Trumps

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.

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.

About 200 Hamas fighters remain trapped in Rafah tunnels as Israel refuses to grant them passage, threatening the truce.

US mediator Jared Kushner has met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss the fragile US-backed ceasefire in Gaza.

Kushner, the son-in-law of US President Donald Trump who helped broker the agreement, met Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Monday as part of US efforts to stabilise the tenuous truce.

The meeting comes a month after Washington and regional powers pushed Israel to agree to a ceasefire. The truce has partly halted two years of Israeli bombardment, which levelled much of Gaza and killed more than 69,000 people, mostly women and children, according to Palestinian authorities.

The talks focused on some of the most contentious elements of Trump’s 20-point plan to end Israel’s two-year war on the Palestinian territory, according to Israeli government spokeswoman Shosh Bedrosian.

The officials discussed plans for the disarmament of Hamas, the deployment of international security forces and the establishment of a technocratic government in the territory that excludes Hamas, she said.

Hamas has repeatedly insisted that relinquishing its weapons is a red line.

Addressing Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, Netanyahu promised that Gaza would be “demilitarised, either the easy way or the hard way”, in what was a thinly veiled threat to escalate the war.

Hamas fighters in Rafah

A key point of contention remains a group of roughly 200 Hamas fighters trapped in tunnels beneath Rafah, an area still controlled by Israeli forces. Hamas has demanded their safe passage to Gaza’s interior, but Israel has refused.

The US’s envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, described the proposal to grant the fighters safe passage in exchange for disarmament as “a test case” for the broader peace plan.

A Hamas official confirmed that negotiations over the issue were ongoing, saying the group was eager to resolve the dispute “to remove any pretext Israel could use to undermine the ceasefire agreement”.

However, he ruled out surrendering the fighters. Another Palestinian source speaking to Reuters warned that any Israeli attempt to forcibly extract them could risk the entire truce.

Beyond the immediate crisis, the ceasefire also requires agreement on a transitional governing council for Gaza excluding Hamas, the formation of the proposed stabilisation force, and conditions for reconstruction and disarmament. Each of these steps is expected to face resistance from both Hamas and Israel, given the political and security implications.

The proposed international force could require a United Nations mandate before deployment, and few nations have expressed willingness to participate without one. Egypt, Qatar and Turkiye are among the potential contributors.

However, the United Arab Emirates has signalled hesitation. “Under such circumstances, the UAE will probably not participate in such a force,” Emirati presidential adviser Anwar Gargash said at the Abu Dhabi Strategic Debate Forum.

LITTLE VILLAGE, Il. — The moment I got out of my Uber ride in this West Side Chicago neighborhood, the noise was everywhere.

Honks. Cursing. Screeching tires. Revving engines. Whistles. So many whistles.

Immigration authorities were sweeping through — again. And people weren’t having it.

Old, young, Latino, Black and white, folks shouted warnings from cars and from businesses like a game of Telephone across 26th Street, the heart of this historic Latino community. One of them was Eric Vandeford, who glanced in every direction for any sign of la migra.

“We all surrounded them earlier trying to get someone and they just left,” the 32-year-old said. He looked down 26th. “I gotta go,” he snapped and jogged off.

I arrived at 9:30 in the morning hoping to grab breakfast before interviewing Baltazar Enriquez. He’s president of the Little Village Community Council, a long-standing nonprofit that has added to its mission of organizing food drives and fighting against environmental racism to face off against Trump’s deportation machine.

Instead, I found myself in a chase to keep up with immigration agents.

Residents watch federal agents as they make a stop in the Brighton Park neighborhood of Chicago. Federal agents participating in Operation Midway Blitz engage in daily patrols through the city’s neighborhoods and surrounding suburbs searching for undocumented immigrants.

(Scott Olson / Getty Images)

Over the last two months, la migra has swept throughout Chicago but has swung its hammer with gusto on Little Village, known as La Villita by residents and considered the Mexican heart of the city. Imagine the density of Pico-Union with the small-town feel of Boyle Heights and the fierce pride of South L.A., then mix in murals and nationally known Mexican restaurants — Carnitas Uruapan, Taqueria El Milagro.

It’s a charming barrio, and it’s been under siege, like many other neighborhoods in the Windy City.

Immigration agents have staged operations in the parking lots of local schools before grabbing undocumented immigrants and citizens alike. When Border Patrol commander-at-large Gregory Bovino swung by in late October, he tossed a tear gas canister toward a group of protesters filming him, a move so reprehensible that a federal judge issued an injunction banning such force the morning I was in Little Village.

Now, the rumor was that Bovino was cruising around with a caravan.

He’s the man the Trump administration tasked with its deportation deluge in Southern California this summer before moving on to Chicago. In L.A., Bovino mostly mugged for the cameras, like the time he oversaw an invasion of an emptied MacArthur Park in July with the National Guard parked on Wilshire Boulevard. Bovino said it was necessary to stop transnational gangs, but he nabbed no one.

In Chicago, Bovino has dialed the cruelty and spectacle to 11. Residents have responded in kind in a way I haven’t seen in Southern California. Sure, Angelenos have organized block patrols and group chats and enlisted the help of politicians and nonprofit leaders just like Chicago.

But we don’t have the whistles.

They’ve become the fall soundtrack of the Windy City to the point organizers are holding “Whistlemania” events to hand them out by the thousands. Chicago has a radical legacy that predates L.A. by decades — anarchists, socialists and immigrants were fighting back against government-sponsored thugs when L.A. was still a relative cow town.

The suburban apathy that has kept too many Southern Californians on the sidelines as immigration agents sweep into our cities was nowhere to be felt in Little Village. People poured out of businesses and their residences. Others looked out from rooftops. The intensity of their pushback was more concentrated, raw and widespread than almost anything I’ve seen back home.

It wasn’t just the activists on call — block after block was ready.

Honks and whistles went off toward the west. I ran toward them and met Rogelio Lopez Jr. He was going inside grocery stores and discount marts to let people know that el hielo — ICE — was nearby.

Federal agents, including from Border Patrol and the Bureau of Prisons, stop a resident and request to see his proof of citizenship in Chicago. The man produced the required documents and was allowed to go free.

(Scott Olson / Getty Images)

The 53-year-old Little Village resident was enjoying lunch with his father at Carniceria Aguascalientes the day Bovino unleashed his mayhem nearby. He and other customers bolted to confront the Border Patrol bigwig.

“I’m sure he was thinking, ‘Here’s this guy standing in front of my force with a stupid little whistle in my territory.’ No, you’re in our territory.”

A minivan stopped near us and rolled down its window. “We lost them by Central and 26th!” shouted 32-year-old Mariana Ochoa from the back seat as she held her son on her lap. Joining us now was a masked 18-year-old college student who went by Ella and is a U.S. citizen along with her parents. She rattled off all the locations where her WhatsApp group had spotted ICE that morning. Lopez texted them to his own group.

Ella took a call from her mother.

“I’ll be back home soon, Ama,” the college student said in Spanish. “Love you. Stay inside.”

Angry residents gathered on street corners. Many had whistles — pink, black, orange, green — around their necks. Lopez handed one to Juan Ballena, who immediately used it — a shrill, reedy blast soon answered by others.

He waved up and down 26th Street. “Look at the buildings,” said the 61-year-old. “Closed. Closed. Closed. These migra are ruining a beautiful town.”

Nearby, 64-year-old Flavio Luviano stood outside his wife’s bistro with a whistle in one hand and a laminated know-your-rights card in the other. Business is down — and so is trust.

“I always have the door locked,” said the dual Mexican and U.S. citizen in Spanish. “People will come who aren’t from here and say, ‘Let me in’ and I tell them, ‘No, only with a warrant.’ They get angry, and I say, ‘I don’t care, we need to protect the people we know.’”

Three blocks toward the east, the horns and screams and whistles I had heard an hour ago were going off again. ICE had just passed by.

The stocky Enriquez stood in the middle of the street trying to clear cars whose drivers had tried to block off what they said were undercover immigration agents. People around him were scrambling in every direction while on their phones letting others know what had just happened. “I got their … license plates on my phone!” a woman yelled to no one in particular.

Most had whistles around their necks.

Wearing Crocs, a puffer jacket and sweats, Enriquez looked like a defensive end about to start a training session.

Soon, we were off again.

Border Patrol agent Gregory Bovino speaks with other federal agents during a gas station stop before resuming immigration arrests in Chicago.

(Jamie Kelter Davis / Getty Images)

Esparza and the driver, Lissette Barrera, sped up and down Little Village’s narrow tree-lined streets, many with signs that read “Hands Off Chicago” inside the city’s flag scheme. They alternated between blowing their whistles, pounding on the car horn and yelling “¡Anda la migra!”

Immigration agents always seemed a few minutes ahead. Reports via texts said they were asking people about their legal status. Some were detained.

We finally parked underneath the Little Village Arch, a colonial-style gateway crossing over the part of 26th Street where Uber dropped me off earlier. A crowd was waiting for Enriquez to hear his game plan: “No ramming, no throwing, no nothing. Just follow and film.”

A Chicago police officer passed by. “Ya se fueron [They’re gone],” he told Enriquez very matter-of-factly. “The whistles worked.”

