President Donald Trump is in South Carolina on Friday making a last-minute appeal for Sen. Darline Graham, his chosen candidate to replace her brother, the late Sen. Lindsey Graham. Voters will decide Tuesday whether Graham or Rep. Ralph Norman will be Republicans’ nominee on the November ballot.
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts is allowing the White House to continue construction on Trump’s $400 million ballroom project for now. Roberts signed
a temporary order on Friday allowing work to continue while the court considers an emergency appeal from the Trump administration. Lower courts had ordered a halt to the project, finding that it must have congressional approval.
Nearing the six-month mark of the Iran war and facing diminishing stockpiles of key weapons, the Trump administration is touting a crushing financial campaign against Tehran, promising an “economic D-Day” against a country that has so far withstood nearly five decades of punishing American sanctions.
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Trump told a crowd of thousands in Myrtle Beach that the first step in sending Graham to the U.S. Senate involves helping her win Tuesday’s runoff election against Rep. Ralph Norman so she can become the Republican candidate.
“You have to get out and vote,” he said as he campaigned for Graham. “And we need every South Carolina patriot to go to the polls and vote for Darline Graham.”
Leavitt is leaving the White House at the end of August to devote more time to her young family.
She told reporters accompanying Trump aboard Air Force One that she’ll be back on the plane soon for Trump’s trip to Dallas in September to attend the Republican Party’s midterm convention.
She said she’ll spend some time back in her native New Hampshire before she returns to Washington.
Asked if she’ll work for MAGA Inc., Trump’s political action committee, Leavitt said she would. She didn’t say in what capacity.
Darline Graham pumped her fist and danced a little bit as she walked on stage to music, then outlined her record serving South Carolinians as the head of a state agency.
She responded to those who argue she doesn’t have enough experience to serve in the U.S. Senate.
“Now, the critics say I shouldn’t run for the Senate. They say I’m not a politician. You know what I say? Guilty as charged,” Graham said.
She drew parallels with Trump, who has endorsed her, saying he was never elected to any office before he became president
“I think he’s done a damn good job,” she said.
Graham urged people to vote for her in Tuesday’s runoff election against Rep. Ralph Norman “and take 10 friends with you.”
Darline Graham pumped her fist and danced a little bit as she walked on stage to music, then outlined her record serving South Carolinians as the head of a state agency.
She responded to those who argue she doesn’t have enough experience to serve in the U.S. Senate.
“Now, the critics say I shouldn’t run for the Senate. They say I’m not a politician. You know what I say? Guilty as charged,” Graham said.
She drew parallels with Trump, who has endorsed her, saying he was never elected to any office before he became president “and I think he’s done a damn good job.”
Graham urged people to vote for her in Tuesday’s runoff election against Rep. Ralph Norman “and take 10 friends with you.”
The Trump administration has notified Congress of its plans to pay more than $800 million of the several billions it owes to the United Nations, making it the largest payment the U.S. has made to the world body since it demanded sweeping reforms in exchange for continued support as its largest donor.
That’s according to notifications sent to lawmakers this month and obtained Friday by The Associated Press.
In them, the State Department laid out its plans to transfer $725 million as part of its dues to the regular U.N. budget and $125 million toward U.N. peacekeeping operations in Haiti and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Trump and his allies have spent the last year and a half demanding drastic changes across the U.N., alarming many humanitarian workers and leading to severe reductions in programs and services.
The president told reporters that with Karoline Leavitt’s announced departure at the end of the month, “I have never had so many job applications in my life. They all want that job.”
Trump also had a favorable review of CNN’s conservative commentator Scott Jennings, whose name has been among those suggested as a possible replacement.
“Scott Jennings is good,” Trump said.
“I’ll name the companies probably over the next couple of weeks, but I want to ask if they mind, but, and really, most of them have said, ‘You could use my name’ gladly,” Trump said. “So that’s all money, no taxpayer money for the ballroom at all.”
His claim of only private funding for the ballroom is incorrect. Public funds are being used for security aspects of the building. He was asked if he could guarantee that no taxpayer money would pay for construction.
“We’re spending hundreds of millions of dollars on the ballroom, and it’s all from people like me and great companies that are putting it up,” Trump said. “It’s going to be close to $400 million dollars, and it’s all paid for by patriots and patriotic companies, big companies.”
As the rapid expansion of data centers fueling the artificial intelligence boom has sparked bipartisan outcry around the country, Trump insists the subject is actually “pretty simple.”
He said you had to “pick the right location” but “what it means for a community is jobs and lots of money and lower taxes.”
