White House pushes Congress to approve $250 bill with Trump’s image

Treasury secretary says banknote would celebrate US’s 250th anniversary but Democrats vow to block move

The White House is pushing Congress to approve a $250 bill bearing Donald Trump’s portrait, US treasury secretary Scott Bessent said, which would require changing longstanding federal law that prohibits any living person from appearing on US currency.

Speaking from the White House at a news conference, Bessent said the bill would be in celebration of the country’s 250th anniversary of independence, and that the treasury has already started preparing for the possibility of the new currency.

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source https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/28/trump-250-bill

Trump Threatens Oman Over the Strait, Then Says, ‘They’ll Be Fine.’ #wanitaxigo

Trump administration ‘drawing up plans’ to stop processing international flights in sanctuary cities

Markwayne Mullin, DHS secretary, said move would come in response to protests outside ICE facility in New Jersey

The Trump administration has threatened to stop processing international flights in major cities around the country as a reaction to protests against immigration enforcement.

Markwayne Mullin, the homeland security secretary, said during an interview with Fox News on Tuesday that the administration is “drawing up plans” to take the action, in response to days of clashes at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center in New Jersey.

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source https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/27/dhs-international-flights-sanctuary-cities

Federal court blocks new Republican-friendly voting map in Alabama

Panel of three judges says congressional map was drawn to intentionally discriminate against Black voters

Alabama cannot use a new Republican-friendly map in this year’s midterm elections because it was drawn to intentionally discriminate against Black voters, a panel of three federal judges ruled on Tuesday.

The decision blocks Alabama from using a congressional map lawmakers passed in 2023 but never went into effect because the same court found it was drawn with intent to discriminate. Alabama was eventually ordered to adopt a map with two majority-Black districts that both elected Democrats. After the US supreme court gutted a major provision of the Voting Rights Act in its Louisiana v Callais ruling in April, Alabama took the extraordinary step of moving its imminent congressional primary and sought to use the 2023 congressional map this year.

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source https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/26/alabama-new-congressional-map-struck-down

Tony Blair’s essay on Labour failings gets full marks for being unhelpful

Intervention by former PM almost feels designed to inflict maximum annoyance on his party

• Tony Blair tells Starmer and rivals: abandon net zero and move closer to Trump

Did Tony Blair ever mention he was quite good at winning elections? If you happened to miss it, then his 5,700-word opus on where Labour, Keir Starmer and the UK more generally have gone wrong is here to remind you. Several times.

“I led the Labour party for 13 years and through three general elections,” goes the second sentence. Further on, Blair laments that when the party tries to puzzle out how to win a second term, the one thing ruled out was “learning from the only time in the party’s 120-year history it has ever done so”.

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source https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/may/26/tony-blair-essay-labour-failings-unhelpful

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Nurseries in England charging extra fees to cover funding gap, campaigners say

Head of Early Years Alliance says additional charges paid by parents represent ‘cross-subsidy’

Parents of nursery children in England are being charged extra fees to cover for government underfunding of free childcare hours, with some paying thousands of pounds a year for consumables such as food, wipes and nappies, campaigners have said.

The comments came as the education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, asked the competition watchdog to investigate hidden extra charges that parents have encountered when trying to access government-funded childcare.

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source https://www.theguardian.com/money/2026/may/25/nursery-extra-fees-charges-england-funding-free-childcare-hours