Trump

Republican-controlled House of Representatives is expected to approve funding bill to re-open US federal government in coming days.

United States President Donald Trump has called the looming end of the government shutdown a “big victory” after the Senate passed a bill to fund federal agencies.

Trump congratulated Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune on Tuesday for the soon-to-be-approved funding bill.

“Congratulations to you and to John and to everybody on a very big victory,” Trump said, addressing Johnson at a Veterans Day event.

“We’re opening up our country — should have never been closed.”

The US president’s comments signal that he views the shutdown crisis as a political win for his Republican Party, which is set to end the budgeting impasse in Congress without meeting the Democrats’ key demand: extending healthcare subsidies.

The Senate passed the funding bill late on Monday in a 60-40 vote that saw eight members of the Democratic caucus backing the proposal.

The Republican-controlled House of Representatives is expected to pass the budget in the coming days to end the shutdown, which has been the longest in US history. Assuming the House approves the bill, it will then go to Trump’s desk, and the president is expected to sign it into law.

In the US system, Congress is tasked with funding the government.

If lawmakers fail to pass a budget, the federal government goes into shutdown mode, where it stops paying most employees and sends non-essential workers home.

The current shutdown started on October 1.

Republicans control the House, Senate and White House, but their narrow majority in the Senate had previously prevented them from passing a continuing resolution to keep the government funded.

In the 100-seat Senate, major legislation must generally be passed with at least 60 votes to overcome the filibuster, a legislative procedure that allows the minority party to block bills it opposes.

The Democratic caucus holds 47 seats in the chamber, which allowed it to successfully wield the filibuster until this week’s divisive vote.

Until Monday, Democrats had largely been united in opposition to the Republicans’ funding bill. They had previously maintained they would only approve government funding if the bill included provisions to extend healthcare subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, which are set to expire at the end of the year.

Those subsidies, Democrats argued, help millions of Americans afford their medical insurance.

But Trump had threatened to ramp up the pressure against Democrats by cutting programmes he associated with their party.

During the shutdown, for example, Trump tried to withhold food benefits for low-income families – a policy that is being challenged in the courts.

The shutdown crisis has also led to flight delays and cancellations across the country due to a shortage of available air traffic controllers, who have been working without pay.

Monday’s Senate vote paved the way for a resolution to the crisis. But it has sparked infighting amongst Democrats, with segments of the party voicing disappointment with senators who backed the bill.

The issue has also intensified criticism against Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who voted against the proposal but failed to keep his caucus united in opposition to it.

“Sen. Schumer has failed to meet this moment and is out of touch with the American people. The Democratic Party needs leaders who fight and deliver for working people,” Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib said in a social media post on Monday.

“Schumer should step down.”

Senator John Fetterman, one of the most conservative Democrats in the Senate, defended his vote on Tuesday.

“When you’re confronting mass, mass chaos, you know, I don’t think you should respond with more chaos, or fight with more chaos,” Fetterman told the ABC talk show The View. “It’s like, no, we need to be the party of order and logic.”

BALTIMORE — U.S. Catholic bishops elected Oklahoma City Archbishop Paul Coakley as their new president on Tuesday, choosing a conservative culture warrior to lead during President Trump’s second term.

The vote serves as a barometer for the bishops’ priorities. In choosing Coakley, they are doubling down on their conservative bent, even as they push for more humane immigration policies from the Trump administration.

Coakley was seen as a strong contender for the top post, having already been elected in 2022 to serve as secretary, the No. 3 conference official. In three rounds of voting, he beat out centrist candidate Bishop Daniel Flores of Brownsville, Texas, who was subsequently elected vice president.

Coakley serves as advisor to the Napa Institute, an association for conservative Catholic powerbrokers. In 2018, he publicly supported an ardent critic of Pope Francis, Italian Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, who was later excommunicated for stances that were deemed divisive.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has often been at odds with the Vatican and the inclusive, modernizing approach of the late Pope Francis. His U.S.-born successor, Pope Leo XIV, is continuing a similar pastoral emphasis on marginalized people, poverty and the environment.

The choice of Coakley may fuel tensions with Pope Leo, said Steven Millies, professor of public theology at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago.

“In the long conflict between many U.S. bishops and Francis that Leo inherits, this is not a de-escalating step,” he said.

Half the 10 candidates on the ballot came from the conservative wing of the conference. The difference is more in style than substance. Most U.S. Catholic bishops are reliably conservative on social issues, but some — like Coakley — place more emphasis on opposing abortion and LGBTQ+ rights.

The candidates were nominated by their fellow bishops, and Coakley succeeds the outgoing leader, Military Services Archbishop Timothy Broglio, for a three-year term. The current vice president, Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore, was too close to the mandatory retirement age of 75 to assume the top spot.

Coakley edged out a well-known conservative on the ballot, Bishop Robert Barron of Minnesota’s Winona-Rochester diocese, whose popular Word on Fire ministry has made him a Catholic media star.

In defeating Flores, Coakley won over another strong contender, who some Catholic insiders thought could help unify U.S. bishops and work well with the Vatican. Flores has been the U.S. bishops’ leader in the Vatican’s synod process to modernize the church. As a Latino leading a diocese along the U.S.-Mexico border, he supports traditional Catholic doctrine on abortion and LGBTQ issues and is outspoken in his defense of migrants.

Flores will be eligible for the top post in three years. His election as vice president indicates that the U.S. conference “may eventually, cautiously open itself to the church’s new horizons,” said David Gibson, director of Fordham University’s Center on Religion and Culture.

The bishops are crafting a statement on immigration during the annual fall meeting. On many issues, they appear as divided and polarized as their country, but on immigration, even the most conservative Catholic leaders stand on the side of migrants.

The question is how strongly the whole body plans to speak about the Trump administration’s harsh immigration tactics.

Fear of immigration enforcement has suppressed Mass attendance at some parishes. Local clerics are fighting to administer sacraments to detained immigrants. U.S. Catholic bishops shuttered their longstanding refugee resettlement program after the Trump administration halted federal funding for resettlement aid.

“On the political front, you know for decades the U.S. bishops have been advocating for comprehensive immigration reform,” Bishop Kevin Rhoades, of Indiana’s Fort Wayne-South Bend diocese, said during a news conference.

Rhoades serves on Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission, and he leads the bishops’ committee on religious liberty. He said bishops are very concerned about detained migrants receiving pastoral care and the sacraments.

“That’s an issue of the right to worship,” he said. “One doesn’t lose that right when one is detained, whether one is documented or undocumented.”

The bishops sent a letter to Pope Leo from their meeting, saying they “will continue to stand with migrants and defend everyone’s right to worship free from intimidation.”

The letter continued, “We support secure and orderly borders and law enforcement actions in response to dangerous criminal activity, but we cannot remain silent in this challenging hour while the right to worship and the right to due process are undermined.”

Pope Leo recently called for “deep reflection” in the United States about the treatment of migrants held in detention, saying that “many people who have lived for years and years and years, never causing problems, have been deeply affected by what is going on right now.”

Stanley writes for the Associated Press.

LONDON — President Trump’s threat to bring a billion-dollar lawsuit against the BBC has cast a shadow over the British broadcaster’s future, but it could also be a bluff with little legal merit.

The president’s lawyer sent the threat to the BBC over the way a documentary edited his Jan. 6, 2021, speech before a mob of his followers stormed the U.S. Capitol.

Trump’s history of suing news media companies — sometimes winning multimillion-dollar settlements — is part of a long-running grievance against the industry he describes as “fake news” that has often focused a critical eye on his actions.

But Trump faces fundamental challenges to getting a case to court, never mind taking it to trial. He would also have to deal with the harsh glare of publicity around his provocative pep talk the day Congress was voting to certify President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election that Trump falsely alleged was stolen from him.

“If he sues, he opens a Pandora’s box and inside is every damning quote he’s ever uttered about the ‘steal,’” said attorney Mark Stephens, an international media lawyer who practices in the U.S. and U.K.

The BBC documentary

The BBC’s “Panorama” series aired the hourlong documentary titled “Trump: A Second Chance?” days before the 2024 U.S. presidential election.

The third-party production company that made the film spliced together three quotes from two sections of the 2021 speech, delivered almost an hour apart, into what appeared to be one quote in which Trump urged supporters to march with him and “fight like hell.” Among the parts cut out was a section where Trump said he wanted supporters to demonstrate peacefully.

BBC Chairman Samir Shah apologized Monday for the misleading edit that he said gave “the impression of a direct call for violent action.”

Director-General Tim Davie and news chief Deborah Turness quit Sunday over accusations of bias and misleading editing.

