UK Reviews Duty Exemption for Parcels After Trump Shuts Loophole
Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced an examination of the so-called de minimis rules, under which goods valued at £135 ($179) or less can be imported into the UK without customs duty. The move comes after British retailers including fashion and homeware chain Next Plc and grocer J Sainsbury Plc called for the loophole to be addressed, arguing that it allows international companies to undercut them.
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Yahoo
7 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump voices shock at devastating scale of Texas flood damage
US President Donald Trump spoke Friday of seeing devastation like he'd never before experienced as he toured parts of Texas hit by devastating flash floods that have left at least 120 people dead, including dozens of children. The Republican leader and First Lady Melania Trump were in the Hill Country of central Texas to meet first responders, victims' families and local officials, a week after a rain-swollen river swept away houses, camp cabins, cars and people. "This is a tough one. I've never seen anything like this," Trump said at a roundtable meeting in Kerrville, in the worst-affected Kerr County. "I've gone to a lot of hurricanes, a lot of tornadoes. I've never seen anything like this. This is a bad one." Trump lashed out at reporters for questioning authorities' response to the disaster and said he wanted to focus on solidarity with emergency workers and volunteers. "All across the country, Americans' hearts are shattered," said Trump, speaking at a table draped in a black banner with the message "Texas Strong." "I had to be here as president. The first lady wanted to be here." He compared the suddenly rising floodwaters to a "giant wave in the Pacific Ocean that the best surfers in the world would be afraid to surf." Earlier, the Trumps were met by Governor Greg Abbott near the Guadalupe River in Kerrville, in an area with numerous downed trees and an overturned tractor trailer. They were briefed by Texas Emergency Management and Kerrville Fire Dept officials, and greeted by 30 or so rescue workers and Coast Guard members. The search for more than 170 missing people, including five girls who were at summer camp, was in its eighth day as rescue teams combed through mounds of debris and mud. But with no live rescues reported this week, worries have swelled that the death toll could still rise. Trump has brushed off questions about the impact of his cuts to federal agencies on the response to the flood, which he described as a "100-year catastrophe" that "nobody expected." On Thursday, Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem, who was with Trump in Texas, defended the immediate response as "swift and efficient." But Texas officials have faced questions about why emergency evacuation messages to residents and visitors along the flooding Guadalupe River reportedly were delayed, in some cases by hours. Trump expressed support for a flood warning system in a telephone interview with NBC News on Thursday. - FEMA questions - The floods, among America's deadliest in recent years, have reopened questions about Trump's plans to phase out federal disaster response agency FEMA in lieu of greater state-based responsibility. FEMA began its response to the Texas flash floods over the weekend after Trump signed a major disaster declaration to release federal resources. But the president has so far avoided addressing questions about its future. Noem insisted FEMA should be "eliminated" in its current form at a government review meeting Wednesday. Officials in Kerr County, which sits astride the Guadalupe River in an area nicknamed "Flash Flood Alley," said at least 36 children were killed in the disaster at the start of the Fourth of July holiday weekend. Details have surfaced about reported delays to early alerts at a local level that could have saved lives. Experts say forecasters did their best and sent out timely and accurate warnings despite a sudden weather change. ABC News reported Thursday that at 4:22 am on July 4, a firefighter in Ingram, upstream of Kerrville, had asked the Kerr County Sheriff's Office to alert residents of nearby Hunt to the coming flood. The network said its affiliate KSAT obtained audio of the call, and that the first alert did not reach Kerr County's CodeRED system for a full 90 minutes. In some cases, it said, the warning messages didn't arrive until after 10:00 am, when hundreds of people had already been swept away. The flooding of the Guadalupe River was particularly devastating for summer camps on its banks, including Camp Mystic, where 27 girls and counselors died. dk-ft/acb
San Francisco Chronicle
an hour ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
DOGE sprouts in red states, as governors embrace the cost-cutter brand and make it their own
