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President Donald Trump departs on Marine One after speaking at the United States Army War College in Carlisle, Pa., at the Pennsylvania Defense and Innovation Summit, Wednesday, July 15, 2026.<\/p>\n
Julia Demaree Nikhinson\/AP Photo\/Julia Demaree Nikhinson<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump arrives at the United States Army War College for the Pennsylvania Defense and Innovation Summit, Wednesday, July 15, 2026, in Carlisle, Pa.<\/p>\n
Julia Demaree Nikhinson\/AP Photo\/Julia Demaree Nikhinson<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump is set to address the nation Thursday at 9 p.m. ET on topics he said will include elections and voting machines, suggesting he could revisit long-debunked conspiracy theories about his 2020 defeat to Democrat Joe Biden. The speech comes as he\u2019s escalated his calls for Republicans to pass tighter federal voting rules ahead of November\u2019s midterm elections.<\/p>\n
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At Trump\u2019s last primetime presidential address in April, he said the U.S. would accomplish its Iran war objectives \u201cvery shortly.\u201d But days of back-and-forth attacks by the U.S. and Iran across the Middle East and in the Strait of Hormuz have shredded the interim deal to pause the fighting. U.S. strikes intensified early Thursday against a widening set of targets, including a ship it accused of breaking its blockade on Iranian ports. Iran retaliated by firing on U.S. allies in the region.<\/p>\n
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Leavitt says White House staffer accused of profiting off position is on unpaid leave<\/p>\n
Asked about reports that a teleprompter operator for Trump is accused of placing online bets using inside knowledge from his job, Leavitt said the employee has been put on unpaid leave.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI\u2019m aware of the report; the president is too. I spoke with him about it. He believes it\u2019s deeply unfortunate and, frankly, a disgrace,\u201d Leavitt said Thursday.<\/p>\n
Leavitt said she does not know of other White House employees accused of similar allegations, adding that the White House has \u201cextremely strict, ethical guidelines with respect to issues like this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reports from ABC News and other outlets say Gabriel Perez, a technical assistant to the president, is in talks with federal regulators to settle allegations that he used inside knowledge from Trump\u2019s speeches to win more than $100,000 on the predictions market Kalshi.<\/p>\n
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White House press secretary punts on who Trump wants to win the World Cup<\/p>\n
Asked if Trump will be cheering for Argentina given the hard feelings he has toward Spain, Karoline Leavitt answered a reporter\u2019s question with, \u201cIt\u2019s a really good question.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I\u2019m disappointed in myself for not asking the president before I came out here, knowing you would probably ask,\u201d she said at her briefing Thursday. \u201cI haven\u2019t talked to him about it. But we\u2019ll get you an answer on that. You\u2019re welcome to ask him yourself at some point before the game. I\u2019m sure you\u2019ll see him, and I\u2019m sure he\u2019ll have a fun answer for you on it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Leavitt teases Trump\u2019s primetime address and World Cup visit<\/p>\n
She kicked off the briefing with a scheduling update, highlighting Trump\u2019s national address planned for Thursday evening.<\/p>\n
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\u201cPresident Trump will deliver a major address to the nation on protecting the integrity of our elections. And we encourage every American to tune in,\u201d Leavitt said.<\/p>\n
She added that Trump will head to New York City on Friday for a FIFA reception at Trump Tower ahead of his appearance at the World Cup final between Spain and Argentina on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Tech troubles before White House briefing<\/p>\n
The White House planned to use TV screens ahead of the daily briefing, but technical issues got in the way, and the screens were removed before White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt came to the lectern.<\/p>\n
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An aide was working on a laptop to get the screens going before the briefing began and looked relatively stressed as the start of the briefing was delayed. Eventually, four aides \u2014 two of them on cellphones \u2014 tried to resolve the situation without success.<\/p>\n
Eventually, the screens were removed from behind the lectern, and Leavitt appeared for her first briefing since giving birth and going on parental leave.<\/p>\n
Leavitt holds her first briefing since returning from maternity leave<\/p>\n
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt is back at the briefing room podium on Thursday, the first time since she went on maternity leave earlier this year.<\/p>\n
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Leavitt last held a briefing on April 24 before taking leave and giving birth to a daughter on May 1. She returned to work at the White House in late June.<\/p>\n
While she was away, the White House leaned on a rotating cast of cabinet members to fill in, including Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.<\/p>\n
Leavitt\u2019s return comes ahead of a national address Trump is scheduled to deliver Thursday evening. The president has said he will discuss topics including elections and voting machines.<\/p>\n
