分类： politics

The U.S. Supreme Court has for a second time turned away a legal request from former President and current presidential candidate Donald Trump, who sought to throw out a federal civil jury verdict finding him liable for sexual abuse and defamation against writer E. Jean Carroll. This marks the second rejection of Trump’s challenge in the high-profile case, after justices first declined to review the ruling back in June.

Carroll, an 82-year-old former magazine columnist, first brought the civil suit against Trump, alleging he sexually assaulted her in a Manhattan department store fitting room in the mid-1990s. The defamation charge stems from a 2022 post on Trump’s own social platform Truth Social, where he denied Carroll’s allegations and claimed she was “not my type”, a statement the jury found defamatory.

Trump has steadfastly denied all wrongdoing in the case from the beginning. He has repeatedly argued that the trial judge improperly allowed damaging evidence that biased the jury against him, specifically the 2005 *Access Hollywood* footage where Trump used crude language to describe groping and kissing women. In July, Trump paid Carroll more than $5 million (£3.6 million) in damages as ordered by the jury verdict, though he has continued to challenge the ruling through the courts.

Following the Supreme Court’s latest decision, Roberta Kaplan, Carroll’s lead attorney, released a statement celebrating the outcome. “We are pleased that the United States Supreme Court has declined again to hear this case,” Kaplan said. She went on to confirm that the unanimous jury verdict finding Trump sexually assaulted and then defamed Carroll is now final, and cannot be appealed or challenged in any U.S. court.

The court published its decision as part of a routine order list released Monday, and offered no official explanation for why justices chose not to take up the case for review. Legal analysts note that Trump’s latest request for reconsideration after the court’s initial June rejection was an unusual, long-shot legal tactic, as the Supreme Court very rarely grants such second requests.

Trump has not yet issued a public comment on the latest ruling. After the court’s first rejection in June, he released a lengthy statement on Truth Social, vowing to continue fighting what he called a “weaponisation and lawfare case”, and dismissing the defamation claim as “ridiculous”. He went on to frame the case as an attack on American democracy, claiming “This Case is really against the United States of America, and all it stands for, and should never be allowed to happen to another President, or Candidate”.

The verdict from the first case is now finalized, but Trump has a separate pending request before the Supreme Court challenging a second, larger civil defamation verdict. In that separate ruling, a jury ordered Trump to pay Carroll an additional $83.3 million in damages for his continued public denials of the assault. Trump’s legal team argues that he has presidential immunity for statements he made while in office, and thus cannot be held liable for those comments. The Supreme Court has not yet issued a decision on that second challenge.

In a shocking revelation that has sent ripples through global diplomatic circles, former U.S. President Donald Trump has issued an explosive military threat against Oman, a longstanding American ally in the Middle East, according to reporting from Fox News. Trump stated bluntly that if Oman interferes with his administration’s separate negotiations with Tehran over reopening the strategically critical Strait of Hormuz, U.S. military forces will bomb the country.

The Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway linking the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea, stands as one of the world’s most vital economic chokepoints. Roughly 20 percent of global oil supplies and a large share of global liquefied natural gas transit through the route daily, making its six-month closure amid the ongoing U.S.-Iran war a major disruptor of global energy markets. Since the joint U.S.-Israeli military strike on Iran in February, Tehran has maintained a near-total blockade of the strait, making its reopening the central priority of international diplomatic efforts in the region.

Oman, which shares a southern border with the Strait of Hormuz and has positioned itself as a neutral party in the ongoing conflict, has emerged as a key mediator between Tehran and Western powers. Despite suffering multiple cross-border strikes from Iranian forces, the Omani government has advanced separate bilateral talks with Iran to end the blockade. As of early Monday, Iranian officials confirmed that a tentative agreement to allow commercial ship transit through the strait was nearly finalized. Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei announced that “an understanding has been reached regarding the map of the transit route,” with final details set to be ironed out ahead of an official joint statement. Omani officials have previously characterized these negotiations as productive and positive.

The revelation of Trump’s threat came from Fox News reporter Trey Yingst, who quoted the president making the comment in a phone interview, which included graphic profanity. Yingst cited Trump as saying: “If Oman gets in the way, we’ll bomb the shit out of them.”