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — The brash and chaotic first days of President Donald Trump 's Department of Government Efficiency, once led by the world's richest man Elon Musk, spawned state-level DOGE mimicry as Republican governors and lawmakers aim to show they are in step with their party's leader. Governors have always made political hay out of slashing waste or taming bureaucracy, but DOGE has, in some ways, raised the stakes for them to show that they are zealously committed to cutting costs. Many drive home the point that they have always been focused on cutting government, even if they're not conducting mass layoffs. 'I like to say we were doing DOGE before DOGE was a thing,' Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds said in announcing her own task force in January. Critics agree that some of these initiatives are nothing new and suggest they are wasteful, essentially duplicating built-in processes that are normally the domain of legislative committees or independent state auditors. At the same time, some governors are using their DOGE vehicles to take aim at GOP targets of the moment, such as welfare programs or diversity, equity and inclusion programs. And some governors who might be eyeing a White House run in 2028 are rebranding their cost-cutting initiatives as DOGE, perhaps eager to claim the mantle of the most DOGE of them all. No chainsaws in the states At least 26 states have initiated DOGE-style efforts of varying kinds, according to the Economic Policy Institute based in Washington, D.C. Most DOGE efforts were carried out through a governor's order — including by governors in Florida, Iowa, Louisiana, Montana, New Hampshire and Oklahoma — or by lawmakers introducing legislation or creating a legislative committee. The state initiatives have a markedly different character than Trump's slash-and-burn approach, symbolized by Musk's chainsaw-brandishing appearance at a Conservative Political Action Committee appearance in February. Governors are tending to entrust their DOGE bureaus to loyalists, rather than independent auditors, and are often employing what could be yearslong processes to consolidate procurement, modernize information technology systems, introduce AI tools, repeal regulations or reduce car fleets, office leases or worker headcounts through attrition. Steve Slivinski, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute who researches state government regulatory structures, said that a lot of what he has seen from state-level DOGE initiatives are the 'same stuff you do on a pretty regular basis anyway' in state governments. States typically have routine auditing procedures and the ways states have of saving money are 'relatively unsexy," Slivinski said. And while the state-level DOGE vehicles might be useful over time in finding marginal improvements, "branding it DOGE is more of a press op rather than anything new or substantially different than what they usually do,' Slivinski said. Analysts at the pro-labor Economic Policy Institute say that governors and lawmakers, primarily in the South and Midwest, are using DOGE to breathe new life into long-term agendas to consolidate power away from state agencies and civil servants, dismantle public services and benefit insiders and privatization advocates. 'It's not actually about cutting costs because of some fiscal responsibility,' EPI analyst Nina Mast said. Governors promoting spending cuts Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry rebranded his 'Fiscal Responsibility Program' as Louisiana DOGE, and promoted it as the first to team up with the federal government to scrub illegitimate enrollees from welfare programs. It has already netted $70 million in savings in the Medicaid program in an 'unprecedented' coordination, Landry said in June. In Oklahoma, Gov. Kevin Stitt — who says in a blurb on the Oklahoma DOGE website that 'I've been DOGE-ing in Oklahoma since before it was cool" — made a DOGE splash with the first report by his Division of Government Efficiency by declaring that the state would refuse some $157 million in federal public health grants. The biggest chunk of that was $132 million intended to support epidemiology and laboratory capacity to control infectious disease outbreaks. The Stitt administration said that funding — about one-third of the total over an eight-year period — exceeded the amount needed. The left-leaning Oklahoma Policy Institute questioned the wisdom of that, pointing to rising numbers of measles and whooping cough cases and the rocky transition under Stitt of the state's public health lab from Oklahoma City to Stillwater. Oklahoma Democrats issued rebukes, citing Oklahoma's lousy public health rankings. 'This isn't leadership,' state Sen. Carri Hicks said. 'It's negligence." Stitt's Oklahoma DOGE has otherwise recommended changes in federal law to save money, opened up the suggestion box to state employees and members of the general public and posted a spreadsheet online with cost savings initiatives in his administration. Those include things as mundane as agencies going paperless, refinancing bonds, buying automated lawn mowers for the Capitol grounds or eliminating a fax machine line in the State Board of Licensure for Professional Engineers and Surveyors. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed an executive order in February creating a task force of DOGE teams in each state agency. In the order, DeSantis recited 10 points on what he described as his and Florida's 'history of prudent fiscal management' even before DOGE. Among other things, DeSantis vowed to scrutinize spending by state universities and municipal and county governments — including on DEI initiatives — at a time when DeSantis is pushing to abolish the property taxes that predominantly fund local governments. His administration has since issued letters to universities and governments requesting reams of information and received a blessing from lawmakers, who passed legislation authorizing the inquiry and imposing fines for entities that don't respond. After the June 30 signing ceremony, DeSantis declared on social media: 'We now have full authority to DOGE local governments.' In Arkansas, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders launched her cost-cutting Arkansas Forward last year, before DOGE, and later said the state had done the 'same thing' as DOGE. Her administration spent much of 2024 compiling a 97-page report that listed hundreds of ways to possibly save $300 million inside a $6.5 billion budget. Achieving that savings — largely by standardizing information technology and purchasing — would sometimes require up-front spending and take years to realize savings.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Rosie O'Donnell: ‘I Look At America, And I Feel Overwhelmingly Depressed'
