Newly disclosed records reveal how undercover federal agents posed as concerned community members to spy onresidents and activists who opposed Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) crackdown in Minnesota.
Internal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) files, disclosed in federal court and reviewed by the Guardian, document the actions of several undercover agents, including one who went by the username “peanutbutterjelly” in Signal chats with activists. The documents show that the officer kept records of Signal conversations, screenshotting chats about protest plans and volunteer recruitment, and offering to help with fundraising efforts.
Republican senator tries to assuage concerns but does not offer details of Graham’s national security experience
Tim Scott defended fellow US South Carolina Republican senator Darline Graham’s knowledge of national security issues ahead of their state’s runoff election on Tuesday.
Graham, who was appointed to fill the Senate seat held by her brother Lindsey Graham after his sudden death in July, is in a Republican primary runoff against South Carolina congressman Ralph Norman. During a debate between the two on Tuesday night, Graham struggled to answer a question about US national security interests in Taiwan and the South China Sea.
Critics include Senator Chris van Hollen, ex-aide to Obama Tommy Vietor and ex-Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger
Democrats and other Donald Trump critics reacted incredulously to a New York Times report on Sunday that House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries met with Jared Kushner, the president’s influential son-in-law, to discuss possible areas of collaboration.
The reported meeting comes months ahead of the November midterm elections in which Democrats are favored to retake the US House, a development that would make Jeffries speaker. If they are in the majority, Democrats are expected to use their oversight power to aggressively investigate the Trump administration, including self-enrichment by the president and his family.
The department told Nevada officials that the 15,903 figure registered was ‘preliminary’ and more than 14,000 names still needed review
About a month after alleging Nevada had as many as 16,000 non-citizens on its voter rolls, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials admitted they had confirmed that only 185 were actually non-citizens, according to records obtained by the Guardian.
In a primetime TV address on 16 July, Donald Trump claimed that a DHS review had found about 278,000 non-citizens registered to vote in four states.
US Senator Tim Sheehy, a Montana Republican and a cattle rancher, has come out against a plan announced Friday by Donald Trump to allow for an increase in imported ground beef.
”I’ve advised President Trump against this course of action for a year because American ranchers have been struggling against the packer monopoly for decades, and this will further harm them - most of whom are MAGA Republicans,” Sheehy wrote on X. “The President’s heart is in the right place on wanting lower prices for the American people, and beef prices have been impacted by the Mexican screwworm. But the reality is this action will make it more difficult for American ranchers to rebuild our herd and bring prices down for the American people. And most importantly, this will harm our ranching families who feed the nation.”
Trump announced a plan on Truth Social to allow 300,000 metric tonnes of beef to be imported without tariffs over the next 90 days, to be sold for hamburger at a 25 percent discount to current prices. Trump offered this agreement with an unnamed source as measure to lower prices while “as we work to rebuild this herd and help our ranchers.”
The US beef cattle herd is near historic lows, and beef prices have skyrocketed over the last year. The average price of ground beef in American cities is around $7.12 a pound, an increase of 9.4 percent year-over-year according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
This is a slap in the face to every war hero and every service member who has worn the uniform. It’s beyond comprehension for a president to want his own name on a Navy ship while our armed forces are living in deteriorating conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. For generations, millions of Black women and men have proudly served in the United States military, defending freedoms that too often were not even afforded to them, their families, or their communities. Donald Trump is making a mockery of that legacy by treating military service as another opportunity for personal branding. Our brave service members signed up to defend the nation, not the fragile ego of one man. America deserves better than this.
Former officials and voting rights experts have expressed skepticism over a pledge by the Trump administration to dispatch 1,000 monitors across the country to scrutinize November’s US midterm elections.
While the Department of Justice (DoJ) has expressed hope that the operation will be the largest in its history, its plan raised questions over its ability to recruit so many people – and what they would do.
Exclusive: Rahil Prakash tells the Guardian: ‘I wanted to see if fake polls could penetrate the ecosystem that easily’
A 21-year-old recent college graduate was behind an anonymous website that put out widely shared fake election polling in Wisconsin, Nevada and California, the Guardian can reveal.
