New York Attorney General Letitia James pleaded not guilty to bank fraud charges at her arraignment in federal court this morning.
Before James’ arraignment began, Lindsey Halligan, the acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, sat with the prosecution team while the New York attorney general and her attorney, Abbe Lowell, entered the packed courtroom together at 10:55 a.m.
While waiting for the hearing to begin, reporters in the overflow room could hear Lowell on a hot mic joking with James about the old seats in federal courthouses.
U.S. District Judge Jamar Walker entered the courtroom and the proceedings got underway at 11 a.m. sharp.
The parties introduced their attorneys to the judge before he invited James forward with Lowell to inform her of her rights and the charges against her and confirm that she understood them. James answered affirmatively to each of those questions.
Lowell then confirmed to the judge that James was waiving the reading of the indictment. Walker asked for her plea, and Lowell told the court that James would enter it herself. James then proceeded to plead not guilty to both charges.
New York Attorney General Letitia James has pleaded not guilty to bank fraud charges at her arraignment in a Virginia federal court this morning.
James is charged with one count of bank fraud and one count of making false statements to a financial institution related to allegations that she received favorable home mortgage terms by falsely claimed a home in Norfolk, Virginia, was her second residence despite renting it to a family of three.
James has called the allegations “baseless” and said Trump’s “own public statements make clear that his only goal is political retribution at any cost.”
Former first lady Hillary Clinton took to social media today to launch a fundraising effort off of Trump’s demolition of the East Wing.
“If you’re hopping mad about Trump destroying the White House, we’ve got a new hat or sticker for you,” Clinton wrote in a post on X.
The message links to an online store for her political action committee selling merchandise that says, “Not his house. Our house.”
“Your purchase supports progressive groups working to build a fairer, more inclusive America for everyone—and win elections!” the X post says.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said today that the U.S. struck a boat allegedly carrying drugs in the Caribbean Sea, marking at least the third time this week that the U.S. has attacked a vessel it says was involved in drug trafficking.
“The vessel was known by our intelligence to be involved in illicit narcotics smuggling, was transiting along a known narco-trafficking route, and carrying narcotics,” Hegseth wrote in a post on X. “Six male narco-terrorists were aboard the vessel during the strike, which was conducted in international waters—and was the first strike at night. All six terrorists were killed and no U.S. forces were harmed in this strike.”
Hegseth said that this vessel belonged to the Tren de Aragua gang, which the Trump administration has named a designated terrorist organization, and was hit in the Caribbean.
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Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., and at least a half a dozen other senators are calling on the U.S. Education Department to pressure immigration authorities to refrain from carrying out enforcement within 1,000 feet of any school property, citing recent classroom disruptions in the Chicago area.
Today, they sent the letter, first provided to NBC News, to Education Secretary Linda McMahon, demanding that she step in and ask the Department of Homeland Security to curb its operations around schools.
“Federal agents continue to use unwarranted, excessive levels of force around Chicago, demonstrating an alarming lack of care or regard for the health and wellbeing of children, particularly by conducting unfocused, inflammatory operations within close proximity of school grounds,” the senators wrote in the letter. “We demand you pressure your colleague, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, to reinstate restrictions on Federal immigration enforcement operations in and around places of education.”
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The sting of rising prices continues to linger.
Consumer price growth hit 3% in September on an annual basis, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today, slightly higher than the 2.9% rate seen in August.
On a monthly basis, the rate fell from 0.3% to 0.2%, though many major categories saw increases including housing, airline fares, recreation, household furnishings and apparel.
Read the full story here.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said today that the U.S. and numerous other countries are committed to the demilitarization of Gaza, stressing that Israel had met its commitment to withdraw its forces from areas of the Palestinian territory.
“If Hamas refuses to demilitarize, it’ll be a violation of the agreement, and that’ll have to be enforced,” Rubio said. I’m not going to get into the mechanisms by which it is going to be enforced, but it’ll have to be enforced.”
Speaking from the Civilian Military Coordination Center in Israel, Rubio said “miles of tunnels” set up by Hamas posed a challenge to the demilitarization efforts.