Type Rosie O'Donnell's name into Google, and the first autocorrect suggestion is just one word. That word isn't related to her pioneering, 11-time Emmy-winning daytime talk show, which ran for six seasons in the late 90s, and led to her becoming known in the US media as the 'queen of nice'. It isn't based around her early work as a stand-up career, which was followed by an acting career that saw her sharing the screen with everyone from Tom Hanks and Demi Moore to Madonna (with whom she remains close friends) and Elizabeth Taylor. It isn't even about Rosie's tumultuous time as a presenter on the American panel show The View, her work as a charity campaigner and advocate, or her family life. No, that word is simply 'Trump'. Rosie first publicly crossed paths with the man who would go on to be elected president of the United States almost 20 years ago, in 2006, when she was an anchor on The View, and he was still best known as the face of the reality show The Apprentice. At that time, Trump was also the owner of the Miss USA pageant (a title he retained until 2015, the year before he became president), which was then facing controversy due to the behaviour of its recently-crowned winner. To settle the matter, Trump gave a press conference defending the young woman in question, insisting she should be given a second chance by the American public, and that she would be allowed to retain her crown. When this became a discussion point on The View, Rosie shared her take that Trump wasn't one who should be considered a 'moral authority' in any scenario. 'Left the first wife, had an affair, left the second wife, had an affair, had kids both times… but he's the moral compass for 20-year-olds in America?' Rosie opined, to rapturous applause and laughs from both the audience and her fellow panellists (including future Fox News presenter Elisabeth Hasselbeck), after swooping over her hair and launching into a Trump impersonation. 'Donald, sit and spin, my friend,' she continued, calling his business credentials into question and branding him a 'snake-oil salesman'. Trump swiftly hit back, branding the talk show star a 'real loser', and sparking a feud that has now spanned almost two decades. As the years rolled on, Trump took every opportunity to publicly bash Rosie, repeating his 'loser' jibe in various iterations, as well as insulting everything from her appearance and her career to her personal life – including after he began his first presidential campaign. In 2015, for instance, when Fox News' Megyn Kelly questioned his use of terms like 'fat pigs,' 'dogs,' 'slobs' and 'disgusting animals' to describe women he disagreed with, Trump responded: 'Only Rosie O'Donnell.' Rosie was on his mind yet again during one of his now-infamous debates against fellow candidate Hillary Clinton the following year, when he stated: 'I said very tough things to [Rosie, but] I think everybody would agree that she deserves it and nobody feels sorry for her.' It's perhaps unsurprising, then, that when it was announced at the end of 2024 that Trump would be returning to the White House, Rosie made a bold decision. Quietly, she packed up her life, and moved herself and her 12-year-old child across the Atlantic to Ireland, where the small family now resides. 'I needed a place where I could slow it down and remove him from the scary place he lives in my psyche,' she tells HuffPost UK. The move has been life-changing for Rosie, but it still hasn't kept her name out of Trump's mouth. As recently as March, he was still taking shots at Rosie, after a White House reporter asked a question about her while the president was hosting Irish Taoiseach Micheál Martin. Despite everything she's been through in the last 20 years as a result of her past drama with Trump, culminating in her moving 3,000 away to another country, Rosie is adamant there's nothing she'd do differently. 'I have no regrets,' she insists. 'I do say to myself sometimes, 'what are the chances that the one guy that I exposed for being a misogynist and a sexist pig on The View would become the president of the United States, and would still be hung up on the fact that I told the truth about him?'. I think to myself, 'boy, my life would be easier if this hadn't happened'.' Rosie shares: 'I also think to myself, 'why me?'. With the president of the United States going after me, calling me a fat, ugly, unsexy, disgusting, gay, liberal pig for 20 years…? And to have the people who follow him feel emboldened to say things to me, sometimes, as well. Is that something I'd wish on anybody? It's really not.' Looking back to the early years of Trump's insults against her, she admits: 'When he was doing all that, I really firmly believed that the National Organisation For Women was going to try to file a suit against the blatant misogynistic harassment that he was doing. But nobody did. Nobody called. Everybody laughed! People thought that it was funny – Rosie vs. Trump. 