From letter to lawsuit

A lawsuit in England is unlikely because the one-year deadline to bring one expired two weeks ago, experts said. If successful in overcoming that barrier, libel awards in the High Court rarely exceed 100,000 pounds ($132,000), experts said.

Trump could still bring a defamation claim in several U.S. states, and his lawyer cited Florida law in a letter to the BBC.

Filing a lawsuit and demanding money is one thing, but prevailing in court is much different. To succeed, Trump would have to clear many hurdles to get a case before a jury.

Before any of that could happen, Trump faces a more fundamental challenge: The BBC program was not aired in the U.S., and the BBC’s streaming service is also not available there. Americans could not have thought less of him because of a program they could not watch, Stephens said.

“The other ticklish problem for Trump’s lawyer was that Trump’s reputation was already pretty battered after Jan. 6,” he said. “Alleging ‘Panorama’ caused additional harm when your reputation is already in tatters … is a tough sell.”

Trump was impeached on a charge of inciting insurrection over the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by some of his supporters, though he was acquitted by the Senate.

The demands

Trump’s lawyer Alejandro Brito threatened the BBC with a defamation lawsuit for “no less than” $1 billion. The letter spelled out the figure and used all nine zeros in numeric form.

The letter demanded an apology to the president and a “full and fair” retraction of the documentary along with other “false, defamatory, disparaging, misleading or inflammatory statements” about Trump.

It also said the president should be “appropriately” compensated for “overwhelming financial and reputational harm.”

The letter cites Florida’s defamation statute that requires a letter be sent to news organizations five days before any lawsuit can be filed.

If the BBC does not comply with the demands by 5 p.m. EST Friday, then Trump will enforce his legal rights, the letter said.

“The BBC is on notice,” it said.

While many legal experts have dismissed the president’s claims against the media as having little chance of success, he has won some lucrative settlements against U.S. media companies.

In July, Paramount, which owns CBS, agreed to pay $16 million to settle a lawsuit filed by Trump over a “ 60 Minutes” interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump alleged that the interview was edited to enhance how Harris, the Democratic nominee for president in 2024, sounded.

That settlement came as the Trump-appointed head of the Federal Communications Commission launched an investigation that threatened to complicate Paramount’s need for administration approval to merge with Skydance Media.

Last year, ABC News said it would pay $15 million to settle a defamation lawsuit over anchor George Stephanopoulos ’ inaccurate on-air assertion that the president-elect had been found civilly liable for raping writer E. Jean Carroll. A jury found that he was liable for sexually abusing her. Trump asked the Supreme Court on Monday to throw out that jury’s finding.

Litigation threat could leverage payout

London lawyer David Allen Green dismissed the litigation letter for failing to spell out any actual harm Trump suffered. But he said Trump’s willingness to use lawsuits as a form of deal making could leverage a payout because the edit was indefensible.

“Putting aside the theatrics of a bombastic letter with its senseless $1 billion claim, there is a power play here which Trump has done many times before,” Green said on the Law and Policy Blog. “The real mistake of the BBC (and the production company) was opening itself up to such a play of power.”

Stephens said if Trump were somehow to win billions from the BBC, it could crush the news organization that is mostly funded through a fee charged to all television owners in the U.K.

But he said that outcome was unlikely and the broadcaster should stand its ground. He recommended Trump take the public relations win and avoid the damage from revisiting the Jan. 6 events that would be dredged up at trial.

He said Trump was due an apology, which Shah offered, for the BBC not upholding high journalistic standards.

“The question is, ‘Did it cause harm in people’s minds?’” he said. “Because he was elected afterwards, it doesn’t appear it did.”

Melley writes for the Associated Press.

Nov. 11 (UPI) — President Donald Trump mentioned political correctness, President Joe Biden and renaming Veterans Day at Arlington National Cemetery after laying a wreath for the holiday.

Trump said he plans to rename the holiday celebrated on Nov. 11 as “Victory Day for World War I.”

“You know, I was recently at an event and I saw France was celebrating Victory Day, but we didn’t,” he said. “And I saw France was celebrating another Victory Day for World War II, and other countries were celebrating. They were all celebrating.

“We’re the one that won the wars. … And we could do for plenty of other wars, but we’ll start with those two. Maybe someday somebody else will add a couple of more, ’cause we won a lot of good ones.”

Veterans Day was originally named Armistice Day to celebrate the end of World War I. But it eventually became Veterans Day to celebrate all who have served in the U.S. Armed Forces.

Since he took office, Trump has been on a renaming streak. He has renamed the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America,” the Persian Gulf to the “Arabian Gulf,” Mount Denali to “Mount McKinley” and the Department of Defense to the “Department of War.”

“Under the Trump administration, we are restoring the pride and the winning spirit of the United States military,” he said at Arlington. “That’s why we have officially renamed the Department of Defense back to the original name, Department of War.”

He also complained about political correctness.

“We don’t like being politically correct, so we’re not going to be politically correct anymore,” Trump said. “From now on when we fight a war, we only fight for one reason: to win.”

He thanked American troops for their service.

“And we want to also say thank you for carrying America’s fate on your strong, very broad, and proud shoulders,” he said. “Each of you has earned the respect and the gratitude of our entire nation.

“We love you. We salute you, and we will never forget what you have done to keep America safe, sovereign, and free.”

Trump also used the speech to attack the Biden administration and its management of the Veterans Administration.

“And the other thing is, we fired thousands of people who didn’t take care of our great veterans,” he said. “They were sadists. They were sick people. They were thieves. They were everything you want to name. And we got rid of over 9,000 of them.

“And then, when Biden came in, he hired them back, many of them. But we got rid of them. And I think we got rid of them permanently. We replaced them with people who love our veterans, not people who are sick people.”

The Department of Veterans Affairs laid off more than 2,400 people in February.

LONDON — Britain’s government rallied to the defense of the BBC on Tuesday after allegations of bias from its critics and the threat of a lawsuit from President Trump over the way the broadcaster edited a speech he made after losing the 2020 presidential election

Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy said the national broadcaster faces “challenges, some of its own making,” but is “by far the most widely used and trusted source of news in the United Kingdom.”

With critics in media and politics demanding an overhaul of the BBC’s funding and governance, Nandy said that “the BBC as an institution is absolutely essential to this country.

“At a time when the lines are being dangerously blurred between facts and opinions, news and polemic, the BBC stands apart,” she said in the House of Commons.

Trump threatens to sue

A lawyer for Trump is demanding a retraction, apology and compensation from the broadcaster over the allegedly defamatory sequence in a documentary broadcast last year.

Fallout from the documentary has already claimed the BBC’s top executive, Tim Davie, and head of news Deborah Turness, who both resigned over what the broadcaster called an “error of judgment.”

The BBC has apologized for misleading editing of a speech Trump delivered on Jan. 6, 2021, before a crowd of his supporters stormed the Capitol in Washington.

Broadcast days before the November 2024 U.S. election, the documentary “Trump: A Second Chance?” spliced together three quotes from two sections of the speech, delivered almost an hour apart, into what appeared to be one quote in which Trump urged supporters to march with him and “fight like hell.” Among the parts cut out was a section where Trump said he wanted supporters to demonstrate peacefully.

BBC chair Samir Shah said the broadcaster accepted “that the way the speech was edited did give the impression of a direct call for violent action.”

The BBC has not yet formally responded to the demand from Florida-based Trump attorney Alejandro Brito that it “retract the false, defamatory, disparaging and inflammatory statements,” apologize and “appropriately compensate President Trump for the harm caused” by Friday, or face legal action for $1 billion in damages.

Nigel Huddleston, media spokesman for the opposition Conservative Party, said the BBC should “provide a fulsome apology to the U.S. president” to avoid legal action.

Legal experts say Trump is likely too late to sue the BBC in Britain, because a one-year deadline to file a defamation suit has expired. He could still bring a defamation claim in several U.S. states, and his lawyer cited Florida law in a letter to the BBC, but faces considerable legal hurdles.

An embattled national institution

The publicly funded BBC is a century-old national institution under growing pressure in an era of polarized politics and changing media viewing habits.

Funded through an annual license fee of 174.50 pounds ($230) paid by all households who watch live TV or any BBC content, the broadcaster is frequently a political football, with conservatives seeing a leftist slant in its news output and some liberals accusing it of having a conservative bias.

Governments of both left and right have long been accused of meddling with the broadcaster, which is overseen by a board that includes both BBC nominees and government appointees.

Some defenders of the BBC allege that board members appointed under previous Conservative governments have been undermining the corporation from within.