The president added that his administration is mandating that data centers supply their own power sources, helping reduce strain on local electric grids and keeping utility rates from rising too sharply.
Asked about the issue becoming a liability for some Republicans in key midterm races, Trump said of his fellow party members: “I want them to do what they want.”
“Some people feel differently,” he said. “If a Republican’s against a data center that’s OK with me.”
The president told reporters that the record milestone the U.S. passed this week “has been a problem for 35 years” but that “the way you take care of debt is growth.”
Trump’s prescription comes as the U.S. is facing growing costs for the Iran war, social programs like Social Security and Medicare and interest payments on the deficit.
Experts say the debt has already started impacting Americans’ finances, raising costs for borrowing and goods and lowering wages.
The deal, which would allow 300,000 metric tons of beef to be imported for 90 days at a lower cost, incurred backlash from some rural-state Republicans and cattle producers. When asked about criticism, Trump said the proposal would bring beef prices down “a little bit,” which is “what people want.”
“The ranchers are great; they’re my people. I love the ranchers. They’ve done a fantastic job,” he told reporters. “But they admit that we need a little help, and in order to get the prices down, so that’s what we’re doing.”
Critics of the deal, including the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, have said it will harm the industry in the long term as it slowly recovers from a low cattle herd.
When asked what countries were involved in the agreement, Trump said he didn’t want to say but that “there are a few countries” and that they will “be sending the highest quality beef.”
As he boarded the plane to head to Myrtle Beach to rally for Sen. Darline Graham, Trump gave his first public reaction to his chosen South Carolina GOP Senate runoff candidate’s flub earlier in the week.
Trump told reporters Graham “was being honest” when she said Tuesday during a debate that she wasn’t up to speed on national security issues.
“She’s surrounded by very good people, and she said that she’s totally for the military,” Trump said, adding he looked forward to seeing “a very big crowd” in South Carolina.
Graham says she entered the special primary to replace her late brother Lindsey Graham at Trump’s urging. Friday’s rally comes just four days before her runoff against U.S. Rep. Ralph Norman.
Asked about the unprecedented amount of money raised as part of his MAGA, Inc. Super PAC, the president said, “I’ll be spending a lot of that” as well as his own funds on “Republican candidates that I think are good.”
“You add the $850 million, all of the other money that we’ve raised,” he said, “We’re in very good shape.”
Trump’s mountain of money could be enough to lift Republicans during November’s midterm elections, but the president has remained tight-lipped on if and how he’ll spend it before Election Day.
The South Carolina Republican had so far stayed out of the special Senate primary to replace Lindsey Graham.
But just ahead of a scheduled appearance at Trump’s rally in Myrtle Beach, McMaster — also a Trump ally — posted on social media that the interim senator had “stood for the values that South Carolinians live by, continued Lindsey Graham’s work, and stood firmly with President Trump to advance his America First agenda.”
“I am proud to give my full endorsement to Darline Graham,” McMaster concluded.
Voters choose Tuesday between Graham and U.S. Rep. Ralph Norman. Three days of early voting just wrapped up.
The president says he is “grateful” for a temporary order by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts to continue construction on the $400 million White House ballroom project.
“The Military/Ballroom Complex being built on the hallowed grounds of the White House, which is so vital for National Security, will be THE GREATEST OF ITS KIND!” he posted on Truth Social on Friday.
The temporary order came hours before lower-court rulings would have forced a halt to aboveground construction of the project because Trump didn’t get congressional approval.
The president will be bearing the Congressional Space Medal of Honor for the Artemis II crew, who flew farther than any human has from the Earth and hung a U-turn around the moon, laying the first eyes on the rocky orb’s far side in April.
It was NASA’s first lunar trip since the Apollo era, and a step toward again putting a human back on the moon in just two years. The crew of three Americans and one Canadian flew in NASA’s Orion capsule a maximum distance of 252,756 miles (406,771 kilometers) from Earth.
Trump is set to honor them next week at the Johnson Space Center, said White House spokesperson Liz Huston, who added that “America is leading the world in space exploration.”
The Pentagon on Friday fired the editor-in-chief of Stars and Stripes, as well as its publisher and a reporter, the editor said. He said he was dismissed for insubordination after an interview he gave that objected to any potential censorship by the U.S. military.
Erik Slavin, editor-in-chief of the military newspaper that is partly funded by the Pentagon but has a long legacy of editorial independence, told The Associated Press that he and the others had received notices of separation.