Steven Villalobos pulled up in a raised truck with a giant Mexico flag flapping from its cab. It was his first-ever protest.

“I’ve been seeing this for months and enough was enough — I had to join,” said the Little Village lifer. Near him, Amor Cardenas nodded.

“It sucks that my mom can’t even go to … Ross, bro,” said the 20-year-old. She was still in her pajamas. “You don’t understand this feeling of terror until it’s in front of you. Then, there’s no turning back.”

Barrera and I jumped in the back seat of another car as Enriquez took the wheel. She opened a bag of Sabritones and passed it to two other passengers. The four of them had just returned home on an overnight bus from Washington, D.C., where they participated in an anti-Trump protest at the National Mall.

Enriquez drove slower. He and a volunteer named Lille logged on to Instagram and livestreamed from their respective phones to an audience of about a thousand.

“Those who have papers, come out and patrol,” he said in Spanish in a deep voice. “Those who don’t, stay inside.”

“Tell Baltazar that I’m going to buy him a caguama,” Lille said someone had commented. A tall boy of beer.

For the first time all morning, Enriquez smiled. “Make it two.”

The 46-year-old Enriquez was born in Michoacán, came to Chicago without papers as a child and received his American citizenship thanks to the 1986 amnesty. He cut his activist teeth with the Assn. of Community Organizations for Reform Now, better known as ACORN, before becoming the Little Village Community Council vice president in 2008.

A rapid responder blows a whistle to warn residents of an approaching caravan of federal agents in Chicago.

(Scott Olson / Getty Images)

Espinoza said the idea of using whistles to alert people about ICE in Chicago started in Little Village but came indirectly from Los Angeles. During a June Zoom call, Enriquez heard activists say they couldn’t communicate with one another while protesting outside the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown L.A. after their cellphones suddenly stopped working.

“So I thought we needed low tech to beat that if it happened here,” Enriquez said as we cruised past a city-owned lot where ICE had staged operations weeks earlier. Signs now said immigration agents weren’t allowed. “People at first thought the whistles were a joke. But then we used them once and la migra took off — and it spread like wildfire.”

We were now in nearby Brighton Park. He was following a tip that Bovino was approaching residents himself.

“They just tear-gassed someone!” someone yelled over the phone. “They’re taking people right now.”

The call cut short.

Enriquez tried to speed back to Little Village but hit construction traffic. Barrera jumped out of the car to grab two traffic cones. “To trap pepper balls when ICE fires them,” she explained.

Another call. “They got my son,” a woman quietly said in Spanish.

“Go to the [Little Village Community Council] office and we’ll help,” Enriquez replied.

“I can’t go out. I don’t have papers.”

When we passed an elementary school off Western Avenue, Barrera screamed in Spanish, “Take in the kids because la migra is driving around!” Teachers immediately blew their whistles and rushed their students inside.

Amid the Trump administration’s Operation Midway Blitz, residents watch a parade while celebrating Mexican Independence Day in Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood on Sept. 14.

(Brandon Bell / Getty Images)

ICE was out of Little Village — for now. Enriquez logged back on to Instagram Live.

“Good job, guys. Stay on their ICE nalgas.”

We took a right on 26th toward the Little Village Community Center’s small office. “We’re going to take a break,” Enriquez told his audience. We’ve gotta get pizza for everyone.”

Bilingual signs taped to the storefront window read “ICE OUT!” and “Free Whistles.”

“It was just supposed to be the bad people that they were going to target, they told us, but that didn’t happen,” said Nayeli Girón, a 24-year-old student. She wore a jacket that read “Southwest,” the name of a nearby neighborhood. “Every day it’s a different story. That’s why we need to stand up.”

Enriquez told everyone to gather around.

Time to learn how to defuse a pepper ball.

CHICAGO — When I turned on my phone after landing at O’Hare Airport on Wednesday, texts poured in from friends and colleagues warning that I was about to enter a region under siege.

Many sent a video from that morning of immigration agents running into a day care facility in Chicago’s Roscoe Village neighborhood to pull out a teacher. It was the latest attack against the metropolis by President Trump’s deportation Leviathan, whose so-called Operation Midway Blitz this fall has made its earlier occupation of Los Angeles look like a play date.

Armed agents have sauntered through downtown and manned a flotilla of boats on the Chicago River. They shot and killed a fleeing immigrant and raided an apartment building with the help of a Black Hawk helicopter. In nearby Broadview, home to the region’s main ICE detention facility, rooftop migra shot pepper balls at protesters below, including a pastor. They even tear-gassed a neighborhood that was about to host a Halloween children’s parade, for chrissakes.

From Back of the Yards to Cicero, Brighton Park to Evanston, immigration agents have sown terror throughout Chicagoland with such glee that a federal judge declared that it “shocks the conscience” and issued an injunction limiting their use of force — which they no doubt will ignore.

I was in town to speak to students at the University of Chicago about the importance of reporting on things one may not like. Heaven knows that’s been my 2025. But as I waited to deplane, I checked my email and found something I’ve sorely needed this year:

Hope.

On Tuesday, Democrats won governor’s races in New Jersey and Virginia by wide margins. Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor of New York, telling Trump to “Turn. The. Volume. Up” during a soaring victory speech.

Back home in California, 64% of voters favored Proposition 50, the ballot initiative crafted by Gov. Gavin Newsom to create up to five Democratic-leaning congressional districts in response to Trump’s gerrymandering in Texas.

It was a humiliating rebuke of Trumpism. And the tip of the Democratic spear? Latinos.

Rep. Mikie Sherrill, the Democratic governor-elect in New Jersey, takes a photo during an election-night party. Democrats reclaimed political momentum Tuesday with gubernatorial victories in New Jersey and Virginia, early signs that voter unease with the economy in President Trump’s second term could give them a path to winning control of Congress next year.

(Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

In New Jersey, where Trump received 46% of the Latino vote in 2024, a CNN exit poll showed just 31% of Latinos siding with the losing GOP candidate for governor. Nearly two-thirds of Latinos in Virginia went against Cuban American Atty. General Jason Miyares, a Republican who also lost. The CNN poll also found that more than 70% of California Latinos voted for Proposition 50, a year after GOP Latino legislators made historic gains in Sacramento.

At the same time, support for Trump has dropped among Latinos. Only 25% of Latinos surveyed in October by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research viewed Trump favorably — a cratering from the 45% who liked him in April. Even more telling, two-thirds of Latino men thought negatively of Trump — despite 51% of that demographic choosing him in 2024.

Latinos’ leftward shift on election night already set off as many thought pieces as Trump did when he captured 48% of the Latino vote — the most a Republican presidential candidate has earned, despite his long history of slurring, maligning and insulting America’s largest minority. Democrats, who have long depended on Latino voters, were shocked, and GOP leaders were delighted, feeling that a demographic that had long eluded them was finally, truly within reach.

This week Latinos sent a loud message: You had your chance, y nada.

House Speaker Mike Johnson tried to play off his party’s collapse among Latinos to NBC News, sniffling, “I do believe that the demographic shift that we were able to see and experience in the 2024 election will hold.”

Mike: time to bring the Republican Party out of its Stockholm syndrome. Your guy has blown it with Latinos. Let him keep doubling down on his madness, and Latinos will continue to flip on ustedes like a tortilla.

Trump’s 2024 victory was the culmination of an extraordinary shift in the Latino electorate that few saw coming — but I did. As I’ve written ad nauseam since 2016, Latinos were beginning to favor the GOP on issues like limited government, immigration restrictions and transgender athletes in high school sports because Democrats were taking them for granted, obsessing over woke shibboleths while neglecting blue-collar issues like gas prices and high taxes.

A voter holds a sign in Spanish while riding with other voters to the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center as part of a 2024 event organized by LUCHA (Living United For Change In Arizona) for Latinx voters and volunteers in Arizona.

(Anna Watts/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

All this was was happening as the Biden administration made it easier for newly arrived undocumented immigrants to remain, angering those who have been here for decades without similar help. The long-standing tendency for Latinos to sympathize with the latest Latin Americans to cross over eroded, and some became more receptive to Trump’s apocalyptic words against open borders.

Last year 63% of Latinos in California considered undocumented immigrants to be a “burden,” according to a poll by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies and co-sponsored by The Times.

That happened to be the same percentage of California voters who favored Prop. 187, the infamous 1994 initiative that sought to make life miserable for undocumented immigrants and showed the GOP that xenophobic politics can work.

After the 2024 election, Latinos seemed to be joining earlier Catholic immigrants who were once cast as invaders — Irish, Italians, Poles, Germans — on the road to assimilation and the waiting arms of the Republican party. All Trump had to do was improve the economy and clamp down on the border. If he did the former, Latinos would have been largely supportive of the latter, as long as deportations focused on newcomers.

Instead, Trump wasted his opportunity.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents knock on the door of a residence during a targeted enforcement operation in Chicago.

(Christopher Dilts/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

The economy remains stagnant. Trump effectively declared war on Latin America with tariffs real and threatened and by bombing Venezuelan and Colombian boats suspected of carrying drugs without asking permission from Congress.