Pressure on the broadcaster has been growing since the right-leaning Daily Telegraph published parts of a dossier compiled by Michael Prescott, who had been hired to advise the BBC on standards and guidelines. As well as the Trump edit, Prescott criticized the BBC’s coverage of transgender issues and raised concerns of anti-Israel bias in the BBC’s Arabic service.

Near the BBC’s London headquarters, some passersby said the scandal would further erode trust in a broadcaster already under pressure.

Amanda Carey, a semi-retired lawyer, said the editing of the Trump speech is “something that should never have happened.”

“The last few scandals that they’ve had, trust in the BBC is very much waning and a number of people are saying they’re going to refuse to pay the license (fee),” she said.

A growing number of people argue that the license fee is unsustainable in a world where many households watch little or no traditional TV.

Nandy said the government will soon start the once-a-decade process of reviewing the BBC’s governing charter, which expires at the end of 2027. She said the government would ensure the BBC is “sustainably funded (and) commands the public’s trust,” but did not say whether the license fee might be scaled back or scrapped.

Davie, who announced his resignation as BBC director-general on Sunday, acknowledged that “we have made some mistakes that have cost us.”

But, he added: “We’ve got to to fight for our journalism.”

Lawless writes for the Associated Press. AP journalist Kwiyeon Ha contributed to this story.

US airlines cancel 1,200 flights, marking five days of disruptions caused by the prolonged government shutdown.

Airlines in the United States have cancelled nearly 1,200 flights, marking the fifth consecutive day of mass delays and cancellations sparked by the country’s longest-ever government shutdown.

In addition to cancellations on Tuesday, passengers continued to face long wait times, as more than 1,300 domestic and international flights were delayed in the morning.

New York’s LaGuardia Airport, in particular, is seeing significant hold-ups, with average delays of one hour and 40 minutes, according to FlightAware — a platform that tracks flight disruptions worldwide.

On Monday, there were more than 2,400 cancelled flights to, from and within the US, along with over 9,500 delayed flights, according to the same tracker.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) last week instructed airlines to cut 4 percent of daily flights from Friday at 40 major airports due to air traffic control staffing shortages. Reductions rose to 6 percent on Tuesday, then 8 percent on Thursday, and are expected to reach 10 percent by November 14th.

Airlines and the FAA are in talks over whether these cuts will be eased as a record-setting 42-day government shutdown draws to a close.

An end to the shutdown appears to be in sight. On Monday, the Senate passed a bill to reopen the federal government. It now heads to the House of Representatives and, if approved, will go to President Donald Trump’s desk for signing. Once signed, the bill would reopen the government.

Despite progress on Capitol Hill, the president has urged air traffic controllers across the country to return to work, warning that their pay could be “docked” if they do not comply. He also claimed that those who remained on duty during the shutdown would receive a $10,000 bonus.

On Wall Street, airline stocks are taking a hit amid persistent cancellations. As of 11am in New York (16:00 GMT), Delta Air Lines had fallen 1.26 percent since the market opened on Tuesday. United Airlines was down 1.7 percent, while American Airlines had tumbled more than 1.8 percent.

Budget carriers are also being hit hard. New York-based JetBlue has dropped by more than 2 percent, Dallas-based Southwest by 1.8 percent, and Alaska Airlines is down roughly 2.1 percent.

BELGRADE, Serbia — Thousands of protesters in Serbia symbolically formed a human shield Tuesday around a bombed-out military complex, vowing to protect it from redevelopment as a luxury compound by a company linked to President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Youth-led protesters drew a red line as they encircled the sprawling buildings in the capital, Belgrade that were partially destroyed in a 1999 NATO bombing campaign. The site faces demolition and redevelopment under a plan backed by the populist government of President Aleksandar Vucic.

The $500-million project to build a high-rise hotel, offices and shops at the site has met fierce opposition from experts at home and abroad, as well as the Serbian public. But last week Serbian lawmakers passed a special law clearing the way for the construction despite legal hurdles.

Vucic’s pro-Trump government says the project would boost the economy and ties with the U.S. administration, which has imposed tariffs of 35% on imports from Serbia. It has also sanctioned Serbia’s monopoly oil supplier, which is controlled by Russia.

However, critics say the building is an architectural monument, seen as a symbol of resistance to the U.S.-led NATO bombing that remains widely viewed in the Balkan country as an unjust “aggression.”

Serbia’s government last year stripped the complex of protected status and signed a 99-year-lease agreement with Kushner-related Affinity Global Development in the U.S. But the redevelopment project came into question after Serbia’s organized crime prosecutors launched an investigation into whether documents used to remove that status were forged.

The buildings are seen as prime examples of mid-20th century architecture in the former Yugoslavia. The protesters demanded that the protected heritage status for the complex be restored, and the buildings rebuilt.

“This is a warning that we will all defend these buildings together,” one of the students said. “We will be the human shield.”

The issue has become the latest flashpoint in yearlong street protests that have shaken Vucic’s firm grip on power. Protesters have accused his government of rampant corruption in state projects. The protests started after a concrete canopy collapsed at a train station in the northern city of Novi Sad after renovation, killing 16 people.

Tens of thousands of people marked the tragedy’s anniversary on Nov. 1 in Novi Sad.

Serbia was bombed in 1999 for 78 days to force then-President Slobodan Milosevic to end his crackdown on separatist ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. Anti-NATO sentiment remain strong in Serbia, and the U.S. role in revamping the military buildings is particularly sensitive among many Serbians.

Earlier this year, the government in Albania, another Balkan country, approved a $1.6 billion plan from Kushner’s company for a project to develop a luxury resort on a communist-era fortified island on the Adriatic coast.

Gec writes for the Associated Press.

Over the weekend, United States President Donald Trump promised Americans $2,000 each from the “trillions of dollars” in tariff revenue he said his administration has collected.

During his second term, Trump has imposed tariffs broadly on countries and on specific goods such as drugs, steel and cars.

“People that are against Tariffs are FOOLS!” Trump said in a November 9 Truth Social post. “We are taking in Trillions of Dollars and will soon begin paying down our ENORMOUS DEBT, $37 Trillion. Record Investment in the USA, plants and factories going up all over the place. A dividend of at least $2000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone.”

How seriously should people take his pledge? Experts urged caution.

Tariffs are projected to generate well below “trillions” a year, making it harder to pay each person $2,000. And the administration already said it would use the tariff revenue to either pay for existing tax cuts or to reduce the federal debt.

Trump’s post came days after the US Supreme Court heard arguments about the legality of his tariff policy. The justices are weighing whether Trump has the power to unilaterally impose tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. If the justices rule against Trump, much of the expected future tariff revenue would not materialise.

What Trump proposed, and who would qualify

The administration has published no plans for the tariff dividends, and in a November 9 ABC News interview, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he had not spoken to Trump about giving Americans a dividend payment.

Details about a potential payment have been limited to Truth Social posts.

Trump said “everyone”, excluding “high income people”, would get the money, but did not explain the criteria for high-income people. He also did not say whether children would receive the payment.

In a November 10 Truth Social post, Trump said his administration would first pay $2,000 to “low and middle income USA Citizens” and then use the remaining tariff revenues to “substantially pay down national debt”.

Trump has not said what form the payments might take. Bessent said the dividend “could come in lots of forms, in lots of ways. You know, it could be just the tax decreases that we are seeing on the president’s agenda. You know, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security, deductibility of auto loans. So, you know, those are substantial deductions.”

Analysts said it is a stretch to rebrand an already promised tax cut as a new dividend.

Trump has previously discussed paying Americans with tariff revenue.

“We have so much money coming in, we’re thinking about a little rebate, but the big thing we want to do is pay down debt,” he told reporters on July 25. “We’re thinking about a rebate.”

Days later, Senator Josh Hawley introduced legislation that would give $600 tariff rebate cheques to each American adult and child. Hawley’s bill has not advanced.

Tariff revenue collected versus cost of ‘dividend’ payment

Trump made the imposition of tariffs one of his signature campaign promises for the 2024 presidential election. Since taking office in January, he has enacted tariffs on a scale not seen in the US in almost a century; the current overall average tariff rate is 18 percent, the highest since 1934, according to Yale Budget Lab.

Through the end of October, the federal government collected $309.2bn in tariff revenue, compared with $165.4bn through the same point in 2024, an increase of $143.8bn.

The centre-right Tax Foundation projects that tariff revenue will continue to increase to more than $200bn a year if the tariffs remain in place.

Erica York, the Tax Foundation’s vice president of federal tax policy, estimated in a November 9 X post that a $2,000 tariff dividend for each person earning less than $100,000 would equal 150 million adult recipients. That would cost nearly $300bn, York calculated, or more if children qualified. That is more than the tariffs have raised so far, she said.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget projected that Trump’s proposal could cost $600bn, depending on how it is structured.