The website, Median Strategies, abruptly shut down and withdrew its polling earlier this week following questions from a reporter from the Los Angeles Times. In an unsigned statement, it described a “short-term social experiment” to examine how fake polling “could enter and spread through the political information ecosystem without independent verification”.
José Mejía Hernandez, 45, who was hospitalized for his injuries, was then transferred to an ICE office and fitted with an ankle monitor
A man in Virginia was hospitalized with a brain injury and severe bruising all over his face after he was arrested by US immigration agents, according to his lawyers, who shared photos and medical records with the Guardian.
José Mejía Hernández, 45, was walking to a bus stop in Arlington on the morning of 11 August when two agents got out of an unmarked vehicle and started chasing him, according to one of his lawyers, Margaret Hellerstein. The man recalled being hit by some kind of stun gun, but did not remember what happened after that, only waking up hours later in the hospital, Hellerstein said.
Regulations that would block sale of older tires praised by environmental groups amid rightwing backlash
California has become the first state in the nation to mandate that replacement tires be energy efficient, a major auto industry regulation set to block the sale of older tires and make vehicles on the road greener.
State regulators have said the new rules will reduce emissions and drivers’ fuel costs. But the rules – which come as the Trump administrations fights to block other California restrictions to promote greener cars – have already sparked a rightwing backlash, with one conservative news outlet calling the policies a “massive overreach”.
In an upset for the Democratic establishment, progressive Angie Nixon won the party’s US Senate primary in Florida, beating former army intelligence officer Alexander Vindman.
Nixon, a state representative and member of the Democratic Socialists of America, had significantly less funding going into the primary – with $975,000 to Vindman’s $16.3m at the end of July, according to Florida Politics.
CNN says attack ‘beneath the office’ after Kristen Holmes asked president about Jon Ossoff’s comments on key aide
The White House launched a personal attack against a CNN reporter on Monday with a social media post that mentioned her children and accused her of asking a “disgusting and inhumane question”.
A White House post targeted Kristen Holmes, a senior White House correspondent for the network, after she asked Donald Trump to respond to a widely shared comment by Democratic senator Jon Ossoff in a speech on Sunday.
Shasta county, hotbed of US election denialism movement, set to appoint ex-Colorado clerk who served prison term
A northern California county that has become a hotbed of activism for those who sow doubts about the reliability of voting machines plans to hire Tina Peters, the prominent Colorado election denier recently released from prison, to work on elections.
Clint Curtis, the top election official in Shasta county, told the Guardian he plans to hire Peters as a consultant to replace Brent Turner, his top deputy, who has been on medical leave. He said Peters would not have access to the county’s voting system and did not directly respond when asked what her responsibilities would be. Plans to hire Peters, who is still on parole and must receive permission to travel outside Colorado, were first reported by Action News Now.
DHS sent undercover agents to meetings and infiltrated chats of groups opposing Trump’s immigration crackdown
Newly disclosed records reveal the US government extensively spied on prominent leftwing organizations and on protesters as part of a vast operation into groups opposing the immigration crackdown in Minnesota earlier this year.
Internal investigative reports show the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) sent undercover agents to community meetings in the Twin Cities and New York City, infiltrated Signal chats and obtained financial records of mainstream unions and left-leaning non-profit groups.
Prosecutors charge Heidi Beirich with financial crimes as part of case against the Southern Poverty Law Center
The justice department on Wednesday arrested a leading expert on far-right extremism, charging her with financial crimes as part of the government’s ongoing case against the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).
Federal prosecutors charged Heidi Beirich, who formerly worked as an executive overseeing work monitoring hate groups , with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to submit false statements to a federally insured bank and conspiracy to commit concealment money laundering.
This article was amended on 13 August 2026. A previous version said Heidi Beirich was the Southern Poverty Law Center’s former chief financial offer, after Todd Blanche, the US attorney general, had described her as such. Beirich was formerly an executive overseeing work on hate groups.
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