Trump blasts decision that blocks mail-in voting executive orders: ‘This court has really let our country down’ – live

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Patel spars with Democratic senator over Atlantic article that alleges FBI director's excessive drinking

The FBI director sparred intensely with Democratic Senator Peter Welch, of Vermont, after the lawmaker questioned Patel over his defamation lawsuit against a journalist at the Atlantic, who wrote earlier this year about Patel’s alleged excessive drinking and unexplained absences on the job.

The FBI director has sued the magazine, and the author of a story it published, filing a defamation lawsuit in US district court for the District of Columbia that seeks $250m in damages.

“I have every right to claim the truth,” Patel said, accusing Sarah Fitzpatrick, the reporter, of printing “false material”. The FBI director added that he was acting as a “personal private citizen” in the lawsuit. “I am allowed to participate in my own defense, especially when there’s a smear campaign, one which you are participating and continuing the falsehoods and lies that have been directed at me,” he told Welch.

Patel also said that he did not direct the FBI to investigate Fitzpatrick for her reporting.

Welch also questioned Patel about after a video surfaced earlier this year, which shows the FBI director chugging a bottle and spraying beer in a locker room with the men’s USA hockey team in Milan, following their gold medal victory against Canada at the Winter Olympics.

“What you’ll never understand is the players who are my friends invited me into the locker room. What you’ll never understand is that during that trip, where 300,000 Americans went to Italy to participate in the games and watch them, not a single security incident occurred,” Patel said.

During Kash Patel’s hearing before senators on the judiciary committee, Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, also probed the FBI director about Kremlev’s involvement in Donald Trump Jr’s wedding.

“I would like to know from you whether you have begun an investigation of potential intelligence compromises,” Blumenthal asked Patel. However, the FBI director said that he didn't “track” the reporting from ProPublica.

“Public reporting generally is inaccurate, and so what the men and women of the FBI will do, as we do in every case, is we will look at whatever information comes our way and analyze it,” Patel said.

Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House oversight committee, is investigating potential ties between the White House and a Russian oligarch who paid for a portion of Donald Trump Jr’s wedding.

In a letter sent to Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, on Monday, Garcia expressed concern about “any possible foreign entanglement” between the president’s son and the oligarch, Umar Kremlev. Garcia asked Wiles to provide documents, records and communications between the White House and Trump Jr about Kremlev, among other requests.

“As the son of President Donald Trump and the part-owner and major investor of multiple companies with extensive Department of Defense contracts, any apparent ties to members of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle raises serious questions about pay-to-play schemes and foreign intelligence infiltration of the President’s family,” Garcia wrote in the letter.

In a separate letter addressed to Trump Jr, Garcia expressed similar worries and asked the president’s son to provide more details about his wedding events bankrolled by Kremlev, including: all dates of communication between Trump Jr and Kremlev, any communications Trump Jr may have had with the White House about Kremlev, financial records of purchases made by foreign nationals and a complete list of wedding gifts from foreign nationals.

It came just hours after ProPublica revealed that the Kremlev spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on wedding celebrations for Trump Jr and his wife, Bettina, earlier this year. The couple also confirmed Kremlev’s financial involvement on Monday.

The US president, however, downplayed the oligarch’s involvement: “I have no idea who Umar is, never heard of him, and he didn’t pay for Don and Bettina’s wedding, which took place at a totally different location, and on a different day from the wedding. It was an ‘afterparty’ given in their honor. Not a big deal! I was not present at the party.”

Patel does not commit to keep FBI agents away from polls during midterm elections

Kash Patel did not commit to keeping FBI agents away from polls during the November midterm elections.

While responding to Democratic senator Richard Blumenthal, the FBI director said that his department has an election counselor coordinator in every field office where they “quarterback these election activities”.

When Blumenthal pushed Patel on whether he would confirm that agents wouldn’t be physically present at ballot sites, Patel said: “The FBI will follow the law if there’s a reason to go there because there’s been a violation of law”.

The FBI director noted that the priority to “monitor elections” rests with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

“I don’t know that we can’t legally do it. I’m telling you, we’re going to house our agents and intel analysts in our field offices for election security,” Patel told Blumenthal.

Maria ‌Ressa, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, has told Reuters that artificial intelligence will take away our agency unless we legislate now to limit it.

