flat-out propaganda, as if it’s written by our adversaries”.
MS Now also reported in August on alarming allegations of mold in the ship’s showers and dwindling supplies of food and soap, among other basic necessities. At the time, Hegseth dismissed reports about deteriorating conditions on board as “completely misrepresented”.
My colleague, Anna Betts, has been speaking to families of crew members ahead of the Lincoln’s return. You can read her full report here:
In the Oval Office, Trump dismissed any concerns about Mike Rogers’ recent campaign ad, where the Republican nominee for US Senate in Michigan calls to “end this tariff war – now”.
The spot appears to be another instance of Rogers trying to create daylight between his bid and the administration’s policies. “Here in Michigan, we know that Canada is not our enemy,” he says in the ad.
Trump, however, said he “viewed it as though [Rogers] wanted Canada to make a deal”, before launching into a familiar rant about how the country has been “ripping off” the US for “many, many years”.
A reminder that trade talks broke down in August between the US and Canada – resulting in a flurry of reciprocal tariffs of up to 50% between the countries.