Trump officials keep issuing punitive policies that crush the dreams of Latinos, like a crackdown on English fluency in the trucking industry and ending federal grants that helped colleges and universities recruit and retain Latino students.

Federal agents leave the area of North A Street as residents and community members protest an early morning federal enforcement action in Oxnard.

(Julie Leopo/For The Times)

But Trump’s biggest mistake has been his indiscriminate deportation raids. His toxic alphabet soup of immigration enforcement agencies — HSI, ERO, CPB, ICE — largely has ignored the so-called “worst of the worst” in favor of tamale ladies, fruteros and longtime residents. Nearly three-quarters of immigrants in ICE detention as of September have no criminal convictions, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.

Trump’s deportation deluge has rained down across the country as his administration repeatedly has exhibited white supremacist tendencies, from effectively blocking all new refugees except South African Boers to pumping out social media garbage extolling a mythical America where white makes right and Latinos exist only as blurry mug shots of alleged illegal immigrants.

A federal agent holds his weapon as law enforcement officers conduct a raid on street vendors. New Yorkers witnessing the attempted detainments began protesting and attempted to block agents.

(Michael Nigro/LightRocket via Getty Images)

No wonder 65% of Latinos feel it’s a “bad time” to be Latino in the U.S. — a 25-percentage-point drop in optimism from March of last year, according to an Axios-Ipsos poll done with Telemundo and released this week.

Trump even is losing credibility among Latino Republicans, with a September 2024 AP-NORC poll finding that 83% of them had a “very” or “somewhat” positive view of the president last year.

Now? Sixty-six percent.

Trump very well can win back some of those Latinos in 2026 if the economy improves. But every time his migra goons tackle innocents, another Latino will turn on him and get ready to fight back.

At the University of Chicago, orange whistles hung around a bronze bust just outside the room where I spoke. They’ve become a symbol of resistance to Trump’s invasion of the City of Strong Shoulders, blown by activists to alert everyone that la migra is on the prowl.

A bronze bust with whistles around it inside Swift Hall at the University of Chicago. They’ve become a symbol of resistance, blown by activists to alert everyone that la migra is on the prowl.

(Gustavo Arellano/Los Angeles Times)

I grabbed one as a memento of my time here and also as a reminder of what’s happening with Latinos right now. Nationwide, we’re warning everyone from the front lines — the streets, the ballot box, the courtroom, everywhere — about the excesses of Trump and warning him what happens if he doesn’t listen.

So, Trump: Turn. The. Volume. Up.

Polls find large majorities of people in the US oppose military action against Venezuela, where Trump has ramped up military pressure.

Republicans in the United States Senate have voted down legislation that would have required US President Donald Trump to obtain congressional approval for any military attacks on Venezuela.

Two Republicans had crossed the political aisle and joined Democrats to vote in favour of the legislation on Thursday, but their support was not enough to secure passage, and the bill failed to pass by 51 to 49 votes.

“We should not be going to war without a vote of Congress,” Democratic Senator Tim Kaine said during a speech.

The vote comes amid a US military build-up off South America and a series of military strikes targeting vessels in international waters off Venezuela and Colombia that have killed at least 65 people.

The US has alleged, without presenting evidence, that the boats it bombed were transporting drugs, but Latin American leaders, some members of Congress, international law experts and family members of the deceased have described the US attacks as extrajudicial killings, claiming most of those killed were fishermen.

Fears are now growing that Trump will use the military deployment in the region – which includes thousands of US troops, a nuclear submarine and a group of warships accompanying the USS Gerald R Ford, the US Navy’s most sophisticated aircraft carrier – to launch an attack on Venezuela in a bid to oust President Nicolas Maduro.

Washington has accused Maduro of drug trafficking, and Trump has hinted at carrying out attacks on Venezuelan soil.

Senator Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, referencing Trump’s military posturing towards Venezuela, said on Thursday: “It’s really an open secret that this is much more about potential regime change.”

“If that’s where the administration is headed, if that’s what we’re risking – involvement in a war – then Congress needs to be heard on this,” he said.

Earlier on Thursday, a pair of US B-52 bombers flew over the Caribbean Sea along the coast of Venezuela, flight tracking data showed.

Data from tracking website Flightradar24 showed the two bombers flying parallel to the Venezuelan coast, then circling northeast of Caracas before heading back along the coast and turning north and flying further out to sea.

The presence of the US bombers off Venezuela was at least the fourth time that US military aircraft have flown near the country’s borders since mid-October, with B-52s having done so on one previous occasion, and B-1B bombers on two other occasions.

Little public support in US for attack on Venezuela

A recent poll found that only 18 percent of people in the US support even limited use of military force to overthrow Maduro’s government.

Research by YouGov also found that 74 percent of people in the US believe that the president should not be able to carry out military strikes abroad without congressional approval, in line with the requirements of the US Constitution.

Republican lawmakers, however, have embraced the recent strikes on vessels in the Caribbean and Pacific, adopting the Trump administration’s framing of its efforts to cut off the flow of narcotics to the US.

Questions of the legality of such attacks, either under US or international law, do not appear to be of great concern to many Republicans.

“President Trump has taken decisive action to protect thousands of Americans from lethal narcotics,” Senator Jim Risch, the Republican chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in remarks declaring his support for the strikes.

While only two Republicans – Senators Rand Paul and Lisa Murkowski – defected to join Democrats in supporting the legislation to limit Trump’s ability to wage war unilaterally on Thursday, some conservatives have expressed frustration with a possible war on Venezuela.

Trump had campaigned for president on the promise of withdrawing the US from foreign military entanglements.

In recent years, Congress has made occasional efforts to reassert itself and impose restraints on foreign military engagements through the War Powers Resolution of 1973, which reaffirmed that Congress alone has the power to declare war.

The US Supreme Court has questioned US President Donald Trump’s authority to use emergency powers to impose sweeping tariffs on trading partners around the world.

In a closely watched hearing on Wednesday in Washington, DC, conservative and liberal Supreme Court judges appeared sceptical about Trump’s tariff policy, which has already had ramifications for US carmakers, airlines and consumer goods importers.

The US president had earlier claimed that his trade tariffs – which have been central to his foreign policy since he returned to power earlier this year – will not affect US businesses, workers and consumers.

But a legal challenge by a number of small American businesses, including toy firms and wine importers, filed earlier this year, has led to lower courts in the country ruling that Trump’s tariffs are illegal.

In May, the Court of International Trade, based in New York, said Trump did not have the authority to impose tariffs and “the US Constitution grants Congress exclusive authority to regulate commerce”. That decision was upheld by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, DC, in August.

Now, the Supreme Court, the country’s top court, is hearing the issue. Last week, the small business leaders, who are being represented by Indian-American lawyer Neal Katyal, told the Court that Trump’s import levies were severely harming their businesses and that many have been forced to lay off workers and cut prices as a result.

In a post on his Truth Social Platform on Sunday, Trump described the Supreme Court case as “one of the most important in the History of the Country”.

“If a President is not allowed to use Tariffs, we will be at a major disadvantage against all other Countries throughout the World,” he added.

What happened in Wednesday’s Supreme Court hearing, and what could happen if the court rules against Trump’s tariffs?

Here’s what we know:

What was discussed at the Supreme Court on Wednesday?

During a hearing which lasted for nearly three hours, the Trump administration’s lawyer, Solicitor General D John Sauer, argued that the president’s tariff policy is legal under a 1977 national law called the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).

According to US government documents, IEEPA gives a US president an array of economic powers, including to regulate trade, in order “to deal with any unusual and extraordinary threat, which has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States, to the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States, if the President declares a national emergency with respect to such threat”.

Trump invoked IEEPA in February to levy a new 25 percent tax on imports from Canada and Mexico, as well as a 10 percent levy on Chinese goods, on the basis that these countries were facilitating the flow of illegal drugs such as fentanyl into the US, and that this constituted a national emergency. He later paused the tariffs on Canada and Mexico, but increased China’s to 20 percent. This was restored to 10 percent after Trump met Chinese President Xi Jinping last month.

In April, when he imposed reciprocal tariffs on imports from a wide array of countries around the world, he said those levies were also in line with IEEPA since the US was running a trade deficit that posed an “extraordinary and unusual threat” to the nation.

Sauer argued that Trump had imposed the tariffs using IEEPA since “our exploding trade deficits have brought us to the brink of an economic and national security catastrophe”.

He also told the court that the levies are “regulatory tariffs. They are not revenue-raising tariffs”.

But Neal Katyal, the lawyer for the small businesses that have brought the case, countered this. “Tariffs are taxes,” Katyal said. “They take dollars from Americans’ pockets and deposit them in the US Treasury. Our founders gave that taxing power to Congress alone.”

What did the judges say about tariffs?

The judges raised another sticking point: Also, under the US Constitution, only Congress has the power to regulate tariffs. Justice John Roberts noted that “the [IEEPA] statute doesn’t use the word tariff.”

Liberal Justice Elena Kagan also told Sauer, “It has a lot of actions that can be taken under this statute. It just doesn’t have the one you want.”

Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who was appointed by Trump during his first term as president, asked Sauer, “Is it your contention that every country needed to be tariffed because of threats to the defence and industrial base?

