dailynewsnblog
Key events
Edward Helmore
The Trump administration is continuing to pressure the United Nations and the international aid sector more broadly to adopt trade-focused policies to benefit US firms – or face the threat of further budget cuts.
Donald Trump’s second term has already seen USAID suffer mass layoffs and have its remaining operations folded into the state department, with a ripple effect across the globe that has many experts warning will cost thousands of lives as vital programs are cut.
The Trump administration has also largely suspended support for agencies, including the World Health Organization, the UN human rights council and the UN’s cultural body Unesco.
Last week the Trump administration unveiled a “trade over aid” initiative at the United Nations, outlining a shift away from donor-focused development assistance toward greater private investment, or what it says is “an international economic development vision built on free markets”.
At the same time, the news website Devex reported on two US diplomatic notes that circulated in Geneva and New York that made it clear that the US was willing to use the threat of more budget cuts to the international community in order to force through its agenda.
Suspect in White House correspondents’ dinner shooting hearing scheduled for today
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.
The suspect from the 25 April shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner has a hearing covering the conditions of his confinement scheduled for later today.
Cole Allen, who remains behind bars for now pending his trial, was injured during the attack but was not shot by officers. The attack was an attempt to kill president Trump, according to the federal prosecutor overseeing the investigation.
Allen is accused of rushing a Secret Service checkpoint at the event, attended by president Donald Trump and other members of the cabinet. Allen was allegedly armed with multiple weapons and fired at an agent.
Jeanine Pirro, the US attorney for the District of Columbia, said last week there was no evidence the agent was hit by friendly fire during the incident. However, she went beyond that Sunday in saying a shot from one of Allen’s weapons hit the officer’s bullet-resistant vest.
“We now can establish that a pellet that came from the buckshot from the defendant’s Mossberg pump-action shotgun was intertwined with the fiber of the vest of the Secret Service officer,” she told CNN’s State of the Union. “It is definitively his bullet.”
Allen is charged with attempting to assassinate Trump, interstate transportation of weapons and discharge of a firearm during a violent crime. His attorneys filed a document with the court on Sunday, saying they learned he was no longer on suicide watch and sought to withdraw a motion formally seeking to remove him from such supervision.
In other developments:
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Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of New York City, has been hospitalised and is in a “critical but stable condition”, his spokesperson said on Sunday evening. Ted Goodman, the spokesperson, posted on social media: “Mayor Giuliani is a fighter who has faced every challenge in his life with unwavering strength, and he’s fighting with that same level of strength as we speak. We do ask that you join us in prayer for America’s Mayor Rudy Giuliani.”
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Donald Trump’s approval rating has hit its worst level during his two terms in office, with more than six in 10 Americans disapproving of the president’s job performance. Trump’s rating is at its worst on the cost of living and other economic issues since launching his deeply unpopular war against Iran in February, which has plunged the global economy into an oil crisis and sent gas prices rocketing to a four-year high.
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Trump has announced that the US will “guide” ships trapped by the Iran war out of the Gulf through the strait of Hormuz on Monday morning, and claimed his representatives were having “very positive” discussions with Iran. Trump wrote on his social media site that the operation, called “Project Freedom”, would be a humanitarian gesture “on behalf of the United States, Middle Eastern Countries but, in particular, the Country of Iran”.
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The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, is to travel to Rome this week for a visit reportedly aimed at thawing frosty relations with the Italian government and the Vatican. Rubio is scheduled to be in the Italian capital on Thursday and Friday, which will also mark the one-year anniversary of the papacy of Pope Leo, the first US-born pontiff.
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Pete Hegseth’s purges of senior officers with impeccable reputations have caused alarm at the Pentagon, raising questions about whether a supposed last line of defense against the impulsive whims of a president with access to the nuclear codes still exists.
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Trump is attempting to select his own citizenry and control who can vote by gathering the personal details of all Americans, Arizona’s top election official has warned. Adrian Fontes, Arizona’s Democratic secretary of state, fears that the Trump administration’s active efforts to forcibly extract voter files from 30 states including Fontes’s own are part of a bigger plan to gather vital information on all US citizens into a centralised database.
