Democrats are quietly drafting a monumental overhaul of the presidency, and unfortunately, I’m one of the reasons why it’s necessary.
On 9 April last year, Donald Trump sat down in the Oval Office and signed a piece of paper with my name on it. The memorandum stripped me of my security clearance and ordered the federal government to investigate me. As he signed it, he told reporters he thought I was guilty of “treason”, a crime punishable by death. Of course, my real offence was quitting his administration and speaking out about his penchant for corruption. The irony — of a man abusing his power to punish someone who warned that he’d abuse his power — was not lost on me.
Trump’s order declared me guilty of several crimes, including having “illegally published classified conversations” … “stoked dissension”… “disclos[ed] information obtain[ed] through unauthorized methods” … “for personal enrichment” and which could be “properly characterized as treasonous” in “violation of the Espionage Act” – all of which is false, none of which any court has found or even considered and for which he prescribed punishment via executive order.
I wasn’t the only one. The same afternoon, Trump signed a near-identical order against Chris Krebs, his former cyber security chief, whose sin was saying the 2020 election had been secure. In the days that followed, constitutional scholars started contacting me, and several made the same point. In nearly 250 years, no American president had ever put his signature to a written order directing the machinery of the state against a named private citizen for what he or she had said.
The types of cancer with ‘concerning’ rise among under 50s
The number of people getting cancer before the age of 50 has risen, according to the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF).
While most cancers are still diagnosed in older adults, the charity said that the trajectory is “concerning”.
Increase in cancer rates
There have been increases in rates of , , , , , and cancers among adults under 50, the WCRF said.
It comes as figures from Cancer Research UK show that between the , in 25 to 49-year-olds in the UK .
Cancer trends
The WCRF analysis of NHS data in England compared the rates of diagnoses among people in 2001 and 2023, finding:
- Rise in number of prostate cancer diagnoses in men under 50, from 158 to 640 between 2001 and 2023.
- Bowel cancer cases among younger adults increased from 1,289 in 2001 to 2,989 in 2023.
- In 2023, 1,065 adults under 50 were diagnosed with kidney cancer, compared to 510 adults in 2001.
- Women aged under 50 diagnosed with womb cancer rose from 1.8 per 100,000 in 2001 to 3.9 per 100,000 in 2023.
- Meanwhile, women diagnosed with breast cancer in this age bracket rose from 6,886 in 2001 to 8,507 in 2023.
Expert opinion
“While is much more common in older people, it can strike at any age.”
NHS England national medical director Professor Frankie Swords urged people to see a GP for possible symptoms like a lump, unusual bleeding or unexplained weight loss. “Don’t put off a simple check-up because you think you’re too young, it could save your life,” she said.
Five theories about staggering rise of cancer in under-50s
By and large, the rising trend of young-onset cancers is a mystery, one which oncologists around the world are scrambling to try and understand. But when it comes to bowel cancer, at least, a handful of clues are starting to emerge.
Labour polling at 21-month high as Tories gain on Reform
Labour is polling at their highest rate since January 2025, according to a YouGov poll.
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New voting intention poll
The latest YouGov voting intention poll for and found Labour is taking a strong lead with voters, followed by Reform UK and the Conservatives.
What does the poll show
- 1Labour is experiencing a 21-month high at 27 per cent (+3)
- 2 is still second, but saw some losses at 22 per cent (-3)
- 3 gained on Reform, with 20 per cent (+1)
- 4 have seen small losses at 11 per cent (-1)
- 5 remain fifth, sitting at 11 per cent (no change)
Changes from the last poll
Another YouGov poll surveying 17,000 voters between 23 August and 18 September indicated a similar trend to this latest one.
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Asos hack fears after ‘compromised’ alert – what we know
Thousands of Asos customers have been sent a phone alert saying the retailer has been hacked.
Here’s everything we know so far…
What happened?
Phone alert
Thousands of customers received a mobile app notification on Tuesday.
