Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has formally scrapped President Donald Trump’s $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund,” issuing a written order to end the program that was intended to compensate Trump’s political supporters. The decision comes after weeks of talks with two Republican senators who had been holding up Blanche’s confirmation for the permanent post.
Still untouched is a separate declaration granting Trump and his family retroactive protection from tax audits — a move a judge previously criticized as improper self-dealing.
Trump also said fresh talks aimed at winding down the war in Iran are set to begin Monday afternoon, after he announced he would delay another large round of strikes. The remarks helped push oil prices lower again, as investors bet on the possibility of renewed shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.
On the domestic front, immigration continues to rank as a stronger political issue for Trump than either the economy or Iran, according to a new AP-NORC poll. That support comes despite three deaths last month during encounters involving Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Here’s what to know now:
Lower oil prices ease Wall Street’s inflation fears, while chip stocks resume their slide
A pullback in oil prices is giving Wall Street some relief from concerns that inflation could heat up further. The shift helped lift major U.S. stock indexes in early Monday trading, though several big semiconductor names, including Micron and AMD, were under pressure again.
The S&P 500 gained 0.4%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 625 points and the Nasdaq composite edged up 0.2%. Brent crude dropped 5.1% to $83.42 a barrel after Trump said over the weekend that, at the urging of regional allies, he would pause plans for new strikes on Iran. Treasury yields also moved lower.
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Trump overhaul could gut Head Start preschool quality standards
The Trump administration is planning a dramatic overhaul of Head Start that would gut its quality standards, two people familiar with the deliberations said.
Head Start, established in the 1960s to help fight poverty, has long been considered by experts to be a gold standard for early education. It has more than 100 pages of regulations that cover everything from child-to-teacher ratios and child health screenings to family engagement.
The Republicans would replace these with around a dozen pages of rules that leave most specifics to state and local law, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the information is not yet public and they feared reprisal.
The draft rules would require more documentation from homeless or unemployed parents, and an early version would have barred even the U.S. citizen children of parents who are in the United States illegally.
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US dollar weakens sharply against Japanese yen after Trump intervenes in market
The U.S. dollar weakened sharply against the Japanese yen on Monday after Trump and Japan’s finance minister confirmed that both sides had intervened in markets.
The yen’s prolonged weakness against the dollar has been a source of frustration for Tokyo. Since Japan imports so much of what it consumes, a weak currency pushes prices higher. High oil prices have amplified pressure on Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi to do more to address the rising cost of living.
Normally, foreign exchange markets determine the relative values of currencies, and officials usually stay mum on any interventions, but Trump confirmed it on Sunday.
A weaker dollar makes U.S.-made goods more competitive. Analysts are describing the intervention as a “low-cost” way for Washington to pay a favor to a key U.S. ally.
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Blanche order keeps Trump’s ‘self-dealing’ immunity for any past tax audits
The document released by Blanche on Sunday night keeps a provision of the IRS settlement that provided broad tax-audit immunity for Trump and family, while limiting its scope.
It clarifies that the immunity “applies by its terms only retroactively” to claims open at the time of the settlement, and does not protect the president from examination of future tax filings.
On Friday, Trump’s attorneys notified a court they would appeal a judge’s scathing ruling that characterized the settlement of the president’s lawsuit against the IRS as an improper exercise in self-dealing.
The judge said that because Trump manipulated the court system by suing an agency he controls, the government cannot claim in official proceedings that the agreement resulted from a legitimate legal process.
Trump says talks on Iran war will begin on Monday after he holds off on ‘massive’ strikes
Trump said new talks to wind down the war in Iran and revive traffic through the Strait of Hormuz will start Monday afternoon, after announcing he is holding off on new massive strikes he had threatened to unleash on the country. Iranian state media, however, quoted the country’s foreign ministry as saying Tehran was not currently holding negotiations with the United States.
Israel struck the Gaza Strip again over the weekend, after the U.S. and Hamas said a deal was reached for the militant group to disarm, a potential step toward ending the war in Gaza that depends on Israel stopping its attacks. The Israeli military said the strikes targeted militant operatives.
Hospitals in Gaza said at least 17 people were killed, including children. A strike on one residential apartment killed three family members including a 4-year-old child, according to Nasser hospital, where the bodies arrived.
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Why immigration remains strong for Trump among Republicans, according to a new AP-NORC poll
Immigration remains a stronger issue for Trump than the economy or Iran, according to a new AP-NORC poll, even after three people were killed in encounters with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in July.
Trump is not getting a glowing endorsement on his immigration approach from Americans overall, the new survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found: Only 39% of U.S. adults approve of his performance on immigration, a decline from 49% at the beginning of his second term.
Despite that, about 8 in 10 Republicans continue to approve of how Trump is handling immigration. That’s a slight decline from the beginning of Trump’s second term, when about 9 in 10 Republicans approved, but his support within his base has been mostly stable despite a chaotic year of immigration enforcement actions.
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Iran déjà vu: Trump once again threatens massive escalation against Tehran only to walk back
Trump has played this hand before during the 5-month-old Iran war.
It starts with a grim warning to Tehran that he’s on the cusp of ordering U.S. forces to “obliterate” its power plants or seize key parts of its oil industry if its leaders don’t quickly agree to U.S. terms to end the war. It ends with him edging away with a last-minute declaration, sometimes at the behest of Gulf allies, that he’s going to give diplomacy more time.
The hardball strategy aims to create movement in negotiation through pressure and chaos. But the tactic is facing a challenge with an Iranian theocracy that believes it holds a higher threshold for strategic pain than Washington.
The latest episode began on Friday when Trump grimly declared that he was “losing faith” in negotiations with Iran and warned that the U.S. military “ will be hitting them very hard.”
But by late Saturday night, Trump declared on social media that there were signs of progress on reaching an agreement and so he was calling off a plan to carry out new, massive strikes for the time being.
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Blanche rescinds fund for Trump allies after GOP senators threaten to block his attorney general bid
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche finally put it in writing, issuing a formal order late Sunday terminating Trump’s $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund” to compensate his political allies. The move follows weeks of negotiations with two Republican senators who were blocking his nomination for the permanent job.
A spokeswoman for Texas Sen. John Cornyn confirmed the deal, which comes ahead of a Tuesday confirmation vote for Blanche’s nomination in the Senate Judiciary Committee. The other GOP senator, North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, did not have immediate comment.
Blanche said at a June hearing that the Justice Department would not move forward with the fund to compensate those who believe they were unfairly prosecuted, as he faced bipartisan outrage over the possibility that violent rioters who attacked police at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, could be considered for payments. But Cornyn and Tillis, both members of the Judiciary panel, have said they wanted to see the promise in writing before they endorsed Blanche’s nomination — especially as Trump continued to express support for the idea.
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