Donald Trump

ATLANTA — Keisha Lance Bottoms talks a lot about the policies she would pursue as Georgia governor. The Democratic nominee is less likely to talk about the history she would make by winning the job.

Never has a Black woman been elected governor in any state. The former Atlanta mayor and onetime White House adviser to Democratic President Biden is trying to do it in a Deep South state where her lineage extends back to antebellum enslavement.

“I am at least a fifth-generation Georgian,” Bottoms, 56, says as she campaigns. “I say ‘at least’ because we can only trace our family back five generations to a plantation in Crawfordville.”

Bottoms rarely if ever mentions slavery, Jim Crow segregation or even race explicitly. But that story — hers, Georgia’s and the nation’s — shadows her battle with Republican nominee Rick Jackson.

The billionaire, a 72-year-old white man who grew up in Atlanta but now lives on a sprawling suburban estate, has hammered the former mayor as a failure, painting her four-year tenure as a crime-ridden decline. Other Republicans, up to Donald Trump, have joined in, with the president accusing Bottoms of ruining a once-great city.

“It’s a long-standing playbook to paint Atlanta as this big bad place,” Bottoms said, dismissing the Republican frame as ridiculous for a town that once hosted the Olympics and recently staged eight World Cup soccer matches.

One of her most recent ads pushes back by featuring clips of the news conference she held with the city’s law enforcement leaders during the peak of 2020 street protests of police violence in Atlanta and nationwide against Black men. “If you care about this city, then go home,” she said. “We are better than this.”

Bottoms would have her chance to answer Trump and Republicans at a rally Wednesday headlined by Barack Obama, the first Black U.S. president.

Some Black women see the attacks as loaded

Republican coalitions in most states, and certainly in Georgia, are overwhelmingly white and anchored in suburbs, smaller cities and small towns. Those are places where many voters look skeptically, even scornfully, upon big cities and the people who run them. But some of the rhetoric directed against Bottoms is steeped in the specter of race and gender in a state where all 83 governors since 1776 have been white men.

Jackson’s TV ads, a deluge funded by more than $200 million of his own money, feature footage of the demonstrations and violence in Atlanta in 2020, along with grainy images of Bottoms. The protests followed the police killing of Rayshard Brooks, an unarmed Black man, by a white Atlanta police officer.

The Republican campaign effort has not gone unnoticed among some Bottoms supporters, especially other Black women.

“It’s easy for people to attack Atlanta and Mayor Bottoms based on their own biases,” said retired educator Beverly Rice, a Bottoms supporter.

Bottoms’ bid marks the third consecutive time that Georgia Democrats have nominated a Black woman for governor. Stacey Abrams lost in 2018 and 2022 to Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, who is leaving office in 2027 after eight years due to term limits. Abrams came as close to winning a governor’s race as any Black woman before her.

In an interview, Abrams was reluctant to assign race and gender as the deciding factor in her defeats. But she said Black women running for governor face a higher bar because there is no example yet for voters who place a special emphasis on executive experience. Abrams, also an Atlantan, had served previously as state House minority leader, a role Republicans minimized as insufficient experience.

Abrams said that executive standard “does not apply equally across candidates” in politics. She said Bottoms “has a sound argument” because she has held the executive’s role. Before that, Bottoms was a City Council member, magistrate judge and prosecutor. That resume, Abrams and others said, is why Republicans have so aggressively criticized Bottoms’ experience.

“Bad mayors don’t make good governors,” Jackson has said over and over in the closing stretch of the campaign.

He has taken special notice of her decision not to run for a second term as mayor, instead joining Biden’s White House as a senior adviser – a move Bottoms said she deliberately put off to finish her four-year term. In Jackson’s telling, Bottoms “turned her back on Atlanta.”

Republicans say Atlanta ‘burned’ in Bottoms’ tenure

Other conservatives have gone further than Jackson.

“Keisha Lance Bottoms let Atlanta burn,” top Jackson surrogate John King, a former Atlanta police officer and now state insurance commissioner, sometimes says at the candidate’s rallies.

That is a reference to protesters setting fire to a Wendy’s fast food restaurant close to where Brooks was killed. The reference carries an extra weight in a city whose symbol is a phoenix rising from the ashes — a symbol adopted because Union forces burned parts of a young Atlanta during the Civil War.

At a Trump rally last weekend in Macon, a smaller city in middle Georgia, the president hammered away, too. Bottoms “destroyed Atlanta with her crime and filth and constant riots,” Trump said, echoing the kind of sometimes profane attacks he has leveled against many places with large or majority Black populations.

“I always viewed Atlanta as a great city,” he insisted. “It’s not considered that anymore.”

In a 2017 dispute with then-U.S. Rep. John Lewis, Trump called the civil rights icon’s district, which includes Delta Airlines’ and Coca-Cola’s world headquarters and the Georgia Institute of Technology, “crime-infested” and said it was “falling apart.”

Bottoms counters with a more complicated reality

Atlanta did see a crime spike during Bottoms’ tenure, but it was not an outlier alongside the COVID-19 pandemic surge across the country, according to federal statistics. After the pandemic waned, U.S. and Atlanta crime rates dropped significantly. Bottoms did sign an executive order blocking the Atlanta jail from holding federal immigration detainees.

Republicans have exaggerated her action on bail. Bottoms signed a city ordinance that eliminated cash bail for certain nonviolent crimes, intending to reduce the jail’s population and what she and other city officials deemed excessive punishment for low-grade offenses.

Her latest advertising retort follows a surge of fundraising that she did not have throughout Jackson’s summer advertising onslaught. “When a national crisis poured into Atlanta, Keisha Lance Bottoms stood up,” a voice-over says.

Besides her exhortation for people to leave the streets, the mother of four said, “Above everything else, I am a mother, so you are not going to out-concern me and out-care about where we are.”

Her aides see the ad — and the reality of how she handled the matter in real time — as depicting a political figure who is tough and empathetic, aware of public safety concerns and the realities for Black Americans.

But Bottoms’ advisers, and the candidate herself, also say they want Georgians to make their decisions on tangible policy distinctions, most notably her emphasis on addressing economic struggles and expanding Medicaid insurance eligibility — a move that would reach urban and rural populations across racial lines.

That is the point of the governor’s office, said Rice, the retired educator.

“I have 100% faith that she can win if people just judge her with their values,” she said. “I don’t look at her and see a ‘Black governor.’ I see a governor for all the people.”

Barrow writes for the Associated Press.

Rates will remain 3.75-4 percent even as inflation continues to rise.