The notification, titled “Asos hacked”, directed users to a Telegram account.
Shares drop
Asos shares plummeted by more than 10 per cent on Tuesday as a result.
What did the message say?
The message read: “Dear Asos DPO and IT, we have fully compromised the Snowflake instance. Engage with us, or we will leak it.”
DPO refers to the data protection officer, the role in a company responsible for customer information safeguarding.
Snowflake is an online data platform used by a wide array of companies, but it is not yet known whether Asos – which is yet to comment on the incident – is one of those.
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The notification
Latest hacking incident
Asos, which owns brands including Topshop and Miss Selfridge, has 17 million customers globally. The UK is its largest market, making up 49 per cent of revenues in the first half of the latest financial year.
Snowflake has been the reported subject of a number of data breaches in recent years, including an attack on Ticketmaster which saw customer details stolen. It comes after a raft of UK retailers were targeted by cyber attackers over the past two years, including Marks & Spencer and Harrods.
Brits pick greatest ‘driving anthems’ of all time
British motorists have voted to decide on the best driving anthem of all time.
Here are the results…
New research
Drivers vote
A new poll of 2,000 UK drivers, commissioned by Isuzu UK, has unveiled British motorists’ favourite driving anthem.
The tunes
Bruce Springsteen, Miley Cyrus and Bon Jovi were among the artists attributed with providing the best highway tracks. But did they come out on top?
Top five driving anthems
- 1Hotel California – The Eagles. The 70s hit saw 27 per cent of those surveyed name the 1977 classic rock song as the ultimate driving anthem.
- 2Born in the USA – Bruce Springsteen. The 1984 hit just missed top spot, with 24 per cent.
- 3. The 2023 hit from the American pop star came in third with 22 per cent.
- 4Boys of Summer – Don Henley. Another from 1984, the song placed fourth with 21 per cent.
- 5Livin’ on a Prayer – Bon Jovi. The 1986 power ballad took 18 per cent of the votes.
What else are drivers saying?
Meanwhile, 40 per cent of drivers polled admitted to singing along to tunes in the car around seven times a week, despite a third (33 per cent) admitting they have startled passengers with their “enthusiastic” vocals.
Three in 10 (31 per cent) agreed that certain songs bring back fond childhood memories of family holidays and day trips.
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Who was ex-MP and ‘master storyteller’ Jeffrey Archer?
The bestselling author and former politician has died at the age of 86.
But who was Jeffrey Archer?
Archer passes away ‘suddenly’
Jeffrey Archer, renowned novelist and former Conservative MP, died “suddenly and peacefully at home between writing sessions” on Monday, his publisher HarperCollins said in a statement.
Alongside his political career, Archer was a wildly successful novelist, during his five-decade career and being made a in 1992.
Early life
Archer was born an only child in Weston-super-Mare on 15 April, 1940. After completing his education at Wellington School in Somerset, Archer attended the University of Oxford in October 1963.
He went for a one-year course, a diploma in education, but ended up staying for three years, just as though he were a typical undergraduate.
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Political career
- Archer was first elected MP for the Lincolnshire constituency of Louth in 1969.
- In 1985, Margaret Thatcher appointed him deputy chairman of the Conservative Party.
- The same year, Archer also set up his own PR firm, Archer Enterprises, and in 1992 was created a life peer.
- At the turn of the century, he was the Tory candidate to be mayor of London; then scandal struck.
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Time in jail
- Archer’s political career was paused in 2001 when he was jailed for four years for perjury and perverting the course of justice.
- A jury found he lied in a libel action he had brought against newspaper, in which he was awarded £500,000 in damages.
- Archer was released early in 2003 and returned to the House of Lords until he retired in 2024.
Archer the novelist
- Archer wrote his first novel, Not A Penny More, Not A Penny Less, in 1974, after almost going bankrupt.
- An instant bestseller, it sparked a prolific career as an author which ultimately made him a millionaire.
