Trump accused of ‘turning military on American citizens’ over plans to send national guard to Chicago – US politics live | Trump administration

Key events

Michael Sainato

A proposed mega-merger of two of the largest railroad companies in the US will hurt jobs, raise costs for consumers and increase the risk of more catastrophic train crashes, according to workers and unions.

Union Pacific proposed a $85bn deal to buy Norfolk Southern last month, which would create the first transcontinental railroad network in the US.

As executives at Union Pacific seek approval from federal regulators the Surface Transportation Board, union leaders warn the deal heightens fears around safety – two years after the derailment of a Norfolk Southern train in East Palestine, Ohio, resulted in the release of plumes of toxic chemicals.

“The entirety of the workers” is against the merger, claimed John Samuelsen, the president of the Transport Workers Union. “We’re hoping that the stakeholders in DC that are making determinations are going to listen and understand that when something like East Palestine happens, the chances of that happening under a mammothly merged new entity become greater and greater,” he said.

“Anything that empowers the freight rail carriers makes them more profitable and just increases the levels of power that they can press is dangerous for workers, and actually dangerous for everybody,” Samuelsen added. “They’re already an incredibly difficult employer to deal with. And if they’re twice as big, they’ll be twice as difficult to deal with, and they’re going to move to reduce headcount.”

The two firms expect their merger to create an “annualized synergy opportunity” worth $2.75bn. Samuelsen cited such savings cannot be achieved without reducing the workforce, a longstanding issue in the railroad industry.

Share

The justice department is alleging in a new court filing that three Smartmatic executives who were indicted last year on bribery and money-laundering charges transferred money from a 2018 voting machine contract with Los Angeles county into slush funds that were originally set up to pay bribes to election officials in Venezuela and the Philippines between 2012 and 2016 to obtain and retain lucrative election contracts.

Prosecutors say one of the executives transferred an undisclosed amount from the $282m LA county contract into the slush funds in 2019 but did not say if anyone actually received bribes from the county’s money at that point.

The government is seeking to prove the funds were part of a long pattern of bribing election officials by Smartmatic, the voting machine company, which sued Fox News for defamation after the 2020 election.

A separate court filing in a lawsuit brought by Fox News against LA county to obtain records about Smartmatic’s relationship with Dean Logan, LA county’s registrar-recorder and county clerk who oversees elections and the Smartmatic contract, Fox News asserts that Logan may have received inappropriate gifts from the company in the form of business-class travel and upscale restaurant meals.

Logan is supposed to report vendor gifts above $50 on annual disclosure forms, but records obtained by Fox News and included in the court filing show he did not report some gifts from Smartmatic.

Logan maintains he was not required to report the travel or a meal that Fox highlights in its filing. Fox News is seeking the records from LA county to support its defense against a defamation suit filed against it by Smartmatic in 2021.

Share

France summoned the American ambassador Charles Kushner after he wrote a letter to president Emmanuel Macron alleging France had failed to do enough to stem antisemitic violence, a French foreign ministry spokesperson said on Sunday.

Kushner, who is Jewish and whose son is married to US President Donald Trump’s daughter, published the open letter in the Wall Street Journal amid deep divides between France and the US and Israel.

Kushner’s letter to Macron noted that Monday was “the 81st anniversary of the Allied Liberation of Paris, which ended the deportation of Jews from French soil” under Nazi German occupation.

He wrote: “I write out of deep concern over the dramatic rise of antisemitism in France and the lack of sufficient action by your government to confront it…

“In France, not a day passes without Jews assaulted in the street, synagogues or schools defaced, or Jewish-owned businesses vandalized,” he added.

In the letter, he urged French president Emmanuel Macron to more urgently enforce hate-crime laws and tone down criticism of Israel, saying French government statements about recognising a Palestinian state have fuelled antisemitic incidents in France.

Share

National guard in DC to begin carrying weapons

National guard troops patrolling the streets of Washington DC as part of what President Donald Trump said was his crackdown on crime will begin carrying weapons on Sunday night, two officials said.

The exact number of troops who would carry their weapons was fluid, but they will either carry their M17 pistols or M4 rifles, according to the officials who spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to discuss the matter.