The administration previously detailed other uses for tariff revenue

The Trump administration already promised to use tariff revenue for other purposes, including reducing the country’s deficit and offsetting the cost of the GOP tax and spending bill Trump signed into law in July.

As Trump announced new tariffs on April 2, he said he would “use trillions and trillions of dollars to reduce our taxes and pay down our national debt”.

Bessent has made the same promise, falsely saying in July that tariffs were “going to pay off our deficit”.

The treasury secretary said in August that he and Trump were “laser-focused on paying down the debt”.

“I think we’re going to bring down the deficit-to-GDP,” Bessent said in an August 19 CNBC interview. “We’ll start paying down debt and then, at a point, that can be used as an offset to the American people.”

Tariffs’ current cost to Americans 

Tariffs are already costing Americans money, analysts say. Independent estimates range from about $1,600 to $2,600 a year per household. Given the similarity of these amounts to Trump’s proposed dividend, York said it would be more efficient to remove the tariffs.

Joseph Rosenberg, Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Centre senior fellow, said a $2,000 dividend in the form of a cheque would require congressional approval – and lawmakers have already declined to act on that idea once.

When members of Congress approved the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, “They had the ability to include a tariff dividend, but they didn’t”, Rosenberg said.

US president demands ‘full and fair’ retraction of BBC documentary that prompted resignation of two top executives.

US President Donald Trump has threatened to sue the BBC for $1bn over an edited clip that has plunged the broadcaster into a public relations crisis and prompted the resignations of two top executives.

In a letter sent to the BBC, Trump’s legal team has demanded the retraction of “false, defamatory, disparaging, misleading, and inflammatory statements” contained in a Panorama documentary aired a week before the 2024 US presidential election.

The letter, written by Trump lawyer Alejandro Brito, gives the BBC until Friday to provide a “full and fair” retraction of the documentary and “appropriately compensate President Trump for the harm caused”, or face legal action in the US state of Florida.

“The BBC is on notice. PLEASE GOVERN YOURSELF ACCORDINGLY,” says the letter, which was widely circulated on social media.

The BBC did not immediately respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

The documentary, titled Trump: A Second Chance?, has been mired in controversy since the leak of an internal memo that criticised producers for editing Trump’s remarks to make it appear that he had directly encouraged the January 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol.

In the documentary, Trump is shown saying, “We fight like hell”, directly after telling supporters, “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol”.

Trump had actually followed his comments about going to the Capitol with a remark about cheering on “our brave senators and congressmen and women”, and made his “fight like hell” comment nearly an hour later.

The memo, written by Michael Prescott, a former adviser to the BBC’s standards committee, also accused the broadcaster of suppressing critical coverage of transgender issues and displaying anti-Israel bias within the BBC Arabic service.

The BBC’s director-general, Tim Davie, and its head of news, Deborah Turness, stepped down on Sunday amid the fallout of the controversy.

Trump welcomed the resignations in a post on Truth Social, accusing the BBC executives of being “corrupt” and “very dishonest people”.

BBC chair Samir Shah on Monday acknowledged that the clip was misleading and apologised for the “error of judgement”, but rejected claims that the broadcaster is institutionally biased.

Shah also said that the memo did not present “a full picture of the discussions, decisions and actions that were taken” by the standards board in response to concerns raised internally before the leak.

Trump’s legal threat is the latest in a flurry of actions he has taken to punish critical media.

Those moves include defamation claims against outlets including The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and ABC News, funding cuts at NPR and PBS, and the removal of Associated Press journalists from the White House press pool.

CAPE TOWN, South Africa — President Trump says that his government will boycott the Group of 20 summit this month in South Africa over his claims that a white minority group there is being violently persecuted. Those claims have been widely rejected.

Trump announced Friday on social media that no U.S. government official will attend the Nov. 22-23 summit in Johannesburg “as long as these Human Rights abuses continue.” South Africa’s Black-led government has been a regular target for Trump since he returned to office.

In February, Trump issued an executive order stopping U.S. financial assistance to South Africa, citing its treatment of the Afrikaner white minority. His administration has also prioritized Afrikaners for refugee status in the U.S. and says they will be given most of the 7,500 places available this fiscal year.

The South African government — and some Afrikaners themselves — say Trump’s claims of persecution are baseless.

Descendants of European settlers

Afrikaners are South Africans who are descended mainly from Dutch but also French and German colonial settlers who first came to the country in the 17th century.

Afrikaners were at the heart of the apartheid system of white minority rule from 1948-94, leading to decades of hostility between them and South Africa’s Black majority. But Afrikaners are not a homogenous group, and some fought against apartheid. There are an estimated 2.7 million Afrikaners in South Africa’s population of 62 million.

Afrikaners are divided over Trump’s claims. Some say they face discrimination, but a group of leading Afrikaner business figures and academics said in an open letter last month that “the narrative that casts Afrikaners as victims of racial persecution in post-apartheid South Africa” is misleading.

Afrikaners’ Dutch-derived language is widely spoken in South Africa and is one of the country’s 12 official languages. Afrikaners are represented in every aspect of society. Afrikaners are some of South Africa’s richest entrepreneurs and some of its most successful sports stars, and also serve in government. Most are largely committed to South Africa’s multiracial democracy.

Trump claims they’re being ‘killed and slaughtered’

Trump asserted that Afrikaners “are being killed and slaughtered, and their land and farms are being illegally confiscated.” The president’s comments are in reference to a relatively small number of attacks on Afrikaner farmers that he and others claim are racially motivated.

Trump has also pointed to a highly contentious law introduced by the South African government that allows land to be appropriated from private owners without compensation. Some Afrikaners fear that law is aimed at removing them from their land in favor of South Africa’s poor Black majority. Many South Africans, including opposition parties, have criticized the law, but it hasn’t led to land confiscations.

Trump first made baseless claims of widespread killing of white South African farmers and land seizures during his first term in response to allegations aired on conservative media personality Tucker Carlson’s former show on Fox News. Trump ordered then-U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to look into the allegations, but nothing came of any investigation.

South Africa rejects the claims

The South African government said in response to Trump’s social media post that his claims were “not substantiated by fact.” It has said that Trump’s criticism of South Africa over Afrikaners is a result of misinformation because it misses the context that Black farmers and farmworkers are also killed in rural attacks, which make up a tiny percentage of the country’s high violent crime rate.

There were more than 26,000 homicides in South Africa in 2024. Of those, 37 were farm murders, according to an Afrikaner lobby group that tracks them. Experts on rural attacks in South Africa have said the overriding motive for the violent farm invasions is robbery, not race.

Other pressure on South Africa

Trump said it is a “total disgrace” that the G-20 summit — a meeting of the leaders of the 19 top rich and developing economies, the European Union and the African Union — is being held in South Africa. He had already said he wouldn’t attend, and Vice President JD Vance was due to go in his place. The U.S. will take on the rotating presidency of the G-20 after South Africa.

Trump also said in a speech last week that South Africa should be thrown out of the G-20.

Trump’s criticism of Africa’s most developed economy has gone beyond the issue of Afrikaners. His executive order in February said South Africa had taken “aggressive positions towards the United States and its allies,” specifically with its decision to accuse Israel of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza at the United Nations’ top court.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio boycotted a G-20 foreign ministers meeting in South Africa in February after deriding the host country’s G-20 slogan of “solidarity, equality and sustainability” as “DEI and climate change.”

Imray writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — President Trump hosted Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa at the White House on Monday, welcoming his once-pariah state into a U.S.-led global coalition to fight the Islamic State group.

Al-Sharaa arrived at the White House around 11:30 a.m. and shortly after began his Oval Office meeting, which remained closed to the press. The Syrian president entered the building through West Executive Avenue, adjacent to the White House, rather than on the West Wing driveway normally used for foreign leaders’ arrivals. He left the White House about two hours later and greeted a throng of supporters gathered outside before getting into his motorcade.

“We’ll do everything we can to make Syria successful because that’s part of the Middle East,” Trump told reporters later Monday. The U.S. president said of Al-Sharaa that “I have confidence that he’ll be able to do the job.”

Syria’s foreign ministry, in a statement, described the meeting as “friendly and constructive.”

Trump “affirmed the readiness of the United States to provide the support that the Syrian leadership needs to ensure the success of the reconstruction and development process,” the statement said.

It added that U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio had then met with Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shibani and Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, who arrived in Washington on Monday, and that they agreed to proceed with implementing an agreement reached in March between Damascus and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces to integrate the SDF into the new Syrian army. Implementation of the deal has repeatedly stalled amid tensions between the two sides. It was unclear what concrete steps were agreed upon in Monday’s meeting.