Slavin said he was being fired “for stating in a CBS interview that hypothetical censorship of news for service members would constitute a red line.” He said he stands by the principle “that Stars and Stripes must remain editorially independent.”
Earlier this week, publisher Max Lederer announced his retirement effective at the end of September. He too received a separation notice, according to Slavin, as did the Middle East reporter Lara Korte.
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Trump says Ed Martin, a key ally who has pushed the president’s claims of election fraud, is leaving his administration to help with this November’s midterms and the 2028 election.
“Ed Martin has been with me from the very beginning, and done an incredible job as an Attorney, Director of the Weaponization Working Group, and the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia. Ed is now leaving to go outside to fight Legal Battles,” Trump said in a Truth Social posting. “I know he will do an outstanding job, ensure Free, Fair, and Honest Elections, and strongly advance our Constitutional Rights. Good luck Ed! President DONALD J. TRUMP.”
Martin has been a leading figure in — and cheerleader for — Trump’s campaign to use the Justice Department to prosecute his political enemies, including former FBI director James Comey.
Nearly 200 activists in Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” movement are criticizing Trump’s promotion of coal to fuel the rise of artificial intelligence data centers, according to a letter sent Friday.
The letter, signed by at least two former staffers from Kennedy’s 2024 presidential campaign, marks the first major MAHA movement mobilization over fossil fuels and the latest in a series of rifts between the diverse group of activists and the Trump administration over environmental policy.
The letter to Trump, Kennedy and various other Cabinet officials, first obtained by The Associated Press, laments a 2025 executive order that aimed to boost coal to power data centers over pollution concerns and asks the administration to consider renewable options, including solar and geothermal energy.
“We understand the importance of American leadership in artificial intelligence, national security, innovation, and economic growth,” the letter reads. “But American AI leadership should not come at the cost of a more toxic burden for American children.”
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Chief Justice Roberts signed a temporary order on Friday allowing work to continue while the court considers an emergency appeal from the Trump administration.
Lower courts had ordered a halt to the project, finding that it must have congressional approval. That ruling was set to take effect on Friday. Roberts signed the order because he oversees appeals of Washington-based cases.
The case comes before the nation’s highest court as Trump, a Republican, exercises unparalleled assertions of presidential power and increasingly seeks to mold the capital in his own image.
The Trump administration has scored a series of victories on the high court’s emergency docket, though the justices have ruled against some of the president’s signature policies after fuller review.
The administration has argued that the president has total authority to renovate the White House and other federal buildings as he sees fit and that the ballroom project must be completed due to national security concerns.
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Vice President JD Vance said he and Trump are fighting for American-born workers, while Democrats prefer foreigners.
The Republican vice president outlined a fiery midterm message during an appearance at the Middletown, Ohio, steel plant where his grandfather used to work. Republican candidates for the U.S. Senate and governor joined steelworkers in the crowd.
“Every step of the way, these Democrats have voted for foreign workers and fraudsters over American citizens and hard-paying taxpayers,” Vance said. “Who do these Democrats put first? Everyone else. You know who the Trump administration puts first? Americans.”
Vance noted that he served in the Senate alongside former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, who is locked in a tight race against Republican Sen. Jon Husted.
“He was a friendly enough guy, but he was a man who claimed to represent this state, but never once raised his voice against Joe Biden’s border crisis or against the inflation that was brought on by Joe Biden underinvesting and trying to destroy American industry,” Vance said.
“I’m going to serve for one more term, and then I’m going to go home because these shouldn’t be jobs forever,” Moreno said at an event in Middletown, Ohio, on Friday before Vance was scheduled to speak.
Moreno, a Republican and Ohio’s first Latino senator, was elected in 2024, when he defeated incumbent Democrat Sherrod Brown.
Moreno is up for reelection in 2030. If he abides by his pledge Friday to serve only one more term, he’d be in office until early 2037.
Moreno’s remark follows an intense period of scrutiny involving his daughter Emily’s former marriage to U.S. Rep. Max Miller. Moreno publicly called Miller unfit to serve.
Spokesperson Reagan McCarthy said Moreno had always said he would serve only two terms.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Trump had an 80-minute phone call on Friday amid pressure from Washington ahead of Brazil’s October elections.
Lula’s presidency said in a statement that the two leaders discussed trade, organized crime and global conflicts. Brazil’s president, who has insisted he has a friendly relationship with Trump, has blamed U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio for several recent sanctions against his country, including the revocation of the visa held by Brazil’s ambassador to the U.S.
Lula’s rival in the elections is Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro, whose family has long been allied with Trump.