Ressa, a Filipino and American journalist and CEO of Rappler, jointly won the 2021 award in part for her work documenting the power of large tech companies. She also serves as co-chair of the UN’s international scientific panel on artificial intelligence, tasked with assessing how AI is transforming lives worldwide.

“It is not ​a freedom of speech issue to ask for regulation,” Ressa told Reuters. “It’s a public safety issue.”

She added that if AI regulation doesn’t happen, it will “be beyond our control ⁠if we don’t step in now”.

Ressa also dismissed Donald Trump’s argument that any guardrails could allow China to gain ground in developing AI and outpacing the US.

“China actually puts more safeguards in place for its citizens than Silicon Valley does for the rest of the world. If you’re on TikTok, the version of TikTok that ‌is in ⁠China has age restrictions,” she said.

Ressa’s interview with Reuters happened before leading AI company CEOs called for further checks and to slow down the development of the technology.

During his hearing with Senate judiciary lawmakers, both parties have questioned FBI director Kash Patel about his department lowering hiring standards for applicants with certain background histories. This includes those who have had sexual encounters with sex workers, theft from an employer or engaging in acts of bestiality.

On the last act, Patel claimed this only includes people who were “trafficked” into having sex with an animal. Republican senator John Kennedy however, sought further clarity.

“If Joe participated in beastiality, not as the animal but as the human, don’t you think he ought to be disqualified?” he asked the FBI director, while asking how it was possible to “involuntarily” commit bestiality.

“In a lot of these cases, when human traffickers, who are some of the worst individuals on planet Earth, they don’t just traffic you for prostitution; they traffic you for degrading acts of all kind, and they force you into that type of conduct. And some of these individuals would go on to be law enforcement officers, who qualified to be law enforcement officers and later applied to the FBI,” Patel insisted.

'This court has really let our country down': Trump blasts decision that blocks mail-in voting executive orders

Donald Trump has blasted the supreme court’s ruling which blocks his long-sought executive order which curbs mail-in voting. The president called mail-in voting – which he has used on several occasions to cast a ballot – “a laughing stock” across the world. He has routinely claimed, without evidence, that the voting method is prone to fraud.

“The Supreme Court has really let our Country down! Certain Justices are petrified of these crazed and depraved Democrats, and are totally unable to show the courage necessary to save our America,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

A reminder, only two of nine justices – Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito – sided with the administration. Trump called both of the conservative members of the bench “legends” in their dissent.

“This Supreme Court is bullied and cajoled by the Radical Left into making decisions that have set America back at least a hundred years,” the president added, while chiding the court’s decision at the end of its last term which also rejected Trump’s executive order which attempted to limit birthright citizenship and the earlier ruling which found a number of the administration’s tariffs unlawful. The president also accused the justices he nominated for the bench – Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett – not “the people I interviewed to serve” but “merely a shell of their original selves”.

“The damage done to America is incalculable, and they know this, just as everyone else does – It is an irreparable and unrecoverable harm! The Court’s inability and unwillingness to do the right thing for our Country will go down, in a very negative way, in the annals of History,” Trump wrote. “It is not easy for me to write this criticism of the United States Supreme Court – it will likely cost me dearly for years to come – but I feel it my obligation and duty, as President, to do so for the America we love!”

Against the backdrop of Patel’s hearing is the FBI’s latest report outlining the national crime statistics. The new data shows that between 2024 and 2025 there was the largest year-to-year decline in violent crime rates since FBI estimations began in 1936.

Kash Patel, the FBI director, is now testifying before lawmakers on the Senate judiciary committee. A reminder that the last time he appeared before Congress was in May, when he sparred with senators on the appropriations committee and denied – under oath – allegations of excessive drinking and unexplained absences on the job, dismissing them as “baseless” during a fiery congressional hearing.

Today’s hearing is also expected to be full of heated exchanges. “Mr Patel is the least qualified and most partisan FBI director in our nation’s history,” said Senator Dick Durbin, the judiciary committee’s top Democrat. “The bureau has been reshaped as a political weapon against President Trump’s political enemies and a shield to protect the president and his MAGA loyalists, not the American people.”

Durbin accused Patel of “diverting FBI resources to inane, debunked conspiracy theories” that the “deep state” has been targeting Donald Trump since 2016. The ranking member also questioned why the judiciary committee has still not called on former special counsel Jack Smith to testify after routinely denigrating his January 6 investigations and alleging that he targeted Republican lawmakers.