The statement said the “American side also affirmed its support for reaching a security agreement with Israel,” but it did not say how Syria had responded.

Al-Sharaa’s visit was the first to the White House by a Syrian head of state since the Middle Eastern country gained independence from France in 1946 and comes after the U.S. lifted sanctions imposed on Syria during the decades the country was ruled by the Assad family. Al-Sharaa led the rebel forces that toppled Syrian President Bashar Assad last December and was named the country’s interim leader in January.

Trump and Al-Sharaa — who once had ties to Al Qaeda and had a $10-million U.S. bounty on his head — first met in May in Saudi Arabia. At the time, the U.S. president described Al-Sharaa as a “young, attractive guy. Tough guy. Strong past, very strong past. Fighter.” It was the first official encounter between the U.S. and Syria since 2000, when then-President Clinton met with Hafez Assad, the father of Bashar Assad.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Monday’s visit is “part of the president’s efforts in diplomacy to meet with anyone around the world in the pursuit of peace.”

One official with knowledge of the administration’s plans said Syria’s entry into the global coalition fighting Islamic State will allow it to work more closely with U.S. forces, although the new Syrian military and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in the country’s northeast had already been fighting the group.

Before Al-Sharaa’s arrival in the U.S., the United Nations Security Council voted to lift sanctions on the Syrian president and other government officials in a move that the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Mike Waltz, said was a strong sign that Syria is in a new era since the fall of Assad.

Al-Sharaa came to the meeting with his own priorities. He wants a permanent repeal of sanctions that punished Syria for widespread allegations of human rights abuses by Assad’s government and security forces. While the Caesar Act sanctions are currently waived by Trump, a permanent repeal would require Congress to act.

One option is a proposal from Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, that would end the sanctions without any conditions. The other was drafted by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a hawkish Trump ally who wants to set conditions for a sanctions repeal that would be reviewed every six months.

But advocates argue that any repeal with conditions would prevent companies from investing in Syria because they would fear potentially being sanctioned. Mouaz Moustafa, executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, likened it to a “hanging shadow that paralyzes any initiatives for our country.”

The Treasury Department said Monday that the Caesar Act waiver was extended for another 180 days.

Kim writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Abby Sewell in Beirut and Fatima Hussein and Konstantin Toropin in Washington contributed to this report.

Nov. 10 (UPI) — The Trump administration is working on a plan to introduce a 50-year fixed-rate mortgage with the goal of making homeownership more affordable for millions of Americans, as some analysts warn of hidden costs.

Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte confirmed the report, saying the proposed 50-year loan would lower monthly payments to bring more buyers into the housing market.

“Thanks to President Trump, we are indeed working on The 50-year Mortgage — a complete game changer,” Pulte wrote Saturday in a post on X. Trump has compared the plan to the 30-year mortgage from President Franklin D. Roosevelt‘s New Deal.

“We hear you. We are laser focused on ensuring the American Dream for young people and that can only happen on the economic level of home buying,” Pulte added. “A 50-year mortgage is simply a potential weapon in a wide arsenal of solutions that we are developing right now: stay tuned.”

The housing market has grown stagnate over the past three years as younger Americans are unable to afford the payments that come with a 30-year fixed rate at more than 6% interest. To add to that, inventory is depleted as homeowners are locked in to their houses with the lower interest rates of the COVID-19 economy.

Both Pulte and Trump have blamed Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell for hiking interest rates to curb inflation and then keeping rates “artificially high.”

While a 50-year mortgage would lower monthly payments, it would also prevent homeowners from building equity as quickly. Over the life of the loan, the amount of interest paid to lenders would be 40% higher, according to analysts who also warn about the need for congressional approval.

“Fannie and Freddie could establish a secondary market for 50-year mortgages in advance of policy changes. They even could buy mortgages for their retained portfolios,” Jaret Seiberg, a financial services and housing policy analyst at TD Cowen, wrote in a note to clients.

“Yet this would not alter the legal liability for lenders. It is why we believe lenders will not originate 50-year mortgages absent qualified mortgage policy changes,” Seiberg said, adding congressional approval could take up to a year to meet the definition of a qualified mortgage under the Dodd-Frank Act.

WASHINGTON — President Trump has pardoned his former personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, his onetime chief of staff Mark Meadows and others accused of backing the Republican’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

The “full, complete, and unconditional” pardon for dozens of Trump allies are largely symbolic. It applies only to federal crimes, and none of the people named in the proclamation were charged federally over the bid to subvert the election won by Democrat Joe Biden. It doesn’t affect state charges, though state prosecutions stemming from the 2020 election have hit a dead end or are just limping along.

The move, however, underscores Trump’s continued efforts to promote the idea that the 2020 election was stolen from him even though courts around the country and Trump’s own attorney general at the time found no evidence of fraud that could have affected the outcome. Reviews, recounts and audits of the election in the battleground states where Trump contested his loss also affirmed Biden’s victory.

Trump’s recent action follows the sweeping pardons of the hundreds of Trump supporters charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, including those convicted of attacking law enforcement.

Ed Martin, the Department of Justice’s point person on pardons and a former lawyer for the Jan. 6 defendants, linked his announcement of the pardons to a post on X that read “No MAGA left behind.”

Dozens of Trump allies received pardons

Among those also pardoned were Sidney Powell, an attorney who promoted baseless conspiracy theories about a stolen election, John Eastman, another lawyer who pushed a plan to keep Trump in power, and Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official who championed Trump’s efforts to challenge his election loss.

Also named were Republicans who acted as fake electors for Trump and were charged in state cases accusing them of submitting false certificates that confirmed they were legitimate electors despite Biden’s victory in those states.

The proclamation explicitly says the pardon does not apply to the president himself, who has continued to repeat the lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him, used that falsehood to argue for sweeping changes in the way the country votes and demanded his Department of Justice investigate the vote count that led to his loss.

The pardon described efforts to prosecute the Trump allies as “a grave national injustice perpetrated on the American people” and said the pardons were designed to continue “the process of national reconciliation.” Giuliani and others have denied any wrongdoing, arguing they were simply challenging an election they believed was tainted by fraud.

“These great Americans were persecuted and put through hell by the Biden Administration for challenging an election, which is the cornerstone of democracy,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in an emailed statement.

Those pardoned were not prosecuted by the Biden administration, however. They were charged only by state prosecutors who operate separately from the Justice Department.

An Associated Press investigation after the 2020 election found 475 cases of potential voter fraud across the six battleground states, far too few to change the outcome.

Impact of the pardons is limited

Giuliani, a former New York City mayor, was one of the most vocal supporters of Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of large-scale voter fraud after the 2020 election. He also is an example of the limited impact of the pardons.

Giuliani has been disbarred in Washington, D.C., and New York over his advocacy of Trump’s bogus election claims and lost a $148-million defamation case brought by two former Georgia election workers whose lives were upended by conspiracy theories he pushed. Since pardons only absolve people from legal responsibility for federal crimes, they’re unlikely to ease Giuliani’s legal woes.

Ted Goodman, a spokesperson for Giuliani, said the former mayor “never sought a pardon but is deeply grateful for President Trump’s decision.”

“Mayor Rudy Giuliani stands by his work following the 2020 presidential election, when he responded to the legitimate concerns of thousands of everyday Americans,” Goodman said in an emailed statement.

While the pardons may have no immediate legal impact, experts warned they send a dangerous message for future elections.

“It is a complete abdication of the responsibility of the federal government to ensure we don’t have future attempts to overturn elections,” said Rick Hasen, a UCLA law professor. “Ultimately, the message it sends is, ‘We’ll take care of you when the time comes.’”

Some pardoned were co-conspirators in Trump’s federal case

Trump himself was indicted on federal felony charges accusing him of working to overturn his 2020 election defeat, but the case brought by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith was abandoned in November after Trump’s victory over Democrat Kamala Harris because of the department’s policy against prosecuting sitting presidents. Giuliani, Powell, Eastman and Clark were alleged co-conspirators in the federal case brought against Trump but were never charged with federal crimes.

Giuliani, Meadows and others named in the proclamation had been charged by prosecutors in Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin over the 2020 election, but the cases have repeatedly hit roadblocks or have been dismissed. A judge in September dismissed the Michigan case against 15 Republicans accused of attempting to falsely certify Trump as the winner of the election in that battleground state.

Eastman, a former dean of Chapman University Fowler School of Law in Southern California, was a close adviser to Trump in the wake of the 2020 election and wrote a memo laying out steps Vice President Mike Pence could take to stop the counting of electoral votes while presiding over Congress’ joint session on Jan. 6 to keep Trump in office.