“I mean, Spain, France? I could see it with some countries, but explain to me why as many countries needed to be subject to the reciprocal tariff policy,” Coney Barrett said.

Sauer replied that “there’s this sort of lack of reciprocity, this asymmetric treatment of our trade, with respect to foreign countries that does run across the board,” and reiterated the Trump administration’s power to use IEEPA.

Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor took issue with the notion that the tariffs are not taxes, as asserted by Trump’s team. She said, “You want to say that tariffs are not taxes, but that’s exactly what they are.”

According to recent data released by the US Customs and Border Protection agency, as of the end of August, IEEPA tariffs had generated $89bn in revenues to the US Treasury.

During the court’s arguments on Wednesday, Justice Roberts also suggested that the court may have to invoke the “major questions” doctrine in this case after telling Sauer that the president’s tariffs are “the imposition of taxes on Americans, and that has always been the core power of Congress”.

The “major questions” doctrine checks a US executive agency’s power to impose a policy without Congress’s clear directive. The Supreme Court previously used this to block former President Joe Biden’s policies, including his student loan forgiveness plan.

Sauer argued that the “major questions” doctrine should not apply in this context since it would also affect the president’s power in foreign affairs.

Why is this case the ultimate test of Trump’s tariff policy?

The Supreme Court has a 6-3 conservative majority and generally takes several months to make a decision. While it remains unclear when the court will make a decision on this case, according to analysts, the fact that this case was launched against Trump at all is significant.

In a recent report published by Max Yoeli, senior research fellow on the US and Americas Programme at UK-based think tank Chatham House, said, “The Supreme Court’s outcome will shape Trump’s presidency – and those that follow – across executive authority, global trade, and domestic fiscal and economic concerns.”

“It is likewise a salient moment for the Supreme Court, which has empowered Trump and showed little appetite to constrain him,” he added.

Penny Nass, acting senior vice president at the German Marshall Fund’s Washington DC office, told Al Jazeera that the verdict will be viewed by many as a test of Trump’s powers.

“A first impact will be the most direct judicial restraint at the highest level on Presidential power. After a year testing the limits of his power, President Trump will start to see some of constraints on his power,” she said.

According to international trade lawyer Shantanu Singh, who is based in India, the global implications of this case could also be huge.

“One objective of these tariffs was to use them as leverage to get trade partners to do deals with the US. Some countries have concluded trade deals, including to address the IEEPA tariffs,” he told Al Jazeera.

After the imposition of US reciprocal tariffs in April and again in August, several countries and economic blocs, including the EU, UK, Japan, Cambodia and Indonesia, have struck trade deals with the US to reduce tariffs.

But those countries were forced to make concessions to get those deals done. EU countries, for example, had to agree to buy $750bn of US energy and reduce steel tariffs through quotas.

Singh pointed out that an “adverse Supreme Court ruling could bring into doubt the perceived benefit for concluding deals with the US”.

“Further, trade partners who are currently negotiating with the US will have to also adjust their negotiating objectives in light of the ruling and how the administration reacts to it,” he added.

Other countries including India and China are currently actively engaged in trade talks with the US. Trade talks with Canada were terminated by Trump in late October over what Trump described as a “fraudulent” advertisement featuring former President Ronald Reagan speaking negatively about trade tariffs, which was being aired in Canada.

What happens if the judges rule against Trump?

Following Wednesday’s Supreme Court Hearing, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who was at the court with Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, told Fox News that he was “very optimistic” that the outcome of the case would be in the government’s favour.

“The solicitor general made a very powerful case for the need for the president to have the power,” he said and refused to discuss the Trump administration’s plan if the court ruled against the tariff policy.

However, Singh said if the Supreme Court does find these tariffs illegal, one immediate concern will be how tariffs collected so far will be refunded to businesses, if at all.

“Given the importance that the current US administration places on tariffs as a policy tool, we can expect that it would quickly identify other legal authorities and work to reinstate the tariffs,” he said.

Nass added: “The President has many other tariff powers, and will likely quickly recalibrate to maintain his deal-making efforts with partners,” she said, adding that there would still be very complicated work for importers on what to do with the tariffs already collected in 2025 under IEEPA.

During Wednesday’s hearing, Justice Coney Barrett asked Katyal, the lawyer for the small businesses contesting Trump’s tariffs, whether this process of paying money back would be “a complete mess”.

Katyal said the businesses he’s representing should be given a refund, but added that it is “very complicated”.

“So, a mess,” Coney Barrett stated.

“It’s difficult, absolutely, we don’t deny that,” Katyal said in response.

In an interview with US broadcaster CNN in September, trade lawyers said the court could decide who gets the refunds. Ted Murphy, an international trade lawyer at Sidley Austin, told CNN that the US government “could also try to get the court to approve an administrative refund process, where importers have to affirmatively request a refund”.

What tariffs has Trump imposed so far, and what has their effect been?

Trump has imposed tariffs of varying rates on imports from almost every country in the world, arguing that these levies will enrich the US and protect the domestic US market. The tariff rates range from as high as 50 percent on India and Syria to as low as 10 percent on the UK.

The US president has also imposed a 50 percent tariff on all copper imports, 50 percent on steel and aluminium imports from every country except the UK, 100 percent on patented drugs, 25 percent levies on cars and car parts manufactured abroad, and 25 percent on heavy-duty trucks.

According to the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Wharton Budget Model, which analyses the US Treasury’s data, tariffs have brought in $223.9bn as of October 31. This is $142.2bn more than the same time last year.

In early July, Treasury Secretary Bessent said revenues from these tariffs could grow to $300bn by the end of 2025.

But in an August 7 report, the Budget Lab at Yale University estimated that “all 2025 US tariffs plus foreign retaliation lower real US Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth by -0.5pp [percentage points] each over calendar years 2025 and 2026”.

Meanwhile, according to a Reuters news agency tracker, which follows how US companies are responding to Trump’s tariff threats, the first-quarter earnings season saw carmakers, airlines and consumer goods importers take the worst hit from tariff threats. Levies on aluminium and electronics, such as semiconductors, also led to increased costs.

Reuters reported that as tariffs hit factory orders, big manufacturing companies around the world are also struggling.

In its latest World Economic Outlook report released last month, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said the effect of Trump’s tariffs on the global economy had been less extreme.

“To date, more protectionist trade measures have had a limited impact on economic activity and prices,” it said.

However, the IMF warned that the current resilience of the global economy may not last.

“Looking past apparent resilience resulting from trade-related distortions in some of the incoming data and whipsawing growth forecasts from wild swings in trade policies, the outlook for the global economy continues to point to dim prospects, both in the short and the long term,” it said.

President Trump has long acknowledged that he doesn’t read books, so perhaps he’s never cracked the spine of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby.” But hasn’t he seen one of the several movies? Does he really not know that Gatsby is a tragedy about class, excess and hubris?

It seems not. On Halloween, there was Trump, dressed as himself, hosting a Gatsby-themed party at his Gatsby-era Mar-a-Lago estate. The president was fresh from a diplomatic tour of Asia during which he’d swept up an array of golden gifts (a crown!) from heads of state paying tribute in hopes of not paying tariffs.

Trump’s arriving guests, costumed as Roaring ’20s flappers, bootleggers and pre-crash tycoons, passed a scantily clad woman seductively writhing in a giant Champagne glass, then entered his gilded ballroom beneath a sign in Art Deco script pronouncing the night’s theme: “A little party never killed nobody.”

That’s the title of a song from the soundtrack of Baz Luhrmann’s 2013 film take on Gatsby, the most recent. Perhaps Trump is unaware that in the wake of the fictional Gatsby’s own debauched party, three people died, including Gatsby.

The tone-deaf Trump faced a comeuppance far short of tragedy after his party, but painful nonetheless: a blue wave in Tuesday’s elections. Revulsion at his imperial presidency swamped Republican candidates and causes.

The apparent ignorance of Mr. Make America Great Again about one of the great American novels, now in its centennial year, wasn’t the worst of Trump’s weekend show of excess. This was: The president of the United States held court at Mar-a-Lago, amid free-flowing liquor and tables laden with food, hours before federal food aid would end for 42 million Americans. Meanwhile, more than 1 million federal employees were furloughed or worked without pay amid a five-week-old government shutdown, some of them joining previously fired public servants at food banks. The online People magazine juxtaposed a photo of Trump surveying his Palm Beach party with a shot of nearby Miamians in a food line.

The president, who for nearly 10 months has seized powers he doesn’t have under federal law and the Constitution, professed to be all but powerless to avert the nutrition assistance cutoff, despite two federal judges’ rulings that he do so. And, characteristically, he claimed to be blameless about the shutdown that provoked the nutrition crisis.

“It’s their fault,” Trump said of congressional Democrats as he flew to Mar-a-Lago for the fete. “Everything is their fault. It’s so easily solved.”

How? Why, Democrats have to bend the knee, of course. They must abandon their quest to get Trump and Republicans to reverse their Medicaid cuts and to extend Obamacare subsidies for the working poor. Even as Mr. Art of the Deal claims (falsely) to have settled eight wars, bargaining even with Hamas, he’s refused to negotiate with Democrats. The shutdown is now the longest ever, on Tuesday surpassing the 35-day record Trump set in his first term.