The United States Federal Reserve is set to hold interest rates steady in its final monetary policy decision before the US midterm elections.

The central bank will maintain rates at 3.75-4 percent, following a 10-2 vote, in line with expectations.

CME FedWatch, which tracks the likelihood of monetary policy decisions, indicated that there was more than a 90 percent chance rates would remain unchanged.

“Economic activity is expanding at a strong pace,” the Fed said in its press release announcing the decision on Wednesday. “While uncertainty remains elevated owing, in part, to geopolitical developments, domestic spending has been resilient. Productivity growth is strong, and capital investment is robust. Job gains have kept pace with the workforce, and the unemployment rate has changed little.”

The Fed noted how inflation continues to rise.

It also added, “The accumulation of more information will help the Committee determine the policy stance appropriate to ensure a timely return of inflation to the Committee’s 2 percent goal.”

The most recent Consumer Price Index (CPI) report showed the annual inflation rate increasing to 3.7 percent in September, up from 3.4 percent in August, with energy prices largely accounting for the monthly surge.

There were signs earlier this month that the central bank would maintain benchmark interest rates, with the Fed’s chair for supervision, Michelle Bowman, advocating a “wait and see” approach.

“I don’t feel any urgency for taking further action at this point,” she said at this month’s International Monetary Fund-World Bank meetings in Bangkok, Thailand. “We really need to take some time and understand how things will evolve.”

The decision comes before Thursday’s release of the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) Price Index report, which is used by the central bank to assess inflation and inform its decisions.

Today’s Fed announcement follows an interest-rate hike rise last month, amid surging inflation – the first increase by the central bank since July 2023. The move drew criticism from US President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly pressed the Fed to cut rates since taking office. At the time, he wrote on Truth Social that “interest rates in the United States should be 1% or less.”

The Fed’s next monetary policy meeting is scheduled for December 8-9, when it will give its final rate decision of the year.

Current forecasts point to a quarter-point interest rate increase.

With six days to go before the November 3 midterm elections in the United States, Democrats are leading Republicans in national polls, but several key Senate races seem too close to call.

President Donald Trump has stepped up his campaigning, holding two Republican rallies in Texas on Tuesday before heading to Ohio on Wednesday. Ex-President Barack Obama and former Vice President Kamala Harris are also hitting the campaign trail in Georgia for the Democratic Party.

Here is what the latest polls say, what happened on the campaign trail and what to expect on Wednesday.

What do the latest polls suggest?

With less than a week to go before the midterms, a Reuters/Ipsos poll suggests the Democrats are ahead of the Republicans by nine points.

According to the October 22-26 survey, 47 percent of voters support the Democrats, compared with 36 percent who support the Republicans. When undecided voters’ leanings were taken into account, Democrats lead with 50 percent compared with Republicans’ 41 percent.

Trump’s approval rating improved by a percentage point to 32 percent, with 73 percent of US adults saying the cost of living was going in the wrong direction.

In Texas, where Democrats have not won a Senate election since 1988, James Talarico and Republican Ken Paxton are virtually tied in the polls.

Trump has made several trips to the state ahead of the midterms, but the polls indicate a much tighter race than the president has suggested.

“The good people of Texas have probably never seen so much of President Trump. Four visits in seven weeks, which, to put that into context, is twice as many as we saw at the comparable period leading up to the 2024 election, which perhaps shows just how concerned Republicans are,” Al Jazeera’s Phil Lavelle said, reporting from the Texas coastal city of Corpus Christi.

Lavelle said local analysis suggested more Republicans have voted early than Democrats, but Talarico has also been courting Republicans dissatisfied with Trump.

“That doesn’t mean Republicans are voting for Republican candidates,” Lavelle said.

In Michigan, Democrat Abdul El-Sayed and Republican Mike Rogers are also competing in a closely contested Senate race.

“I was a Republican forever, but I became an independent in the last two elections,” Michael Alexander, a Native American backing El-Sayed, told Al Jazeera.

“I don’t really vote for a party any more. I vote for who I think will do the best job.”

Kansas has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1932, but Republican incumbent Roger Marshall now faces a close contest against Democrat Adam Hamilton.

The race has brought Trump and his deputy, JD Vance, to the state.

“There’s a reason why we’re seeing not only US President Donald Trump but also Vice President JD Vance heading to Kansas because it’s actually in play,” Al Jazeera’s Patty Culhane said.

According to The Associated Press news agency, both parties and their allied groups have committed about $71m to campaign advertising in the Kansas race, making it the most expensive Senate contest in the state’s history.

What happened in the US midterm campaigns over the past 24 hours?

Trump addressed two campaign rallies in Texas on Tuesday in support of Paxton.

In Corpus Christi, Trump pointed to a tanker that he said was carrying one million barrels of Venezuelan oil and called it a win for his administration. He also suggested the idea of making Venezuela the 51st US state. The Trump administration has signed an oil deal with Venezuela’s interim leader, Delcy Rodriguez, after abducting socialist President Nicolas Maduro in a military operation in January.

Trump also announced plans to roll back the Biden-era restrictions on methane emissions from oil and gas production, stating that it would help bring down energy prices.

Fuel prices have become a huge election issue as the US-Israel war on Iran continues. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has also joined Trump for a rare campaign-trail appearance in Texas.

In Alaska, Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski has backed Democrat Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins for governor rather than Bernadette Wilson, the Trump-endorsed candidate.

What’s next for Democrats and Republicans on Wednesday?

Trump heads to Ohio on Wednesday for his third rally in the state this month, as Republicans try to defend a Senate seat being challenged by former Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown.

The US president is scheduled to speak in Chillicothe at 23:00 GMT. Republican Senator Jon Husted, who took over Vance’s seat when he became vice president, is facing Brown, who is seeking a return to the Senate after losing his seat in 2024.

The two are in a closely contested race, with more than $400m spent or reserved for campaign advertising as of October 8, according to an Axios report.

Republicans are particularly concerned in Texas, Ohio, Kansas and Iowa, where even a few percentage points for a third party could swing the outcome.

Trump is scheduled to hold rallies in Ohio on Wednesday and Iowa on Sunday.

Vance will be in Kinston, North Carolina, campaigning for Republican Senate candidate Michael Whatley, who is running against former Democratic Governor Roy Cooper. The vice president is expected to speak at 16:30 GMT.

In Georgia, former President Obama will campaign in Atlanta alongside Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff and gubernatorial candidate Keisha Lance Bottoms at 20:00 GMT.

