Republicans are gathering in Dallas on Wednesday for a highly unusual two-day midterm convention, a first for the party, that will put President Donald Trump at the center of this fall’s midterm elections. Trump plans to take the stage both nights, delivering a keynote address Wednesday and then closing remarks after Vice President JD Vance gives his own speech on Thursday. Members of Trump’s Cabinet will also address the convention. Democrats, meanwhile, are planning their own counterprogramming.
Republicans hope the event, which is part rally and part fundraiser, will help catapult their candidates into November, primarily by highlighting the first two years of Trump’s term. The president has insisted that running on his record will give the GOP their best shot at winning, even as his own poll numbers sag.
Trump gave $45,000 holiday gifts to Natalie Harp and two other White House aides, according to new financial disclosures the administration released. A White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the cash gifts were not related to the “individuals’ official government duties, and therefore are entirely permissible under relevant legal and ethical standards.”
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Vance to address presidential battleground state Republican delegations Thursday
The vice president is using his time in Dallas to meet with Republican delegations from three key presidential battleground states, according to sources familiar with the plans.
Vance, keynoting the Midterm Republican Convention on Thursday evening, is talking at a morning breakfast with GOP leaders and activists from Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, some of the most competitive states in the 2024 election, as well as his home state of Ohio.
Vance has not said whether he plans to seek the 2028 Republican nomination, but is widely expected to explore running to succeed Trump.
Pritzker, a potential 2028 candidate, swipes at another: JD Vance
The Illinois governor demurred about his own White House plans. But he certainly was thinking about the potential Republican candidate who is now vice president.
Blasting the Republicans who are speaking at the GOP midterm convention, Pritzker called Vance “Trump’s chief bootlicker” and said the vice president “wants to hide the fact that he’s the architect of Trump’s endless war in Iran.”
Vance has declined to share publicly how he has advised Trump on Iran.
As a senator and as Trump’s running mate, Vance advocated for less U.S. military intervention abroad and specifically criticized “stupid wars” fought by previous administrations. He has been less critical of the Iran war, having to balance his role as Trump’s understudy with his previous statements about the U.S. role in the world.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker leads off Democrats’ counterprogramming before GOP midterm convention
The potential 2028 White House contender came to Dallas to urge voters not to be distracted by Trump’s made-for-TV event.
“Voters can see through the BS that Republicans are spewing,” Pritzker told reporters.
Among other aspects of Trump’s record, Pritzker cited the Iran war, Trump’s trade war with Canada, and rising prices on gas, housing, healthcare, and other consumer goods.
And he framed the 80-year-old Trump as a “president suffering from dementia, who unleashed violence on our cities, who jacked up grocery prices, screwed our farmers, and now has you paying for his gaudy golden ballroom.”
Pritzker brushed aside questions about his own presidential ambitions.
He’s running for a third term as governor and said he’d decide his next moves after November.
UN nuclear watchdog board reports Iran to the UN Security Council for the first time in 20 years
The U.N. atomic watchdog’s board reported Iran to the U.N. Security Council for the first time in 20 years for failure to cooperate in a long-running investigation into uranium traces detected by inspectors at various undeclared sites in Iran.
Twenty-three countries on the IAEA’s 35-member board of governors voted Wednesday for the resolution at IAEA headquarters in Vienna.
China, Russia and Niger opposed it, while eight countries abstained and one didn’t vote as it was in arrears.
The United States, Britain, France and Germany put forward the resolution.
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Pirro brushes aside questions about her decision to drop Reflecting Pool damage case
U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro was peppered with questions about her decision to drop a criminal case against a former Olympian who was charged with intentionally damaging the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, a move the president strongly criticized.
Trump has said Pirro “choked” and “folded like an umbrella” in seeking to dismiss a felony charge against David Hearn.
At an unrelated press conference, Pirro wouldn’t answer reporters’ questions about her charging decision.
“I’m not going to talk about any other issue,” she said in one of her first public appearances since the decision. “The president has a right to decide what he wants to do and what is important.”
Trump has repeatedly claimed that most of the pool damage was caused by vandals. But Pirro’s office cited evidence that the damage was the result of a botched installation by a contractor as well as a rush to complete the project.
‘Border czar’ said DHS secretary will decide the status of Salvadorans in the US
Tom Homan, Trump’s “border czar,” said Wednesday’s decision on whether to extend protections against deportation for Salvadorans in the U.S. rests with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin.