House Democratic leader says Trump is \u2018conspirator in chief\u2019 over election claims<\/p>\n
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries said, \u201cNone of the things that Trump has said \u2014 or may say later on today \u2014 with respect to election interference have any merit.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Ahead of Thursday\u2019s speech, Jeffries was asked whether China may have interfered in U.S. elections. The Democratic leader said he drew from the work of the House Intelligence Committee\u2019s top Democrat, Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, whose op-ed published Thursday in The New York Times restated the findings of U.S. intelligence after recent elections.<\/p>\n
Himes wrote that U.S. intelligence said that there are \u201cno indications that any foreign actor attempted to interfere in the 2020 U.S. elections by altering any technical aspect of the voting process.\u201d Himes warned that Trump may try to cherry-pick unverified information and present it as explosive new theories of election wrongdoing.<\/p>\n
Jeffries said Trump is \u201cthe one fanning the flames of conspiracy theories.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump administration revives rule that may deny green cards to immigrants using public benefits<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump\u2019s administration is reviving a rule that could deny green cards to immigrants who use public benefits, including food stamps, Medicaid, housing vouchers and others.<\/p>\n
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The policy, known as \u201cpublic charge,\u201d appeared in the Federal Register on Thursday and will be formally published on July 20.<\/p>\n
The policy was first implemented in February 2020 as one of Trump\u2019s moves to limit legal immigration during his first administration. But it was reversed after Democratic President Joe Biden took office.<\/p>\n
Its return comes when the Republican administration is implementing a hardline policy to curb both illegal and legal immigration, and when the cost of healthcare and food is rising.<\/p>\n
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It\u2019s unclear if TV networks plan to air Trump\u2019s speech or to what extent<\/p>\n
Messages to ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News Channel and MS NOW asking about coverage plans weren\u2019t returned.<\/p>\n
Democrats warned that Trump was trying to revive false claims of past stolen elections in order to delegitimize the upcoming 2026 midterm elections, in which Trump\u2019s Republican Party is facing headwinds.<\/p>\n
US government designates 2 new Mexican cartels as foreign terrorist organizations<\/p>\n
They are the Ju\u00e1rez Cartel, on the border with Texas, and Los Viagras, a criminal group from the western state of Michoac\u00e1n. The Federal Register, the U.S. government\u2019s gazette, published the designation Thursday.<\/p>\n
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They joined six other Mexican criminal organizations the U.S. considers terrorist groups, including the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel. Gangs in other Latin American countries, including Venezuela, Brazil, Ecuador and El Salvador, also have been designated as foreign terrorist organizations by the Trump administration.<\/p>\n
President Trump began to extend the terrorist label to Latin American cartels in February 2025 to allow U.S. authorities to take more aggressive action against them or against anyone the U.S. sees as aiding the groups.<\/p>\n
As Iran war expands, Rubio hosts world leaders for conference on \u2018far-left political terrorism\u2019<\/p>\n
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio convened more than 60 governments to address what he described a growing increase of left wing violence around the globe. Rubio opened the conference by making sweeping statements about the issue and noting that the U.S. and most of the world has spent the last few decades focusing on Islamic terrorism.<\/p>\n
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\u201cFor far too long, however, our counterterrorism doctrine has had a blind spot, a blind spot when it comes to extremist violence from the political left,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Rubio added that the U.S. plans to make more terrorist designations against groups like antifa.<\/p>\n
2 of 8 men charged in thwarted attack on UFC cage-fighting show at White House plead not guilty<\/p>\n
Two of the eight men indicted on murder and terrorism conspiracy charges for their alleged roles in a thwarted drone and sniper attack on the UFC cage-fighting show at the White House last month pleaded not guilty Thursday.<\/p>\n
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Tycen Proper, 19, of Danville, Ohio, and Chandler Scaggs, 21, of Chapmanville, West Virginia, entered the pleas before U.S. District Court Judge Edmund Sargus Jr. in Columbus, Ohio. Each is charged, as are the six others, with conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists and conspiracy to commit murder on federal government territory and to murder a federal government official.<\/p>\n
Sargus set their trial date for Sept. 14.<\/p>\n
A message seeking comment was left with Proper\u2019s attorney. Scaggs\u2019 lawyer declined to comment.<\/p>\n
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DHS finds itself back in the headlines after 3 fatal ICE encounters, in a test for Secretary Mullin<\/p>\n