Clark, who is now overseeing a federal regulatory office, also is facing possible disbarment in Washington over his advocacy of Trump’s claims. Clark clashed with Justice Department superiors over a letter he drafted after the 2020 election that said the department was investigating “various irregularities” and had identified “significant concerns” that may have affected the election in Georgia and other states.

Clark said in a social media post Monday that he “did nothing wrong” and “shouldn’t have had to battle this witch hunt for 4+ years.”

Richer writes for the Associated Press. AP reporter Nicholas Riccardi in Denver contributed to this report.

Nov. 10 (UPI) — Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa will meet with President Donald Trump Monday in the White House.

Al-Sharaa, who was affiliated with al-Qaida, was labeled an international terrorist by the United States until Friday and had a $10 million bounty on his head.

On Friday, the State Department said that Sharaa and Syrian Interior Minister Anas Khattab would be removed from the list of terrorists.

“These actions are being taken in recognition of the progress demonstrated by the Syrian leadership after the departure of Bashar al-Assad and more than 50 years of repression under the Assad regime,” the State Department’s press release said.

“This new Syrian government, led by President al-Sharaa, is working hard to locate missing Americans, fulfill its commitments on countering terrorism and narcotics, eliminating any remnants of chemical weapons, and promoting regional security and stability as well as an inclusive, Syrian-led and Syrian-owned political process.”

Sharaa was formerly known by an assumed name, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani. He once led the militant group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, which cut ties with al-Qaida in 2017.

Sharaa is likely to ask Trump to lift sanctions against the Assad government and to join the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State. Removing the sanctions will allow Syria to get international finance to rebuild after the devastating civil war.

The Syrian leader met Trump in Saudi Arabia in May, and Trump told him he would get the sanctions lifted.

“Tough guy,” Trump said of Sharaa after the meeting. “Very strong past. Fighter.”

Critics of Sharaa’s government have cited recent acts of violence in the country. In July, about 37 people were killed in sectarian violence. A few days later, Israel attacked Damacus and killed about three people and wounded 34 others. Israel claimed it attacked to protect the Druze, a Syrian Arab minority.

In June, a suicide bombing killed 20 people at a Damascus church.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said it has registered 35,000 cases of people missing in Syria in the past 13 years. Syria’s Network for Human Rights put the number of Syrians “in forced disappearance” at 80,000 to 85,000 killed under torture in Assad’s detention centers.

Only 33,000 detainees have been found and freed from Syria’s prisons since Assad’s ouster, according to the human rights network. American journalist Austin Tice, who was detained by the Assad regime in 2012, has still not been found.

Donald Trump has branded the BBC ‘100% fake news’ but Keir Starmer has backed the Corporation for being ‘internationally renowned’ and rejected the accusation that it’s journalists were ‘corrupt’

Donald Trump has threatened to sue the BBC over its editing of his Capitol Hill speech from 2021, as the government yesterday defended the corporation in the wake of the resignations of two top bosses. Amid the fallout from the exits of director general Tim Davie and BBC News boss Deborah Turness, the BBC yesterday confirmed it had received the letter threatening legal action from the US President and would respond in due course.

And Trump’s claim that the BBC has “corrupt journalists” was rejected by Keir Starmer as Downing Street threw its weight behind the BBC, describing it as an “internationally renowned” institution.

The developments came as BBC Chair Samir Shah finally apologised over the BBC Panorama in which two bits of a speech from Trump were edited together in a way which made him appear to support the rioters. This move has allowed Trump’s press secretary to accuse the BBC of being “100% fake news” and brand it a “propoganda machine”.

READ MORE: Strictly Come Dancing in huge show first with Britain’s Got Talent link-upREAD MORE: Alan Carr lined up for two major TV roles after Celebrity Traitors win

Shah’s apology, contained in a letter to culture, media and sport select committee chair Caroline Dinenage, said the BBC regretted its “error of judgement” that resulted in a misleading edit of a Donald Trump speech.

It came after a week of silence from the BBC, which claimed it did not comment on leaked documents. This seemingly prevented it from either defending its journalism or apologising for any mistake made, leaving many supporters baffled.

The row erupted a week ago with the publication of a leaked memo from Michael Prescott, a former political journalist who spent three years as an external adviser to the BBC, in which he made many complaints about issues that he claimed were not being sufficiently dealt with, notably on its coverage of the Gaza conflict and around trans issues.

But in his letter yesterday, Shah insisted that it was “simply not true” to say the BBC had done nothing to tackle the problems raised and he also defended the BBC against claims of systemic bias.

The chairman said the edit had initially been cleared to “convey the message of the speech” made by Trump, so that Panorama viewers would “better understand” how it was received by the president’s supporters, and what was happening on the ground at that time.

The edit, which drew no complaints at the time of broadcast, had been discussed by the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines and Standards Committee (EGSC) in both January and May this year. He said that while it was discussed as part of a wider review of the US election coverage, hindsight had shown “it would have been better to take more formal action”.

He said that reports suggesting Prescott had “uncovered” a list of stories and issues that the BBC have sought to “bury” were “simply not true,” explaining: “The issues raised by Mr Prescott are precisely the issues that have been considered by the EGSC and the Board.”

The chairman said it was also misleading to suggest that the BBC has done nothing to tackle these problems.”That is also simply not true,” he wrote. “Over the three years Mr Prescott was an advisor to the EGSC, the BBC has: published corrections where we have got things wrong; changed editorial guidance to make the BBC’s position on issues clearer; made changes to leadership where the problems point to underlying issues; and carried out formal disciplinary measures.”

He said it was important to remember the thousands of hours of “outstanding journalism” produced by the BBC on TV, radio and digitally, calling for “a sense of perspective” to be maintained.

Speaking to reporters yesterday, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: “On the question of is the BBC corrupt? No. The BBC has a vital role in an age of disinformation… where there’s a clear argument for a robust, impartial British news service to deliver, and that case is stronger than ever.”

Asked if Mr Starmer believed the BBC was institutionally biased, the spokesman replied: “No, but it is important that the BBC acts to maintain trust and correct mistakes quickly when they occur, because as I say, for any public service broadcaster, accountability is vital to maintain trust.”

Elsewhere, ex-PM Gordon Brown told Sky News an “immediate” apology from the BBC over the Trump speech could have swerved the need for resignations. “I think the problem that the BBC has had is that this happened a year ago,” he said. “An apology should have been made instantly. If a mistake has been made, you’ve got to apologise instantly.”

As many media commentators and BBC alumni rushed to either defend or denigrate the BBC, there were also claims of a “coup” from within the BBC board.

David Yelland, a former editor of The Sun who now presents a podcast for the BBC, said: “It was a coup and, worse than that, it was an inside job. There were people inside the BBC – very close to the board, on the board – who have systematically undermined Tim Davie and his senior team. This has been going on for a long time. What happened yesterday didn’t happen in isolation.”

He added: “There is a reason that the BBC is the most trusted news organisation in the world – look at who is celebrating this morning, including the president of the United States. This is not a good day and I do think there was a failure of governance.”

Radio 4 presenter Nick Robinson, a former political editor for BBC News, declared that forces were at work to try and bring down the BBC. “It’s clear that there is a genuine concern about editorial standards and mistakes,” he said on Today. “There is also a political campaign by people who want to destroy the organisation. Both things are happening at the same time.”

He said the BBC had appeared “paralysed” for the past week – “unable to agree what to say not just about the editing of Donald Trump’s speech by Panorama but also wider claims of institutional bias”.

Former 5 Live Breakfast Show host Shelagh Fogarty now works in commercial radio but says the BBC needs defending. “We need the BBC as part of a broader economy in news media. I worked there for 25 years and can see its rigour has been eroded. The practice of impartiality is its highest aim. Fix that and state facts.”

But Nigel Farage seized on the crisis, claiming the BBC “has been institutionally biased for decades” as he appeared at a press conference in central London. The Reform leader said: “I actually spoke to the president on Friday. He just said to me: ‘Is this how you treat your best ally?’ It’s quite a powerful comment.”

Former Radio 4 presenter Libby Purves said that she was “glad” to see Turness had been “binned” from her job at the helm of BBC News and claimed the Trump edit should never have happened. “The trans bias is irritating and the Arabic service a problem, but what viscerally distressed us ancient BBC newsfolk was the Trump edit,” she posted on social media. “As a reporter, spent years editing tape and being vv careful NOT to risk traducing even horrible people.”

And Charles Moore, chair of The Spectator, argued that the BBC’s views were “always from a metropolitan left position”. He added: “That means it’s not serving a very large percentage of the licence fee payers. I’m not, of course, saying it should be right wing either, I’m saying it should take impartiality seriously.”

