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The expected arrest of Donald Trump is putting Republican senators who want to move on from the former president in a tough spot as he calls for mass protests if Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg places him in custody. 

GOP lawmakers see the indictment of a former president by a local district attorney as crossing the line and setting a bad precedent, but they fear a repeat of the violence that broke out when Trump encouraged his supporters to protest Congress’s certification of the 2020 election on Jan. 6, 2021.  

Adding to their discomfort is the nature of the allegations that Trump paid $130,000 in hush money to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels, something his onetime fixer, Michael Cohen, testified about before Congress in 2019.  

The top members of Senate Republican leadership have stayed silent on the prospect of Trump being arrested and on Trump’s calls for mass protests, which Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) tried to discourage over the weekend.  

There’s also a concern among Republicans that arresting Trump could supercharge his support among GOP voters and vault him to victory in next year’s presidential primary. 

“If you want to talk about how to unify Republicans behind Donald Trump in the primary, having an unhinged left-wing prosecution, complete with perhaps a perp walk for the cameras, that ends up being thrown out and ends in failure could be the single biggest in-kind gift to the Donald Trump campaign of this entire cycle,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said on his podcast Monday.   

Cruz hasn’t yet made an endorsement in the primary. 

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Trump’s closest ally in the Senate, said Bragg, the Manhattan prosecutor, “has done more to help Donald Trump get elected president than any single person in America today.”  

“I think this is an effort that’s ongoing, never ending to destroy Donald Trump, everything around Donald Trump,” he said.  

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) framed Trump’s expected arrest as part of a broader effort by Democrats to weaponize law enforcement agencies against their opponents. 

“Now they want to arrest Trump, their leading political opponent. They are the banana republic party,” he tweeted over the weekend.  

But GOP strategists and aides say the complicated political dynamics put Republican lawmakers in a tough situation.  

“My view is that Trump is a despicable individual who has done fundamental damage to our party and has harmed our country but what is going on in New York seems to be a classic example of prosecutorial abuse,” said former Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), a onetime adviser to Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell’s (Ky.) leadership team. 

McConnell has been absent from the Senate for more than a week after suffering a concussion during a fall at an event away from the Capitol.

“You just don’t indict a former president on some issue involving campaign finance of seven years ago unless it’s really, really serious and an open-and-shut case,” Gregg said.  

But Gregg also criticized Trump’s call for mass protests as “inexcusable.”  

“It reflects the type of person he is and why we had Jan. 6 but hopefully people ignore it,” he said.  

McCarthy, who has been criticized for not holding Trump accountable for the violence on Jan. 6, on Sunday tried to tamp down Trump’s calls for mass protests if he is arrested.  

“I don’t think people should protest this, no,” he said.  

Vin Weber, a GOP strategist and former member of the House Republican leadership, said Republican lawmakers “should condemn the precedent of arresting and indicting a former president. Period, full stop.”  

“If we let the genie out of the bottle, we can expect that it’ll happen again to other people and all of the sudden America doesn’t look like America anymore. We look like those countries where you would use the judicial system to go after your political opponents,” he said.  

Trump’s biggest rival for the GOP presidential nomination, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), at first stayed quiet about the former president’s possible indictment. 

He finally broke his silence on Monday by offering a half-hearted defense. 

“I’ve seen rumors swirl. I have not seen any facts yet, and so I don’t know what’s going to happen,” he said. “But I do know this: The Manhattan district attorney is a Soros-funded prosecutor and so he, like other Soros-funded prosecutors, they weaponize their office to impose a political agenda on society at the expense of the rule of law and public safety.” 

George Soros is a prominent Democratic donor who has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to Color of Change PAC, which supported Bragg’s election. He’s also a frequent target of the GOP and conspiracy theories. 

DeSantis also took a veiled shot at his rival by quipping he didn’t “know what goes into paying hush money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair.”  

In a sign of how statements about Trump are already playing out in real time in the emerging GOP presidential primary race, Donald Trump Jr. blasted DeSantis’s response as “pure weakness.” 