'They asked me to do a Doritos commercial with him for the Super Bowl, and I said, 'not on your fucking life'. And they offered me $3 million to be on one season of the Celebrity Apprentice, and I told them to sit and spin. He thought that I would want to cash in on this little tirade that we did, you know? And the answer was no. I don't want to be around him, in his presence.' 'He's been a very… shocking addition to my reality,' Rosie says, which is ultimately what motivated her to leave America. She notes that, in an attempt to discredit her continued arguments against Trump's presidency, many of her detractors will point out that she has now left the US for a new life overseas. 'Well,' she counters. 'I knew I wasn't up for this battle. But I still believe in the virtue of the fight. I just personally couldn't do it. The cost was too high for me.' It wasn't just Rosie's 'own self-preservation' she was thinking of when she chose to leave her life in the US behind, but also that of her 12-year-old, Clay, who is non-binary and autistic. 'I have a little 12-year-old who has autism that I am the only parent of, and so I have a responsibility to keep myself healthy and balanced,' she explains. 'I knew what [the Trump administration was] planning to do, because I read Project 2025. I know what he's capable of. And I didn't want to put myself through another four years of him being in charge, in any way, shape or form. 'So, I picked up and left before the inauguration – because I wasn't going to take any chances. And we moved.' Being the mother of a non-binary child, Rosie is all too aware of the negativity currently being aimed at the transgender, and otherwise gender non-conforming, communities (or, as she describes, it: 'I wouldn't say it's negativity, I would say it's like homicidal delirium'). 'Trans people have always existed, and they're always going to exist,' she says, describing the vitriol aimed at transgender people in recent years as 'terrifying'. 'But you know, what fascists do is they pick minority groups and then they prey on them,' she continues. 'And the 'weakest' part of the LGBTQIA+ group are trans people. They're the smallest majority, they're publicly ridiculed, their lives are threatened, they're killed and there's obscene violence against them.' Rejecting calls from certain gay, lesbian and bisexual groups who buy into anti-trans rhetoric, Rosie observes: 'I think that for the gay community to discriminate against other members of the community is wrong. The variety of our community is so thrilling. And to take out one of the colours diminishes them all.' 'When I see trans people spoken about in less than human terms –' she adds, before bringing up the British author JK Rowling, whose own commentary about the trans community has made her a divisive figure in the last few years. Rosie recalls how she actually gave Rowling her first US television interview shortly before Harry Potter arrived in America, even presenting her with a typewriter as a gift, after learning that she wrote out her manuscripts by hand. 'What happened to that woman?' Rosie ponders. '[She] has become the worst person speaking out publicly about trans people. And it is tragic for me to watch what she's doing. It's unfathomable.' 'There's some bad trauma that she's dealing with. She was in a very violent relationship at one point,' she says, referring to Rowling's past disclosures about being a survivor of domestic abuse. 'And listen, we all have our burdens of our past. Every human living, you get to be the age you are – you got stories. And she's got some stories she needs to tend to. Maybe not in the public eye. 'I think she, one day, will go, 'I was wrong'. And she will have to, because she's not a stupid woman, and if she's ever going to write anything again… she has to clean her window on the inside.' As for watching Trump's second stint in office from afar, Rosie laments: 'I think it's as bad as everyone worried it would be. 'I believe fascism has taken a foothold in the United States. And with this new bill – that allows him to have his own secret police, and the budget for that [being] greater than the money we give to Israel, which is already unbelievably high – I look at America, and it feels tragic. I feel sad. I feel overwhelmingly depressed. I don't understand how we got here.' Trump's second term in office, Rosie believes, is already 'exponentially worse' than his first. She explains: 'The Supreme Court is stacked with right-wing idealists and Christian nationalists and people of questionable moral standing. 'I wish that they would have packed the court, that he would have enlarged the numbers so that there would be balance of some sort again. But it hasn't happened, and it's not going to happen.' 'This is what happens when democracies die,' she continues. 'I believe we, as a human species, can do better than what we're doing. And we, as the United States, can do better than what is happening right now. And it may be too late. That's my worst fear. 'I don't want to be a doomsdayer, but I think that the writing is on the wall. And it does not look good.' Rosie traces Trump's initial foray into politics in the 2010s back to his days on The Apprentice – a show she points out, at its peak, was pulling viewing figures that rivalled the Super Bowl. 'Donald Trump was on a reality show, a game show, really, and he got to play this villainous, evil, bullying boss that America used to hold up as the example of the American Dream,' she says. 'Well, a lot has changed since those times, you know?' 'He was sold as something he never was. A successful businessman,' she claims. 