Allegra Stratton: Can Restoration, not Revolution, Work for UK?
She's been to Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, the island where Donald Trump's mother was born, to see how they are braced for the effect of her son's tariffs. It's illustrated with a beautiful photo portrait by Emily Macinnes of fourth-generation Harris Tweed weaver Iain Martin, dressed in a handsome wool blazer, working on his loom at home.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
12 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump meets with Intel CEO after demanding he resign
US President Donald Trump on Monday said he had a "very interesting" meeting with the chief of US chip maker Intel, just days after calling for his resignation. Trump said on his Truth Social platform that he met with Lip-Bu Tan along with Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick and Secretary of Treasury Scott Bessent. "The meeting was a very interesting one," Trump said in the post. "His success and rise is an amazing story." Trump added that members of his cabinet are going to spend time with Tan and bring the president "suggestions" next week. Intel did not respond to a request for comment. Trump demanded last week that the recently-hired boss of Intel resign "immediately," after a Republican senator raised national security concerns over his links to firms in China. "The CEO of INTEL is highly CONFLICTED and must resign, immediately. There is no other solution to this problem," Trump posted on Truth Social last Thursday. Tan released a statement at the time saying that the company was engaged with the Trump administration to address the concerns raised and ensure officials "have the facts." Intel is one of Silicon Valley's most iconic companies but its fortunes have been dwarfed by Asian powerhouses TSMC and Samsung, which dominate the made-to-order semiconductor business. In a statement, Tan said there has been "a lot of misinformation circulating" about his past roles at Walden International and Cadence Design Systems. "I have always operated within the highest legal and ethical standards," Tan said. The Malaysia-born tech industry veteran took the helm at struggling Intel in March, announcing layoffs as White House tariffs and export restrictions muddied the market. Intel's niche has been chips used in traditional computing processes, which are steadily being eclipsed by the AI revolution. gc/bjt Sign in to access your portfolio
Los Angeles Times
13 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
Of course Trump wants to flex on D.C. Where are the Democrats to stop him?
Remember 'I alone can fix it'? Donald Trump, who made that laughable statement in his 2016 convention acceptance speech, is now testing the theory in Washington. Trump and his party have been threatening a D.C. takeover for years and made it part of the Republican platform last year. But it was all just empty talk and random uppercase words until a former staffer at the Department of Government Efficiency was reportedly attacked in an attempted carjacking in the wee hours of Aug. 3 in a busy area of bars and restaurants. It doesn't matter at all to Trump that D.C.'s violent crime rate fell to a 30-year low last year and is down another 26% so far this year compared with 2024, or that a police report suggests police saw the incident and intervened. This particular victim — a teenage Elon Musk protégé and notorious DOGE operative — gave this particular president the 'emergency' he needed to declare a 'public safety emergency.' Of course, he called it 'a historic action to rescue our nation's capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse.' He has federalized the city's Metropolitan Police Department and deployed 800 members of its National Guard (to start). Over the weekend he sent 450 federal police officers from 18 agencies to patrol the city. It's the second time this year that Trump has played the National Guard card to show who's boss. He sent 4,000 Guard troops and 700 Marines to Los Angeles in June, over the objections of Gov. Gavin Newsom and Mayor Karen Bass, ostensibly to restore order amid immigration raids. But the move sparked new tensions, protests and at least one surreal foray by armed, masked agents into a park where children were attending summer camp. It also drew a legal challenge from Newsom, which is unfolding in court this week. There will be no similar lawsuit in D.C., where I've lived