Trump attacks Cornyn and defends $1.8bn slush fund amid Blanche nomination standoff
Donald Trump went after US senator John Cornyn this morning, saying Cornyn didn’t have a problem with the IRS slush fund until after Trump endorsed his opponent, Ken Paxton, in the Republican primary in Texas, which Paxton won.
Trump also defended the $1.8bn slush fund to pay out people who claim they were targets of political weaponization which also grants Trump and his businesses immunity from past tax investigations. The fund, and Trump’s refusal to officially end it, have stalled the nomination for attorney general Todd Blanche, with Cornyn and Thom Tillis holding out.
Trump’s defense of the slush fund is curious, as his administration has claimed the fund is not moving forward but not committed in writing to end it. Cornyn and Tillis have sought written confirmation from the justice department that the fund will not proceed.
In a Truth Social post, Trump said the fund “will not benefit me, but rather the great American Patriots who were hunted down like dogs and whose lives were unfairly and illegally destroyed by the Crooked Joe Biden Administration”. He went on to defend the people who could benefit from the fund, noting that he “gave up any payments for myself, which would have been substantial”.
“I will always feel that these victims of government abuse should be paid back for what they were forced to endure, their lives have been ruined!” Trump wrote. “Millions of people agree with me, as was proven in my landslide Presidential win, where this was a major subject of debate, and so did John Cornyn, until he lost his Election to an opponent that I Endorsed.”
Key events
After Trump’s remarks, officials around the table detailed their work on administration projects. JD Vance went through his fraud task force, followed by Marco Rubio, then Pete Hegseth.
Rubio panned the International Criminal Court as an “illegitimate international organization”. Trump joked, “there’s no indication they’re after me” about the court. Rubio also brought up “far-left” and “antifa” groups, saying the administration would continue to go after “far-left violent terrorism”.
Hegseth touted his work on “ripping out DEI” in the military, referring to diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
“When you rip out DEI, when you rip out social engineering and social justice, and you put in merit, and then you untie the hands of commanders to be commanders, to enforce discipline and accountability, to get back to basics, then you get historic reenlistment inside our ranks,” Hegseth said.
Trump went through a laundry list of his supposed accomplishments, including prescription drug prices, an immigration crackdown and savings accounts for kids.
He defended the Iran war.
“We’re in there for five months,” he said of the war. “And if you look at Vietnam, they were in there for 20 years. You look at Afghanistan, they were there for many years. We look at any one of the wars, Korea, any one of them. They’re there for many years. We’re in for five months, and we have obliterated their military capacity. They’ve got some left, but soon they won’t have some left.”
Donald Trump blames cyber-attack on Minnesota’s water systems on state leaders during cabinet meeting
Donald Trump is holding a cabinet meeting now from Camp David, where he blamed a cyber-attack on Minnesota water systems on Minnesota’s leaders.
“We heard in Minnesota there was a cyber-attack, and they blame it on Iran. I don’t think so,” Trump said. “I think I blame it on Minnesota because they’re grossly incompetent. There was a cyber-attack of 30 water plants, and I would blame it on Minnesota and the governor, the corrupt governor of Minnesota. They like to say, oh, it’s Iran. Iran should be so lucky. Iran’s got bigger problems than worrying about Minnesota.”
State and federal investigators have said they suspect Iranian hackers were behind the attacks on the water systems, though said that was not a conclusion and could change.
The Republican president pro tem of the Indiana senate announced today that he wouldn’t run again to lead the chamber, which Donald Trump – who tangled with Indiana’s top Republicans on redistricting – applauded.
Rodric Bray was key to blocking Indiana from undertaking mid-decade redistricting as several Republican-led states did following pressure from the Trump administration, resulting in Democratic states redistricting to offset Republican gains.
Bray, who has been president pro tem since 2018, said Friday that he wouldn’t seek reelection to lead the chamber, but would continue in his role until November and would not be stepping down as an elected senator.
Trump, in a post on Truth Social, said he was “pleased to announce” Bray’s plan not to seek the top role again, saying Bray had “foolishly” led the chamber.
“Better yet would be if he would resign from Office, completely, but he will be met by us at the Indiana Polls,” Trump wrote. “Rodric Bray should be ashamed of himself for costing our Country, mainly the Republican Party, two U.S. House Seats, and for costing all of his colleagues who went along with him, an Election loss!”
Trump and his allies backed a host of challengers to state lawmakers who refused to redistrict, and voters largely sided with Trump’s picks in the primaries earlier this year. Trump thanked Indiana voters for ousting the “wayward Senators, led down the Path of Destruction by a FOOL named Rodric Bray”.
In the last few days before Michigan’s 4 August primary, US representative Haley Stevens accused her opponent, Abdul El-Sayed, of blaming “all of (his) problems on Jewish Americans”.
Stevens quoted-tweeted a video of El-Sayed talking about massive outside funding from the groups affiliated with American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), where El-Sayed said Aipac should “come for me” and called Stevens “the least capable candidate in America”.
Stevens wrote that when she and El-Sayed were both on the ballot in 2018, in different races, she won her race and El-Sayed lost in a primary to Gretchen Whitmer, the state’s governor.
“Everyone in America understands you want to blame all of your problems on Jewish Americans,” Stevens wrote.
She said El-Sayed would lose to Mike Rogers, the likely Republican candidate in November, talking like he did in the video. El-Sayed will “be a celebrity whining and writing books to get even richer. You’re part of the complainer class, looking for their next book or podcast deal,” she wrote.
