Senator Adam Schiff, a California Democrat and former federal prosecutor who serves on the Senate judiciary committee, has released a statement opposing the confirmation of Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, to the job on a permanent basis.
Schiff says that Blanche has continued to act as Trump’s personal lawyer, noting in particular: his support for the indictment of James Comey, the former FBI director and Trump critic, for posting an Instagram photo of seashells on a beach arranged to read: “86 47”; his decree that Trump and his family should be exempt from prosecution or audits by the IRS; his approval of a $1.776bn fund to reward Trump supporters who claim that they were prosecuted on political grounds.
Here is Schiff’s statement in full:
double quotation mark“At every turn, Todd Blanche has been unable to put aside his role as Donald Trump’s criminal defense lawyer and represent the American people instead.
“He has allowed the President to abuse the Department of Justice to go after his political enemies with absurd seashells cases, engaged in the most blatant self-dealing by representing both Trump and his government in an IRS scam, and blessed a corrupt slush fund for cop beaters.
“This is hardly the stuff of Attorney Generals.
“The Senate must vigorously oppose his confirmation.”
Chuck Grassley, the Republican chair of the US Senate judiciary committee that has to confirm a new attorney general, said in a statement on Monday that Donald Trump has officially nominated his former personal lawyer, Todd Blanche, now the acting attorney general. In a statement, Grassley also called Blanche, a “well-qualified” nominee.
Here is Grassley’s full statement:
double quotation markToday, the Senate received President Trump’s nomination of Todd Blanche to be United States Attorney General. Maintaining the Department of Justice’s ability to protect Americans from crime and hold criminals accountable is essential for the safety of American families. I’ve worked well with Acting Attorney General Blanche for more than a year and appreciate his commitment to transparency and support for law enforcement. Blanche is well-qualified and has shown his dedication to restoring law and order across our country. The Senate Judiciary Committee’s work to process Blanche’s nomination is underway.”
As expected, Donald Trump has nominated Todd Blanche to serve permanently as attorney general, lining up his former personal lawyer to be the country’s top law enforcement officer.
The US president suggested last week that Blanche, who was appointed on an acting basis in April after the president fired Pam Bondi, was set to receive the nod. “He’s a very talented guy,” Trump told a podcast.
Under Blanche – a staunch ally of Trump – the US Department of Justice has pursued a series of controversial actions, including the unveiling of criminal charges against James Comey, the former FBI director, representing an escalation of its investigation into former CIA director, John Brennan, and the removal of press releases about prosecutions of rioters who attacked the US Capitol on January 6.
Blanche also played a key role in the effort to create a $1.8bn “anti-weaponization” fund to compensate Trump’s allies. On Tuesday, he abruptly announced the fund had been axed, amid widespread condemnation of the plan, but a provision granting Trump, his family and his businesses immunity from IRS audits would remain in place.
Blanche’s appointment will require confirmation in the US Senate, where even Republicans pushed back against the proposed fund.
Hours after Trump announced his intention to nominate Blanche permanently for the position, Senate majority leader John Thune said it was “hard to say” whether Blanche will have a difficult time getting the votes.
“I think obviously most of our members are pretty deferential to who the president wants in these key positions. He’s already serving in the role already, and clearly has experience in it,” Thune said. “But this is an environment where nothing is a safe or sure bet.”
Donald Trump has forcefully denied he ever promised not to draw the US into war, having spent years pledging to avoid doing just that.
The US president’s own biography on the White House website credits him with “putting a stop to endless wars” – raising questions about the US-Israel war on Iran, which he launched, with no end currently in sight.
NBC’s Kristen Welker pressed Trump in a Meet the Press interview that aired yesterday about his previous pledges to refrain from starting wars.
“Mr President, in your first term, you held to that promise, and it was so fundamental to who you were as a candidate, to a first-term president,” she said. “What changed? Because you insisted no new wars.”
“I didn’t guarantee no war,” Trump interjected. “Why would I have built the strongest military in the world? I built our military.”
