Marco Rubio impostor using AI to contact multiple senior officials – report
An unknown fraudster has used artificial intelligence to impersonate the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, contacting at least five senior officials.
According to a state department cable seen by the Washington Post, the impostor sent fake voice messages and texts that mimicked Rubio’s voice and writing style to those targets including three foreign ministers, a US governor and a member of Congress.
The cable, dated 3 July, said the impostor “left voicemails on Signal for at least two targeted individuals” and sent text messages inviting others to communicate on the platform.
It’s still a mystery who is behind the scam, but the cable reportedly reads that the goal had been “gaining access to information or accounts” of powerful government officials.
Key events
Obama adviser warns of AI threat after Rubio impostor reported
David Axelrod, who served as senior adviser to Barack Obama, said the AI scam using Rubio was “only a matter of time” and urged urgent action to defend against such attacks.
“A Marco Rubio impostor is using AI voice to call high-level officials,” Axelrod wrote on X. “This is the new world in which we live and we’d better figure out how to defend against it because of its implications for our democracy and the world.”
Donald Trump is scheduled to have a meeting with his cabinet officials at 11 am.
Marco Rubio impostor using AI to contact multiple senior officials – report
An unknown fraudster has used artificial intelligence to impersonate the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, contacting at least five senior officials.
According to a state department cable seen by the Washington Post, the impostor sent fake voice messages and texts that mimicked Rubio’s voice and writing style to those targets including three foreign ministers, a US governor and a member of Congress.
The cable, dated 3 July, said the impostor “left voicemails on Signal for at least two targeted individuals” and sent text messages inviting others to communicate on the platform.
It’s still a mystery who is behind the scam, but the cable reportedly reads that the goal had been “gaining access to information or accounts” of powerful government officials.
Ramon Antonio Vargas
A pediatrician for a chain of clinics affiliated with a prominent Houston hospital system is “no longer employed” there, according to officials, after a social media account associated with her published a post wishing the “Maga” voters of a Donald Trump-supporting county in Texas to “get what they voted for” amid flash flooding that killed more than 100 people, including many children.
“We were made aware of a social media comment from one of our physicians,” read a statement from Blue Fish Pediatrics circulated late on Sunday. “The individual is no longer employed by Blue Fish Pediatrics.”
The statement also said: “We strongly condemn the comments that were made in that post. That post does not reflect the values, standards or mission of Blue Fish Pediatrics. We do not support or condone any statement that politicizes tragedy, diminishes human dignity, or fails to clearly uphold compassion for every child and family, regardless of background or beliefs.”
Blue Fish Pediatrics’ statement neither named the physician in question nor specified whether she had resigned or was dismissed. But multiple publicly accessible social media posts identified her as Dr Christina Propst. A Guardian source familiar with the situation confirmed the accuracy of the posts naming Propst. And, at the time it issued the statement, Blue Fish Pediatrics had recently unpublished Propst’s biographical page from its website.
Attempts to contact Propst weren’t immediately successful.
Jessica Glenza
A pregnant physician who was denied a Covid-19 vaccine is suing the Trump administration alongside a group of leading doctors associations, charging that the administration sought to “desensitize the public to anti-vaccine and anti-science rhetoric”, according to their attorney.
The lawsuit specifically takes aim at health secretary Robert F Kennedy’s unilateral decision to recommend against Covid-19 vaccines for pregnant women and healthy children.
Kennedy’s announcement circumvented expert scientific review panels and flouted studies showing pregnant women are at heightened risk from the virus, and made it more difficult for some to get the vaccine.
“This administration is an existential threat to vaccination in America, and those in charge are only just getting started,” said Richard H Hughes IV, partner at Epstein Becker Green and lead counsel for the plaintiffs in a statement.
The American Academy of Pediatrics, American College of Physicians and American Public Health Association are among a list of leading physicians associations named as plaintiffs in the lawsuit.
“If left unchecked, secretary Kennedy will accomplish his goal of ridding the United States of vaccines, which would unleash a wave of preventable harm on our nation’s children,” said Hughes. “The professional associations for pediatricians, internal medicine physicians, infectious disease physicians, high-risk pregnancy physicians, and public health professionals will not stand idly by as our system of prevention is dismantled. This ends now.”
In late May, Kennedy announced that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) would no longer recommend Covid-19 vaccines for healthy children or pregnant women. The announcement, made on social media, contradicted a raft of evidence showing pregnant women and infants are at especially high-risk from the disease, including from the administration’s own scientific leaders.
In June, Kennedy went further by firing all 17 sitting members of a key vaccine advisory panel to the CDC. The advisory panel is a key link in the vaccine distribution pipeline, helping to develop recommendations insurers use when determining which vaccines to cover.
That panel met for the first time in late June. Members announced they would review both the childhood vaccine schedule and any vaccines that had not been formally reviewed in seven years. They also recommended against a long-vilified vaccine preservative, in spite of a lack of evidence of harm.
Republicans toe Trump line even in aftermath of deadly Texas floods
David Smith
The US is reeling after catastrophic floods killed more than 100 people in Texas, including 27 children and counsellors from an all-girls Christian camp. On Monday, Democrats asked a government watchdog to investigate whether cuts at the National Weather Service (NWS) affected the forecasting agency’s performance.
But Republicans’ default response has been to express fealty to Donald Trump. They lavished praise on the president for providing federal assistance while studiously avoiding questions around the effect of his “department of government efficiency” (Doge) or threats to dismantle the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema).
“It is a sign of the sickness and dysfunction of what was the Republican party that they have almost no thoughts about their constituents,” said Rick Wilson, a cofounder of the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group. “Their thoughts are, how do I avoid making sure that Donald Trump doesn’t look at me as an enemy or a critic?