Ossoff is running against Republican Mike Collins, while Bottoms faces Republican Rick Jackson in the governor’s race. Trump won Georgia in the 2024 presidential election.

Former Vice President Harris also begins a three-day visit to Georgia on Wednesday, with early in-person voting due to end on Friday, October 30.

In Wisconsin, Marquette Law School will publish its latest statewide poll at 18:15 GMT.

Wednesday’s poll will also examine voters’ views on inflation, tariffs, the US-Israel war on Iran and Trump’s presidency.

The media reports come a day after Supreme Court ordered Bolsonaro hand over passport as part of money laundering probe.

A senior US State Department official has said that the Trump administration will issue visas to Brazilian Senator Flavio Bolsonaro and his family, allowing them to enter the US after news outlets reported that Bolsonaro had fled Brazil following his loss in the country’s presidential election.

The news came on Tuesday, one day after Brazil’s Supreme Court ordered Bolsonaro to turn over his passports as part of a probe into alleged money laundering. Bolsonaro has denied any wrongdoing and said on Monday that he would stay in the country and lead the opposition.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who has previously accused members of the Bolsonaro family of courting US interference in Brazilian affairs for their political benefit, called the right-wing senator’s actions shameful.

“This is what the Bolsonaro family is like,” Lula said. “Brazil is their second nation, the US is their first.”

Bolsonaro, the son of former right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro, initially refused to acknowledge the election results and said he would seek their annulment. His party released a statement on Monday saying it accepted the results of the election, which the conservative candidate lost by more than 4.4 million votes.

US President Donald Trump reacted by casting doubt on the election result, telling reporters it “looked like another rigged election”.

No evidence has emerged that the vote was marred by malfeasance. While critics seized on a last-minute decision to extend polling hours, Lula’s eventual victory was commanding, and the extension was unlikely to change the outcome.

US president seeks to underscore Latin American military operation, as Iran war causes midterm affordability threat.

United States President Donald Trump has featured a ship he said is carrying Venezuelan oil during a visit to Texas, where he will hold two rallies one after the other in the hopes of boosting Republican chances in a make-or-break Senate race.

Speaking at Corpus Christi on Tuesday on his fourth trip to the state this campaign season, Trump pointed to a ship in the distance.

“It’s got 1 million barrels of oil on it from Venezuela,” he said, adding the cargo was “thanks to our big victory in our recent war with Venezuela”.

The emphasis on the oil comes as US consumers have wrestled with high fossil fuel prices amid the US-Israel war with Iran, a key issue in the upcoming midterm elections.

“We’re celebrating the greatest oil victory in history,” Trump said.

It was not immediately clear under what pretext the oil had been shipped or whether the details Trump gave were correct. The US had received crude oil shipments from Venezuela before the US abduction of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro on January 3, but those transfers have increased this year.

In August, the Trump administration announced a deal giving the Pentagon a 35 percent stake in North America Blue Energy Partners, a new company overseeing 65 billion barrels of proven oil reserves. The White House said in September that the first shipment from the deal would likely hit US reserves in November, although experts have cast doubt on whether the deal will have any short-term impact.

Speaking to reporters earlier in the day, Trump referred to the shipment as a “gift” from Venezuela. The country’s interim leader, Delcy Rodriguez, has not commented on the specific shipment.

At the rally, Trump also floated making Venezuela the “51st state”.

Key race

Trump’s frequent visits to Texas underscore the state’s significance for Republicans.

Trump endorsed Attorney General Ken Paxton in the Republican primary over incumbent Senator John Cornyn. The scandal-ridden Paxton now faces a punishing contest against Democrat James Talarico, a Presbyterian seminarian.

Polls have regularly shown Talarico leading Paxton, although that lead has largely remained within the margin of error. A RealClearPolitics average of polls had Talarico leading Paxton by 1.7 points.

Talarico’s victory would mark a sea change in a state that has not elected a Democrat to statewide office since 1994.

It would also represent a major rebuke to Trump, whose Republican Party is fighting to maintain its narrow control of the Senate. Democrats are widely projected to take control of the US House of Representatives in the November 3 vote.

Talarico has used the final stretch of the race to focus on years of corruption allegations against Paxton, while drawing a contrast to voters’ affordability concerns.

“Ken Paxton represents everything that’s wrong with this broken, corrupt system,” he said during an event in Houston last week.

Paxton has sought to portray Talarico as too “radical” for Texas, saying his policies would hurt a state known for its pro-business policies.

Trump and other administration officials, notably Vice President JD Vance, have regularly focused on cultural issues, distorting Talarico’s past comments on transgender rights and border security.

Speaking in Corpus Christi, Trump repeated those attacks and urged his supporters to vote as if he were on the ballot.

“If you go out, and if you all vote, we win in a landslide,” Trump said.

The political party of Senator Flavio Bolsonaro has acknowledged the result of Brazil’s presidential run-off, despite the right-wing candidate pledging to annul the outcome.

On Monday, Valdemar Costa Neto, the leader of the right-wing Liberal Party, issued a statement saying his political group had accepted the outcome of the vote.

Still, he echoed Bolsonaro’s concerns about the circumstances surrounding the election.

“We recognise the presidential election results,” Costa Neto said. “But we believe the issues raised need to be properly clarified.”

On Sunday, Bolsonaro was defeated by left-wing incumbent President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva by a margin of more than 4.4 million votes.

Bolsonaro has yet to formally concede. In a post-election speech, he called the election results “unacceptable”, citing a last-minute extension to voting hours.

“We will take legal action,” he told supporters. “I will request that these elections be annulled.”

An extension to Sunday’s vote had been sought by the campaigns of both candidates — but for different reasons.

Bolsonaro’s camp had pointed to inclement weather that impeded some voters from reaching polling stations. Parts of southern Brazil, considered a right-wing stronghold, had experienced heavy rains on Sunday.

Lula’s campaign, meanwhile, pushed for longer voting hours after it accused some cities of limiting public transportation on election day.

The left-wing leader’s allies framed those reductions in service as an attempt at election interference, aimed at preventing Lula’s working-class base from voting.

Media reports indicated that Pablo Souza, a transportation official in the city of Salvador, was arrested on Sunday over the matter.

In response to the petitions, Supreme Court Justice Cristiano Zanin agreed to extend voting by two hours.

Whereas polls across the country had been slated to close at 5pm Brasilia time (20:00 GMT), Zanin’s order allowed those that had not already closed to remain open until 7pm (22:00 GMT).