There’s more.

En route to Florida aboard Air Force One, the presidential plane that Trump is replacing with a truly royal jet, a gift from Qatar, and having left behind the ruins of the East Wing where his $300-million ballroom will rise, Trump took to social media to boast of his latest project in the Mar-a-Lago-fication of the White House: an all-marble and gold do-over of the bathroom adjoining the Lincoln Bedroom. “Highly polished, Statuary marble!” he crowed, sending two dozen photos in a series of posts. Trump wrote that the previous 1940s-era bathroom “was totally inappropriate for the Lincoln Era,” but his changes fixed that.

“Art Deco doesn’t go with, you know, 1850 and civil wars and all of the problems,” he’d told wealthy donors last month. “But what does is statuary marble. So I ripped it apart and we built the bathroom. It’s absolutely gorgeous and totally in keeping with that time.”

And with that, Trump again showed his ignorance of America’s history as well as its literature. That said, the new bathroom is more attractive than the one at Mar-a-Lago in which Trump stashed boxes of government documents, including top-secret papers, after his first term.

Trump’s lust for power and its trappings seems to have made him blind to bad optics and deaf to the dissonance of his utterances. The politician who’s gotten so much credit — and won two of three presidential elections — for speaking to working-class Americans’ grievances now seems completely out of touch. There’s also his family’s open accrual of wealth, especially in crypto, and Trump’s recent demand for $230 million from the ever-accommodating Justice Department, to compensate him for the past legal cases against him for keeping government documents and attempting to reverse his 2020 defeat.

All of this while Americans’ costs of living remain high, people are out of jobs thanks to his policies and longtime residents, including some citizens, are swept up in his immigrant detentions and deportations, sundering families.

This week’s election results aren’t the only thing that suggests Trump is finally paying a price. So did the release of several polls timed for the first anniversary of his reelection. Despite Trump’s claims to the contrary, his job approval ratings are the lowest since the ignominious end of his first term. Majorities oppose his handling of most issues, including the ones — the economy and immigration — that helped elect him.

The narrator in “The Great Gatsby” famously says of two central characters, “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

I’m looking forward to the day when the careless Trump is gone and his mess can be cleaned up — including all that gold defiling the People’s House.

Bluesky: @jackiecalmes
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The U.S. Supreme Court’s skeptical questioning of former President Donald Trump’s global tariffs has fueled speculation that his trade measures may be struck down, potentially upending the already fragile trade landscape.

The case centers on Trump’s use of the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose sweeping tariffs on imports. The law grants presidents broad authority to regulate trade during national emergencies but makes no mention of tariffs, raising constitutional questions about the limits of executive power.

During oral arguments on Wednesday, justices across the ideological spectrum except Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas appeared doubtful that Trump had legal authority to levy such blanket global tariffs.

Trade experts now warn that if the court invalidates Trump’s tariff policy, it could trigger a new wave of economic uncertainty, as the administration is expected to pivot quickly to other trade laws to reimpose duties.

Why It Matters

The outcome of this case could reshape U.S. trade policy for years. Businesses have paid over $100 billion in IEEPA-related tariffs since 2025, and a ruling against Trump could open a complex refund battle or force the White House to seek alternative legal pathways for its protectionist agenda.

Corporate leaders, already weary of erratic trade shifts, say a ruling either way offers little stability. “Even if it goes against IEEPA, the uncertainty still continues,” said David Young of the Conference Board, who briefed dozens of CEOs after the hearing.

Trump Administration: Faces potential legal defeat but can pivot to Section 232 (Trade Expansion Act of 1962) or Section 122 (Trade Act of 1974), both of which allow temporary or national security-based tariffs.

U.S. Supreme Court: Balancing presidential powers with statutory limits on trade actions.

Businesses & Importers: Risk being caught in regulatory limbo over refunds and future duties.

Federal Reserve: Monitoring potential economic fallout from prolonged trade instability.

Refunds Could Get “Messy”

Justice Amy Coney Barrett raised concerns about how refund claims would be handled if the tariffs are ruled illegal, calling it “a mess” for courts to manage.
Lawyer Neal Katyal, representing five small businesses challenging the tariffs, said only those firms would automatically receive refunds, while others must file administrative protests a process that could take up to a year.

Customs lawyer Joseph Spraragen added that if the court orders refunds, the Customs and Border Protection’s automated system could process them, but he warned, “The administration is not going to be eager to just roll over and give refunds.”

Economic and Policy Repercussions

Analysts expect the administration to rely on alternative statutes if IEEPA tariffs are overturned. However, implementing new duties under those laws could be slow and bureaucratic, potentially delaying trade certainty until 2026.

Natixis economist Christopher Hodge said such a ruling would be only a “temporary setback” for Trump’s trade agenda, predicting renewed tariff rounds or trade negotiations in the coming year.

Meanwhile, Federal Reserve Governor Stephen Miran warned the uncertainty could act as a drag on economic growth, though it might also prompt looser monetary policy if trade instability dampens business confidence.

What’s Next

A Supreme Court ruling is expected in early 2026, leaving companies in limbo over the future of U.S. tariff policy.
If Trump’s powers under IEEPA are curtailed, analysts expect a new wave of trade maneuvers potentially invoking national security provisions to maintain his “America First” economic approach, prolonging the climate of global trade unpredictability.

With information from Reuters.

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s signature plan to impose import taxes on products coming from countries around the world ran into sharp skepticism at the Supreme Court on Wednesday.

Most of the justices, conservative and liberal, questioned whether the president acting on his own has the power to set large tariffs as a weapon of international trade.

Instead, they voiced the traditional view that the Constitution gives Congress the power to raise taxes, duties and tariffs.

Trump and his lawyers rely on an emergency powers act adopted on a voice vote by Congress in 1977. That measure authorizes sanctions and embargoes, but does not mention “tariffs, duties” or other means of revenue-raising.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said he doubted that law could be read so broadly.

The emergency powers law “had never before been used to justify tariffs,” he told D. John Sauer, Trump’s solicitor general. “No one has argued that it does until this particular case.”

Congress has authorized tariffs in other laws, he said, but not this one. Yet, it is “being used for a power to impose tariffs on any product from any country for — in any amount on any product from any country for — in any amount for any length of time.”

Moreover, the Constitution says Congress has the lead role on taxes and tariffs. “The imposition of taxes on Americans … has always been a core power of Congress,” he said.

The tariffs case heard Wednesday is the first major challenge to Trump’s presidential power to be heard by the court. It is also a test of whether the court’s conservative majority is willing to set legal limits on Trump’s executive authority.

Trump has touted these import taxes as crucial to reviving American manufacturing.

But owners of small businesses, farmers and economists are among the critics who say the on-again, off-again import taxes are disrupting business and damaging the economy.

Two lower courts ruled for small-business owners and said Trump had exceeded his authority.

The Supreme Court agreed to hear the appeal on a fast-track basis with the aim of ruling in a few months.

In defense of the president and his “Liberation Day” tariffs, Trump’s lawyers argued these import duties involve the president’s power over foreign affairs. They are “regulatory tariffs,” not taxes that raise revenue, he said.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan disagreed.

“It’s a congressional power, not a presidential power, to tax,” Sotomayor said. “You want to say tariffs are not taxes, but that’s exactly what they are.”

Imposing a tariff “is a taxing power which is delegated by the Constitution to Congress,” Kagan said.

Justice Neil M. Gorsuch may hold the deciding vote, and he said he was wary of upholding broad claims of presidential power that rely on old and vague laws.

The court’s conservative majority, including Gorsuch, struck down several far-reaching Biden administration regulations on climate change and student forgiveness because they were not clearly authorized by Congress.

Both Roberts and Gorsuch said the same theory may apply here. Gorsuch said he was skeptical of the claim that the president had the power to impose taxes based on his belief that the nation faces a global emergency.

In the future, “could the President impose a 50% tariff on gas-powered cars and auto parts to deal with the unusual and extraordinary threat from abroad of climate change?” he asked.

Yes, Sauer replied, “It’s very likely that could be done.”

Congress had the lawmaking power, Gorsuch said, and presidents should not feel free to take away the taxing power “from the people’s representatives.”

Justice Amy Coney Barrett said she was struggling to understand what Congress meant in the emergency powers law when it said the president may “regulate” importation.

She agreed that the law did not mention taxes and tariffs that would raise revenue, but some judges then saw it as allowing the authority to impose duties or tariffs.

Justices Brett M. Kavanaugh and Samuel A. Alito Jr. appeared to be leaning against the challenge to the president’s tariffs.

Kavanaugh pointed to a round of tariffs imposed by President Nixon in 1971, and he said Congress later adopted its emergency powers act without clearly rejecting that authority.

A former White House lawyer, Kavanaugh said it would be unusual for the president to have the full power to bar imports from certain countries, but not the lesser power to impose tariffs.

Since Trump returned to the White House in January, the court’s six Republican appointees have voted repeatedly to set aside orders from judges who had temporarily blocked the president’s policies and initiatives.

Although they have not explained most of their temporary emergency rulings, the conservatives have said the president has broad executive authority over federal agencies and on matters of foreign affairs.

But Wednesday, the justices did not sound split along the usual ideological lines.