“If it expires, it’s up to the secretary,” Homan, who has advocated for ending the Temporary Protected Status designation, said Tuesday. “Temporary protected status means temporary. Let’s face it, El Salvador is a much safer country than it’s ever been now with a new president up there.”
Protests in South Korea as Trump demands military support in Mideast
Dozens of protesters rallied in South Korea’s capital Wednesday, calling on the government to reject any U.S. demand to deploy military assets to the Strait of Hormuz.
They chanted slogans and held signs and letter cards that read “Oppose the deployment” and “Do not join a war of aggression.”
The government of South Korean President Lee Jae Myung has said it sent a team of military investigators to the Middle East to assess the security situation, but has not made any decision on whether to deploy military assets.
Trump has openly demanded that South Korea help secure safe passage through the critical oil route, complaining that Seoul has been unwilling to help. Iran has warned of “serious consequences” if South Korea participates in U.S. operations around the waterway.
Ending TPS for Salvadorans could be an economic blow for Trump’s ally
The vast majority of Salvadoran TPS holders have children born in the U.S. Many fear being separated from their American family members and deported to a country they barely know.
Once one of the world’s most violent places, El Salvador has become one of the safest since President Nayib Bukele cracked down on violent crimes and murders. Human rights advocates have denounced mass and arbitrary arrests, torture, and disappearances in the prison system.
Bukele has been an ally of Trump’s policy of mass deportations and was one of the first countries to receive deportees, holding them inside El Salvador’s mega prison known as CECOT.
Bukele hasn’t said whether he requested another extension like he did during Trump’s first term. The $9.9 billion in remittances sent last year by Salvadorans in the U.S. represents 24% of country’s gross domestic product, according to its central bank.
Temporary protected status in limbo for 200,000 Salvadoran immigrants
The law doesn’t specify when exactly on Wednesday is the deadline for the Trump administration to decide if it should end TPS for Salvadorans, as it has done for hundreds of thousands from Venezuela, Haiti and other countries. If the Department of Homeland Security takes no action, protections are automatically extended for six months. This rare reprieve happened for about 11,000 Lebanese in May.
During Trump’s second term, Homeland Security has ended TPS for more than 1 million people from 14 countries, including El Salvador, Venezuela, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Afghanistan and Syria. About 103,000 others remain protected, until October for Ukraine and Sudan, and November for Lebanon.
Rubio visits Ecuador, where a Trump-friendly leader is backing a US counterdrug push
The U.S. secretary of state is on the second leg of a three-nation tour of South America aimed at boosting security cooperation with conservative leaders who have cozied up to Trump.
Marco Rubio spent Tuesday in Colombia meeting with new conservative firebrand President Abelardo de la Espriella and is traveling to Quito on Wednesday for talks with Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa, who has embraced the Trump administration’s get-tough stance on narcotics trafficking and illegal immigration. After Quito, he’ll see new Peruvian President Keiko Fujimori in Lima.
Coinciding with Rubio’s trip, U.S. forces intercepted and sank a vessel on Tuesday that Washington said had links to the Ecuadorian criminal group Los Choneros. It was the sixth such operation in less than two weeks and the second in as many days.
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Death of Chinese national in ICE custody is suspected suicide, official says
Officials in a U.S. territory are reviewing whether shortcomings in jail procedures contributed to the suspected suicide of a Chinese national who was in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Lianyong Wei, 51, was found with a ligature around his neck by a guard performing morning checks at a lockup in Saipan on Aug. 23, Northern Mariana Islands Department of Corrections Commissioner Anthony Torres said in a statement.
Torres said the department is treating the death as a suicide, which would be at least the 11th of an ICE detainee since April 2025. Public health experts have expressed alarm at the trend.
China had pressed the U.S. for answers after ICE announced Wei’s death last week with few details. He’d been arrested two days before his death.
Torres said the department is reviewing its observation, intake screening and emergency response procedures, and will implement any necessary corrective actions.
Americares receives $50 million donation to boost medicines in high-need areas
The nonprofit supporting thousands of health centers globally announced the donation Wednesday from an unidentified Connecticut family. It’s enabling an unusual expansion as sudden U.S. funding cuts have hamstrung programs ranging from maternal and child health to HIV treatment and prevention.