Following his loss, Bolsonaro cried foul, saying that the justice’s decision had disadvantaged his voters.

He pointed to Zanin’s relationship with Lula as support: Lula had appointed Zanin to the high court in 2023, and Zanin had formerly served as the left-wing politician’s personal lawyer.

“With a simple stroke of a pen, at the request of a former partner, [Zanin] changed the rules of the game mid-match,” Bolsonaro said in his address on Sunday night.

But experts signalled they were sceptical of Bolsonaro’s claims of malfeasance.

An analysis by Pedro Burgos, a professor at the Brazilian educational institute Insper, found that the extension resulted in 35,000 additional votes across the country, less than 0.03 percent of the total.

That amount was far short of Lula’s 4.4 million vote advantage. The incumbent won more than 64.25 million votes, compared with Bolsonaro’s 59.83 million.

Still, some right-wing allies rallied to Bolsonaro’s support. US President Donald Trump, who has clashed with Lula in the past, told reporters that the vote seemed “rigged”.

“Elections have to be indisputable and it looked very bad to me,” Trump said on Monday. “It looked like another rigged election, frankly.”

Still, Trump stopped short of suggesting that he would get involved on behalf of Bolsonaro, saying instead he “did not take sides” in the election.

Bolsonaro’s refusal to accept his loss has raised concerns about whether he will abide by the democratic process or follow in the footsteps of his father, Jair Bolsonaro, who served as Brazil’s president from 2019 to 2023.

After his defeat to Lula in the 2022 election, the ex-president refused to acknowledge the outcome.

Instead, he and his allies sought to overturn the results, including through a legal challenge, and prosecutors accused him of plotting a coup to prevent the legal transfer of power.

Jair Bolsonaro is currently serving a 27-year prison sentence on coup-related charges.

Separately, he was also barred from serving in public office for eight years, after a court found he had misused his public office to spread misinformation about the election.

Flavio Bolsonaro, along with his siblings, has sought to have his father released. The family has denounced the elder Bolsonaro’s trial as a case of political persecution.

Still, it is unclear whether Flavio Bolsonaro will continue with his legal challenge over Sunday’s election.

The Brazilian news outlet Folha de S Paulo reported on Monday that legal advisers and political allies have convinced Bolsonaro to abandon his quest to have his loss annulled, citing the large margin of Lula’s victory and its validation by the Supreme Court and election authorities.

Bolsonaro also announced on Monday that federal police asked him to hand over his passports amid speculation that he could leave the country following his loss.

He said that he would comply with the order and had no plans to leave.

“To withstand the chaos, I’m going to organise the opposition,” the right-wing politician said.

BREAKINGBREAKING,

Comey, who was fired during Trump’s first term, has been accused of unlawfully divulging national security information

James Comey, the former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), is facing a third set of criminal charges under the administration of United States President Donald Trump.

On Monday, sealed documents came to light showing that the Trump administration accused Comey of two counts related to the unlawful dissemination of “information related to national defence”.

Comey, a high-profile Trump critic, has not been indicted in the case. He has denied any wrongdoing.

But it is the third time the Trump administration has sought to level a criminal case against the former FBI director since the president returned to office in January 2025.

In a video on the online platform Substack, Comey once again denounced the Trump administration’s attempts to prosecute him as a campaign of political retribution.

“Well, now they’re back again. it would almost be funny if it weren’t such an appalling abuse of the Department of Justice, one that we cannot become numb to,” Comey said.

“Nothing’s changed with me. I’m still innocent, and I’m still not afraid of these people, and I still believe in the independent federal judiciary.”

He also noted that Trump is only midway through his second term, and he hinted that he expects more criminal charges to come.

“The next couple years are going to be hard for all of us,” Comey added. “It’s really important that we stand straight and keep the faith in America.”

More details to come.

The Democratic candidate for the US Senate has been the subject of Islamophobic attacks from Trump.

Detroit, Michigan – Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed has dismissed United States President Donald Trump’s anti-Muslim attacks against him, saying that they are an attempt to move the attention away from the president’s own record.

At a news conference in Detroit on Monday, El-Sayed said Trump is trying to distract from issues that matter to Americans – including petrol prices and the war on Iran – by accusing the Democratic candidate of being a “jihadist”.

El-Sayed called the attacks “deflections and deceptions based on no evidence”.

“They have nothing to say about solving the problems in your life. They’re not talking about you,” the Democratic candidate said of Republicans.

“They’re not talking about your gas or your groceries … They’re not talking about clean air or clean water. They’re not talking about any of the things that the government is actually supposed to solve. Why? Because Donald Trump has created those problems.”

At a rally in Michigan on Sunday, Trump unleashed repeated baseless claims against El-Sayed, accusing the Democrat of wanting to impose “Sharia law” on the country.

“He would be the only senator that will have to go through a metal detector before he’s allowed to go into the Senate,” Trump said. “I want him to have a metal detector.”

El-Sayed laughed off the suggestion that he may personally be a physical threat to Congress. “He knows I got those Wolverine claws,” he said, a reference to the sports teams of his alma mater, the University of Michigan.

The progressive Democrat and former public health official is locked in a close race with former Republican Congressman Mike Rogers, a contest that could decide the Senate majority for the next two years.

Rogers has made unfounded allegations linking El-Sayed to the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and Hezbollah a central point of his campaign.

On Monday, El-Sayed said most Americans reject such attacks.

“There are always a few small people who want to make America small like that. You see them; they’re very loud, and they bark,” El-Sayed said.

“The vast majority of folks in this state believe in a big America. They’re open-minded. They’re big-hearted. And the story of America is those who believe in big America, overcoming the deception, the distraction, the sad attempts of the small-minded to make us small.”

He added that “Michiganders are a lot bigger than that”.

El-Sayed also addressed Trump’s statements mocking his name and misrepresenting it as “Mohamed”.

“My name and my faith are not the reason you can’t afford your gas – not the reason you can’t afford your groceries, not the reason you can’t pay your rent, your mortgage, not the reason you can’t see a doctor,” he said.

The plaintiffs argue they are losing access to vital information media outlets covering Trump used to provide.

A group of private citizens has sued the administration of United States President Donald Trump over its restrictions on news outlets covering the White House.

“All of the Plaintiffs rely on the White House press corps for independent reporting about the president and his administration, and all of them use that reporting in a variety of ways in their scholarship, teaching, journalism, or advocacy,” says the lawsuit, filed on Monday in a federal court in New York.

The lawsuit is the first lodged not by the news outlets being banned, but by those who consume the news and rely on it for their work.