When Markwayne Mullin took over as Homeland Security secretary from fired Kristi Noem, he pledged to get the department responsible for carrying out the Trump administration\u2019s mass deportations policy out of the headlines.<\/p>\n
But just months into Mullin\u2019s time in office, the department is squarely in the center of controversy again after three people were killed in encounters with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in the span of less than a week.<\/p>\n
The events are the first major test for Mullin, who promised a steady hand for a department roiled by his predecessor\u2019s conduct and the Trump administration\u2019s immigration crackdown.<\/p>\n
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As he navigates the uptick in violence, he\u2019s being forced into a balancing act that has him juggling pressures from a White House eager to carry out mass deportations and his former colleagues in Congress seeking answers \u2014 all while attempting to ease tensions in American cities over the deaths.<\/p>\n
After six years, Trump brings his election obsession to primetime at the White House<\/p>\n
In the weeks after Trump lost to Joe Biden in 2020, the people Trump appointed to run the Department of Justice, cybersecurity agencies and intelligence departments all said the same thing \u2014 the election was fair, legitimate and free of major fraud or foreign interference.<\/p>\n
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In his second term, Trump has tried to use the levers of power to rewrite that well-settled history, something he\u2019s expected to try again Thursday night with an address to the nation.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s already appointed loyalists who\u2019ve echoed his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen and made clear he expects everyone to follow his lead.<\/p>\n
In an indication of how fealty to Trump\u2019s lies has become a litmus test for his administration, many of his nominees have steadfastly refused to directly answer the question of who won in 2020, preferring to tersely note that Biden became president.<\/p>\n
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Trump is taking longer to approve disaster aid and denying Democratic states more frequently<\/p>\n
When major disasters strike, Americans are routinely waiting weeks \u2014 or even months \u2014 to receive presidential approval for aid. And if they live in a state that didn\u2019t support President Trump, chances are greater that aid will be denied.<\/p>\n
Since taking office last year, Trump has approved about 65 requests for major disaster declarations and denied more than two dozen others from states, tribes or territories seeking federal financial assistance following hurricanes, tornadoes, storms, floods and fires.<\/p>\n
Trump has taken longer on average to approve disaster requests than any other president, according to an Associated Press analysis of data dating back to 1989, when a federal law setting new parameters for disaster determinations was implemented. And no other president has such a disparity in denials between states that supported him politically and those that did not.<\/p>\n
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Trump is expected to make election conspiracies a focus of his national address<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump is set to address the nation Thursday night on topics he said will include elections and voting machines, suggesting he\u2019s likely to revisit some of the unproven claims he\u2019s previously made about Republican losses, particularly his own in 2020.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s fixation on his loss to Democrat Joe Biden six years ago and the long-debunked theories he\u2019s circulated about it are something he still brings up regularly when discussing other subjects. But elevating the deeply political and conspiratorial topics to a presidential primetime address underscores the lengths to which Trump has used his second term to both blow past norms and fixate on old grievances.<\/p>\n
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Trump has offered only vague details about the address, scheduled for 9 p.m. When asked by a reporter Tuesday if it would concern \u201celection machines and integrity,\u201d Trump said it would \u201cconcern that subject\u201d and \u201cwe\u2019ll have a couple of other things to say also.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President Donald Trump departs on Marine One after speaking at the United States Army War College in Carlisle,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":154675,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2],"tags":[12,72265,72266,485,34,31018,168,3461,1192,3755,186,8912,303,572,573,10,65,11,64,569,570,4090,4091,3010,3580,67],"class_list":["post-154674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-donald-trump","tag-donald-trump","tag-edmund-sargus-jr","tag-gabriel-perez","tag-hakeem-jeffries","tag-iran","tag-james-himes","tag-jd-vance","tag-joe-biden","tag-karoline-leavitt","tag-kristi-noem","tag-marco-rubio","tag-markwayne-mullin","tag-middle-east","tag-package-100024-ap-online","tag-package-100373-mc-complete-state-national","tag-potus","tag-president-donald-trump","tag-president-of-the-united-states","tag-president-trump","tag-product-30598-ap-national-news-report-a-wire","tag-product-31998-ap-online-national-news","tag-product-32510-ap-online-general-election-news","tag-product-32520-ap-online-other-u-s-government-news","tag-product-46986-ap-online-top-stories","tag-scott-bessent","tag-strait-of-hormuz"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154674\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}