The court’s ruling is not likely to be the final word on tariffs, however. Several other past laws allow the president to impose temporary tariffs for reasons of national security.

United States President Donald Trump’s tariffs are headed to the Supreme Court, as Washington and New Delhi pursue a trade deal. On the ground in India, export hubs are seeing cancelled orders, layoffs, and falling pay rates. As uncertainty deepens, what does this mean for factory workers?

New York City – For Jessica Dejesus, deciding who to vote for as the next mayor of New York City came down to the final minutes.

The 40-year-old resident of the Mott Haven neighbourhood in the Bronx admittedly had not been following the race closely, but planned to vote for former Governor Andrew Cuomo. She recalled his near-nightly television appearances when he was governor of New York State amid the ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“He was our guy during the pandemic,” she reflected.

But a day before the election, Dejesus saw a video on TikTok detailing US President Donald Trump’s endorsement of Cuomo.

While her feelings towards the candidates in the mayoral race may be ho-hum, Dejesus knows she is no fan of Trump. The nod made her give upstart candidate Social Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, a closer look.

“We can’t have that. I don’t disagree with everything Trump does, but he cut back on food stamps, and that affects a lot of people,” she said, referring to restrictions on US Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits in a bill passed by Trump and Republicans earlier this year.

“I understand you have to stop bad people coming over the border, but there are a lot of good immigrants here as well,” she said, referring to Trump’s mass deportation drive.

Walking into her voting site, she told Al Jazeera she still had not made up her mind. “I’ll have to wait until that paper’s in front of me,” she said.

Moments later, she emerged: “I voted for Mamdani!” she said.

‘You really have no choice’

A neighbourhood like Mott Haven, which was solidly mixed during the June primary in its turnout for Mamdani and Cuomo, shows just how reactive Trump’s endorsement could be to the race: a poison pill for some and a final nail in the coffin for others.

Trump, meanwhile, hoped his endorsement, soon followed by that of billionaire Elon Musk, would help rally conservative New Yorkers who came out in atypically large numbers in the city’s 2024 presidential election.

“Whether you personally like Andrew Cuomo or not, you really have no choice,” Trump said in a social media post on Monday.

“You must vote for him and hope he does a fantastic job. He is capable of it, Mamdani is not!”

Cuomo has also been explicitly reaching out to Republicans, hoping to court their votes. About 11 percent of New York’s 4.7 million voters were registered with the Republican Party in 2024.

Recent polls have shown Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa carrying about 14 percent of the vote – not a huge amount, but potentially enough to close Mamdani’s lead over the former governor.

It remained unclear how successful the action from Trump – who has also threatened to target city funding if Mamdani was elected – would be. But for some staunch supporters of Sliwa, Trump’s intervention did little to change their minds.

“[Trump’s endorsement] doesn’t change my vote. Sliwa is for the people and I have faith in that,” said Artemio Figuero, a 59-year-old city street cleaner, who spoke to Al Jazeera in Jackson Heights, Queens.

“He was a protector of the neighbourhood,” Figuero added, referring to Sliwa’s stewardship of the vigilante anti-crime Guardian Angels group.

Other Republicans who had long grown accustomed to voting outside of their party in the liberal-dominated local elections saw Trump’s support as a positive development, if not a game-changer.

“I like that Trump endorsed him,” Lola Ferguson, a 53-year-old social worker and registered Republican who was already planning to vote for Cuomo, told Al Jazeera in Mott Haven.

“He knows that [Cuomo’s] the better match for the city,” she said.

Cuomo, for his part, has denied Trump’s endorsement counts, noting that Trump had referred to him as a “bad Democrat” compared to Mamdani, whom he falsely called a “communist”.

Still, for Mamdani supporters, Trump’s move was not unexpected. Cuomo has been supported by an array of the city’s wealthiest residents, including billionaires like Bill Ackman and Miriam Adelson, who have also backed Trump.

“Birds of a feather flock together,” said Andre Augustine, a 33-year-old who works at a college access nonprofit, who voted for Mamdani.

“I feel like the signs were already there. All the folks that were financing Trump’s campaign were also financing Cuomo’s, and I feel like [Cuomo] just wouldn’t be honest about it,” he said.

For others, Trump’s endorsement was the feather that broke the camel’s back.

Dominique Witter, 39, a healthcare tech consultant, respected Cuomo’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic in the city, but had been gradually shifting towards Mamdani.

She did not decide on Mamdani until the final sprint of the race.

“It took me a while to get there, but I’m voting for Mamdani,” she told Al Jazeera as she prepared to vote in Mott Haven.

“I’m not gonna lie; the Trump endorsement did not help. Because that’s not what we want, right?” she said.

“Oh no, that’s not an endorsement you want.”

WASHINGTON  — The Supreme Court’s conservatives face a test of their own making this week as they decide whether President Trump had the legal authority to impose tariffs on imports from nations across the globe.

At issue are import taxes that are paid by American businesses and consumers.

Small-business owners had sued, including a maker of “learning toys” in Illinois and a New York importer of wines and spirits. They said Trump’s ever-changing tariffs had severely disrupted their businesses, and they won rulings declaring the president had exceeded his authority.

On Wednesday, the justices will hear their first major challenge to Trump’s claims of unilateral executive power. And the outcome is likely to turn on three doctrines that have been championed by the court’s conservatives.

First, they say the Constitution should be interpreted based on its original meaning. Its opening words say: “All legislative powers … shall be vested” in Congress, and the elected representatives “shall have the power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposes and excises.”

Second, they believe the laws passed by Congress should be interpreted based on their words. They call this “textualism,” which rejects a more liberal and open-ended approach that included the general purpose of the law.

Trump and his lawyers say his sweeping “Liberation Day” tariffs were authorized by the International Economic Emergency Powers Act, or IEEPA.

That 1977 law says the president may declare a national emergency to “deal with any unusual and extraordinary threat” involving national security, foreign policy or the economy of the United States. Faced with such an emergency, he may “investigate, block … or regulate” the “importation or exportation” of any property.

Trump said the nation’s “persistent” balance of payments deficit over five decades was such an “unusual and extraordinary threat.”

In the past, the law has been used to impose sanctions or freeze the assets of Iran, Syria and North Korea or groups of terrorists. It does not use the words “tariffs” or “duties,” and it had not been used for tariffs prior to this year.

The third doctrine arose with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and is called the “major questions” doctrine.

He and the five other conservatives said they were skeptical of far-reaching and costly regulations issued by the Obama and Biden administrations involving matters such as climate change, student loan forgiveness or mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations for 84 million Americans.

Congress makes the laws, not federal regulators, they said in West Virginia vs. Environmental Protection Agency in 2022.

And unless there is a “clear congressional authorization,” Roberts said the court will not uphold assertions of “extravagant statutory power over the national economy.”

Now all three doctrines are before the justices, since the lower courts relied on them in ruling against Trump.

No one disputes that the president could impose sweeping worldwide tariffs if he had sought and won approval from the Republican-controlled Congress. However, he insisted the power was his alone.

In a social media post, Trump called the case on tariffs “one of the most important in the History of the Country. If a President is not allowed to use Tariffs, we will be at a major disadvantage against all other Countries throughout the World, especially the ‘Majors.’ In a true sense, we would be defenseless! Tariffs have brought us Great Wealth and National Security in the nine months that I have had the Honor to serve as President.”

Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer, his top courtroom attorney, argues that tariffs involve foreign affairs and national security. And if so, the court should defer to the president.

“IEEPA authorizes the imposition of regulatory tariffs on foreign imports to deal with foreign threats — which crucially differ from domestic taxation,” he wrote last month.

For the same reason, “the major questions doctrine … does not apply here,” he said. It is limited to domestic matters, not foreign affairs, he argued.

Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh has sounded the same note in the past.

Sauer will also seek to persuade the court that the word “regulate” imports includes imposing tariffs.

The challengers are supported by prominent conservatives, including Stanford law professor Michael McConnell.

In 2001, he and John Roberts were nominated for a federal appeals court at the same time by President George W. Bush, and he later served with now-Justice Neil M. Gorsuch on the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver.

He is the lead counsel for one group of small-business owners.

“This case is what the American Revolution was all about. A tax wasn’t legitimate unless it was imposed by the people’s representatives,” McConnell said. “The president has no power to impose taxes on American citizens without Congress.”

His brief argues that Trump is claiming a power unlike any in American history.

“Until the 1900s, Congress exercised its tariff power directly, and every delegation since has been explicit and strictly limited,” he wrote in Trump vs. V.O.S. Selections. “Here, the government contends that the President may impose tariffs on the American people whenever he wants, at any rate he wants, for any countries and products he wants, for as long as he wants — simply by declaring longstanding U.S. trade deficits a national ‘emergency’ and an ‘unusual and extraordinary threat,’ declarations the government tells us are unreviewable. The president can even change his mind tomorrow and back again the day after that.”

He said the “major questions” doctrine fully applies here.

Two years ago, he noted the court called Biden’s proposed student loan forgiveness “staggering by any measure” because it could cost more than $430 billion. By comparison, he said, the Tax Foundation estimated that Trump’s tariffs will impose $1.7 trillion in new taxes on Americans by 2035.