The plaintiffs include a human rights advocate, a media watchdog, a university history professor, a high school teacher, a legal journalist and a student journalist.

Each argues they need unbiased, diverse media reporting from the White House to do their work.

“I’m gravely concerned that the Trump administration’s restrictions on White House reporters are cutting off access to crucial information,” Peter Schmidt-Nowara, a high school social studies teacher in New York City, said in a statement.

“I joined this lawsuit because my students deserve to know what’s happening in their government and to hear from a free and independent press.”

Trump already faces several legal challenges to his practice of banning journalists from outlets he dislikes from accessing the White House.

Last month, he banned journalists from CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from attending news conferences at the White House. A federal judge later ruled the order was unconstitutional, a violation of the First Amendment, which protects freedom of the press, and ordered access be restored. However, the Trump administration continues to fight the ruling.

Last week, Trump dismissed reporting that he planned to evict journalists from the White House press briefing room and restore a swimming pool that was housed there starting in 1933. But he said he is still considering moving the press out of the briefing room.

“I am thinking about moving the Press, and putting them in a different location, but I will use that location for very badly needed space,” Trump said in a social media post.

Kenneth Roth, a senior fellow at Yale University and former executive director of Human Rights Watch, said the restrictions on press access were familiar postmarks in countries whose leaders have become authoritarian.

“Worldwide, I have seen how governmental leaders’ efforts to penalise independent journalists are a prelude to the rise of autocracy,” he said in a statement.

Judge questions the Trump administration’s efforts to exert greater influence over elections process ahead of upcoming midterm vote.

A United States appeals court has expressed doubt over the Department of Justice’s lawsuit against California, which seeks to force the state to throw out mail-in ballots it has deemed likely to go to non-citizens.

Circuit Judge Mark Bennett said on Sunday that the three-judge panel would issue a decision as soon as possible, following a rare weekend oral argument.

But Bennett, an appointee of Republican President Donald Trump, voiced concern that the lawsuit would not hold up to scrutiny.

He pointed to the Elections Clause in the US Constitution, which allows states — not the federal government — to administer elections.

“It seems to me that you want us to issue an injunction that is entirely inconsistent with the law that the California legislature has adopted pursuant to the Elections Clause,” Bennett told Justice Department lawyer Matthew Donnelly. “How can we do that?”

The case is part of a larger effort under the right-wing Trump administration to crack down on alleged non-citizen voting ahead of the crucial November 3 midterm elections.

On October 15, less than three weeks before the midterm races, the Justice Department issued a complaint targeting California, a left-wing stronghold.

It asked the federal court system to set aside thousands of mail-in ballots that the government says were sent to “likely non-citizens”.

The lawsuit indicates the Trump administration sent California officials a list of 20,000 names it believes are not eligible to vote, based on citizenship.

Trump has often pushed the discredited claim that the Democratic Party is benefiting from widespread voting by non-citizens.

California has long been one of the targets for his election misinformation.

Earlier this year, Trump denounced the state’s primaries after right-wing candidates like Los Angeles mayoral hopeful Spencer Pratt felt short of his expectations.

“There’s BIG cheating by the Dumocrats in California,” he wrote on social media at the time.

He then announced that the state would be under investigation from the US attorney’s office.

Trump’s efforts have caused alarm, with critics accusing him of seeking to dampen voter turnout through intimidation and confusion.

The midterms will decide which party controls the US Congress, as well as key state and local positions.

Polls, however, predict steep odds for Republican candidates, given Trump’s souring approval ratings and dissatisfaction with issues like the cost of living and the US-Israeli war against Iran.

Voting rights advocates have warned that the Trump administration has not publicly revealed how it has compiled its list of non-citizen voters, and whistleblower reports have cast doubt on the accuracy of such lists.

In response to the October 15 lawsuit, California has countered that it has strong safeguards to prevent non-citizens from voting.

It also said that the Justice Department’s claims are based on dubious data.

“This is a sad, desperate attempt by Trump to use his politicized Justice Department to try to suppress California voters just three weeks before Election Day,” California Governor Gavin Newsom said in a statement earlier this month.

“We will continue to carry out free and fair elections in the Golden State — and call out this authoritarian as he tries every play in the dictator’s playbook.”

United States Attorney General Todd Blanche has defended the Department of Justice’s decision to sue to prevent the certification of a Republican loss in Alaska’s tight Senate race.

On Sunday, Blanche did a tour of the morning political shows in the US, making stops at CNN’s State of the Union TV programme and CBS’s Face the Nation.

In each appearance, he faced pointed questions about the legality of the Justice Department’s efforts, responding, in some cases, with open frustration.

“ Why is this controversial?” Blanche asked CNN host Dana Bash at one point. He proceeded to accuse one of the candidates in the Senate race of intentionally trying to confuse voters.

“We’re going to try to create a situation where that can be remedied,” he said. “That shouldn’t be something that is causing this shock and horror.”

But the Justice Department’s lawsuit, filed on October 22, has been the subject of bipartisan criticism.

Many have accused the administration of President Donald Trump of laying the groundwork to block a Democratic win in the race. Trump himself claimed to have authorised the lawsuit.

“I’m the one who said do it,” he told reporters on Friday.

Inside the Alaska Senate race

During the midterm elections on November 3, citizens in Alaska will be asked to vote in one of the closest Senate races in the country, one which will help decide whether Republicans maintain their majority in the chamber.

Senator Dan S Sullivan, the Republican incumbent, is seeking to defend his seat in the Senate. But he faces fierce competition from former US Representative Mary Peltola, a Democrat.

Also in the running is another candidate named Dan J Sullivan, a former Forest Service employee.

The second Sullivan’s decision to also run has raised concerns that he is a spoiler candidate, whose presence on the ballot is designed to draw votes away from the incumbent.

But the Forest Service worker has denied any such intent. Such allegations, he said, are “entirely false”.

“I am not a registered Democrat, and I have had no conversations whatsoever with the Peltola campaign about my candidacy,” the second Sullivan wrote in a letter to Alaska’s lieutenant governor before the state’s primaries.

“I have considered running for political office for over a decade. I made the decision to formally run for the United States Senate in the upcoming primary election because Senator Sullivan has routinely failed the people of Alaska, and they deserve a better representative. It is my right to do so.”

Four candidates advanced to the final round of voting after Alaska’s August primaries. They included Peltola and both Sullivans. The two men are running as Republicans.