His response sharply contradicts previous comments he has made over the years, including when accepting his victory in the 2024 US presidential election.
double quotation markWe want want security. We want to have things be good, safe. We want great education. We want a strong and powerful military. And ideally, we don’t have to use it. You know, we had no war – four years, we had no wars, except we defeated Isis. We defeated Isis in record time, but we had no wars.
They said: ‘He will start a war.’ I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars.
My colleague George Chidi has compiled all the president’s war quotes here:
Fears of a return to a full-scale regional war eased on Monday as Israel and Iran said they had halted attacks on each other after an appeal from Donald Trump to “immediately stop shooting”. The new violence has complicated Trump’s push to end the war he and Israel started back in February. Trump has leaned on Israel to stop its attacks in Lebanon to allow room for a deal to end the wider war with Iran, including an obscenities-filled rebuke of Netanyahu in a phone call last week, but the Israeli PM faces an election later this year and is under domestic pressure to continue efforts to broaden his assault on Lebanon. Here’s our news story and analysis of the ever more strained Trump-Netanyahu relationship.
A federal judge struck down a $100,000 fee that Trump imposed on new H-1B visas for foreign workers in highly skilled occupations, such as IT, healthcare and engineering, as unlawful and said it must be invalidated. Judge Leo Sorokin, an Obama appointee, concluded that the fee was not a penalty but a tax that the president lacked any authorization from Congress to issue. Here’s our report.
Trump again repeated his baseless claim that the California elections were “rigged”, this time in reference to the Los Angeles mayoral primary and reality TV star Spencer Pratt. “Not possible for Spencer Pratt to have lost the L.A. runoffs after the big lead he had,” Trump posted on Truth Social. It comes as Nithya Raman, the progressive Los Angeles city councillor, appeared to be edging out Pratt in the race. More on that here.
The Trump administration has plans to announce today that it is seeking to revoke the citizenship of 17 US citizens accused of immigration fraud, CBS News reported, significantly expanding Trump’s already unprecedented denaturalization drive. Justice department officials told CBS News the move represents the largest-ever effort by the US government to use its denaturalization powers, which were rarely invoked before Trump returned to the White House last year with promises to launch a historic mass deportation campaign. More on this story here.
Trump’s hardline border czar Tom Homan again threatened to dispatch a surge of immigration agents to New York City, as the administration vows to press ahead with its controversial crackdown. Homan said he had reviewed a plan to expand ICE operations in New York and deploy “more ICE agents than you’ve ever seen” in the city. It comes as millions are expected to visit the region to celebrate the New York Knicks in the NBA finals, as well as for the Fifa World Cup final, which will take place in New Jersey. “We will not allow ICE or anyone else to sow fear in our communities – especially at this moment,” Zohran Mamdani, New York City’s Democratic mayor, responded on X. “As the world comes to our city, we will stand proudly with our immigrant neighbors and reject these attacks for what they are: an attempt to divide us.”
And finally, a five-block area around Madison Square Garden will be on virtual lockdown during Trump’s visit for tonight’s NBA Finals game. Amid heightened security due to Trump’s attendance, the watch party outside MSG was cancelled, though the city has organized other free ones in Central Park and Brooklyn Bowl. Go Knicks!
The latest eruption of hostilities between Israel and Iran appears to have been contained for now after Donald Trump insisted he called “all the shots” in the Middle East, but in a dangerously fragile region Benjamin Netanyahu has again shown he is ready to take shots of his own.
The exchange of missiles on Sunday and Monday was ample demonstration of the inherent instability of the current limbo between war and peace, but it also shone a bright light on the complex and conflicted relationship between the US president and the Israeli prime minister, frenemies who could determine the fate of the current ceasefire.
Trump and Netanyahu went to war together against Iran on 28 February but fell out of step within days, as soon as it was clear that the quick victory and regime change promised by the Israelis was unlikely to materialise. From then on, their interests have increasingly diverged.