“Despite the fact that the Doge cuts and the reductions in force and the early buyouts have savaged the workforce of the National Weather Service, they can’t even utter the slightest vague, elliptical critique of the administration that is now engaged in these cuts that have cost the lives of the people they supposedly represent.”
The raging flash floods – among the US’s worst in decades – slammed into riverside camps and homes in central Texas before daybreak on Friday, pulling sleeping people out of their cabins, tents and trailers and dragging them for miles past floating tree trunks and cars. Some survivors were found clinging to trees. Authorities say the death toll is sure to rise as crews look for the many who are still missing.
Robert Tait
The Trump administration has ended temporary protections for people from Honduras and Nicaragua in the latest phase of its effort to expel undocumented people from the US.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced it would end temporary protected status (TPS) for an estimated 72,000 Hondurans and 4,000 Nicaraguans in moves that will come into effect in about 60 days.
Citizens of the two Central American nations were accorded the status after Hurricane Mitch in 1998, which left 10,000 dead after it ripped through the region.
Honduras and Nicaragua are the latest in a series of countries to have their US-based citizens stripped of temporary protections since Donald Trump’s return to the White House. Similar moves have been made to end TPS for those from Venezuela, Haiti, Afghanistan, Cameroon and Nepal.
Not all of those being stripped of the protection will necessarily be at risk of being forced to leave. Roughly 21,000 Hondurans and 1,100 Nicaraguans have obtained green cards, giving them legal permanent residence status.
Those without such status will be urged to arrange their departure through a Customs and Border Protection app, which would offer complimentary plane tickets and a $1,000 exit bonus, according to Fox News.
Exclusive: US only has 25% of all Patriot missile interceptors needed for Pentagon’s military plans
Hugo Lowell
The United States only has about 25% of the Patriot missile interceptors it needs for all of the Pentagon’s military plans after burning through stockpiles in the Middle East in recent months, an alarming depletion that led to the Trump administration freezing the latest transfer of munitions to Ukraine.
The stockpile of the Patriot missiles has fallen so low that it raised concern inside the Pentagon that it could jeopardize potential US military operations, and deputy defense secretary, Stephen Feinberg, authorized the transfer to be halted while they reviewed where weapons were being sent.
Donald Trump appeared to reverse at least part of that decision on Monday when he told reporters in advance of a dinner at the White House with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he would “send some more weapons” to Ukraine, although he did not disclose whether that would include Patriot systems.
Trump also told Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in a phone call that he was not responsible for the halt in weapons shipments and that he had directed a review of US weapons stockpiles but didn’t order the freeze, according to people briefed on the conversation.
But the determination last month to halt the transfer, as described by four people directly familiar with the matter, was based in large part on the Pentagon’s global munitions tracker, which is used to generate the minimum level of munitions required to carry out the US military’s operations plans.
According to the tracker, which is managed by the joint chiefs of staff and the Pentagon’s defense security cooperation agency, the stockpiles of a number of critical munitions have been below that floor for several years since the Biden administration started sending military aid to Ukraine.
The Kremlin said on Tuesday that it would take time to clarify what weapons the United States is supplying and will supply to Ukraine after president Donald Trump said Washington would have to send more arms to Kyiv.
Trump said on Monday that the United States would send more weapons to Ukraine, primarily defensive ones, to help the war-torn country defend itself against intensifying Russian advances.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to meet JD Vance and Mike Johnson today
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news lines over the next few hours.
We start with news that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet US vice-president JD Vance at 9.15am local time at the Blair House, The Times of Israel has reported.
He will then meet US House of Representatives speaker Mike Johnson at Capitol House, before returning to Blair House for meetings.
Then at 4pm, Netanyahu will head to the Senate for meeting with majority leader John Thune, Democratic senator John Fetterman and other lawmakers.
It comes as Netanyahu told Donald Trump that he would nominate him for the Nobel peace prize on Monday, as the two leaders met for the first time since the US launched strikes on Iran’s nuclear program as part of a short-lived war between Israel and Iran.
Trump was expected to press Netanyahu to agree to a ceasefire in Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza amid an outcry over the humanitarian cost of an offensive that has led to nearly 60,000 deaths.
Read the full story here:
In other developments:
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The White House published letters to 14 countries detailing new tariff rates on imported goods to the United States. He also signed an executive order on Monday extending a 90-day pause for a slate of so-called “reciprocal” tariffs first introduced in April – in effect pushing back the deadline of trade talks back to 1 August. The tariffs include:
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Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Kazakhstan, and Tunisia: 25%
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Indonesia: 32%
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Bangladesh and Serbia: 35%
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Bosnia: 30%
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Cambodia and Thailand: 36%
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South Africa: 30%
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Laos and Myanmar: 40%
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Trump signed two other executive orders today: one directs his administration to “strictly enforce the termination of the clean electricity production and investment tax credits”, Biden-era subsidies for wind and solar projects. The other extends a federal hiring freeze through 15 October 15.
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Los Angeles mayor, Karen Bass, confronted immigration agents after US Customs and Border Patrol conducted a raid on the city’s MacArthur Park today, she said in a social media post.
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The Trump administration will deport Kilmar Ábrego García if he is released from custody, a justice department attorney said in court this morning, according to the New York Times.
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The Department of Veterans Affairs will no longer need to cut 80,000 jobs, as ordered by the Trump administration’s so-called “department of government efficiency”, because it has already cut staff by 30,000 through retirements, buyouts and hiring freezes, the agency said today.
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A judge has ordered the Trump administration to continue disbursing Medicaid payments to Planned Parenthood, despite a provision in the president’s recently signed tax and spending bill.