A controversial lawsuit

The Department of Justice has argued that its lawsuit — filed less than two weeks before the midterm elections — is necessary “to protect the integrity” of the election.

Any result in the Senate race, it argues, would be “tainted by the inclusion on the ballot of Daniel J Sullivan”.

The department has therefore called on the US district court in Alaska to issue an order declaring the race’s certification “unlawful” and barring the state from “allowing such a certification to occur”.

Under the US Constitution, only states have the power to administer elections, though Congress has the right to pass regulations concerning federal votes.

It is highly unusual for a presidential administration to inject itself into issues of state election certification — and experts say such a move is likely to be deemed illegal.

Already, in June, Alaska’s Supreme Court ruled that both Sullivans could compete in the Senate race. The state’s Division of Elections has also taken steps to reduce voter confusion.

The November 3 ballot, for instance, will list Dan S Sullivan as the incumbent and as a “registered Republican”.

Dan J Sullivan, meanwhile, will have the suffix “Jr” added to his name, and his party affiliation will be left blank, despite the candidate identifying as Republican.

But in Sunday’s TV appearances, Blanche — who leads the Department of Justice and formerly served as Trump’s personal lawyer — argued that merely having two Sullivans on the ballot is a recipe for confusion.

“It is wrong,” Blanche told CNN. “Putting aside whether we’re going to win or lose in the courts, putting aside what the Alaskan Supreme Court has done, in our system we should not have a candidate who has to worry about another candidate being on the ballot for no other reason than to confuse voters.”

Blanche also denied any impropriety in Trump saying he ordered the lawsuit.

“He’s supposed to make sure that everything in this country is running right, including elections,” Blanche said.

The race for the Senate

Historically, the Department of Justice has embraced a norm of judicial independence, though critics have accused the Trump administration of wielding its prosecutorial powers for political gain.

Bash, the CNN host, raised some of those concerns, pointing to Trump’s comments accusing Democrats of cheating, as well as his history of election denialism.

The president has long denied his loss in the 2020 presidential race, and his supporters sought to block the certification of that election, notably by storming the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

When Bash pointed to that incident, Blanche chided her: “Oh, you’ve got to stop it with that.”

“Why are you yelling at me?” Bash responded, as the two talked over each other.

“You are not being a real person. Come on, man,” Blanche continued. “That is crazy.”

He also denied that Trump was setting the stage for a contested election if the Democrat Peltola were to win. Instead, he framed the lawsuit as setting the stage for further investigations into any eventual results.

“The relief that we’re seeking — which, again, isn’t to determine who the senator is, it’s not to try to overturn something the state is going to do — it’s just to make sure that the ballots that come in are kept in a way that may allow a court to investigate further,” Blanche said.

Speaking to CBS, Blanche also dodged a question about whether Trump personally asked him to file the lawsuit.

“I will never, ever, ever talk about communications that I have with the president of the United States. I never have, and I never will,” Blanche said.

The race to control the US Senate is expected to be a nail-biter, with the Republicans holding a slim majority at present: They have 53 seats in the 100-member chamber.

Only a third of the Senate’s seats — 35 in total — will be up for grabs in the midterm races, though, as terms in the chamber last six years and are staggered across different election years.

Trump’s Republican Party is projected to face an uphill battle to protect its congressional majorities, amid backlash against the rising cost of living and Trump’s own withering poll numbers.

Roughly seven Senate elections are considered toss-ups, including the Alaska race.

In early October, The New York Times and Siena College released a poll finding Peltola leading the incumbent Sullivan by nearly seven percentage points, one of the widest margins of any of the toss-up states.

The Nobel laureate’s homecoming follows national protests demanding free elections.

Venezuela’s opposition leader Maria Corina Machado has successfully returned to the country after more than 10 months in exile.

Machado announced her arrival on social media on Sunday, writing, “I am here. With you.”

The current opposition leader, Edmundo Gonzalez, confirmed the news, writing on X that “our leader, my dear Maria Corina, is on Venezuelan soil”.

The Comando Con Venezuela political organisation shared footage of Machado arriving at a church in Lara, where she was greeted by supporters.

Machado first disappeared from public life after being briefly arrested in January 2025. She re-emerged last December in Norway, where she won the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to challenge Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro. Maduro was abducted from Caracas by the United States military in January 2026.

Venezuela’s Vice President Delcy Rodriguez has stood in as acting president since then, with the endorsement of US President Donald Trump, and has cooperated with his administration regarding reforms in the country, as well as a deal to grant the US control of over 65 billion barrels’ worth of Venezuela’s oil reserves.

Calls for elections to be held

Rodriguez’s presidency has extended far beyond the 90-day period she was authorised to serve following Maduro’s removal. But she has yet to call an election despite public demand and despite her promise to do so at the United Nations General Assembly in September. The US maintains that the country is not ready yet.

Earlier this week, thousands of Venezuelans took to the streets to call for elections in the first nationwide opposition protest in nearly two years.

Although the opposition is widely believed to have won Venezuela’s disputed 2024 elections, Trump has cast doubt on Machado’s abilities to lead, claiming in January that she “doesn’t have the support within or the respect within the country”.

Machado presented Trump with her Nobel medal when visiting him in the White House weeks later, in what she said was “a recognition for his unique commitment with our freedom”. The US leader has repeatedly voiced his desire to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize himself.

Machado has made previous unsuccessful attempts to enter Venezuela. In September, her team said she had made seven attempts in the space of a few weeks.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on X that “the conditions allowing for the safe return of Ms. Machado to Venezuela is the direct result of the U.S. supported reconciliation talks which has already seen hundreds of political prisoners freed and hundreds of political opposition figures return from exile.”

Asked to comment about Machado’s return, Trump told reporters on Sunday, “I don’t know anything about it, but I think she’s a very nice woman.”

“She gave me her Nobel Prize, so how can I say anything else? And I hope she’s safe.”

In late August, United States President Donald Trump announced a 90-day pause on certain beef tariffs, making beef cheaper to import, particularly from Brazil.

That decision was framed as a way to bring down prices for consumers, but it landed as a betrayal for many US ranchers, who were getting ready to take their cattle to market.

It is too soon to tell how the decision will ultimately affect grocery prices, but the impact on ranchers was immediate: prices at cattle auctions plummeted, temporarily lowering ranchers’ profits. The United States Cattlemen’s Association, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and the Farm Bureau, all member organisations that represent ranchers, opposed the decision.

Rural Republican members of Congress also distanced themselves, but it is not yet clear how ranchers will vote in the midterms — or whether those votes will decide races.