Hundreds of unarmed national guard troops have been in Washington’s streets for the past two weeks after Trump declared a crime emergency in the district. Defense secretary Pete Hegseth last week authorized the troops to carry weapons.

The guard’s Joint Task Force-DC said in a written statement on Sunday that its personnel would only use force “as a last resort and solely in response to an imminent threat of death or serious bodily harm.”

Share

Updated at 07.50 EDT

South Korean president Lee Jae Myung said it was difficult for Seoul to accept a US demand to adopt “flexibility” over operations of the U.S. military now stationed in South Korea, the Yonhap News Agency reported on Monday.

Lee made the comment on a flight to Washington where he is scheduled to hold a summit meeting with US president Donald Trump on Monday.

Lee said he expected to discuss national security issues, South Korea’s defence spending and details of a trade agreement that was agreed by the countries in late July, Yonhap said.

Share

Trump plans order to end ‘cashless bail’ in DC, Axios reports

President Donald Trump plans to sign an executive order on Monday that aims to eliminate “cashless bail” for arrested suspects in Washington, DC, Axios reported on Monday.

Reuters could not immediately verify the report.

Share

Rahm Emanuel, a Democratic former Illinois congressman, chief of staff to former president Barack Obama, and a former mayor of Chicago, also appeared on CNN on Sunday urging people to reflect that Trump, in two terms of office, had only ever deployed US troops in American cities, never overseas.

Emanuel said if he was still mayor he would call on the president to act like a partner and, although crime was coming down, to “work with us on public safety” to combat carjackings, gun crime and gangs and not “come in and act like we can be an occupied city”.

He added about Trump’s agenda:

He gave his speech in Iowa, he said ‘I hate’ Democrats, and this may be a reflection of that.” The speech was in July, when Trump excoriated Democrats in Congress who refused to vote for his One Big Beautiful Bill, the flagship legislation of the second Trump administration so far that focuses on tax cuts for the wealthy, massive boosts for the anti-immigration agenda and benefits cuts to programs such as Medicaid, which provides health insurance for poor Americans.

Share

Richard Luscombe

Hakeem Jeffries, House minority leader and New York Democratic congressman, said Donald Trump has “manufactured a crisis” to justify sending federalized national guard troops into Chicago next, over the heads of local leaders.

Jeffries, appearing on CNN’s State of the Union, accused the US president of “playing games with the lives of Americans” with his unprecedented domestic deployment of the military, which has escalated to include the arming of troops currently patrolling Washington, DC – after sending troops into Los Angeles in June.

The mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson, said any such plan from Trump was perpetrating “the most flagrant violation of our constitution in the 21st century”.

Late on Friday, Pentagon officials confirmed to Fox News that up to 1,700 men and women of the national guard were poised to mobilize in 19 mostly Republican states to support Trump’s anti-immigration crackdown by assisting the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (Ice) with “logistical support and clerical functions”.

Jeffries said he supported a statement issued by the Democratic governor of Illinois, JB Pritzker, that Trump was “abusing his power” in talking about sending the national guard to Chicago, and distracting from the pain he said the president was causing American families.

Jeffries said in an interview with CNN on Sunday morning:

We should continue to support local law enforcement and not simply allow Donald Trump to play games with the lives of the American people as part of his effort to manufacture a crisis and create a distraction because he’s deeply unpopular.”

He continued:

I strongly support the statement that was issued by governor Pritzker making clear that there’s no basis, no authority for Donald Trump to potentially try to drop federal troops into the city of Chicago.”

Share

Illinois senator Tammy Duckworth condemns Trump plan to send troops to Chicago

Illinois senator Tammy Duckworth has said in a statement that Trump’s national guard plan for Chicago “distracts the military from executing its core mission of keeping Americans safe from real adversaries”.

In a statement, she said:

We know this isn’t about ‘law and order’ because Trump is once again refusing to coordinate with state and local officials. And if he really cared about ‘health and safety,’ he wouldn’t have cut millions of dollars in gun violence prevention funding just weeks ago.

