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White House says Trump ‘did nothing wrong’ amid classified map allegations
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.
The White House says Donald Trump “did nothing wrong”, amid reports that he showed off a classified map on a 2022 flight to his New Jersey golf club.
The president also held onto a record from his first term that was so sensitive only six people would have had access to it, according to a letter released Wednesday by a top House Democrat.
The letter from representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the leading Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, adds to the public understanding of the investigation into Trump’s retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.
It quotes from a newly disclosed Department of Justice memo from January 2023 in which prosecutors cited evidence they said they had accumulated as they moved toward a felony indictment of Trump that would be filed months later.
Responding to Raskin’s letter, the White House said he was not credible. “It’s pathetic that Democrats with zero credibility like Jamie Raskin are still clinging to deranged Jack Smith and his lies in 2026,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said.
“President Trump did nothing wrong, which is why he easily defeated the Biden DOJ’s unprecedented lawfare campaign against him and then won nearly 80 million votes in a landslide election victory.”
The incident was described in a 13 January 2023 briefing memo prepared for the then attorney general, Merrick Garland – roughly six months before special counsel Jack Smith charged Trump with retaining classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago club.
Trump’s alleged disclosure of the map, as described in the memo, would mark the second known time he waved around a classified map in front of Wiles. The indictment charging Trump also described an incident where he showed a classified map to people at his Bedminster club in New Jersey.
Read our full report here:
In other developments:
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Violence continued across much of the Middle East a day after Donald Trump said the US was in “very good” talks with Iran to end the war in the region soon. Iranian barrages targeted Israel, Gulf Arab states and northern Iraq on Tuesday, while Israeli and US warplanes continued to carry out strikes across Tehran and on other targets in the Islamic Republic. More here.
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Democrats managed to flip a seat in the Florida state house in the district that is home to Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago. Emily Gregory, a Democrat, defeated Republican Jon Maples, who had an endorsement from the US president, in the special election in Florida’s 87th state house district. The Associated Press called the race on Tuesday evening, with Gregory, a public health expert and small business owner, leading by more than 2 percentage points. More here.
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Donald Trump on Tuesday swore in Markwayne Mullin as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), while Senate Republicans unveiled a compromise that would restart funding to most of the agency but appears to exclude reforms to immigration enforcement Democrats have demanded. More here.
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Donald Trump has described voting by mail as “cheating” at an event in Memphis, Tennessee, just days after casting a mail‑in ballot himself. “Mail-in voting means mail-in cheating. I call it mail-in cheating, and we got to do something about it all,” the US president said on Monday, in remarks to a roundtable on his administration’s crime taskforce. More here.
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Workers with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) are reeling from the White House’s deployment of immigration law enforcement into airports as TSA workers enter their sixth week without pay as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) shutdown continues. More than 400 TSA workers have quit since the shutdown began in February, with major US airports reporting high call-out rates among workers, leading to longer security wait times. More here.
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The California governor, Gavin Newsom, backtracked on earlier remarks likening Israel to an “apartheid state” in a new interview with Politico published on Tuesday. In the interview, the Democrat, who is widely expected to launch a presidential bid in 2028, said that when he used the term three weeks ago, he meant it to apply to Israel’s future should it continue on its present trajectory. More here.
Key events
Cambodian man deported by Trump administration to Eswatini being repatriated, lawyer says
A Cambodian man deported by the United States to the African kingdom of Eswatini under the Trump administration’s third-country program was released on Wednesday to be repatriated after spending five months in detention at a maximum-security prison with other deportees, his lawyer told the Associated Press.
Pheap Rom was deported to the southern African nation in October and held at the Matsapha Correctional Center. He took a commercial flight to Johannesburg, South Africa, to start his journey to Cambodia, his US-based lawyer, Tin Thanh Nguyen, told The AP.
The US has sent 19 migrants from other countries to Eswatini in three batches since July. Rom is the second to be repatriated after a Jamaican man was flown home in September.
Two of the leading progressives on Capitol Hill will today introduce legislative proposals intended to protect workers’ rights in the brave new world of artificial intelligence.
Bernie Sanders, the left-wing senator from Vermont, will join forces with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic representative for New York, to launch artificial intelligence data center moratorium ct, which they say would ensure that AI benefits workers, is safe and effective, and does not harm communities or the environment.
It would also impose a moratorium on all new AI data centers pending the imposition of national safeguards to protect workers, consumers and communities and to guarantee privacy and civil rights.
Gavin Newsom describes Elon Musk as ‘one of the greatest disappointments of our time’
Gavin Newsom, the California governor, has described Elon Musk as “one of the great disappointments of our time” and accused the billionaire Tesla owner of ceding the electric vehicle market to China.
Talking to Axios, Newsom – widely seen as a frontrunner for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination – that Musk had all but given up on the American EV market that he pioneered by pivoting towards robotics.