“Bro, I just want to work for Michigan,” she concluded.
Trump attacks Cornyn and defends $1.8bn slush fund amid Blanche nomination standoff
Donald Trump went after US senator John Cornyn this morning, saying Cornyn didn’t have a problem with the IRS slush fund until after Trump endorsed his opponent, Ken Paxton, in the Republican primary in Texas, which Paxton won.
Trump also defended the $1.8bn slush fund to pay out people who claim they were targets of political weaponization which also grants Trump and his businesses immunity from past tax investigations. The fund, and Trump’s refusal to officially end it, have stalled the nomination for attorney general Todd Blanche, with Cornyn and Thom Tillis holding out.
Trump’s defense of the slush fund is curious, as his administration has claimed the fund is not moving forward but not committed in writing to end it. Cornyn and Tillis have sought written confirmation from the justice department that the fund will not proceed.
In a Truth Social post, Trump said the fund “will not benefit me, but rather the great American Patriots who were hunted down like dogs and whose lives were unfairly and illegally destroyed by the Crooked Joe Biden Administration”. He went on to defend the people who could benefit from the fund, noting that he “gave up any payments for myself, which would have been substantial”.
“I will always feel that these victims of government abuse should be paid back for what they were forced to endure, their lives have been ruined!” Trump wrote. “Millions of people agree with me, as was proven in my landslide Presidential win, where this was a major subject of debate, and so did John Cornyn, until he lost his Election to an opponent that I Endorsed.”
In this week’s episode of Politics Weekly America, host Jonathan Freedland delves into leftwing Democrats’ political moment in the sun – Zohran Mamdani’s rise in New York City, Abdul El-Sayed’s progressive campaign in Michigan and the buzz of whether New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will run for president in 2028.
Freedland sits down with Bhaskar Sunkara, the president of the Nation magazine and founding editor of Jacobin, to talk about whether Democratic socialism is shifting from the political fringe to the mainstream and how swing voters will respond.
You can watch or listen on the Guardian’s website or find it wherever you get your podcasts.
A new survey of voters in 18 congressional toss-up districts by the Working Families Party showed voters, and especially independents, want candidates who challenge the political system.
The survey found 80% of voters agreed that elected officials care more about wealthy donors and powerful interests than people like them. When given a choice between a generic candidate who is an experienced elected official who focuses on “practical reforms” who gets funding from established groups and party donors, or a “political outsider who says the system is broken” who calls for changes to the status quo, the outsider wins by 14 points in the poll, including among independents and moderates.
“The survey does not show that every progressive policy or organizational cue is equally effective,” a polling memo from the Working Families Party says. “Instead, it points to a broader candidate posture: challenge concentrated power, demonstrate independence from party leadership, and connect change to material improvements in people’s lives.”
The Working Families Party, a progressive minor political party that’s growing in recent years, concludes that advocating for changing the political system instead of a conventional move toward the political center in a competitive district is a more winnable strategy.
“The strongest candidate in this environment is therefore not simply the most progressive or the most moderate,” the memo says. “It is the candidate who can credibly demonstrate that they are independent of entrenched power, willing to challenge their own party, and focused on delivering meaningful improvements for working people.”
Donald Trump meets with cabinet at Camp David to discuss Iran war resolution
Tom Ambrose
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.
President Donald Trump will convene a cabinet meeting later today at his Camp David retreat as he grapples with how to resolve his war against Iran.
He will also be keen to find a way to bring down gasoline prices as the Republicans head into the November midterm elections.
This will be only his third trip to Camp David during his second term, with Trump largely having stayed away from the mountaintop presidential retreat in western Maryland.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters at a briefing last week that this would be the 13th Cabinet meeting of Trump’s second term and that it would be “a lot of fun and something different for the cabinet to experience together.”
The agenda for the meeting will likely focus heavily on foreign policy, Reuters reported. Trump is engaged in tit-for-tat strikes against Iranian targets with no end in sight to a conflict that the president initially projected would last just a few weeks but is now five months old.
The Iran war has sent gasoline prices spiraling and taken a toll on his popularity across the US. This week, a Reuters-Ipsos poll found just one in three Americans support the war, the lowest in the poll since the conflict’s early days.
In another foreign policy development, Trump on Thursday night announced that his so-called “Board of Peace” reached an agreement for the complete disarmament of Hamas militants and other armed groups in Gaza. Israel has yet to respond officially to the plan.
In other developments:
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President Donald Trump has said he may pull Todd Blanche’s nomination for attorney-general until senators John Cornyn and Thom Tillis leave office. The Republicans have demanded written assurances about the settlement of the president’s lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service. Cornyn recently lost the GOP primary in Texas and Tillis is not seeking reelection.
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The US Senate narrowly rejected a largely symbolic effort to check Donald Trump’s war in Iran, as a war powers resolution directing the president to end hostilities failed in a 49-50 vote.
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The House Democratic Women’s Caucus called on Thursday for an ethics committee investigation of Republican congressman Max Miller, a former Trump aide who has been accused of domestic abuse by his ex-wife and former girlfriend.
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New polling commissioned by Fox News shows Texas Democrat James Talarico narrowly ahead of the state’s Trump-backed Republican attorney general, Ken Paxton, in their contest for a seat in the US Senate.
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