“We’re dealing with miles and miles of kilometers of tunnel networks,” he said. “We’re dealing with two decades of terrorist infrastructure. All that has to be confronted, and we’ll do that together with Israel.”
He emphasized the multinational commitment to disarmament.
“Understand over two dozen countries signed on to this, including regional powers, regional countries, Arab countries, majority Muslim countries, signed on to the commitment that there would not, that there would be a demilitarized Gaza, and that there would not be a Hamas with the capability to threaten Israel,” Rubio said.
Responding to the Knesset’s vote to advance a bill to annex the occupied West Bank, Rubio said, “It was used to embarrass Netanyahu.” He added that he doesn’t think annexation will actually happen and said it would jeopardize the ceasefire agreement between Hamas and Israel.
“It’s a threat to the peace process, and everybody knows it,” he said. “But I’m not getting to the middle of Israeli politics. We’re focused on peace and security.”
On Day 23 of the federal government shutdown, Democrats blocked a Republican bill to pay federal workers who are going without paychecks. Democrats said the plan gave too much power to Trump. NBC News’ Ryan Nobles reports.
The Ronald Reagan Foundation has just announced that Canada has fraudulently used an advertisement, which is FAKE, featuring Ronald Reagan speaking negatively about Tariffs.
The Ontario ad is an edited, heavily condensed version of a Ronald Reagan speech, but the sentiment is unchanged and is an accurate reflection of the former president’s views on protectionism.
Trump said late last night that he was canceling trade talks with Canada after the province of Ontario ran an ad attacking his trade war and the negative effects it anticipates from higher trade tariffs.
The ad used an edited speech by Ronald Reagan in 1987 in which he said, among other things: “High tariffs inevitably lead to retaliation by foreign countries, and the triggering of fierce trade wars.”
Trump dismissed the ad as “FAKE,” implying it misrepresented or distorted the former president’s words.
The Ontario ad changes the order of Reagan’s words, quotes only part of some sentences and removes some of the very specific original context on how he had — very reluctantly and contrary to his economic philosophy — just imposed tariffs on Japan in a dispute over semiconductors.
But the sentiment expressed in the ad is unchanged: Reagan’s speech was anti-protectionist and he did say, referring to his own tariffs, that “over the long run such trade barriers hurt every American worker and consumer.”
Trump has doubled down on his criticism this morning, posting on Truth Social that Canada “fraudulently took a big buy ad saying that Ronald Reagan did not like Tariffs, when actually he LOVED TARIFFS FOR OUR COUNTRY, AND ITS NATIONAL SECURITY.”
The Reagan Foundation said it was considering its legal options regarding the ad, which it said misrepresents the remarks and used the speech without permission. But that legality issue aside, it’s not clear in what way Reagan’s words were misrepresented.
The White House confirmed that Trump will meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping next week during a trip to Asia, their first in-person meeting since Trump returned to office in January.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the two leaders would meet Thursday in South Korea, which is hosting a summit of Asia-Pacific economies. The meeting, which comes amid rising trade tensions between the world’s two biggest economies, follows at least three phone calls between Trump and Xi since the start of the year, most recently last month.
China has not yet confirmed the meeting.
Earlier, the White House said Trump would also meet with the prime ministers of Malaysia and Japan and the president of South Korea during his Asia trip. The president will leave for Malaysia tonight.
Auto giant Ford has launched an advertising campaign emphasizing how one of its leading trucks is made in the U.S. as 25% tariffs on medium and heavy trucks are introduced this month.
“Ford is rolling out a new campaign this weekend reinforcing how Ford stands out as a rare example of a company doubling down on American assembly,” the company said in a news release.
The campaign illustrates how major manufacturers are reacting to Trump’s trade war by investing in domestic operations and publicly underlining their commitment to U.S. workers.
The ads, which will run this weekend in newspapers and online, say that around 400,000 Super Duty Trucks are 100% assembled at Ford plants in Kentucky and Ohio every year.
The American-made tag hides a more complex reality, however, with about 40% of the 30,000 items that go into a typical vehicle imported from other countries, according to one analyst.
Ambassador Steve Fagin, a seasoned career U.S. diplomat, is expected to be tapped as the State Department’s liaison to the Civilian Military Coordination Center monitoring the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas and coordinating the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza, two sources familiar with the matter told NBC News.