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It has been one of the great privileges of my publishing life to have been Jeffrey Archer’s editor. He was the master storyteller and an editor’s dream – phenomenally hard-working, utterly committed to completing draft after draft to get every word as perfect as possible, and a true champion of the ‘team’ nature of great publishing
kate elton, harpercollins uk chief executive
Final act
Everybody would like to run their last 100 metres at the Olympics and win the gold medal, but there’s always a time. I think the clever thing in life is when to get out
Archer declared in an interview just last week that he “shall not be retiring”. His final novel, a Second World War-era historical fiction was published Tuesday, hours after his death was announced.
‘Irrepressible life force’ – Camilla
The Queen has joined those paying tribute to Lord Archer, from her position as founder of the Queen’s Reading Room charity which was supported by the author. “While he was not without flaw, his friends will recall him as an irrepressible life force through all the many differing chapters of his life,” Camilla said. “My sympathies go to [Archer’s wife] Mary and the family at this time of sorrow.”
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Badenoch pays tribute
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said she was “incredibly saddened” to hear of Archer’s passing. “He had sent me a lovely message just this morning and was always a great source of encouragement to me personally,” she added on Monday.
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UK POLITICS
Tories pledge ‘Britannia Shield’ – how would it work?
The Conservatives have pledged to invest £10bn in a British missile defence system which has drawn comparisons to Israel’s elaborate “Iron Dome”.
Here’s how it could work, and how much the experts think it might really cost.
What is the ‘Britannia Shield’?
Air defence system
The Tories have promised to build a new UK air defence system if voted into power.
How will it work?
The “Britannia Shield” would provide systems to detect and stop incoming threats using interceptor missiles.
British ‘Iron Dome’?
But Kemi Badenoch has pushed back on comparisons to Israel’s Iron Dome system.
We are not building the Iron Dome. We are doing what other European countries are doing: Greece, Benelux countries, Belgium, and the Netherlands and Germany. We are designing something specific for the kind of threat that we face here
conservative party leader kemi badenoch
How much will it cost?
The Conservatives have estimated the system will cost £10bn to set up, but previous estimates place the cost at £80bn.
The programme, the Tories say, would be funded through the party’s plans to increase defence spending to 3 per cent of GDP by 2030 by slashing Britain’s welfare bill.
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Current levels of protection
- The UK has some existing protection in the form of RAF Typhoons which could shoot down hostile drones, but the jets cannot track or intercept ballistic missiles.
- The Royal Navy’s Type 45 Destroyers, equipped with Sea Viper air defence systems, can intercept missiles, but must be in UK waters to be fully effective.
- Britain could rely on its Nato allies, to some extent, in the event of a strike by Russia, but military experts have long warned the country needs a full Iron Dome-style missile defence shield.
Expert opinion
“This is a well overdue commitment to fill the void in defending Britain as global security deteriorates”
Former Tory defence minister Tobias Ellwood said: “It’s only a matter of time before a military base or a corner of our critical national infrastructure is targeted and currently, we have no air defence.”
J Michael Luttig, the retired conservative appeals court judge, put it bluntly. Targeting Chris and me for speaking out, he wrote, was “the President’s most constitutionally corrupt Executive Order to date”.
There’s an old name for this type of misconduct. As top US legal scholars have written, it’s tantamount to what’s called a “bill of attainder”: a decree that declares a particular person guilty and punishes them, with no trial and no chance to answer the charge. English kings and their parliaments used attainders for centuries to destroy rivals and seize their estates, and the men who founded the United States had seen enough of it. Indeed, the Declaration of Independence criticised King George III for making “Judges dependent on his Will alone” and for “depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury”. When the US Constitution was written a decade later, the ban on bills of attainder passed unanimously, without debate.
Yet Trump has effectively made use of the practise anyway. Then he kept doing it. His administration went on to blacklist universities, law firms, journalists, members of Congress, former officials and more. It stripped funding from universities including Harvard and Columbia, barred news outlets from the White House and published names of those who he would not allow to serve in his government. The pattern that began with a signature in April 2025 effectively became the operating system of his second term.
