In most ways, Donald Trump’s second term has been even more chaotic and extreme than the first. When he first entered the Oval Office, many of the people surrounding Trump were still career Republicans, rather than full-blown Maga loyalists. Lots of people around him pushed back on the President’s most extreme impulses.
In Trump 2.0, those checks and balances are gone. Everyone around the President believes that what he says, goes, and the results are everywhere for people to see, from the demolished East Wing of the White House, to ICE agents roaming the country and grabbing people off the streets.
But while the country might be more chaotic than ever, the White House operation itself has been far quieter this time round. During Trump’s first term, everyone was constantly leaking to the media on virtually every issue, as rival factions contended for power. The churn of senior White House staff and even cabinet members was relentless.
Australian MP’s legs amputated after ‘politically-motivated attack’
Doctors have amputated both of Australian MP Helen Haines’s legs after she was repeatedly hit by a car in an apparent act of political violence, her husband said.
What happened?
Haines remains in critical condition. The 65-year-old independent politician is receiving treatment in a Melbourne hospital where she was flown by helicopter.
Haines’s husband said her left leg was amputated on Monday and her right leg was amputated on Wednesday after doctors abandoned hope of saving it.
8 min read
2 min read
What her husband said
The good news in all this is that Helen is alive and she’s stable. That is the most iortant thing for our family… We are grateful and thankful that at this stage, both her heart and her mind are in good shape.
Phil Haines
The alleged attacker
Brendan Nugent, a 43-year-old man from nearby Tarrawingee, has been charged with intentionally causing serious injury, dangerous driving causing serious injury and causing harm to a federal official.
- Police have yet to determine a motive.
- Witnesses say the driver rammed his victim, pinning her against her own car before reversing and ramming her a second time.
- Nugent’s lawyer Chirag Patel said he was suffering from potential mental health issues but had never been diagnosed with any mental health problem.
- Patel said Nugent suffered from a concussion and a neurological condition, idiopathic transverse myelitis, which disrupts nerve signals between the brain and body, leading to rapid muscle weakness and sensory loss.
Nigeria confirms Ebola case
Nigeria reported its first Ebola case in more than a decade on Tuesday, becoming the fourth African country to be affected by the outbreak.
Where has Ebola been detected?
- Ebola disease from the fast-moving outbreak in Congo has now spread to four other countries.
- This is including two where it’s active.
- It was first declared in eastern Congo in mid-May.
- Nigeria confirmed an Ebola infection in its capital, Abuja.
- This was in a woman who arrived from Uganda about two weeks ago.
- Uganda has reported 20 cases but none are active.
A closer look at confirmed cases so far
- Kenya announced its first Ebola case on 6 October, involving a man who traveled from Congo via Uganda before arriving in the capital, Nairobi, on 3 October.
- France confirmed a positive case of Ebola in June in a doctor travelling back from Congo.
4 min read
Should Britons be worried?
The World Health Organization has said it is the fastest-growing outbreak of Ebola in history. However, France is still the only country outside Africa to have recorded a case in this outbreak. The UK Health Security Agency says the current outbreak “poses a low risk to the UK population”.
Imported cases are extremely rare, only four confirmed cases have been reported in the UK since 1976, and there have been no UK deaths from the disease.
3 min read
1 min read
UK approves drilling in Jackdaw gas field
Gas from the Jackdaw field will start flowing within weeks after the Government approved the project in an effort to improve domestic energy security and grow the economy.
Why has it been approved?
The Government says the approval of Jackdaw will increase domestic gas production by around 6 per cent at its peak, protect hundreds of jobs and provide an estimated £2.9bn economic boost.
- Tax revenues from North Sea oil and gas will also go into a new energy wealth fund, backed with an initial £2bn, which will invest in renewable and low carbon projects.
- Ministers argue that while UK households and businesses are still using gas, it makes more economic and environmental sense to increase domestic production rather than rely on imports shipped from other countries.
Why is the project controversial?
The approval of Jackdaw has been criticised by environmental campaigners who want to accelerate the shift away from fossil fuels. Both Jackdaw and the Rosebank field were approved for drilling licences in June 2022, but these were overturned by the Scottish courts after a challenge from campaigners.
New public consultations on the proposals took place this year and closed in August. The Government has not yet greenlit Rosebank.
What does this mean for your energy bills?
The approval of Jackdaw will not bring down soaring bills because gas prices are set by global markets, and energy minister Michael Shanks acknowledged “we will not stop being a net importer of fossil fuels because of this decision”.
4 min read
2 min read
Actor Noel Clarke in court over sexual offence allegations
Actor Noel Clarke is expected to appear in court today charged with sexual offences against five women.
What has he been accused of?
Clarke, who has appeared in and is accused of two counts of sexual assault, three of voyeurism and one of exposure between 2007 and 2016.
The offences are alleged to have taken place in London and Dorset. Clarke has previously denied any allegations of inappropriate behaviour or sexual misconduct.
What do police say?
Bethan David, deputy chief Crown prosecutor for the Crown Prosecution Service, said: “Our prosecutors have worked to establish that there is sufficient evidence to bring this case to court and that it is in the public interest to do so.”
2 min read
2 min read
Drinking tea may be good for your heart
Tea drinking is good for your heart, and drinking it regularly reduces the risk of vascular disease by 11 per cent, research has found.
What did the study find?
A study in China published in the Journal of Internal Medicine looked at the risk of vascular disease in 485,934 people.
- Those who drank about six to eight cups per day were found to be at the lowest risk of vascular disease among weekly tea drinkers.
- Vascular disease can include heart disease, cerebrovascular disease, pulmonary heart disease and peripheral artery disease.