Netanyahu’s political logic drives him towards further onslaught in the hope of a breakthrough, such as regime collapse in Tehran. To secure support from the Israeli far right, Netanyahu has to show himself ready to defy Trump from time to time in pursuing that multi-front campaign, but no leader of Israel can afford to burn bridges with Washington, its principal security guarantor. That leaves a fine line to tread.
Persuading Trump to join the attack on Iran was the biggest victory of Netanyahu’s career, but that triumph is crumbling. The US-Iranian peace deal is being negotiated without Israeli participation, and in its current reported form, would leave the regime in power with a restricted but continuing nuclear programme. By Tehran’s insistence, any agreement would also tie Israel’s hands in dealing with Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Netanyahu’s best bet for his political survival is that the peace talks will fail, and the US will be drawn back into the war on Iran. Officials in his government have consistently predicted that outcome in off-the-record briefings, and so far they have been right. For all his repeated claims that peace is almost at hand, Trump has clearly found it hard to stomach any deal that would compare with the nuclear agreement achieved by Barack Obama in 2015, especially if it involves anything as visually embarrassing as the delivery of unfrozen Iranian assets in the form of pallets of cash flown into Tehran. The weekend’s eruption of hostilities and their temporary resolution does not bring an exit from that limbo any closer.
So far this year, Trump and Netanyahu have found common remedy for their domestic predicament by going to war. Netanyahu is still determined to press on and take US military might with him, while Trump is wavering. As long as this two-man drama remains unresolved, the Middle East will continue to pay the price.
Here’s Julian’s full analysis:
Scientists inside the Trump administration’s Environmental Protection Agency have told CNN (paywall) they are being pushed to downplay potential risks of household products such as cleaners and cosmetics.
According to CNN’s report, the scientists say they are “under pressure to alter safety reviews of chemicals commonly found in consumer products like household cleaners and cosmetics to make risks to human health and the environment disappear on paper”.
They are also “being told to stop considering the impact a chemical may have on specific racial groups” and “some veteran employees say they have been pressed to make chemicals appear safe by coming up with test parameters that aren’t realistic”.
The EPA said it is “using realistic exposure scenarios rather than defaulting to compounded worst-case assumptions”, and is maintaining “gold-standard science”.
Trump’s border czar Tom Homan’s latest threat to send more ICE agents to New York City comes as millions are expected to visit the region to celebrate the New York Knicks in the NBA finals, as well as for the Fifa World Cup final, which will take place about 10 miles outside of the city, in New Jersey.
“We will not allow ICE or anyone else to sow fear in our communities – especially at this moment,” Zohran Mamdani, New York City’s Democratic mayor, responded on X. “As the world comes to our city, we will stand proudly with our immigrant neighbors and reject these attacks for what they are: an attempt to divide us.”
“Soccer would not exist without immigrants,” Mamdani added. “Immigrants play and coach the game, work in the stadiums, fill the stands, and make celebrations like the World Cup possible. Six of the players on the US Men’s National Team are immigrants.”
It comes as immigrant rights advocates have issued travel warnings for the 10 million visitors expected to travel to the US for the World Cup, the world’s largest sporting event, that they risk “serious rights violations” under the current political climate, including “arbitrary denial of entry and risk of arrest, detention and/or deportation”.
A reminder that least 18 people have died this year in ICE custody. And in January, amidst an enforcement surge in Minneapolis, immigration officers killed two US citizens, Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, in a matter of weeks.
The Iranian regime has announced the end of attacks against Israel, while Donald Trump has claimed both sides “want a ceasefire”. This comes after Israel and Iran attacked each other’s territory for the first time since a fragile ceasefire took effect in April. The Israeli strikes are in apparent defiance of the US president, who told Benjamin Netanyahu not to retaliate against Iran, in order to avoid derailing peace talks.
To unpack all of this in today’s edition of The Latest podcast, Nosheen Iqbal speaks to the Guardian’s senior international correspondent Julian Borger.
Further to that last post, the increase in fees under Trump discouraged H-1B visa requests, Reuters reports. As of 15 February, USCIS had received just 85 payments of the $100,000 fee, the administration said in a March filing.