Chad Basinger, a rancher in Pretty Prairie, Kansas, is sceptical that the imports will have a significant impact.

“I know there’s people that have said, ‘Well I’m just gonna vote for the other party’ or ‘I’m not gonna vote’ or ‘This administration’s really let me down’. So yes, there will be people that swing the other way in the midterms. But overall I don’t think it’ll be that much,” Basinger said.

Ranchers will also be weighing the administration’s other actions, Basinger said, such as the $8bn in farm relief announced in Kansas on October 19.

Basinger’s House of Representatives district in Kansas is expected to remain safely Republican in the midterms. But Kansas faces an unexpectedly tight Senate race and ranchers in House districts elsewhere may find themselves closer to the political fray: potential swing districts in Montana, Iowa, Texas and Colorado are all in cattle country.

Still, it is unlikely that ranchers alone will decide elections: ranchers — along with farmers more broadly — represent a shrinking percentage of rural voters and a smaller voting bloc in practice than in the public imagination.

America’s cattle herd is near its smallest size since 1951 and the number of ranchers has declined alongside the number of livestock. Observers worry that ongoing uncertainty fuelled by tariffs, fuel prices and drought may cause the ranching population to shrink further.

David Anderson, an agricultural economist at Texas A&M University who advises ranchers, said that high prices this year should have given ranchers the confidence to invest in the future and expand their herds. Making imports cheaper, however, may have helped nudge ranchers in the opposite direction.

“It really works against the market signal to expand and produce more domestically,” Anderson said. “That got a lot of people pretty angry.”

Tariff changes add volatility

This is not the first time that Trump’s tariffs have impacted cattle supplies. Last year, the president added a 50 percent tariff on Brazil, a key trade partner for beef, raising the cost of importing Brazilian lean beef, which is often mixed with fatty US beef to make hamburger patties, a staple in most homes.

In February, Trump allowed more tariff-free beef imports from Argentina. In August, he did the same for Brazil and Paraguay.

Both tariff changes led to swift price swings in cattle futures markets, which are often volatile in response to the news cycle.

Cattle prices also moved this year in response to more fundamental drivers of supply and demand: plant closures by meatpackers, labour shortages late last month related to ICE actions at Kansas packing plants, the second-largest in the country, and the reopening of the southern border after a closure due to New World screwworm disease.

Big picture, the shrinking US cattle herd has less to do with short-term price changes and more to do with drought cycles, which are growing more intense as warming temperatures increase evaporation.

Still, tariff changes add uncertainty. “This has been a hot topic for the last six weeks,” said Anderson. “It just adds a little more uncertainty or volatility — or worries or stress.”

This year, extra price volatility as many ranchers prepared to sell meant ranchers faced lower profits and more risk.

Basinger says that for many established ranchers, the tariff announcement was frustrating, but not existential.

“People are upset. They have a right to be upset. But they’re not going to change their strategy,” he said. For most ranchers, Basinger said, the imports would not be the biggest factor shaping decisions about their herds this year.

Where price volatility may matter more, Basinger said, is for the next generation. Most of today’s ranchers are eyeing retirement. Their heirs must decide whether to make a go of ranching or sell their family’s land. Other aspiring ranchers are also watching the industry.

“If you’re seeing your dad not make money, or somebody else not make money…it’s not easy work!” Basinger said. “It has to be very enticing for somebody to want to jump in and be like, ‘I’m gonna be a rancher and go break ice in the middle of winter when it’s cold and I could be inside’.”

Record revenue and record costs

This year, low US cattle supplies meant that ranchers commanded record-high cattle prices, despite added imports and other market shifts.

But high revenue doesn’t always mean huge profits: Many ranchers operate at a loss for years in a row. Then, they rely on a few good years to pay down debts or expand their herds.

This year, profits were lower than hoped, because ranchers also faced high costs.

Interest rates on loans are high and the war with Iran meant ranchers paid extra for fuel and fertiliser. A drought across much of America’s ranchland meant they paid more for feed.

In states such as Kansas and Nebraska, ranchers also faced destructive wildfires and aid groups like Farm Rescue coordinated hay donations.

Still, Basinger said, ranchers who raise cows and calves generally did well this year. In Kansas, he is seeing ranchers use profits to make repairs and upgrades. He said this year’s high cattle prices have been helping. “But it needs to help for a little longer to give them more of an edge,” he said.

More of an edge might mean, for example, enough money for bigger purchases, like buying land from a neighbouring ranch to make room for a growing herd.

Rangeland, however, is increasingly expensive. When it is up for sale, outside investors can often pay more than ranchers, which can mean less land for cattle. That’s just one more pressure shrinking the US herd decade after decade.

Ranchers had hoped that 2026 would be a turnaround year. So far, however, “we really don’t have much evidence of herd expansion,” Anderson said.

Tehran warns that even limited strikes would trigger a response ‘several times greater’.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has blamed Washington for the unravelling of an interim deal aimed at ending the war with the United States and Israel, amid growing fears that the fighting could resume imminently.

In comments broadcast by Iranian Press TV on Saturday, But Pezeshkian also said that both sides should return to the deal and “conclude it”.

His remarks come amid growing fears that military action could resume as soon as this weekend, after US President Donald Trump said on Friday that he “may do another little Epic Fury”, using the codename of the US-Israeli war against Iran that started on February 28.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has warned that even limited strikes would trigger a response “several times greater”, according to comments reported by the semi-official Fars News Agency.

Iranian Armed Forces Chief of Staff Ali Abdollahi said on Saturday that the US military would not be allowed in the Gulf “under any circumstances and at any time”. Abdollahi said Trump could only “dream” of seeing US forces enter the Gulf, adding that he would take his dream to the grave.

Trump has suggested he could take further military action against Iran, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he remains committed to overthrowing the country’s government.

Both leaders face elections, with Israelis set to choose their next government on Tuesday. Meanwhile, Trump’s Republican Party faces crucial midterm elections on November 3, with Democrats potentially winning control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Such an outcome would be a major blow to Trump, who still has more than two years left in his final term in the White House.

Iranian government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani said on Saturday that Tehran would not “wait for permission to defend itself”, adding that the country “seeks peace but will respond to any aggression with severe consequences”.

“Our position is clear: we do not flee from dialogue for peace, and we do not hesitate in defending the country. Those who harbour the illusion of destroying Iran must correct their calculations,” Mohajerani wrote in a memo.

Her comments came as Iranian judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei met Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei. The pair discussed how to tackle corruption and pursue compensation for Iranians affected by the US-Israeli war, among other issues.