for decades. That's because the U.S. president controls our National Guard. The hard truth is that though Wyoming and Vermont each have fewer people than D.C.'s 700,000-plus residents, D.C. is not a state. It's still in a semi-colonial status, with a mayor and city council whose actions can be nullified by Congress, and with no voting representation in that Congress. In fact, Congress accidentally slashed $1.1 billion from D.C.'s budget — our own money, not federal dollars! — in its cost-cutting frenzy last spring. A promised fix never came, forcing cuts that affect public safety and much else. And yet the city's crime rate has continued to fall. Compared with California, an economic juggernaut of more than 39 million people located thousands of miles from Washington, D.C. is a minuscule and all too convenient target for an executive aiming to prove his manhood, show off to autocrats in other countries or create headlines to distract from news he doesn't like. I could go off on Trump for his lies, overreach and disrespect for D.C. and its right to govern itself. Or the various Republicans who have imposed conservative policies on D.C. for years and now are trying to repeal its home rule law. But what really enrages me is the lack of Democratic nerve — or even bravado — that has left D.C. so vulnerable to Trump and conservative-run Congresses. Where was the modern-day Lyndon Johnson (the 'master of the Senate,' in Robert Caro's phrase) in 2021, to whip support in the narrowly Democratic Senate after the House passed a D.C. statehood bill for the second year in a row? Trump has no mastery beyond bullying and bribery — but those tactics are working fine with Congress, corporations, law firms, academia and sovereign nations across the globe. As former House Speaker Newt Gingrich put it last week: 'You have this rock standing in the middle of history called Donald Trump. And he's saying: 'Do you want to do it my way, or do you want to be crushed? I prefer you do it my way, but if you have to be crushed, that's OK.' ' Gingrich correctly characterized most responses to Trump as 'You know, I've always wanted to be part of the team,' and added: 'If he can sustain this, he's moving into a league that, other than Washington and Lincoln, nobody has gotten to the level of energy, drive and effectiveness that we see with Trump.' Unfortunately, Trump is aiming to speed-raze what Washington and Lincoln built. (He keeps claiming it's 'Liberation Day' for D.C., but the last 'Liberation Day' — his April 2 tariff announcements — tanked the stock market.) The only conceivable antidote is to elect a mad-as-hell Democratic Congress in 2026 and, in 2028, an arm-twisting, strong-arming, terror-inspiring Democratic president who's in a hurry to get things done. Someone who's forceful, persuasive and resolved to use the power they have while they have it. The top priorities, beyond reversing as much institutional and constitutional damage as possible, should be structural: Supreme Court term limits and ethics rules with teeth, a national gerrymandering ban, a sensible and uniform national voter ID policy, and minimum national standards for early voting and mail voting — to protect the will of the people and the republic itself. Equally important, make D.C. the state of Douglass Commonwealth, named after the abolitionist Frederick Douglass rather than the colonizing Christopher Columbus. Rural America has wielded disproportionate power since the late 1800s, when Republicans added sparsely populated states and permanently skewed the Senate. Two new D.C. senators would help correct that imbalance. The problem is that the next president, or even the next Congress, might arrive too late for D.C. Trump has already begun the federal takeover he has threatened so often for so many years. He took over the Kennedy Center. He took over Congress. We should have expected we'd be next. Back in March, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) proposed that D.C. seek temporary sanctuary with Maryland, which ceded most of the land to create the capital in the first place. 'You'd definitely be safer,' he said he told Mayor Muriel Bowser. That offer, joke or not, practical or not, is looking increasingly inviting by the day. Jill Lawrence is a writer and author of 'The Art of the Political Deal: How Congress Beat the Odds and Broke Through Gridlock.' @
CNN
14 minutes ago
- CNN
Trump has federalized DC's police force. Now what?