Fagin is currently serving as U.S. ambassador to Yemen and has almost two decades of field experience in the foreign service.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio is set to visit the coordination center in southern Israel later this week.
“We’ll be assigning some career, experienced State Department personnel to sort of be there to help coordinate all these efforts,” Rubio told reporters shortly before his departure for Israel on Wednesday. “It’s important particularly over the next couple of weeks, that we keep the cease fire together.”
Fagin will face an uphill battle increasing humanitarian assistance to meet the needs of a starving population in Gaza.
After two years of war, a United Nations hunger monitor warned in August that Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip were confronting manmade faminelike conditions.
The flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza increased 46% in the first week of the fragile U.S. brokered ceasefire, according to the U.N.
Fagin is also likely to face some skepticism from aid groups after the U.S. backed the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which required Palestinians to travel to four aid distribution hubs rather than bringing the aid directly to civilians.
“Humanitarian assistance must enter the Gaza Strip at scale to meet the enormous needs of the population wherever they are,” Farhan Haq, the deputy spokesperson for the U.N. secretary general, said yesterday.
Trump said last night that he is terminating trade talks with Canada, effective immediately.
Trump accused Canada of trying to interfere with an upcoming Supreme Court case about the legality of his “reciprocal” tariffs.
Trump made the announcement on Truth Social after the Canadian province of Ontario began running a television advertisement in the United States featuring a speech from former President Ronald Reagan.
“They only did this to interfere with the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, and other courts,” Trump wrote, referring to the high court’s scheduled Nov. 5 oral arguments on legal challenges to a significant part of Trump’s tariffs. They include the country-specific rates at the heart of both his foreign policy and economic agendas.
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The Bureau of Labor Statistics is slated to publish September inflation data this morning in spite of a government shutdown that has paralyzed federal reporting and has no end in sight.
The consumer price index for September will be released at 8:30 a.m. ET and will mark the first time a major economic report has been issued since the shutdown began Oct. 1.
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The U.S. and China are holding a new round of trade talks in Malaysia, as the world’s two biggest economies try to avoid further escalating their trade war and keep next week’s meeting between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping on track.
The Chinese Commerce Ministry said yesterday that Vice Premier He Lifeng would lead a delegation to Malaysia today to Monday. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer will represent the U.S. side at the talks in Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital.
Tensions surged again earlier this month when China announced new export controls on strategically important rare earth minerals, prompting Trump to threaten to impose an additional 100% tariff on Chinese imports. The two countries have also started imposing port fees on each other’s ships.
Citing Xi, Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao said today that “dialogue and cooperation are the only correct choices for China and the United States” and that China “has consistently opposed decoupling and supply chain disruption.”
Trump’s trip to Asia, his first since returning to office in January, begins Sunday in Malaysia, which is hosting a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
New York Attorney General Letitia James, a longtime political foe of Trump who previously sued him for making misleading statements to banks, is scheduled to be arraigned today in federal court on bank fraud charges.
A grand jury in Virginia indicted James, a Democrat, this month, weeks after Trump posted a message on Truth Social pressing Attorney General Pam Bondi to take action against her and two other political adversaries.
James is charged with one count of bank fraud and one count of making false statements to a financial institution. The indictment alleges she falsely claimed that a home in Norfolk, Virginia, was her second residence, allowing her to obtain favorable loan terms, and that she rented the property to a family of three.
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For the 12th time, Senate Democrats blocked the Republican Party’s government funding legislation this week without a single senator switching his or her vote.
Just three Democratic caucus members voted for the bill: John Fetterman, D-Pa.; Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev.; and Angus King, I-Maine. That means Republicans are still five votes short of the 60-vote threshold to ensure passage of the bill, just as they have been since before the government shut down 23 days ago.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told NBC News he’s taken aback by some of the Democratic posturing and rhetoric.
“I’m surprised at how open they’ve been about it,” Thune said in an interview Thursday. “That statement yesterday by that House member that they know the American people are going to suffer but this is their leverage? This isn’t about leverage. This isn’t a political game. It’s about people’s lives.”
Read the full story here.
NBC News