Khamenei replaced his father as supreme leader after the latter was assassinated during the opening strikes of the war on February 28. He has not been seen in public since assuming the position in early March.

Parliament Speaker and chief negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf was reported to have met Khamenei earlier this week.

Former US president says Trump ‘chose to make a series of bad decisions’, highlighting the US-Israel war on Iran.

Former United States President Barack Obama has criticised the “cruelty and corruption” during President Donald Trump’s second term.

Obama slammed Trump’s foreign policies on Saturday during a midterm election campaign rally in Ohio to support the state’s Democratic candidates.

“The current president chose to make a series of bad decisions,” the 65-year-old Democrat said. “Most importantly, he decided to start an unnecessary war that nobody asked for,” he added, referring to the US-Israel war on Iran.

Obama urged Ohioans to vote against the Republican administration, saying: “After two years of chaos and cruelty and corruption and incompetence, the likes of which we have not seen in the modern era, you get a chance to say, ‘Enough is enough’.”

Heated Ohio races

The former president also addressed the recent controversy in Ohio’s gubernatorial race surrounding an attack advertisement by Republican candidate Vivek Ramaswamy against Democrat Amy Acton.

“In recent days, we’ve seen there is no line he will not cross, no low he will not sink to,” Obama said of Ramaswamy. “I don’t know what’s happened where the standards of behaviour are so low that somebody could run an ad like that.”

In the advertisement, Donna Arthur, Acton’s mother, disputes her daughter’s account of a childhood involving homelessness and ⁠⁠⁠⁠sexual abuse by her stepfather, urging Ohioans not to vote for her.

Acton says she has not seen her mother since 1978. Acton’s brother has supported her account of being sexually abused by her stepfather when she was a child. The stepfather, who died in 2004, was charged with rape.

Obama backed Acton, saying that she has “spoken movingly about her painful childhood and all she’s experienced: abuse, neglect and homelessness.”

The former president shared the rally stage with Acton and Ohio’s former Democratic senator, Sherrod Brown, who will attempt a comeback against incumbent Republican Senator Jon Husted.

Polls give Democrats a slight lead in both Ohio races, but results are expected to be close.

Trump says the US is considering a possible attack on Iran as soon as Sunday, or it could reach a major deal with Tehran.

More than 300 protesters and police were injured in the Albanian capital Tirana’s fiercest clashes in days.

Protesters have clashed with police in rallies in the Albanian capital of Tirana, with police firing tear gas and water cannon to disperse crowds.

Several government buildings were attacked, dozens of demonstrators arrested, and more than 300 protesters and police injured, authorities said Saturday.

Protesters and police have routinely clashed since a significant wave of protests started in mid-October over poor conditions in schools and the cost of living in the small Balkan country.

While the protests in Tirana had calmed in recent days, Saturday’s demonstration escalated the situation again, with police deploying water cannon, tear gas and rubber bullets against crowds.

Thousands of people had heeded calls from organisers for students and others around Albania to attend the rally. Various groups, including university professors, artists and opposition parties, announced their support or attendance.

The country’s Ministry of Education has become a focal point of rallies, and Saturday’s gathering saw some in the crowd throwing stones and rolling burning bins at the building.

Police had introduced heightened security around the capital on Saturday, with checks being carried out on cars heading to the city, local media reported.

Albania has seen intermittent antigovernment protests since May, when news emerged of a luxury hotel project linked to United States President Donald Trump’s family.

Protesters take aim at PM

Since then, public anger has turned into a broader push against corruption and the high cost of living, with protesters calling for the resignation of Socialist Prime Minister Edi Rama.

Rama has blamed “foreign actors” for the violence and accused both Russia and Iran of driving online misinformation.

The prime minister has called for dialogue, and on Saturday red cushions were laid outside the government headquarters in a symbolic gesture for talk and dialogue. Protesters later set the cushions on fire.

Protesters have blamed the entire political class for the crisis, with some also seen holding signs decrying Rama’s opposition, centre-right leader Sali Berisha.

Trump’s remarks come amid a fractious moment between the US president and the journalists who cover him.

United States President Donald Trump has confirmed he could move the White House press corps to a different location, possibly away from the executive residence.

In a social media post on Friday, Trump described reports that he planned to remove the White House press briefing room in favour of restoring a historic swimming pool located underneath as “Fake News”.

“I NEVER even thought to do such a stupid thing!” he wrote in a Truth Social post.

Trump, however, indicated he may relocate dozens of reporters who cover the White House “to a less obnoxious location”.

The New York Times on Tuesday reported that Trump had pitched his former press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, on an idea to move journalists out of the White House’s storied James S. Brady Press Briefing Room. That proposal did not move forward during Leavitt’s tenure, which ended on August 27.

Trump’s remarks come amid a fractious moment between him and the journalists who cover him.

Last month, Trump banned journalists from three US-based media outlets – CNN, MS NOW and POLITICO – from the White House, a move that proponents of free speech said violated First Amendment protections.

A US federal judge ruled that the order was likely unconstitutional, forcing the White House to restore the journalists’ access. The Trump administration continues to fight the ruling.

Trump has also regularly chided and denigrated members of the media he claims cover him unfairly.

The latest incident was during an Oval Office event on Tuesday when Trump attacked The Independent’s White House Correspondent Andrew Feinberg.

“What’s wrong with you? Are you a sick person? I actually think there’s something wrong with you”, Trump said as Feinberg tried to ask a question. The moment was amplified by the White House on social media.

If Trump opts to proceed with changes to the White House press briefing room, it would be the latest in a long list of controversial projects he has ordered that would transform the property.

Since returning to power last year, the US president has demolished the White House East Wing to construct a new ballroom, installed concrete pavers over the lawn centred in the White House Rose Garden and built a helipad on the South Lawn.

The Times reported Trump told aides he wanted to bring back a West Wing indoor pool constructed in 1933 for use by President Franklin D Roosevelt, who suffered from polio and often swam, according to his presidential library, to ease soreness.

In the 1970s, former President Richard Nixon had a floor constructed above the pool to accommodate a briefing room for the growing White House press corps. The pool remains beneath the floor of the briefing room.

Leavitt confirmed during a Friday interview that Trump was “flirting” with the idea of restoring the pool.

“He just, maybe, wants to restore it to all of its glory”, Leavitt said during an appearance on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher”. “I don’t know if he’ll do it.”

The White House did not immediately return Al Jazeera’s request for comment.