Individual philanthropists and charitable foundations have sought to plug holes since Trump upended the U.S. Agency for International Development. A British billionaire funded nutritional peanut paste. Former USAID employees raised more than $125 million to buoy dozens of critical aid programs. The Gates Foundation narrowed its priorities. And Jeff Bezos’ parents committed up to $500 million for UNICEF’s Child Nutrition Fund.
Experts agree that high-net-worth donors could never save every program lost as the U.S. cut billions of dollars from global health support. This family, at least, “definitely understood the moment and wanted to do more to respond to that,” Americares CEO and president Christine Squires said.
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China hits back at US claims of ‘malicious’ AI development ahead of planned Trump-Xi talks
An advisory issued Tuesday by the FBI, National Security Agency and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency claims that Chinese artificial intelligence developers are engaged in “aggressive, malicious” industrial-scale efforts to extract capabilities from frontier American models including Anthropic’s Claude, OpenAI’s GPT, Google’s Gemini and SpaceXAI’s Grok.
The advisory named China’s DeepSeek, Alibaba, Moonshot AI and Z.ai and said the activities were done “likely with Chinese government awareness.”
In Beijing, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs urged the U.S. to “refrain from making unfounded accusations or smears.”
“China’s AI development is the result of high-level technological self-reliance and strength,” ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said Wednesday. “We maintain that all parties should strengthen cooperation to promote AI development that is open, inclusive, universally beneficial and oriented toward the common good.”
AI governance is expected to figure in talks planned this month between Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
Crude climbs back above $100 a barrel after attacks on oil facilities and tankers
Stocks are falling on Wall Street after the latest attacks between the U.S. and Iran pushed the price of crude oil over $100 a barrel.
It’s the first time the international standard oil price has reached triple digits in nearly six weeks as the fighting throttles the global flow of oil and rising energy prices add to inflationary pressures.
Brent crude rose 2.8% to $100.70 a barrel. Benchmark U.S. crude gained 2.4% to $95.28 a barrel, and it’s dragged the average price for a gallon of regular gasoline up 7 cents overnight to $4.22, more than a dollar above what it cost at this point last year, according to AAA.
The price of diesel, which can have an outsized impact on consumers because it is used in shipping and production, is still climbing, to nearly $6 a gallon after hitting an all-time high Friday.
Democrats say the convention will show how little Republicans care about the voters’ needs
“The fact that these Republicans are planning a celebration in the middle of an economic crisis — where everyday Americans are drowning because of this high cost of living — is extraordinary,” said Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic leader.
Rep. Suzan DelBene of Washington chairs the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and says she’s not worried that Democrats are missing a chance to make their case with their own convention.
“They are not focused on the issues that people are struggling with right now, that they’ve created,” DelBene said. “Cost, housing, food, healthcare, childcare, energy costs, gas prices all going up. That’s what we’re talking about on the ground all across the country.”
Americans “are going to continue to see how much they don’t care,” she added. “And we’re gonna be on the ground all across the country with great candidates talking directly to the American people.”
The convention features Trump and more Trump
The schedule released by organizers makes clear it’s the Trump Show. “It’s gonna be a Trump-a-Palooza,” RNC Chairman Joe Gruters told Spectrum News.
The president will deliver a Wednesday night keynote address and speak again to close the event Thursday. Other speakers include Vice President JD Vance, Republican congressional leaders, Cabinet members including Attorney General Todd Blanche and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Donald Trump Jr. And candidates who will speak include Michigan Senate nominee Mike Rogers, who is running against Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, and North Carolina Senate nominee Michael Whatley, who is up against former Gov. Roy Cooper.
The 12 hours of programming including more than 100 speakers focuses on subjects including tax cuts, fraud allegations, border security and a proposed ban on members of Congress trading stocks. Missing from the public lineup: any mention of the unpopular war with Iran.
Many Republicans are avoiding the ‘Trump-a-Palooza’ convention in Dallas
The gathering puts Trump at the center of this fall’s congressional midterm elections — whether the candidates running like it or not.
An Associated Press survey of more than four dozen Republican candidates found a majority either planned not to attend, said their plans were to be determined, or ignored requests for comment. And many party members are balking at the cost of access: $25,000 for convention tickets and lodging, according to a person familiar with the situation and granted anonymity to speak frankly about the private arrangement.