The case figures to be a major test of whether the Roberts court will put any legal limits on Trump’s powers as president.

But the outcome will not be the final word on tariffs. Administration officials have said that if they lose, they will seek to impose them under other federal laws that involve national security.

Still pending before the court is an emergency appeal testing the president’s power to send National Guard troops to American cities over the objection of the governor and local officials.

Last week, the court asked for further briefs on the Militia Act of 1908, which says the president may call up the National Guard if he cannot “with the regular forces … execute the laws of the United States.”

The government had assumed the regular forces were the police and federal agents, but a law professor said the regular forces in the original law referred to the military.

The justices asked for a clarification from both sides by Nov. 17.

Nov. 4 (UPI) — Federal prosecutors have charged a suburban Chicago man with a history of making threats online for allegedly calling for the execution of President Donald Trump.

Trent Schneider, 57, of Winthrop Harbor, Ill., was arrested Monday morning and was to make his initial court appearance before U.S. Magistrate Judge Jeffrey Gilbert in Chicago that afternoon, the Justice Department said in a statement.

The criminal complaint, filed Friday, states the alleged threats were made against the president in posts to the Instagram account truthreaper888, which prosecutors allege was run by Schneider.

According to the court document, Schneider allegedly made threats in an expletive-laden video posted, stating that he was going to “get some guns” and “take care of business myself.”

“I’m tired of all you [expletive] frauds. People need to [expletive] die and people are going to die. [Expletive] all of you, especially you Trump. You should be executed.”

The video was posted to the account 18 times between Oct. 16 and Oct. 21.

Prosecutors also allege that between Sept. 26 and Oct. 21, an illustration of Trump behind a prohibition sign was published to the account 20 times. The picture was accompanied by the caption: “THIS IS NOT A THREAT!!! AFTER LOSING EVERYTHING and My House Auction is 11.04.2025”

“Donald Trump SHOULD BE EXECUTED!!! She cares NOTHING ABOUT YOU or ME!!!”

A concerned citizen in Florida had tipped off authorities to the post after seeing it online, according to the complaint.

The court document states that Schneider is in a pending foreclosure action, with a foreclosure auction scheduled for Monday.

This is not the first time that Schneider has been investigated over online comments.

In 2022, he allegedly posted multiple violent messages about public officials on various social media accounts, and was arrested that December after allegedly making threats to “shoot up” a T-Mobile store.

In March 2023, he was found unfit to stand trial on the related charges.

Trump is a survivor of an assassination attempt on July 13, 2024, when a bullet fired from a would-be assassin grazed his ear while he was campaigning in Pennsylvania as the Republican nominee for president.

President Donald Trump’s razing of the White House’s East Wing to build a ballroom has put some news organizations following the story in an awkward position, with corporate owners among the contributors to the project — and their reporters covering it vigorously.

Comcast, which owns NBC News and MSNBC, has faced on-air criticism from some of the liberal cable channel’s personalities for its donation. Amazon, whose founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post, is another donor. The newspaper editorialized in favor of Trump’s project, pointing out the Bezos connection a day later after critics noted its omission.

It’s not the first time since Trump regained the presidency that interests of journalists at outlets that are a small part of a corporate titan’s portfolio have clashed with owners. Both the Walt Disney Co. and Paramount have settled lawsuits with Trump rather than defend ABC News and CBS News in court.

“This is Trump’s Washington,” said Chuck Todd, former NBC “Meet the Press” host. “None of this helps the reputations of the news organizations that these companies own, because it compromises everybody.”

Companies haven’t said how much they donated, or why

None of the individuals and corporations identified by the White House as donors has publicly said how much was given, although a $22 million Google donation was revealed in a court filing. Comcast would not say Friday why it gave, although some MSNBC commentators have sought to fill in the blanks.

MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle said the donations should be a concern to Americans, “because there ain’t no company out there writing a check just for good will.”

“Those public-facing companies should know that there’s a cost in terms of their reputations with the American people,” Rachel Maddow said on her show this week, specifically citing Comcast. “There may be a cost to their bottom line when they do things against American values, against the public interest because they want to please Trump or buy him off or profit somehow from his authoritarian overthrow of our democracy.”

NBC’s “Nightly News” led its Oct. 22 broadcast with a story on the East Wing demolition, which reporter Gabe Gutierrez said was paid for by private donors, “among them Comcast, NBC’s parent company.”

“Nightly News” spent a total of five minutes on the story that week, half the time of ABC’s “World News Tonight,” though NBC pre-empted its Tuesday newscast for NBA coverage, said Andrew Tyndall, head of ADT Research. There’s no evidence that Comcast tried to influence NBC’s coverage in any way; Todd said the corporation’s leaders have no history of doing that. A Comcast spokeswoman had no comment.

Todd spoke out against his bosses at NBC News in the past, but said he doubted he would have done so in this case, in part because Comcast hasn’t said why the contribution was made. “You could make the defense that it is contributing to the United States” by renovating the White House, he said.

More troubling, he said, is the perception that Comcast CEO Brian Roberts had to do it to curry favor with the Trump administration. Trump, in a Truth Social post in April, called Comcast and Roberts “a disgrace to the integrity of Broadcasting!!!” The president cited the company’s ownership of MSNBC and NBC News.

Roberts may need their help. Stories this week suggested Comcast might be interested in buying all or part of Warner Bros. Discovery, a deal that would require government approval.

White House cannot be ‘a museum to the past’

The Post’s editorial last weekend was eye-opening, even for a section that has taken a conservative turn following Bezos’ direction that it concentrate on defending personal liberties and the free market. The Oct. 25 editorial was unsigned, which indicates that it is the newspaper’s official position, and was titled “In Defense of the White House ballroom.”

The Post said the ballroom is a necessary addition and although Trump is pursuing it “in the most jarring manner possible,” it would not have gotten done in his term if he went through a traditional approval process.

“The White House cannot simply be a museum to the past,” the Post wrote. “Like America, it must evolve with the times to maintain its greatness. Strong leaders reject calcification. In that way, Trump’s undertaking is a shot across the bow at NIMBYs everywhere.”

In sharing a copy of the editorial on social media, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt wrote that it was the “first dose of common sense I’ve seen from the legacy media on this story.”

The New York Times, by contrast, has not taken an editorial stand either for or against the project. It has run a handful of opinion columns: Ross Douthat called Trump’s move necessary considering potential red tape, while Maureen Dowd said it was an “unsanctioned, ahistoric, abominable destruction of the East Wing.”

In a social media post later Saturday, Columbia University journalism professor Bill Grueskin noted the absence of any mention of Bezos in the Post editorial” and said he wrote to a Post spokeswoman about it. In a “stealth edit” that Grueskin said didn’t include any explanation, a paragraph was added the next day about the private donors, including Amazon. “Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Post,” the newspaper said.

The Post had no comment on the issue, spokeswoman Olivia Petersen said on Sunday.

In a story this past week, NPR reported that the ballroom editorial was one of three that the Post had written in the previous two weeks on a matter in which Bezos had a financial or corporate interest without noting his personal stakes.

In a public appearance last December, Bezos acknowledged that he was a “terrible owner” for the Post from the point of view of appearances of conflict. “A pure newspaper owner who only owned a newspaper and did nothing else would probably be, from that point of view, a much better owner,” the Amazon founder said.

Grueskin, in an interview, said Bezos had every right as an owner to influence the Post’s editorial policy. But he said it was important for readers to know his involvement in the East Wing story. They may reject the editorial because of the conflict, he said, or conclude that “the editorial is so well-argued, I put a lot of credibility into what I just read.”

Bauder writes for the Associated Press.

US President Donald Trump has appeared on the CBS News programme 60 Minutes just months after he won a $16m settlement from the broadcaster for alleged “deceptive editing”.

In the interview with CBS host Norah O’Donnell, which was filmed last Friday at his Mar-a-Lago residence and aired on Sunday, Trump touched on several topics, including the ongoing government shutdown, his administration’s unprecedented crackdowns on undocumented migrants, the US’s decision to restart nuclear testing, and the trade war with China.

Trump, who regularly appears on Fox News, a right-wing media outlet, has an uneasy relationship with CBS, which is considered centrist.

In October 2020, the president walked out of a 60 Minutes interview in the lead-up to the 2020 election he lost, claiming that the host, Lesley Stahl, was “biased”.

Here are some key takeaways from the interview:

The interview took place one year to the day after Trump sued CBS

The president’s lawyers sued CBS owner Paramount in October 2024 for “mental anguish” over a pre-election interview with rival candidate Kamala Harris that Trump claimed had been deceptively edited to favour Democrats and thus affected his campaign.

CBS had aired two different versions of an answer Harris gave to a question on Israel’s war on Gaza, posed by host Bill Whitaker. One version aired on 60 Minutes while the other appeared on the programme Face the Nation.

Asked whether Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, listened to US advice, Harris answered: “We are not going to stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States – to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end.”

In an alternative edit, featured in earlier pre-broadcast promotions, Harris had given a longer, more rambling response that did not sound as concise.

The network argued the answer was edited differently for the two shows due to time restrictions, but Trump’s team claimed CBS “distorted” its broadcasts and “helped” Harris, thereby affecting his campaign. Trump asked for an initial $10bn in damages before upping it to $20bn in February 2025.