Donald TrumpFacebookTweetLink Follow The Metropolitan Police along with federal agencies tasked with helping curb crime in the nation's capital are scrambling to figure out roles and strategy following President Donald Trump's decision to declare a crime emergency and federalize DC's police force, multiple sources told CNN. 'We're going to restore the city back to the gleaming capital that everybody wants it to be,' Trump said at the White House on Monday. 'It's going to be something very special.' But little communication seems to have been done before Trump's news conference – the Washington, DC, mayor and police chief hadn't been told about the takeover until they watched Trump say it live. It's led to confusion over who now leads the MPD, how their policing strategy will change and in what ways federal agents – many who aren't trained for community policing – are going to interact with local officers. During a separate news conference, Mayor Muriel Bowser said she was trying to set up a meeting with Attorney General Pam Bondi, who Trump said would be overseeing the implementation of his order. She also maintained that Chief of Police Pamela Smith would still run the department and report to Bowser up through the deputy mayor. 'Nothing about our organizational chart has changed,' Bowser said. 'And nothing in the executive order would indicate otherwise.' This is the first time a president has used Section 740 of the Home Rule Act to federalize the DC metro police, said Dr. Heidi Bonner, chair of the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology at East Carolina University. 'It's definitely difficult to say what that means,' she said, including it being 'an open question' as to who's in charge. 'Is the chief of police still in charge of the department once it's become federalized?' Bonner asked. 'And of course, all this is mixed up in the unique nature of DC as a district and not a state. There are different authorities – the president acts as the governor for all intents and purposes when it comes from the National Guard.' Bowser seemed resigned to the fact that Trump's decision would go into effect given the city's status. Prominent Democrats called Bowser and her office Monday to offer support but indicated there was little they could do to stop the takeover. 'I don't want to minimize what was said and I don't want to minimize the intrusion on our autonomy,' Bowser said. The mayor also called the move 'unsettling and unprecedented' and advocated for DC statehood to prevent such unilateral action from the president. Police Chief Smith said she was scheduled to meet with federal liaisons following the news conference for the first time regarding Trump's announcement in order to start to 'create an operational plan.' Trump activated 800 soldiers from the DC National Guard, with up to 200 members being assigned to supporting law enforcement, according to the Defense Department. 'Duties for those personnel include administrative and logistical roles, as well as providing a physical presence in support of law enforcement,' the DOD said. The unilateral move contrasts heavily with how Trump blamed others, including Bowser and then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for not deploying the National Guard on January 6, 2021, before Trump-supporters broke into the US Capitol. Over the weekend, Trump had already moved officers from several federal agencies to begin assisting MPD in policing certain areas in DC, including as many as 130 FBI agents to patrol with DC police as part of the increased federal presence, according to two people familiar with the deployment. It's not typical for FBI agents to patrol with local police, and agents are often not trained for community policing and operate under different policies – including for use of deadly force – that could create issues on the ground, two federal law enforcement sources told CNN. Because of this, pairing federal agents with officers to patrol DC could present a situation where each member of the team must respond differently to a potential threat based on the respective agency's policy. In the FBI, the plan to deploy agents to patrol the streets of Washington has been met with concern over strained resources and the safety of agents who are not trained in routine police patrols, according to multiple sources. Taking agents away from their daily investigations to patrol DC would risk not adequately addressing other serious crimes like terrorism, foreign counterintelligence threats, cyber intrusions and the nation's fentanyl epidemic, sources said. 'This isn't hard: If we're doing (policing) we're not covering down on those other threats,' said one source. Federal agents are also typically only minimally trained in conducting vehicle stops, which remains one of the most dangerous aspects of a police officer's job. Unlike routine police encounters with suspects, which may only involve one or two officers, when agencies like the FBI conduct an arrest, they typically plan out the operation methodically in advance and execute it with a complement of agents that far outnumbers the suspect. During the two sparring news conferences Monday, Trump remained adamant that crime in Washington is out of control despite data suggesting that it has decreased in recent years, and Bowser said firmly that DC is 'not experiencing a spike in crime but a decrease in crime.' Regardless of the current crime rates, Bonner noted that Trump's order has a 30-day limit and said any long-term impact on crime is doubtful. 'You can't have a long-term effect on crime with fast actions like this because it doesn't get to the root causes,' Bonner said. 'At the end of 30 days, it will be interesting to see what it has done in terms of reducing the crime rate further, or whatever the goals of this operation are, and what they might try to do moving forward to affect some long term fixes.' 'Because, again, you're not going to affect crime in the long term without addressing the symptoms of crimes,' Bonner said.