Others are hoping an appearance alongside Trump will put them in the national spotlight. Part rally and part fundraiser, the convention comes as Republicans try to boost enthusiasm despite Trump’s low approval ratings. Organizers have cast it as “a primetime showcase for President Trump’s success, candidates, and causes.” Much of the programming will label Democrats as extremists by highlighting the party’s insurgent left wing.
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Trump promotes mythical version of himself with AI memes
In the real world, the president is struggling to stop inflation, rout the Iranian government and restore American manufacturing with tariffs.
It’s a different story in the fantastical vision he shares on social media — like the extraordinarily heavy torrent of memes he put out over Labor Day weekend. One video depicted Trump as a superhero wielding Green Lantern’s ring to effortlessly build a wall to keep out migrants and erect a slew of busy factories. Another post showed him in a U.S. hockey uniform looming over a cowering Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney. Another imagined Trump on a military ship as it bombarded an enemy fleet.
Trump’s gap between meme and reality has become glaringly stark ahead of the midterm elections. With most U.S. adults unhappy with his handling of the economy and saying the Iran war hasn’t been worth it, the memes show Trump as unstoppable and omnipotent.
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Trump’s map-making on social media stirs controversy in North Atlantic
During a flurry of social media posts over the long holiday weekend, Trump posted a map showing the U.S. sprawling across all of North America and extending to Greenland and Iceland. The map was colored in the red, white and blue stars and stripes of the U.S. flag.
The Truth Social post offered no explanation but recalled Trump’s earlier talk of making Canada the 51st state and his repeated musings about taking over Greenland, Denmark’s self-governing territory.
“It’s disturbing and, in many ways, completely inappropriate,” Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen told the national broadcaster DR on Tuesday. “It’s obviously a sign that the U.S. president still harbors some kind of maximalist vision in his own mind. We need to rein that in.”
Iceland’s Foreign Secretary Thorgerdur Katrín Gunnarsdóttir summoned U.S. Ambassador Billy Long to a meeting and said she made it clear that the post was unacceptable, national broadcaster RÚV said.
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US banning dairy products, most alcohol and motorcycles from Canada in growing trade war
The United States is banning the import of some dairy products and motorcycles from Canada, along with most alcoholic beverages, the White House said Tuesday, as part of a trade war that shows little sign of cooling off.
The ban will take effect Sept. 29 and comes after retaliatory tariffs promised by Canada kicked in earlier Tuesday on $20 billion in U.S. imports. Canada had responded to tariff moves by Trump after trade talks between the countries broke down last month.
Trump also moved to shut Canadian products out of large, long-term U.S. government contracts and directed the U.S. General Services Administration to declare Canadian products ineligible for those contracts until Canada allows “full and fair reciprocity″ for American products.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said Canada’s strategy was about becoming more independent and vowed to speed those efforts. “It’s about ensuring that no country can hold us hostage. And that we can live how we want to live,” he said.
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Poll: Fewer have a high level of trust in government certifications of election results
As the 2026 midterms approach, public concern about the accuracy of the election results is widespread, the AP-NORC / USA Facts survey finds.
Only 34% of U.S. adults say they trust the government certifications of election results — the last step in a bureaucratic process where state and local officials confirm the vote count — “a great deal” or “quite a bit,” which is down slightly from 40% in 2024.
Just under half of U.S. adults are “extremely” or “very” concerned the federal government will publicly discredit or question election results, tamper with election results, or pressure state election officials to change how they certify or report results.
Over the past few months, Trump has repeated long-debunked allegations of mass voter fraud in the 2020 election and attempted to place new restrictions on mail ballots in time for the midterms.
Trump cheers anti-immigration German party’s strong showing in regional elections
Trump said the Alternative for Germany, or AfD, performed strongly in Sunday’s vote in Saxony-Anhalt, because the region’s voters “got tired of the absolutely horrible Immigration rules and regulations which have hurt Germany so badly.”
“THEY ARE ON THE RISE, and not going to take it anymore!” Trump said in a social media post, offering a somewhat belated reaction to the far-right party’s surge to a landslide victory in a regional election.
AfD fell just short of a majority, but is in a strong position to form the first far-right state government since the Nazi era.
The victory for AfD, which also has a pro-Russia tilt, is a major distraction for Germany and center-right leader Chancellor Friedrich Merz at a time when Europe faces several challenges, including Russia’s continued aggression against Ukraine, a suspected sabotage campaign targeting NATO countries, and difficult dealings with Trump.
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