Paramount, in July 2025, chose to settle with Trump’s team to the tune of $16m in the form of a donation to a planned Trump presidential library. That move angered journalist unions and rights groups, which argued it set a bad precedent for press freedom.

Paramount executives said the company would not apologise for the editing of its programmes, but had decided to settle to put the matter to rest.

The company was at the time trying to secure federal approval from Trump’s government for a proposed merger with Skydance, owned by Trump ally Larry Ellison. The Federal Communications Commission has since approved the merger that gives Ellison’s Skydance controlling rights.

On October 19, Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and Steve Witkoff, US special envoy to the Middle East, were interviewed on 60 Minutes regarding the Israel-Gaza war.

He solved rare-earth metals issue with China

After meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea last Thursday, Trump praised his counterpart as a “strong man, a very powerful leader” and said their relationship was on an even keel despite the trade war. However, he blamed China for “ripping off” the US through its dominance of crucial rare earth materials.

Trump told 60 Minutes he had cut a favourable trade agreement with China and that “we got – no rare-earth threat. That’s gone, completely gone”, referring to Chinese export restrictions on critical rare-earth metals needed to manufacture a wide range of items including defence equipment, smartphones and electric vehicles.

However, Beijing actually only said it would delay introducing export controls for five rare-earth metals it announced in October, and did not mention restrictions on a further seven it announced in April this year. Those restrictions remain in place.

Xi ‘knows what will happen’ if China attacks Taiwan

Trump said President Xi did not say anything about whether Beijing planned to attack autonomous Taiwan.

However, he referred to past assurances from Xi, saying: “He [Xi] has openly said, and his people have openly said at meetings, ‘We would never do anything while President Trump is president’, because they know the consequences.”

Asked whether he would order US forces to action if China moved militarily on Taiwan, Trump demurred, saying: “You’ll find out if it happens, and he understands the answer to that … I can’t give away my secrets. The other side knows.”

There are mounting fears in the US that China could attack Taiwan. Washington’s stance of “strategic ambiguity” has always kept observers speculating about whether the US would defend Taiwan against Beijing. Ahead of the last elections, Trump said Taiwan should “pay” for protection.

He doesn’t know who the crypto boss he pardoned is

When asked why he pardoned cryptocurrency multibillionaire and Binance founder Changpeng Zhao last month, Trump said: “I don’t know who he is.”

The president said he had never met Zhao, but had been told he was the victim of a “witch hunt” by the administration of former US President Joe Biden.

Zhao pleaded guilty to enabling money laundering in connection with child sex abuse and “terrorism” on his crypto platform in 2023. He served four months in prison until September 2024, and stepped down as chief executive of Binance.

Binance has been linked to the Trump family’s cryptocurrency company World Liberty Financial, and many have questioned if the case is a conflict of interest.

In March 2025, World Liberty Financial launched its own dollar-pegged cryptocoin, USD1, on Binance’s blockchain and the company promoted it to its 275 million users. The coin was also supported by an investment fund in the United Arab Emirates, MGX Fund Management Limited, which used $2bn worth of the World Liberty stablecoin to buy a stake in Binance.

This part of the interview appeared in a full transcript of the 90-minute interview, but does not appear in either the 28-minute televised version or the 73-minute extended online video version. CBS said in a note on the YouTube version that it was “condensed for clarity”.

Other countries ‘are testing nuclear weapons’

Trump justified last week’s decision by his government to resume nuclear testing for the first time in 33 years, saying that other countries – besides North Korea – are already doing it.

“Russia’s testing, and China’s testing, but they don’t talk about it,” Trump said, also mentioning Pakistan. “You know, we’re an open society. We’re different. We talk about it. We have to talk about it, because otherwise you people are gonna report – they don’t have reporters that gonna be writing about it. We do.”

Russia, China, and Pakistan have not openly conducted tests in recent years. Analyst Georgia Cole of UK think tank Chatham House told Al Jazeera that “there is no indication” the three countries have resumed testing.

He’s not worried about Hamas disarming

The president claimed the US-negotiated ceasefire and peace plan between Israel and Hamas was “very solid” despite Israeli strikes killing 236 Gazans since the ceasefire went into effect. It is also unclear whether or when the Palestinian armed group, Hamas, has agreed it will disarm.

However, Trump said he was not worried about Hamas disarming as the US would force the armed group to do so. “Hamas could be taken out immediately if they don’t behave,” he said.

Venezuela’s Maduro’s ‘days are numbered’

Trump denied the US was going to war with Venezuela despite a US military build-up off the country’s coast and deadly air strikes targeting alleged drug-trafficking ships in the country’s waters. The United Nations has said the strikes are a violation of international law.

Responding to a question about whether the strikes were really about unseating Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro, Trump said they weren’t. However, when asked if Maduro’s days in office were numbered, the president answered: “I would say, yeah.”

US government shutdown is all the Democrats’ fault

Trump, a member of the Republican Party, blamed Democrats for what is now close to the longest government shutdown in US history, which has been ongoing since October 1.

Senators from the Democratic Party have refused to approve a new budget unless it extends expiring tax credits that make health insurance cheaper for millions of Americans and unless Trump reverses healthcare cuts made in his tax-and-spending bill, passed earlier this year.

The US president made it clear that he would not negotiate with Democrats, and did not give clear plans for ending the shutdown affecting 1.4 million governent employees.

US will become ‘third-world nation’ if tariffs disallowed

Referring to a US Supreme Court hearing brought by businesses arguing that the Trump government’s tariff war on other countries is illegal and has caused domestic inflation, Trump said the US “would go to hell” and be a “third world nation” if the court ordered tariffs to be removed.

He said the tariffs are necessary for “national security” and that they have increased respect from other countries for the US.

ICE raids ‘don’t go far enough’

Trump defended his government’s unprecedented Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids and surveillance on people perceived to be undocumented migrants.

When asked if the raids had gone too far, he responded: “No. I think they haven’t gone far enough because we’ve been held back by the judges, by the liberal judges that were put in by [former US Presidents Joe] Biden and [Barack] Obama.”

Zohran Mamdani is a ‘communist’

Regarding the New York City mayoral race scheduled for November 4, Trump said he would not back democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani, and called him a “communist”. He said if Mamdani wins, it will be hard for him to “give a lot of money to New York”.

Nigeria’s presidential spokesperson welcomes US assistance ‘as long as it recognises our territorial integrity’.

Nigeria says it would welcome assistance from the United States in fighting armed groups as long as its territorial integrity is respected after US President Donald Trump threatened military action in the West African country over what he claimed was persecution of Christians there.

In a social media post on Saturday, Trump said  he had asked the Department of Defense to prepare for possible “fast” military action in Nigeria if Africa’s most populous country fails to crack down on the “killing of Christians”.

A spokesperson for Nigeria’s presidency, Daniel Bwala, told the Reuters news agency on Sunday that the country would “welcome US assistance as long as it recognises our territorial integrity”.

“I am sure by the time these two leaders meet and sit, there would be better outcomes in our joint resolve to fight terrorism,” Bwala added.

In his post, Trump said the US would immediately cut off all assistance to the country “if the Nigerian Government continues to allow the killing of Christians”.

Earlier, Nigerian President Bola Tinubu pushed back against claims of religious intolerance and defended his country’s efforts to protect religious freedom.

“Since 2023, our administration has maintained an open and active engagement with Christian and Muslim leaders alike and continues to address security challenges which affect citizens across faiths and regions,” Tinubu said in a statement.

“The characterisation of Nigeria as religiously intolerant does not reflect our national reality, nor does it take into consideration the consistent and sincere efforts of the government to safeguard freedom of religion and beliefs for all Nigerians.”

Nigeria, a country of more than 200 million people, is divided between the largely Muslim north and mostly Christian south.

Armed groups have been engaged in a conflict that has been largely confined to the northeast of the country and has dragged on for more than 15 years. Analysts said that while Christians have been killed, most of the victims have been Muslims.

‘No Christian genocide’

While human rights groups have urged the government to do more to address unrest in the country, which has experienced deadly attacks by Boko Haram and other armed groups, experts say claims of a “Christian genocide” are false and simplistic.

“All the data reveals is that there is no Christian genocide going on in Nigeria,” Bulama Bukarti, a Nigerian humanitarian lawyer and analyst on conflict and development, told Al Jazeera. This is “a dangerous far-right narrative that has been simmering for a long time that President Trump is amplifying today”.

“It is divisive, and it is only going to further increase instability in Nigeria,” Bukarti added, explaining that armed groups in Nigeria have been targeting both Muslims and Christians.

“They bomb markets. They bomb churches. They bomb mosques, and they attack every civilian location they find. They do not discriminate between Muslims and Christians.”

Ebenezer Obadare, a senior fellow of Africa studies at the Washington, DC-based Council on Foreign Relations, agreed and said the Trump administration should work with Nigerian authorities to address the “common enemy”.

“This is precisely the moment when Nigeria needs assistance, especially military assistance,” Obadare said. “The wrong thing to do is to invade Nigeria and override the authorities or the authority of the Nigerian government. Doing that will be counterproductive.”