This is just another attempt to distract the American people from the price increases his own policies are causing and the various personal scandals he wants to change the subject from.

Forcing the military, uninvited, into Chicago to intimidate Americans in their own communities does not make our nation stronger, it simply distracts the military from executing its core mission of keeping Americans safe from real adversaries who wish us harm.

Share

Updated at 07.49 EDT

Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi also responded to reports that president Donald Trump is planning to send national guard troops to Chicago.

In a statement, he accused Trump of mounting an “illegal attempt to militarize Chicago” and called the president’s actions a “flagrant abuse of power”.

He said:

President Trump’s illegal attempt to militarize Chicago will do nothing but spark chaos and create spectacle.

There is no emergency in Illinois that warrants federalizing our national guard or deploying active-duty troops into our communities – just as there was no justification in Washington or Los Angeles. Donald Trump’s flagrant abuses of power must end.

Our brave servicemen and women are not pawns in his political games.

Share

Trump accused of ‘turning the military on American citizens’ with Chicago national guard plan

Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. My name is Tom Ambrose and I’ll be bringing you the latest news lines over the next few hours.

We start with news that Donald Trump has been accused of “turning the military on American citizens” after a Pentagon official confirmed that planning is under way to send National Guard troops to Chicago.

Illinois attorney-general Kwame Raoul also told CBS News that the president’s actions are both “un-American” and “unwise strategically”.

Accusing the president of “turning our military on American citizens in his ongoing attempts to move our nation toward authoritarianism,” he added:

His actions are not just un-American. They are unwise strategically. Our cities are not made safer by deploying the nation’s service members for civilian law enforcement duties when they do not have the appropriate training.

To be clear: We have made no such request for the type of federal intervention we have seen in Los Angeles or Washington DC. There is no emergency in the state of Illinois.

It comes as lieutenant-governor Juliana Stratton accused Trump of pursuing “political theatrics, not safety,” since crime in Chicago is already declining and there was no local request for troops.

In a statement to ABC7 Chicago, she said:

Tonight’s reporting from the Washington Post that President Trump is preparing to deploy federal troops in Chicago proves what we all know: he is willing to go to any lengths possible to create chaos if it means more political power-no matter who gets hurt.

As lieutenant-governor and throughout my career, I’ve fervently fought for the reformation of our criminal legal system and under the Pritzker-Stratton administration, we’ve made tremendous progress.

Crime in Chicago is declining and there’s absolutely no rationale for this decision, other than to distract from the pain Trump is inflicting on working families with his dangerous agenda. Illinois, governor Pritzker and I are here to stand for your rights, your freedoms, and will protect you against whatever storms of hate and fear come our way.

Earlier on Sunday, Hakeem Jeffries, House minority leader and New York Democratic congressman, said Donald Trump has “manufactured a crisis” to justify sending federalized national guard troops into Chicago next, over the heads of local leaders.

Read our full report here:

In other developments:

France summoned the American ambassador Charles Kushner after he wrote a letter to president Emmanuel Macron alleging France had failed to do enough to stem antisemitic violence, a French foreign ministry spokesperson said on Sunday.

Sergei Lavrov, Moscow’s most senior diplomat, praised efforts by Donald Trump to end the war, in an interview on NBC on Sunday, while US vice-president JD Vance said Washington would “keep on trying” to broker talks in the absence of a deal.

In the opening weeks of Donald Trump’s second term, Gavin Newsom wagered that peacemaking was best: a tarmac greeting for Air Force One, an Oval Office visit and a podcast slot for Maga’s biggest names. But then Trump came for California, and its governor dropped the niceties. Read the full report here.

The president and his allies have been accused of executing a “pattern of lawfare” akin to those exerted by authoritarian regimes in Hungary and Russia after adopting a new strategy to target political opponents: allegations of mortgage fraud. Read the full report here.

The justice department is alleging in a new court filing that three Smartmatic executives who were indicted last year on bribery and money-laundering charges transferred money from a 2018 voting machine contract with Los Angeles county into slush funds that were originally set up to pay bribes to overseas election officials.

Share

Updated at 05.44 EDT