'This guy was not a successful businessman, by any metric you use to define what a successful businessman is.' Still, Rosie suggests that The Apprentice's success led to people believing in the image of Trump that was being put across on screen, despite, in her view, 'everyone my age, with a brain, on Long Island, knowing what a fool he has been for the whole time he's been alive'. 'Mark Burnett [the creator of The Apprentice, who last year was appointed by Trump as a special envoy to the UK] and all those people who produced The Apprentice, they know what they did,' she adds. 'They created a monster. And they taught him that if you lie enough on television, people will believe it as the truth. 'All the man does is lie! He's a constant, perpetual, obsessive liar. He doesn't understand the difference between reality and his delusion, and that's a very dangerous thing for the leader of the free world.' Turning her attention back to her 'unbelievably wonderful' new life in Ireland, Rosie has 'never had a moment of regret' since she and Clay made the move. 'The people have been so welcoming, and so kind,' she enthuses. 'I love the slower pace of Ireland. And I love the fact that even when it's rainy, and the sky is not blue, it's bright white. That's so much better than New York, where it's an ominous dark grey, and you feel, like, all the depression gathering as the skies get darker. Here, I don't mind it, because the sky is bright. 'When you drive from Dublin to Belfast – as we do, because my cousins are there – and you see those fields, and this endless, beautiful green land, and sheep dotting the landscape, it's like living in a fairytale, in a way.' Thousands of miles from her previous life, Rosie says that Ireland has taken her back to 'my life before I was famous'. 'We bought a beautiful house, and it's in Dublin 4, which makes everybody go, 'ooooh',' she says, alluding to the famous area of the Irish capital. 'But since I've been an adult, it's the smallest house I've lived in – and it's so far my favourite, even though I lived in a big, beautiful, thousands-of-foot home in Miami, on the water, for 20 years. 'There's something beautiful about going back to your essence, and to the simplicity of my life before fame. I know how to do that – I know how to be friends with the cashiers at Tesco. I know how to lurk and live among the people, because I am the people. I never liked any of the pretending not to be, or to have people think that I wasn't. 'All of a sudden, you're transformed into a 'celebrity' person. And, you know, some of us don't feel like we can do that role. I don't know that I'm a good celebrity! I think I'm a good person, I try to use my celebrity for good… even though people say 'you're very negative about Trump'... but people were negative about Hitler, too!' Rosie says that in Ireland, she's recognised only 'maybe every other day, maybe once every three days'. 'And it's never, ever anything like, 'can I have your autograph, can I have a picture?'. It's people saying, 'welcome to Ireland, Rosie. You're welcome here',' she reveals. 'They say, 'lovely to have you, Rosie'. Some people say to me, 'you're smart to get away from that man'. Some people try to buy me a drink because of it. 'There's not a culture of fame in Ireland, like there is in the United States. People don't ask anything of you, they don't expect anything of you, they want to meet you on a person-to-person level, and it's a beautiful quality, and it's a beautiful part of the culture here.' Being away from her home in the US, Rosie says, means she's learning more about herself, which is what inspired Common Knowledge, her upcoming show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The show started out as a stand-up set that Rosie had been working on in LA. Then, she says, she 'left abruptly', at which point it 'no longer felt relevant'. When she and her director began working out the story she wanted to tell after her move to Ireland, she realised that what they had on their hands was 'more of a theatrical show' than a traditional comedy set ('it's not what I normally do… buddum-bum-buddum…' she quips). Instead, Common Knowledge is about 'finding your home, finding your family and finding peace'. 'The show is about losing my mother at the age of 10, and how I mother now, and how great it is to be able to mother this specific child,' she shares. 'I talk about being an adoptive parent, I talk about autism and all its wonder and its grief. And I think it's a beautiful show.' Crucially, she also plans to keep mentions of Trump to a minimum. 'I wanted to do something about why I moved, without dwelling on him, and what happened when my mother died, and we came to Ireland for that summer,' Rosie says. 'I don't go backwards to my early career, or I don't go backwards to, 'oh, he and I had a fight in 2006'. I wanted to start at 63, and introduce myself now, as the 63-year-old woman that I am, not the 30-year-old person who became a public figure'. I love being this age – my mother didn't get to live to 40, so I love 63. 'I don't want to introduce them to, or remind them of, the Rosie that they met all those years ago, because it's 30-something years that I've been doing this. That's a long, long time. This is me now. You know, you can't go back and be who you were then. Nobody should want that.' Rosie O'Donnell makes her Edinburgh Fringe debut with Common Knowledge as part of Gilded Balloon's 40th anniversary celebrations. She will play for 10 shows only between 1 – 10 August 2025. 'What The F**k Has Happened Here?': Carol Vorderman Is Still Asking The Big Questions Jake Shears: 'It Really Feels Like The World Might Need Scissor Sisters Again' Self Esteem: 'I Achieved Everything I Set Out To Do, And I Was Sadder Than Ever'
