Trump heads to Texas a week after devastating floods – US politics live | US politics

At least eight core members of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have left their positions in the last six months, Politico reported on Friday, citing internal records and sources familiar with the matter.

A senior White House official explained the departures by pointing to the fact that many DOGE staffers were special government employees, a designation that has a required end date, the report said.

Russia is awaiting the “major statement” that president Donald Trump announced he would deliver on Monday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday.

Trump told NBC News on Thursday that he will make a “major statement” on Russia on Monday, without elaborating what it will be about.

In recent days, Trump has expressed frustration with Russian president Vladimir Putin over Russia-Ukraine conflict, Reuters reported.

When asked about the new Nato weapons deliveries to Ukraine, Peskov called it “just business” as Kyiv had already been receiving weapons prior to this development.

Secretary of state Marco Rubio on Friday said there was “high probability” of a meeting between president Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, but no date has been discussed.

Rubio was speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a regional meeting in Malaysia.

Brazil threatened to hit back against Donald Trump’s plan to introduce 50% tariffs on its exports with its own 50% tariff on US goods, setting the stage for a precipitous trade war.

“If he charges us 50%, we’ll charge him 50%,” Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the Brazilian president, told local news outlet Record, a day after Trump threatened to impose steep duties on Brazilian goods and accused the country of conducting a “witch-hunt” against its former president Jair Bolsonaro, who is facing a trial over his attempt to overturn his 2022 election defeat.

Brazil could appeal to the World Trade Organization, propose international investigations and “demand explanations”, Lula suggested. “But the main thing is the Reciprocity Law, passed by Congress,” he told Record, referring to recent legislation designed to defend Latin America’s largest economy from tariff attacks.

Trump’s claim that Brazil’s economic relationship with the US was “far from Reciprocal” was also “inaccurate”, Lula had said in a statement on Wednesday. US tariff hikes “will be addressed” by Brazil, he said.

Donald Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship suffered a courtroom defeat on Thursday as a federal judge in New Hampshire blocked the controversial executive order nationwide and certified a sweeping class-action lawsuit that could protect tens of thousands of children.

Ruling from the bench on Thursday, Judge Joseph LaPlante announced his decision after an hour-long hearing and said a written order would follow. The judge, an appointee of George W Bush, said a written order would follow later in the day, with a seven-day stay to allow for appeal.

The decision is a test case following a recent supreme court ruling that restricted nationwide injunctions, in effect making class-action lawsuits the primary remaining method for district court judges to halt policy implementation across large areas of the country. It delivers a legal blow to the administration’s hardline immigration agenda and ramps up a constitutional dispute that has continued through the first six months of Trump’s second term.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of a pregnant woman, two parents and their infants. It is among numerous cases challenging Trump’s January order denying citizenship to those born to undocumented parents living in the US or temporarily. The plaintiffs are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and others.

“Tens of thousands of babies and their parents may be exposed to the order’s myriad harms in just weeks and need an injunction now,” lawyers for the plaintiffs wrote in court documents filed on Tuesday.

Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I am Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you the latest news lines over the next couple of hours.

We start with news that president Donald Trump has backed away from abolishing the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Washington Post reported on Friday.

No official action is being taken to wind down FEMA, and changes in the agency will probably amount to a “rebranding” that will emphasize state leaders’ roles in disaster response, the newspaper said, citing a senior White House official.

It comes as Trump heads to Texas on Friday for a firsthand look at the devastation caused by catastrophic flooding.

Since the 4 July disaster, which has killed at least 120 people, the president and his top aides have focused on the once-in-a-lifetime nature of what occurred and the human tragedy involved rather than the government-slashing crusade that’s been popular with Trump’s core supporters.

“Nobody ever saw a thing like this coming,” Trump told NBC News on Thursday, adding, “This is a once-in-every-200-year deal.” He’s also suggested he’d have been ready to visit Texas within hours but didn’t want to burden authorities still searching for the more than 170 people who are still missing.

The president is expected to do an aerial tour of some of the hard-hit areas. The White House also says he will visit the state emergency operations center to meet with first responders and relatives of flood victims.

Trump will also get a briefing from officials. Republican governor Greg Abbott, senator John Cornyn and senator Ted Cruz are joining the visit, with the GOP senators expected to fly to their state with Trump aboard Air Force One.

In other developments:

• Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration seeking $20m in damages, alleging he was falsely imprisoned

• A US district judge issued an injunction blocking Donald Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship, certifying a nationwide class of plaintiffs

• Police in Scotland are bracing for protests against Trump before an expected visit later this month to his immigrant mother’s homeland, where he is spectacularly unpopular.

• The US state department has announced that it plans to move forward with mass layoffs as part of the most significant restructuring of the country’s diplomatic corps in decades.

• Senator Ruben Gallego introduced a one-page bill to codify into law the Federal Trade Commission’s “click to cancel” rule, one day after a federal appeals court blocked the rule.

• Federal immigration officers, supported by national guard troops, used force against protesters, firing chemical munitions, during raids on two cannabis farms in California’s central coast area.

• Trump nominated a far-right influencer to serve as US ambassador to Malaysia.