The threat comes as a 60-day U.S.-Iran Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) aimed at advancing ceasefire talks is set to expire imminently. The MoU, signed June 18, was intended to lay the groundwork for a permanent end to hostilities, but the agreement collapsed weeks ago after both sides resumed offensive strikes, with Trump officially declaring the ceasefire “over” on July 8. As the MoU approached its formal expiration Monday, Trump reaffirmed his core policy priority in a Truth Social post, writing: “The number one goal is, and always will be, that Iran cannot have, in any way, shape, or form, a nuclear weapon.”

In the same phone interview with Fox News, Trump also made the unsubstantiated claim that the U.S. maintains a direct backchannel communication link with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Iran’s dominant military, economic, and political institution. The claim was immediately and forcefully denied by an IRGC spokesperson, who told Iran’s semi-official Tasnim News Agency: “There are no talks taking place between IRGC officials and the Americans, and this lie by Trump is merely fantasies caused by the delusions and nightmares he has suffered as a result of defeat and desperation in the war.”

Trump also pushed back against growing concerns over depleted U.S. weapons stockpiles amid the ongoing conflict, claiming that the amount of munitions used since the war began was “peanuts” and that the upcoming November U.S. midterm elections had “nothing to do with my thinking” on war policy. “They’re good poker players, but they’re dying,” Trump was quoted as saying of Iranian leadership. “I have no time schedule. I’m not in a hurry.”

Publicly available analysis from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington D.C.-based think tank, contradicts Trump’s assessment of weapons stockpiles, painting a grim picture of rapidly depleted short-term stockpiles that cannot be quickly replaced. Retired Marine Corps Colonel and senior CSIS advisor Mark Cancian previously told the BBC that producing a single guided missile typically takes “one to five years,” adding “there’s nothing you can do to speed that up.” All official data on U.S. ammunition expenditures and remaining stockpiles remains classified.

Negotiations over reopening the strait have hit additional stumbling blocks over Iranian demands for compensation. Earlier this month, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi stated that a full reopening would only move forward after the U.S. compensates Iran for what Tehran calls violations of the expired MoU. Reuters previously reported, citing an unnamed Iranian official, that Tehran is demanding transit fees equal to between 5 and 7 percent of the total value of each cargo passing through the strait.

Domestically, even in a pro-Trump Tennessee munitions manufacturing community that benefits from war production, public opinion remains divided on the administration’s handling of the Iran conflict, with locals split on whether escalating hostilities are justified or whether continued military engagement is unnecessary.

A new high-profile security incident has emerged, revealing that UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham exchanged multiple messages with an imposter pretending to be Susie Wiles, the current White House Chief of Staff to former President and 2024 presidential candidate Donald Trump. The incident was first brought to public attention by political news outlet Politico, with Downing Street declining to issue any formal statement on the breach, citing national security protocols. According to anonymous official sources speaking to Politico, Burnham communicated with the fake account before growing suspicious of the contact’s legitimacy. Only a small number of messages were shared, and none contained sensitive or policy-relevant information, the sources added. Once the impersonation was detected, the exchange was immediately reported to relevant UK security agencies, and no verbal conversation ever took place between Burnham and the imposter. This incident is not an isolated case, and it ties into a broader pattern of high-level impersonation and cyberattacks targeting senior political figures on both sides of the Atlantic. Last year, the BBC confirmed that the US Federal Bureau of Investigation launched an investigation into a hack targeting Wiles’ personal phone in May 2023. During that incident, hackers gained access to Wiles’ contact list after compromising her device and used the stolen information to send messages to dozens of senior US officials from her account. Wiles, one of Donald Trump’s closest and most trusted long-term allies, confirmed at the time that the hack targeted her personal mobile device, not any official government communications line. Even so, the recipients of the fraudulent messages included sitting US senators, state governors, and leading American business executives. Wiles was also separately identified as a target of a 2024 cyber espionage operation linked to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, a major branch of Iran’s military that has been tied to multiple transnational cyberattacks targeting Western political figures. This most recent incident targeting Burnham marks at least the second high-profile hoax against a senior UK government leader in recent years. In 2024, the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) confirmed that then-Foreign Secretary David Cameron fell victim to a hoax phone call from an imposter claiming to be Petro Poroshenko, the former President of Ukraine. Cameron, who previously served as UK Prime Minister and built a long working relationship with Poroshenko during his premiership, also exchanged text messages with the impersonator before the hoax was uncovered. The FCDO chose to release details of that incident publicly out of concern that unreported details could be manipulated by bad actors for political or disinformation purposes. As of this report, Downing Street has reaffirmed its position that it will not comment on matters related to national security, and no additional details about the investigation into the latest impersonation attempt have been released.