So you might expect me to want the favour returned. Some of my friends certainly do. They want the next Democratic president to pick up the same pen on day one and sign orders directing the Justice Department to investigate Trump, his family and his enablers, by name, for alleged corruption. This would include allegations Trump supporters and firms linked to his sons received preferential treatment in securing contracts with the administration; claims Trump businesses were shielded from tax audits; and allegations around the sale of early access rights to his social media platform.
Turn the weapon around. Let them find out how it feels.
I understand the appeal. And I reject it. That’s not to say I don’t think there should be investigations. But they should come about according to the rule of law, based on evidence of crimes — not because a president says someone is guilty first and investigates them second.
If the next president can do to Trump what Trump did to me, then the one after that can do it to someone else, and the American presidency becomes a revenge machine that changes hands every four years. The lesson of the past two years isn’t that the wrong man got hold of this power. It’s that no one should have it, whichever party they belong to.
That’s why the most important work in Washington right now is happening quietly.
reported this week that Trump’s opponents are drawing up the most sweeping overhaul of the presidency since the Watergate scandal. This includes bills to rein in emergency powers, insulate the Justice Department from the White House, bar a president from taking foreign payments and more clearly outlaw the punishment of people for their speech. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, called it “a massive reconstruction task”. I’ve spent the past year working privately with members of Congress and their committees on this, and I can tell you the ambition goes well beyond what Congress did after Watergate in the 1970s.
The other week, I sat down with Congressman Robert Garcia, who is likely to chair the Oversight Committee if Democrats win the House of Representatives in the midterm elections next month. That panel would lead the investigations into Trump and his circle, and Garcia didn’t hedge about where he would start.
“The top single biggest priority is the Trump family,” he told me. “Where Jared Kushner is getting billions from the Saudis, where they’re enriching themselves through crypto, through selling pardons.” In the next breath, he said what I would’ve said. “That has to be investigated. And then we’ve got to put laws in place and legislation to prevent it in the future.”
Garcia admitted that when Trump was re-elected he fell into “a deep state of despair” and thought “we could really lose our country.” He’s more hopeful now. “I can see the end of the Donald Trump presidency,” he said. “It’s going to take an enormous amount of commitment, dedication to rebuild, but I think we’re going to survive Donald Trump.”
I also spoke with Congressman Jason Crow, a former Army Ranger who, like me, was personally targeted by the President. Crow and five fellow Democrats with military and intelligence backgrounds recorded a video last year reminding American service members that they’re obliged to refuse illegal orders. Trump declared their conduct “seditious behavior, punishable by death” and amplified a post calling for them to be hanged. His Justice Department tried to indict them. Then a grand jury threw the case out.
Crow isn’t looking for instant payback, either. “I will put it all on the line to have the real systemic change and oversight,” he said, noting that Congress must think bigger about how to prevent such wrongdoing from happening again. “The United States Constitution created Congress and gave it the duty – not the authority, the duty – the responsibility to do oversight, to go after corruption.”
He also gave the best explanation I’ve heard for why standing up to this President matters beyond any individual case. “Donald Trump – his thesis is that fear is contagious,” Crow said. “And that’s actually true. But courage and hope is more contagious.”
I fought back. So did Crow. So did comedians and news networks and foreign countries that refused to fold. “You push back, he backs down,” Crow said. “Bullies rarely punch up, they punch down. And they’re not used to having people punch back.”
Trump knows what’s coming. He has reportedly promised to pre-emptively pardon all his top administration officials before he leaves office. That tells you that he fears the tables turning and that he’s already working on how to escape accountability. While pardons can shield his people from federal prosecution, they cannot stop Congress from investigating, and they cannot stop Congress from writing into law the guard-rails everyone assumed were already there.
That’s the mission. I want the order Trump signed against me to be both the first and last of its kind in American history. Punishing him would feel good. But making sure no president can ever do it again would be worth far more.