The administration argued that the fee constituted a monetary penalty that the president had lawful authority to impose under federal immigration law to restrict the entry of certain foreign nationals.
But Judge Leo Sorokin, an Obama appointee, concluded that the fee was not a penalty but a tax that the president lacked any authorization from Congress to issue. He wrote:
double quotation markHere, the substance and application of the $100,000 payment reveal that it is a tax, regardless of what the payment is called.
A federal judge has struck down a $100,000 fee that Donald Trump imposed on new H-1B visas for foreign workers in highly skilled occupations, such as IT, healthcare and engineering, as unlawful and said it must be invalidated.
US district judge Leo Sorokin in Boston issued the ruling in a lawsuit filed by 20 Democratic state attorneys general challenging a fee Trump announced last year that dramatically raised the cost of obtaining H-1B visas.
There are as many as 730,000 H-1B holders in the US, and an additional 550,000 dependents, including spouses and children, who together make up nearly 1.3 million residents, according to a January 2025 report from fwd.us, an immigration and criminal justice advocacy group.
The cost for an H-1B previously ranged from about $1,700 to $4,500, depending on whether the visa was expedited. Each year, Congress caps H-1B visas at 85,000, awarded through a lottery system. To enter, companies pay a $215 registration fee, followed by the thousands of dollars more in application fees and legal costs if selected.
But in September, the Trump administration increased the fee for skilled foreign workers applying for H-1B visas to $100,000, claiming the visas were being “abused” to undercut American wages and outsource IT jobs.
In the highly watched Senate election in Texas, in which Democrat James Talarico will be battling it out the Trump-backed Ken Paxton, Talarico has gained an unlikely supporter.
Dan Cogdell, an attorney who helped lead Paxton’s defense during his 2023 impeachment trial on corruption charges, gave a statement to NOTUS on Monday that he would be supporting Talarico.
Cogdell told Notus that his former client – the attorney general of Texas – “has lost sight of his core mission, which is to represent the people of Texas.
“And unlike Ken, I believe to my core that James Talarico believes in unity over division and that he knows how to assemble not only Democrats, but Independents and Republicans, and we need that right now,” Cogdell said.
Donald Trump’s hardline border czar has again threatened to dispatch a surge of immigration agents to New York City, as the administration vows to press ahead with its controversial crackdown.
Tom Homan said today that he had reviewed a plan to expand Immigration Enforcement and Customs (ICE) operations in New York and deploy “more ICE agents than you’ve ever seen” in the city.
Homan said in an interview on Fox News that he is making good on a promise he made to Kathy Hochul, the Democratic governor of New York, that he would increase ICE presence in New York if the state passed legislation barring state and local law enforcement from working with immigration in New York jails.
Hochul signed the bill into law at the end of last month.
“I made her a promise: you’re going to see more ICE agents than you’ve ever seen in New York City, and it’s coming,” Homan said. “I just reviewed an operational plan.”
Homan has repeatedly threatened to send more ICE personnel to New York, as well as to other Democrat-run sanctuary cities around the country that limit the cooperation between local agencies and federal immigration authorities.
Such a move has so far yet to materialize in New York.
Donald Trump again repeated his claim on Monday that the California election was rigged, this time in reference to the Los Angeles mayoral primary and reality TV star Spencer Pratt.
“Not possible for Spencer Pratt to have lost the L.A. runoffs after the big lead he had,” Trump posted on Truth Social.
Trump had endorsed Pratt, a former Republican, a move that may have acted more as a hindrance than a help in deep-blue Los Angeles. Pratt has fallen behind LA city council member Nithya Raman in the contest to face the incumbent mayor, Karen Bass, in the November run-off election.
In the same post, Trump called California a “3rd World Nation” before declaring “Rigged Elections!” and asserting that “they” will now “be working on great guy Steve Hilton” – a Republican in the California gubernatorial race.
Source: Guardian - World News