A high-stakes jury trial that could reshape the future of social media regulation in the United States is set to kick off Tuesday, pitting 30 U.S. states against tech giant Meta Platforms over allegations that the company intentionally designed its platforms to harm and exploit young users. The case, filed in 2023 by states including California and New York, accuses Meta of widespread violations of federal and state child privacy laws, marking the most significant legal challenge the company has faced to date amid a growing string of court losses over its youth-focused product design.

At the core of the states’ argument is the claim that Meta has deliberately built addictive, harmful features specifically designed to keep children and teenagers engaged on its platforms for as long as possible, prioritizing user growth and revenue over young people’s mental and emotional well-being. The plaintiffs are seeking more than $1 trillion in damages, alongside sweeping mandatory changes to core functionality across Meta’s two largest platforms, Instagram and Facebook. These reforms include eliminating public like counts and infinite scrolling, mandating parental verification for all teenage accounts, overhauling what the states describe as “dopamine-manipulating recommendation algorithms”, removing body-altering photo filters, ending automatic video playback, banning the creation of multiple accounts, and discontinuing ephemeral content such as Instagram Stories.

The states also allege that Meta actively discourages reduced usage among young users, relying on frequent, targeted push notifications to lure minors back to the apps. “Meta chose to exploit” children to grow its user base and expand its bottom line, the lawsuit argues, at a time when the company boasts a total market capitalization of roughly $1.5 trillion. Meta has vigorously denied all allegations, with a company spokesperson stating in a formal response: “We strongly disagree with these allegations and are confident the evidence will show our longstanding commitment to supporting young people.”

The trial will be overseen by Chief U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, a California-based jurist with nearly 20 years of experience on the bench, who previously presided over the high-profile Elon Musk v. Sam Altman dispute and is widely known for her incisive, straightforward judicial approach. The upcoming case follows a recent landmark ruling against Meta in New Mexico, where Judge Bryan Biedscheid imposed a $942 million fine on the company and ordered nearly identical reforms to those sought by the 30 states. In that ruling, Judge Biedscheid made history by labeling Meta’s platform operations a “public nuisance”, comparing the firm’s harmful impact on communities to a polluting factory that inflicts widespread damage on public health. That ruling mandated that Meta eliminate public like counts for users under 18, ban the exchange of nude content between teenagers, and restrict push notifications to limited daytime hours in New Mexico. Meta has announced it will appeal the decision.

While the New Mexico ruling only applies within the state’s borders, a ruling in favor of the 30 states would require nationwide changes to Meta’s platforms, as the plaintiffs represent approximately two-thirds of the U.S. population. A defeat for Meta would force fundamental, industry-altering changes to how millions of young people interact with social media across the country.

The debate around features like public like counts underscores the growing body of evidence linking core Meta platform design to youth mental health harm. Likes have been a central feature of Meta’s platforms since the company’s early days as Facebook, and remain the primary mechanism for user engagement across nearly all social networks. But research conducted over the past decade, including Meta’s own internal research, has tied engagement metrics like like counts to rising rates of depression, body dysmorphia, and loneliness among young users. Meta’s internal documents, more than 2 million of which have been turned over to legal teams for the 30 states, show the company has long known that likes drive “social comparison”—the practice of measuring one’s self-worth against curated, idealized content posted by other users. This effect on Instagram, the company’s own research found, is linked to “increased loneliness, worse body image, and negative mood or affect” among teenage users.

Testimony from earlier youth-focused cases has further illustrated these harms. Earlier this year, a young plaintiff named Kaley who won a lawsuit against Meta described creating dozens of separate Instagram and YouTube accounts as a nine-year-old to like her own posts, chasing external validation that ultimately left her clinically depressed by age 10. As Judge Biedscheid noted in his landmark ruling, the first to declare a social media company a public nuisance, Meta’s decade-long operating model has contributed directly to the growing youth mental health crisis across the U.S. Now, attorneys for 30 states will argue that Judge Gonzalez Rogers should reach the same conclusion and impose sweeping changes that could redefine social media regulation for the entire country.