- Tea consumption combined with not smoking and exercising was associated with the lowest risk.
The expert view
This doesn’t prove that a daily cuppa protects your heart. This was an observational study and other differences in people’s diets and lifestyles could help explain the findings… We need further evidence before assuming the findings apply in the same way to people in the UK.
Dell Stanford, senior dietitian at the British Heart Foundation
Judi Dench: Cats film was a waste of talent
Actor Dame Judi Dench has described the 2019 film , the adaptation of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, as a “waste” of “goodwill and talent”.
She starred as the wise moggy Old Deuteronomy and has so far declined to watch the movie.
What she said
Oh God, I can’t bear it, and [Lloyd Webber] had waited so long for it to be made. What a waste of all that goodwill and talent. I understand the critics were rather hostile to the film. I never saw the final cut so I can’t judge. All I’ll say is nobody sets out to give a poor performance or make a bad film. You do your best… and hope that people will get on board and join the party.
Details revealed in new memoir
In her forthcoming memoir, Is It Too Late to Make a Run for It?, Dench said she felt “ill at ease from the beginning – I just didn’t feel right in the role”, reports.
She said young dancers were ignored at the end of each take. However, she said she enjoyed meeting co-star Taylor Swift and receiving 50 everlasting roses, spraypainted gold, from Jason Derulo, another co-star.
2 min read
4 min read
Why was the film panned?
The director, Tom Hooper, has been criticised for how he adapted the musical, including error-prone use of CGI. He has not made a film since.
Lloyd Webber has said “the whole thing was ridiculous”, “off-the-scale wrong” and that it caused him to become a dog owner.
The same has not, so far, been true of Trump’s second term. There have been some high-profile departures – from Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem and attorney-general Pam Bondi to the recent disastrous five-day tenure of White House press secretary Katie Zacharia – but Trump 2.0 has leaked less, and turned over fewer staff.
The woman almost universally credited for that is Trump’s chief of staff, the veteran Florida political operative Susie Wiles. The story of how Wiles ended up as a key figure in the Trump orbit is a curious one: she formerly worked for the state’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis – Trump’s main challenger in the 2024 Republican primaries – but the two fell out in spectacular fashion, and Wiles offered her services to Trump instead, becoming one of his closest advisers.
Wiles has been credited with running a tight ship, ending the culture of relentless media briefings, and keeping most feuds internal. Wiles reportedly does not see it as her job to save Trump from some of his wildest impulses, but does operate a system of waiting to see if the President asks for something several times before actually doing it.
Some of the more obvious backfires and U-turns of the administration – such as Trump’s impulsive, failed bid to exclude multiple outlets from the White House press pool – happened while Wiles was absent, in this case recovering from treatment for breast cancer.
But with what could be – if the polls are correct – disastrous results in the midterms looming, cracks are beginning to form in the previously unified front Team Trump has managed to put forward.
The disastrous short tenure of Zacharia is one such fissure. After her abysmal first press briefing, stories appeared in the media suggesting Zacharia had been recommended to the President personally by Natalie Harp, the aide known as the “human printer” because of her habit of printing out social media posts to cheer up the President. She also once allegedly jumped in the boot of a car, rather than travel separately from the presidential motorcade.
It was then suggested that Wiles was behind setting up a similarly calamitous Fox News interview slot for Zacharia to explain and defend her performance at the press briefing, which was generally held to have marked the point of no return for her in the role. Predictably, magazine has now suggested Zacharia was little more than a “pawn” in a power struggle between Wiles and Harp.
Other media outlets have suggested that Wiles might depart the White House – whether voluntarily or otherwise – shortly after the midterms. According to , Trump has called friends and allies to ask their opinions about firing Wiles in order to bring in some new blood as chief of staff.
However, such reports have been flatly denied, with Trump telling that Wiles “has my COMPLETE confidence” and condemning it as not caring about “facts, integrity, or honest journalism”. He insisted there was “zero chance” of Wiles being fired and added that she was “going to be here for a long time”.
On Monday, in an apparent show of support for his chief of staff, Trump named Wiles co-chair of a new White House taskforce on women’s health alongside First Lady Melania Trump. The President, signing an executive order to establish the agency, praised Wiles’ recent battle with breast cancer, calling her “tough” and “a tremendous fighter”.
Wiles told the the move had been “long planned”, adding on social media: “This is deeply personal to me. Having gone through breast cancer myself, I know first-hand the importance of early detection, medical research, and quality care. I am grateful to the President and First Lady for their commitment to helping women live longer, healthier lives.”
However, Wiles’ new role has done nothing to dampen speculation about the worsening crisis and growing tensions among senior officials in the White House. Wiles has managed to keep a lid on the chaos Trump constantly generates for almost two years, but she may be running out of road as the machinery of politics turns against Trump.
The President is already a lame duck: he cannot run for another term, and any second-term president starts to see power and influence ebb away from them as everyone looks at who is likely to be in power next. Given that Trump is personally unpopular and may lose control of both houses of Congress very soon, that phenomenon accelerates.
Everyone knows that Trump – and the Republican Party at large – will need someone to blame if the midterm results are even close to being as bad as expected. That person cannot, of course, be Trump himself. He is not the kind of man who believes the buck stops with him.
That means someone on the team will almost certainly have to fall on their sword, and in classic Washington DC style, everyone seems eager to get their defence in early, and make the case for why someone else must go.
Susie Wiles seems to be the person the other senior staff are trying to offer up as a sacrifice. She may not be the best pick: the 69-year-old is a long-time political survivor, and this is not her first rodeo. But whether she survives in post or not, her ability to stop the dramatics of the Trump White House spilling out into public seems to be a thing of the past.