Michelle R Smith

Donald Trump’s nominee for US surgeon general reported more than $200,000 in business income from a company she owns that sells dietary supplements, a loosely regulated industry that health and consumer advocates say raises concerns about her record and which some critics allege are akin to “snake oil”.

Dr Nicole Saphier, who specializes in breast cancer as a radiologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New Jersey and was formerly a Fox News contributor, is facing a Senate confirmation hearing on Wednesday. She filed a financial disclosure and ethics agreement last week.

In them, Saphier also reported extensive investments in other industries that have a bearing on Americans’ health, including tobacco. US surgeons general have warned repeatedly about the dangers of tobacco in dozens of reports since the 1960s.

Saphier also listed investments in pharmaceutical and healthcare companies, technology, fossil fuel and food companies including Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and McDonald’s.

The filings show Saphier made substantial income from her company Empower MD, LLC, which owns her supplement line, Drop RX. She reported that she received $270,605 in business income from Empower MD and placed the company’s value in a range of $100,001 – $250,000. She said she would sell the company before assuming the duties of surgeon general.

The Guardian previously reported that Saphier’s company had sold at least nine formulations under the brand name Drop RX since at least 2024 and promoted the products multiple times on her Instagram account. The company sold several of the 2-ounce liquid formulations on Amazon, packaged in glass bottles with a dropper. While most are no longer available for sale this week, at least one – a blend that includes turmeric and ginger root and marketed under the name “Soothe” – was being sold for $24.99 as of Monday.

Read the full report here:

Meanwhile, Trump spent much of the day yesterday posting to Truth Social to make his feelings about calls to slow down the development of advanced artificial intelligence known.

He called the fear about AI’s ability and the lack of guardrails a “hoax” that is being perpetrated by the “Radical Left Dumocrats” and is reminiscent of their “Global Warming Scam of not so long ago, where everyone was going to die from extreme heat”.

However, much of the concern that has emerged in recent days has been bipartisan, and even included CEOs of leading AI companies – who have suggested deceleration and greater checks on the technology’s development.

Donald Trump is in Washington today. He’ll spend the day in meetings, but take part in an Ambassador Credentialing Ceremony at 2.30pm ET. None of his events will be open to the press, but we’ll let you know if that changes.

We’ll also hear from attorney general Todd Blanche, who will hold a White House press briefing in the Rose Garden at 2pm ET. We’ll bring you the latest lines as that gets under way.

Bernie Sanders and podcaster Steve Bannon to call for AI restrictions

Senator Bernie Sanders and conservative ⁠podcaster Steve Bannon will together on Tuesday call for restrictions on AI systems, uniting two political adversaries around concerns that the technology will ⁠harm humans.

Both are due to speak ⁠at the ​same Washington gathering on Tuesday.

Public alarm about the potential danger ⁠posed by AI is growing, after Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon said last week he had resigned, in part because the “people building AI earnestly believe that ⁠it could kill us all by the end of the decade.”

AI-related stocks fell worldwide ​on Monday after leaders of some of ‌the industry’s largest companies ‌called for slowing the pace of the technology’s development.

Bannon, a longtime ally of president ‌Donald Trump, has criticized Trump’s approach to overseeing AI, placing the blame for the president’s unwillingness to regulate the technology squarely on tech companies.

On his Monday podcast, Bannon said Congress should not pass laws that prohibit states from enforcing their own rules for the technology.

“The American people are not going to be supplicants to these tech oligarchs,” ‌Bannon said.

The Kremlin on Tuesday welcomed what it called US president Donald Trump’s “good idea” for a truce between Russia and Ukraine on striking energy targets, without saying whether Moscow had agreed to such a proposal.

Trump announced a truce between the warring sides on Monday, but neither Moscow or Kyiv has confirmed it was in force.

“We have seen president Trump’s post. We consider it a good idea, a good initiative. We are in contact with the Americans,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Kash Patel to testify before Senate committee on FBI agenda

FBI director Kash Patel is set to return to Capitol Hill on Tuesday for an oversight hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The Republican-led panel is likely to try to keep the focus on Patel’s efforts to combat violent crime, counter drug trafficking and pursue the Trump administration’s agenda from his perch at the nation’s premier federal law enforcement agency.