Brazil’s presidency says the two leaders agreed to keep negotiations on tariffs open. The U.S. has imposed new tariffs on Brazilian exports that could add up to 37.5% in some products.
Lula has said that move was politically motivated to help Flávio Bolsonaro, a son of former President Jair Bolsonaro.
The former South Carolina governor and congressman said on social media Friday that Norman “holds the best shot at holding the line on government spending, our debt and its accompanying deficits,” all of which are Sanford’s signature issues.
Sanford was the fourth place finisher in the Aug. 11 primary. He applauded Norman’s “experience in legislative circles, matched by a conservative voting record and conservative stands.”
Norman and Sen. Darline Graham face voters in a GOP primary runoff Tuesday to replace the late Sen. Lindsey Graham.
In a social media post Friday, the president said his administration will allow more beef to be imported into the U.S. without triggering a higher tariff rate that would otherwise go into effect.
The agreement, Trump said, allows up to 300,000 metric tons of ground beef to be brought into the U.S. for the next 90 days without activating an “out of quota” tariff.
The president said he had a commitment that the beef would be sold at 25% below current market rates, making beef cheaper for American consumers.
Trump did not say who the deal was with or what countries the beef will be imported from. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for more details.
An out-of-quota tariff is a higher tax that goes into effect once a certain quantity of that product enters the U.S.
Trump said the agreement would help rebuild the U.S. beef herd and ultimately help American ranchers. But the American cattle industry has in the past balked at Trump’s plans to import more foreign beef, such as his effort last year to bring in more beef from Argentina.
Trump is scheduled to travel to South Carolina on Friday to make a last-minute appeal for Sen. Darline Graham, his chosen candidate to replace her brother, the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, ahead of a Republican runoff next week.
Voters will decide Tuesday whether Graham or Rep. Ralph Norman will be Republicans’ nominee on the November ballot.
The Myrtle Beach rally is the sort of campaign trail occasion that Trump hasn’t done as much of this year, compared with past midterms, making it a signal of the importance Trump is placing on a win for his pick.
It’s also an opportunity for the president to wade into friendly territory ahead of the midterm elections that leave his party’s control of Congress hanging in the balance. South Carolina hasn’t elected a Democrat statewide in decades, its House delegation has only one Democrat and Trump’s own victory in the 2016 presidential primary here helped propel him toward the nomination and ultimately the White House.
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Justice Department investigators have sought to interview law enforcement officials related to the FBI search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate as part of a Florida-based inquiry aiming to establish a conspiracy against the Republican president, multiple people familiar with the matter said Thursday.
The requests for interviews, made in recent weeks, suggest a conspiracy investigation that had mostly appeared focused on the decade-old question of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election is also examining a more contemporary event — the 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago that resulted in the FBI seizing top secret documents from the president’s Palm Beach estate.
The requests for voluntary interviews were not made through subpoenas, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation with The Associated Press.
It is not clear when or if prosecutors might seek to bring charges, or for what, but investigating conduct that occurred in Florida might give the Justice Department the legal hook it needs to try to anchor a prosecution in the state.
— Eric Tucker and Alanna Durkin Richer
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World shares were mixed Friday after a retreat on Wall Street as a U.S. Treasury Department plan to boost its government debt buybacks appeared to have only limited capacity to calm markets.
The futures for the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average were up 0.3%.
The Treasury Department announced Wednesday that it will at least double the size of its planned purchases of longer-term government debt, while Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent signaled Thursday that the repurchase program could be larger.
The announcement temporarily brought down government bond yields, which have been elevated under concerns about high inflation partly caused by the war in Iran and rising U.S. government debt. Higher yields tend to slow the broader economy because of increased borrowing costs across the financial system and can undercut stock prices.
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Nearing the six-month mark of the Iran war and facing diminishing stockpiles of key weapons, the Trump administration is touting a crushing financial campaign against Tehran, promising an “economic D-Day” against a country that has so far withstood nearly five decades of punishing American sanctions.
With sparse details, Trump announced this week that the U.S. would be imposing an “unprecedented” level of economic warfare and isolation on Iran, aiming to force its leadership to cave to demands to end its nuclear program and fully reopen the crucial Strait of Hormuz to oil and natural gas tankers.
It reflects the dire reality Trump faces with an increasingly unpopular war he can’t seem to end just months before pivotal midterm elections that will decide whether his Republican Party keeps control of Congress. Whether out of desperation or strategy, the president is refocusing America’s might on bringing Iran to its knees through an accelerated sanctions campaign against one of the most economically penalized countries in the world.
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