Former Radio 4 controller Mark Damazer said he felt “sad” that Davie had resigned as a result of the latest controversy, describing him as an “outstanding” director general. “I don’t agree that the BBC is systemically biased and that it is basted in a culture which means that its journalism can’t be trusted. I think that’s absolutely wrong,” he said. “The overwhelming majority is excellent and it doesn’t happen by accident. I am here to say that the BBC is an outstanding and excellent exponent of impartial journalism and it needs to be defended.”

Emily Thornberry, chairwoman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, agreed: “Across the world, the BBC is recognised as the best source of impartial news reporting. “It’s not perfect, because nothing made by people ever is. However, in these days of deliberate lies, manipulation & populism, it’s a beacon of truth. Britain should be proud of it.”

Caroline Dinenage said that Davie’s decision to quit came down to “editorial failure”, listing other recent mistakes including Bob Vylan at Glastonbury, misconduct by Gregg Wallace on MasterChef, and editorial failings in the doc Gaza: How To Survive a War Zone.

“There seems to be a muscle memory at the BBC as to how to badly respond to any kind of editorial crisis or scandal,” she complained. “The BBC seems to have dropped the ball at every opportunity. That is not a board-level problem, that is an institutional problem.”

Like this story? For more of the latest showbiz news and gossip, follow Mirror Celebs on TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Threads.

Democrats just crumbled like soft-bake cookies.

The so-called resistance party has given up the shutdown fight, ensuring that millions of Americans will face Republican-created skyrocketing healthcare costs, and millions more will bury any hope that the minority party will find the substance and leadership to run a viable defense against Trump.

Sunday night, eight turncoat Democrats sold out every American who pays for their own health insurance through the affordable marketplaces set up by President Obama.

As has been thoroughly reported in past weeks, Republicans are dead set on making sure that insurance is entirely out of financial reach for many Americans by refusing to help them pay for the premiums with subsidies that are part of current law, offered to both low- and middle-income families.

Republicans — for reasons hard to fathom other than they hate Obama, and apparently basics such as flu shots — have long desired to kill the ACA and now are on the brink of doing so, in spirit if not actuality, thanks to Democrats.

Trump must be doing his old-man jig in the Oval Office.

The pain this craven cave-in will cause is already evident. Rates for 2026 without the government subsidies have been announced, and premiums have doubled on average, according to nonpartisan health policy researchers KFF. Doubled.

Insurance companies are planning on raising their rates by about 18%, already devastating and symptomatic of the need for a total overhaul of our messed-up system. That increase, coupled with the loss of the subsidies beginning at the start of next year, means a 114% jump in costs for the folks dependent on this insurance. Premiums that cost an average $888 in 2025 will jump to $1,904 in 2026, according to KFF.

But it’s the middle-income people who will really be hit.

“On average, a 60-year-old couple making $85,000 … would see yearly premium payments rise by over $22,600 in 2026,” KFF warns, meaning that instead of paying 8.5% of their entire income toward health insurance, it will now jump to about 25%.

Merry Christmas, America.

While the eight Democrats who broke from their party to allow this to happen are directly responsible (thankfully our California senators are not among them), Democratic leadership should also be held accountable.

A party that can’t keep itself together on the really big votes isn’t a party. It’s a a bunch of people that occasionally have lunch together. Literally, they had one job: Stick together.

The failure of Democratic leadership to make sure its Senate votes didn’t shatter in this intense moment isn’t just shameful, it’s depressing. For all of the condemnation of the Republican members of Congress for failing to uphold their duty to be a check on the power of the presidency, here’s the opposition party rolling over belly up on the pivotal issue of healthcare.

As California Rep. Ro Khanna put it on social media, “Senator Schumer is no longer effective and should be replaced. If you can’t lead the fight to stop healthcare premiums from skyrocketing for Americans, what will you fight for?”

If the recent elections had any lessons in them, it’s that Democrats — and voters in general — want courage. Love or hate Zohran Mamdani, his win as New York City mayor was due in no small part for daring to forge his own path. Ditto on Gov. Gavin Newsom and Proposition 50.

Mamdani put that sentiment best in his victory speech, promising an age when people can “expect from their leaders a bold vision of what we will achieve, rather than a list of excuses for what we are too timid to attempt.”

Before you start angry-emailing me, yes, I do understand how much pain the shutdown in causing, especially for furloughed workers and those about to see their SNAP benefits cut off. I feel for every person who doesn’t know how they will pay their bills.

But here are the facts that we can’t forget. Republicans have purposefully made that pain intense in order to break Democrats. Trump has found ways to pay his deportation agents, while simultaneously not paying critical workers such as airport screeners and air traffic controllers, where the chaos created by their absence is both visible and disruptive. He has also threatened to not give back pay to some of those folks when this does end.

And on the give-in-or-don’t-eat front, he’s actually been ordered by courts to pay those SNAP benefits and is fighting it. Republicans could easy band together and demand that money goes out while the rest is hashed out, but they don’t want to. They want people to go hungry so that Democrats will break, and it worked.

But at what cost?

About 24 million people will be hit by these premium increases, leaving up to 4 million unable to keep their insurance. Unable to go to the doctor for routine care. Unable to pay for cancer treatments. Unable to have that lump, that pain, the broken bone looked at. Unable to get their kid a flu shot.

In many ways, this isn’t a California problem. The majority of these folks are in southern, Republican states that refused to expand Medicaid when they had the chance. About 6 in 10 subsidy recipients are represented by Republicans, according to KFF, led by those living in Florida, Georgia and Mississippi. But Americans have been clear that we want access to care for all of us, as a right, not an expensive privilege.

Which makes it all the more mystifying that Democrats are so eager to give up, on an issue that unites voters across parties, across demographics, across our seemingly endless divides.

But I guess that’s just how the cookie crumbles.

Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth says attacks take place in international waters amid mounting criticism against US campaign.

The United States has carried out another set of military strikes against what it says are drug boats in international waters headed to the country.

Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth said on Monday that the US military targeted two vessels in the eastern Pacific Ocean on Sunday, killing six people.

“These vessels were known by our intelligence to be associated with illicit narcotics smuggling, were carrying narcotics, and were transiting along a known narco-trafficking transit route in the Eastern Pacific,” he wrote in a social media post.

“Both strikes were conducted in international waters, and three male narco-terrorists were aboard each vessel. All six were killed. No US forces were harmed.”

The administration of President Donald Trump has faced mounting criticism over such attacks, including accusations of violating domestic and international law.

But Washington appears to be stepping up the campaign. Sunday’s deadly double attack was the fourth this month. Previous strikes in the Pacific and Caribbean Sea killed at least eight people, according to US authorities.

The Trump administration started targeting boats in the Caribbean in September and later expanded its military push to the Pacific Ocean.

The US has carried out 18 strikes on vessels so far, killing dozens of people.

Last month, United Nations rights chief Volker Turk said the US attacks have no justification under international law.

“These attacks – and their mounting human cost – are unacceptable,” Turk said. “The US must halt such attacks and take all measures necessary to prevent the extrajudicial killing of people aboard these boats, whatever the criminal conduct alleged against them.”

The US has described the attacks as “counterterrorism” operations after having designated drug cartels as “terrorists”.

“Under President Trump, we are protecting the homeland and killing these cartel terrorists who wish to harm our country and its people,” Hegseth said on Monday.

Other than grainy footage showing the strikes, the Trump administration has not provided concrete proof that the vessels targeted were carrying drugs.

Trump himself has previously joked that fishermen are now afraid to operate in the Caribbean off the coast of Venezuela.

Critics have questioned why US authorities would not monitor the boats and intercept them when they enter the country’s territorial waters instead of extrajudicially executing the suspects.

The strikes have sparked regional tensions, particularly with Venezuela, with Trump accusing its president, Nicolas Maduro, of links to “narcoterrorists”.

The ramped-up US military campaign near Venezuela has raised speculation that Washington may be preparing for conflict in the oil-rich South American country.

This month, Trump suggested that war with Venezuela is unlikely but said Maduro’s days are numbered.

LONDON — The BBC reported Monday that President Trump sent a letter threatening legal action over the way a speech he made was edited in a documentary aired by the British broadcaster.

The BBC’s top executive and its head of news both quit Sunday over accusations of bias and misleading editing of a speech Trump delivered on Jan. 6, 2021, before a crowd of his supporters stormed the Capitol in Washington.

Asked about a letter from Trump threatening legal action over the incident, the BBC said in a statement on Monday that “we will review the letter and respond directly in due course.” It did not provide further details.