“It breaks my heart,” he said, comparing Musk to Thomas Edison.
“I got one of the first Teslas off the line. I’ve been one of their biggest proponents. It was regulation in California that created the conditions that allowed him to take the risk to become the multi-billionaire, maybe trillionaire, that he’s become.
“He is going to allow the greatest own-goal – one of the most significant own-goals in the next decade is ceding the EV space to China. They have 70% of the global EV market. It’s about statecraft with them…It’s a national security play and I really fear what’s going to happen to American legacy automobile manufacturers.”
He attributed some of Musk’s loss of interest in EVs to Donald Trump, who has frequently criticized the cars as a “hoax” and “too expensive.”
The Department of Justice (DOJ) has intensified its investigation of John Brennan, the former CIA director, as Donald Trump seeks retribution for what he has called a “Russia hoax” supposedly meant to discredit his 2016 election victory.
The department requested documents relating to Brennan, who headed the agency during Barack Obama’s presidency, from the House of Representatives’ intelligence committee, NBC reported.
The request prompted the committee to vote on Tuesday night to send the DOJ several classified hearing transcripts.
A spokesperson for the committee’s Republican members said the move “may advance the accountability process that many Americans are desperate to see unfold.”
Brennan has been in the DOJ’s crosshairs since Tulsa Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, called for Obama and other national security officials in his administration to be prosecuted for allegedly concocting a “treasonous conspiracy” she said was aimed at showing that Trump’s 2016 election victory was aided by Russian interference.
White House says Trump ‘did nothing wrong’ amid classified map allegations
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.
The White House says Donald Trump “did nothing wrong”, amid reports that he showed off a classified map on a 2022 flight to his New Jersey golf club.
The president also held onto a record from his first term that was so sensitive only six people would have had access to it, according to a letter released Wednesday by a top House Democrat.
The letter from representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the leading Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, adds to the public understanding of the investigation into Trump’s retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.
It quotes from a newly disclosed Department of Justice memo from January 2023 in which prosecutors cited evidence they said they had accumulated as they moved toward a felony indictment of Trump that would be filed months later.
Responding to Raskin’s letter, the White House said he was not credible. “It’s pathetic that Democrats with zero credibility like Jamie Raskin are still clinging to deranged Jack Smith and his lies in 2026,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said.
“President Trump did nothing wrong, which is why he easily defeated the Biden DOJ’s unprecedented lawfare campaign against him and then won nearly 80 million votes in a landslide election victory.”
The incident was described in a 13 January 2023 briefing memo prepared for the then attorney general, Merrick Garland – roughly six months before special counsel Jack Smith charged Trump with retaining classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago club.
Trump’s alleged disclosure of the map, as described in the memo, would mark the second known time he waved around a classified map in front of Wiles. The indictment charging Trump also described an incident where he showed a classified map to people at his Bedminster club in New Jersey.
Read our full report here:
In other developments:
-
Violence continued across much of the Middle East a day after Donald Trump said the US was in “very good” talks with Iran to end the war in the region soon. Iranian barrages targeted Israel, Gulf Arab states and northern Iraq on Tuesday, while Israeli and US warplanes continued to carry out strikes across Tehran and on other targets in the Islamic Republic. More here.
-
Democrats managed to flip a seat in the Florida state house in the district that is home to Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago. Emily Gregory, a Democrat, defeated Republican Jon Maples, who had an endorsement from the US president, in the special election in Florida’s 87th state house district. The Associated Press called the race on Tuesday evening, with Gregory, a public health expert and small business owner, leading by more than 2 percentage points. More here.
-
Donald Trump on Tuesday swore in Markwayne Mullin as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), while Senate Republicans unveiled a compromise that would restart funding to most of the agency but appears to exclude reforms to immigration enforcement Democrats have demanded. More here.
-
Donald Trump has described voting by mail as “cheating” at an event in Memphis, Tennessee, just days after casting a mail‑in ballot himself. “Mail-in voting means mail-in cheating. I call it mail-in cheating, and we got to do something about it all,” the US president said on Monday, in remarks to a roundtable on his administration’s crime taskforce. More here.
-
Workers with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) are reeling from the White House’s deployment of immigration law enforcement into airports as TSA workers enter their sixth week without pay as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) shutdown continues. More than 400 TSA workers have quit since the shutdown began in February, with major US airports reporting high call-out rates among workers, leading to longer security wait times. More here.
-
The California governor, Gavin Newsom, backtracked on earlier remarks likening Israel to an “apartheid state” in a new interview with Politico published on Tuesday. In the interview, the Democrat, who is widely expected to launch a presidential bid in 2028, said that when he used the term three weeks ago, he meant it to apply to Israel’s future should it continue on its present trajectory. More here.