But Democrats will almost certainly seize on the tumult inside the bureau over the last year, including sweeping firings of agents who participated in investigations into president Donald Trump, efforts by the bureau to investigate Trump’s perceived political adversaries and Patel’s travel schedule that has blended private leisure with professional responsibilities.

Patel has made multiple appearances before Congress while serving as director, including to testify about the FBI’s budget, but this will be his first time since last September before the Senate committee that has principal oversight jurisdiction over the bureau.

The board of Washington’s John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is due to vote on Tuesday on whether it will continue to operate, with directors largely installed by president Donald Trump arguing that its future hinges ⁠on having his name on ⁠the complex.

Trump’s name has been added ​to and then removed from one of the nation’s top performing arts venues once already this year after federal judges ruled that only Congress could legally change the name of what it designated to be a “living memorial” to ⁠Kennedy, the 35th US president, who was assassinated in 1963.

“The Board understands that without such appropriate recognition it is unlikely that president Trump will provide the fundamental oversight of the renovation of the main building and lead the fiscal rescue of the Center,” the draft resolution says.

The draft resolution says the center’s finances are dire and it will be unable to honor its payroll obligations or routine maintenance contracts “within a matter of weeks.“

Trump facing AI backlash in Congress as push for guardrails intensifies

Donald Trump is facing a rare backlash from the US Congress as Democrats and some Republicans push for guardrails on the world’s most powerful AI companies.

Concerns over the dangerous potential of AI reached fever pitch this week after tech leaders sounded the alarm over the rapid advancement of the technology and its potential threat to humanity.

Trump dismissed the anxieties on Monday, describing them as a “HOAX” and “conspiracy” and insisting on social media: “The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!”

But the 80-year-old president, who has sidelined Congress on numerous issues during his second term, looks increasingly isolated as members of both major parties acknowledged the risks and expressed a desire to act before it was too late.

Don Beyer, a Democratic congressman from Virginia, said: “History will look very poorly on that tweet. He’s not paying attention – or he’s paying attention to the wrong people. He’s being really foolish: not the first time he’s been really foolish but perhaps catastrophically foolish in this case.”

Recent surveys by the University of Maryland’s Program for Public Consultation found 85% of Democrats and 79% of Republicans want a new federal agency to monitor and regulate AI; and 82% of Democrats and 78% of Republicans favour government safety tests for AI making critical decisions.

Supreme court rejection of Trump mail ballot restrictions will ensure 'safe, secure and accurate elections'

Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.

Lawmakers have given their support to the supreme court’s rejection of Donald Trump’s bid to restrict mail ballots for the midterm elections.

The decision capped a flurry of last-minute legal action with voting already underway, with states allowed to continue sending out mail ballots under the same processes used for years.

Election officials have said there was simply no way to carry out a complete overhaul in the weeks before the midterms. Alabama, North Carolina and Wisconsin began sending mail ballots to voters over the past week while the new system was still not active.

Washington’s secretary of state Steve Hobbs, a Democrat, said the decision means work “to carry out a safe, secure, and accurate election” can continue ‘without having to upend our election processes to meet unrealistic ballot mail requirements.”

In Arizona, another largely vote-by-mail state, Democratic secretary of state Adrian Fontes said “it is crucial for us to continue rejecting the notion that access and security are mutually exclusive when it comes to running strong elections.”

Utah Lt Gov Deidre Henderson, a Republican serving as the state’s chief election officer, said on social media that the supreme court’s decision means “Utahns can have confidence that the 2026 election will proceed as normal.”

In other developments:

Mitch McConnell, the 84-year-old former Senate majority leader from Kentucky, was seen in Washington for the first time in months on Monday, minutes before his office released a statement saying that he was back at work.

With a slip of the tongue reminiscent of Joe Biden, Gavin Newsom, California’s Democratic governor, told CNN that he would not run for president in 2028 if his fellow Californian, former vice-president Kamala Harris, decides to run again, since “I know what that means: I know her base of supporters, I know her friends, the zen diagram on that is just pure crossover.”

Donald Trump claimed there is a “SICK conspiracy” against artificial intelligence and data centers in response to the growing calls for greater checks on AI development.

In a statement posted on social media, Barack Obama, the former US president, called for the pace of AI development to be slowed to allow time for the federal government to develop regulations to address “serious safety concerns”.