Earlier, Trump welcomed the resignations of BBC Director-General Tim Davie and news chief Deborah Turness, saying the way his speech was edited was an attempt to “step on the scales of a Presidential Election.”

The hourlong documentary — titled “Trump: A Second Chance?” — was broadcast as part of the BBC’s “Panorama” series days before the 2024 U.S. presidential election. It spliced together three quotes from two sections of the 2021 speech, delivered almost an hour apart, into what appeared to be one quote in which Trump urged supporters to march with him and “fight like hell.” Among the parts cut out was a section where Trump said he wanted supporters to demonstrate peacefully.

In a resignation letter to staff, Davie said: “There have been some mistakes made and as director-general I have to take ultimate responsibility.”

Turness said the controversy was damaging the BBC, and she quit “because the buck stops with me.”

Turness defended the organization’s journalists against allegations of bias.

“Our journalists are hardworking people who strive for impartiality, and I will stand by their journalism,” she said Monday. “There is no institutional bias. Mistakes are made, but there’s no institutional bias.”

BBC chairman Samir Shah apologized Monday for the broadcaster’s “error of judgment,” saying the broadcaster “accept[s] that the way the speech was edited did give the impression of a direct call for violent action.”

Trump posted a link to a Daily Telegraph story about the speech-editing on his Truth Social network, thanking the newspaper “for exposing these Corrupt ‘Journalists.’ These are very dishonest people who tried to step on the scales of a Presidential Election.” He called that “a terrible thing for Democracy!”

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt reacted on X, posting a screen grab of an article headlined “Trump goes to war with ‘fake news’ BBC” beside another about Davie’s resignation, with the words “shot” and “chaser.”

Trump speech edited

Pressure on the broadcaster’s top executives has been growing since the right-leaning Daily Telegraph published parts of a dossier compiled by Michael Prescott, who had been hired to advise the BBC on standards and guidelines.

As well as the Trump edit, it criticized the BBC’s coverage of transgender issues and raised concerns of anti-Israel bias in the BBC’s Arabic service.

The “Panorama” episode showed an edited clip from the January 2021 speech in which Trump claimed the 2020 presidential election had been rigged. Trump is shown saying: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.”

According to video and a transcript from Trump’s comments that day, he said:  “I’ll be there with you, we’re going to walk down, we’re going to walk down. Anyone you want, but I think right here, we’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them.

“Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated.

“I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”

Trump used the “fight like hell” phrase toward the end of the speech, but without referencing the Capitol.

“We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” Trump said.

In a letter to Parliament’s Culture, Media and Sport Committee, Shah said the purpose of editing Trump’s words had been “to convey the message of the speech” so that viewers could understand how it had been received by Trump’s supporters and what was happening on the ground.

He said the program had not attracted “significant audience feedback” when it first aired but had drawn more than 500 complaints since Prescott’s dossier was made public.

Shah acknowledged in a BBC interview that “it would have been better to have acted earlier. But we didn’t.”

A national institution

The 103-year-old BBC faces greater scrutiny than other broadcasters — and criticism from its commercial rivals — because of its status as a national institution funded through an annual license fee of 174.50 pounds ($230) paid by all households who watch live TV or any BBC content.

The broadcaster is bound by the terms of its charter to be impartial, and critics are quick to point out when they think it has failed. It’s frequently a political football, with conservatives seeing a leftist slant in its news output and some liberals accusing it of having a conservative bias.

It has also been criticized from all angles over its coverage of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. In February, the BBC removed a documentary about Gaza from its streaming service after it emerged that the child narrator was the son of an official in the Hamas-led government.

Governments of both left and right have long been accused of meddling with the broadcaster, which is overseen by a board that includes both BBC nominees and government appointees.

Some defenders of the BBC allege that members of the board appointed under previous Conservative governments have been undermining the corporation from within.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s spokesman, Tom Wells, said the center-left Labor Party government supports “a strong, independent BBC” and doesn’t think the broadcaster is biased.

“But it is important that the BBC acts to maintain trust and corrects mistakes quickly when they occur,” he said.

Lawless writes for the Associated Press.

States administering a federal food aid program serving about 42 million Americans faced uncertainty Monday over whether they can — and should — provide full monthly benefits during an ongoing legal battle involving the U.S. government shutdown.

President Donald Trump’s administration over the weekend demanded that states “undo” full benefits that were paid under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program during a one-day window between when a federal judge ordered full funding and a Supreme Court justice put a temporary pause on that order.

A federal appeals court in Boston left the full benefits order in place on Sunday, though the Supreme Court order ensures the government won’t have to pay out for at least 48 hours. The Trump administration is also expected to ask the justices to step in again, and Congress is considering whether to fund SNAP as part of a proposal to end the government shutdown.

Some states are warning of “catastrophic operational disruptions” if the Trump administration does not reimburse them for those SNAP benefits they already authorized. Meanwhile, other states are providing partial monthly SNAP benefits with federal money or using their own funds to load electronic benefit cards for SNAP recipients.

Millions receive aid while others wait

Trump’s administration initially said SNAP benefits would not be available in November because of the government shutdown. After some states and nonprofit groups sued, two judges each ruled the administration could not skip November’s benefits entirely.

The administration then said it would use an emergency reserve fund to provide 65% of the maximum monthly benefit. On Thursday, U.S. District Judge John J. McConnell said that wasn’t good enough, and ordered full funding for SNAP benefits by Friday.

Some states acted quickly to direct their EBT vendors to disburse full monthly benefits to SNAP recipients. Millions of people in those states received funds to buy groceries before Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson put McConnell’s order on hold Friday night, pending further deliberation by an appeals court.

Millions more people still have not received SNAP payments for November, because their states were waiting on further guidance from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers SNAP.

Trump’s administration has argued that the judicial order to provide full benefits violates the Constitution by infringing on the spending power of the legislative and executive branches.

States are fighting attempt to freeze SNAP benefits

On Sunday, the Trump administration said states had moved too quickly and erroneously released full SNAP benefits after last week’s rulings.

“States must immediately undo any steps taken to issue full SNAP benefits for November 2025,” Patrick Penn, deputy undersecretary of Agriculture, wrote to state SNAP directors. He warned that states could face penalties if they did not comply.

Wisconsin, which was among the first to load full benefits after McConnell’s order, had its federal reimbursement frozen. As a result, the state’s SNAP account could be depleted as soon Monday, leaving no money to reimburse stores that sell food to SNAP recipients, according to a court filing submitted by those that had sued.

Some Democratic governors vowed to challenge any federal attempt to claw back money.

In Connecticut, Democratic Gov. Ned Lamont said “those who received their benefits should not worry about losing them.”

“No, Connecticut does not need to take back SNAP benefits already sent to the 360,000 people who depend on them for food and who should have never been caught in the middle of this political fight,” Lamont said. “We have their back.”

Lieb and Mulvihill write for the Associated Press. Associated Press writers Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin; John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas; and Nicholas Riccardi in Denver contributed to this report.

Donald Trump

Former President Donald Trump is pictured in this photo provided by the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office in Atlanta on August 24, 2023. Trump surrendered on a 13-count indictment for efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia. Photo courtesy of Fulton County Sheriff’s Office/UPI | License Photo

Nov. 10 (UPI) — President Donald Trump is pardoning Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and dozens of other allies who have been accused of trying to subvert the 2020 election, according to U.S. Pardon Attorney Ed Martin.

The list of 77 people pardoned by Trump was published late Sunday on Martin’s personal X account.

“No MAGA left behind,” he said.

The proclamation signed by Trump was dated Friday.

“This proclamation ends a grave national injustice perpetrated upon the American people following the 2020 presidential election and continues the process of national reconciliation,” the document states.

Those pardoned were tied to efforts to overturn the 2020 election, including participation in what has become known as the fake electors scheme. The strategy involved the creation of false slates of pro-Trump electors in every battleground state that he lost to Biden, including Georgia.

Among those pardoned were four of Trump’s 17 co-defendants in a case concerning the effort in Georgia, including Kenneth Chesebro, the alleged architect of the scheme. Powell, Scott Hall and Jenna Ellis were the other three.

Trump, who was among those charged in Georgia, was specifically not granted a pardon.

“This pardon does not apply to the president of the United States,” the document states.

Others granted pardons include Mark Meadows, Trump’s former chief of staff during his first term, and former Trump adviser John Eastman.

On his first day of his second term in office in January, Trump issued pardons and commutations of sentences for more than 1,500 people convicted for their participation in the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, including those who injured police officers.

He has also issued pardons to former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, convicted on corruption charges, former Hunter Biden business partner Devon Archer and former Las Vegas City Council member Michele Fiore.