“So DeSantis thinks that Dems weaponizing the law to indict President Trump is a ‘manufactured circus’ & isn’t a ‘real issue’ Pure weakness. Now we know why he was silent all weekend. He’s totally owned by Karl Rove, Paul Ryan & his billionaire donors. 100% Controlled Opposition,” he tweeted.  

A Senate Republican aide said GOP senators who aren’t Trump fans will straddle the line like DeSantis by condemning the Manhattan district attorney for dredging up an old allegation while staying away from defending Trump. 

“DeSantis’s statement was pretty creative, it checked both boxes, acknowledging the absurdity of paying off a porn star and all that and highlighting how this is a Soros-backed district attorney. That may be the way forward for people,” the aide said. 

Weber, the GOP strategist, said Trump’s alleged conduct “has to appall” leading Republicans such as DeSantis and Utah Sen. Mitt Romney (R) but that’s why they should focus on “the precedent of indicting a former president on the face of it is a bad idea.”   Democratic senator presses tech companies about AI’s threat to teens Watch live: Yellen delivers remarks at the American Bankers Association summit

Brian Darling, a GOP strategist and former Senate aide, acknowledged that prominent Republicans don’t want to go too far in defending Trump. 

“You’re seeing that now with Ron DeSantis’s comments, a backhanded defense. You’ll see a lot of back-handed defenses going forward. I think that DeSantis probably gave cover to a lot of Republicans to give backhanded defenses,” he said. 

“But the bottom line is I think that Republicans understand that voters are going to look at this as overreach and the weaponization of the D.A.’s office,” he added.

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Bank of England issues inflation warning but cuts interest rate to 4%

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Bank of England issues inflation warning but cuts interest rate to 4%

The Bank of England has cut the interest rate for the fifth time in a year to 4% but warned that climbing food prices will cause inflation to jump higher in 2025.

In a tight decision that saw members of the rate-setting committee vote twice to break a deadlock, the Bank cut the rate to the lowest level in more than two-and-a-half years. Households on a variable mortgage of about £140,000 will save about £30 a month.

Andrew Bailey, governor of the Bank of England, said: “We’ve cut interest rates today, but it was a finely balanced decision. Interest rates are still on a downward path, but any future cuts will need to be made gradually and carefully.”

Money latest: What interest rate cut means for savers and borrowers

The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), the nine-member panel that sets the base interest rate, voted in favour of lowering borrowing costs by 0.25 percentage points.

However, rate-setters failed to reach a unanimous decision, with four members of the committee voting to keep it on hold and another four voting for a 0.25 percentage point cut.

Alan Taylor, an external member of the committee, initially called for a larger 0.5 percentage point cut but after a second vote reduced that to 0.25% to break the deadlock. Had they failed to reach a decision, Mr Bailey, the governor, would have had the decisive vote.

More on Bank Of England

It is the first time the committee has gone to a second vote and highlights the difficulty policymakers face in navigating the current economic climate, in which economic growth is stagnating, with at least one rate-setter fearing a recession, but inflation remains persistent.

Although the central bank voted to cut borrowing costs, it also raised its inflation forecasts on the back of higher food prices.

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‘We’ve got to get the balance right on tax’

The bank predicted that the headline rate of inflation would hit 4% in September, up from a previous estimate of 3.75%.

The September inflation rate is used to uprate a range of benefits, including pensions.

The increase was driven by food, where the inflation rate could hit 5.5% this year. About a tenth of household spending is devoted to food shopping, which means it can have an outsized impact on inflation.

The Bank said this risked creating “second round effects”, whereby a sense of higher inflation forces people to push for pay rises, which could push inflation even higher.

Economists at the Bank blamed poor harvests, weather conditions, and changes to packaging regulations but also, in a blow to the chancellor, higher labour costs.

It pointed out that a higher proportion of workers in the food retail sector are paid the national living wage, which Rachel Reeves increased by 6.7% in April.

Economists at the Bank also blamed higher employment taxes announced in the autumn budget. “Furthermore, overall labour costs of supermarkets are likely to have been disproportionately affected by the lower threshold at which employers start paying NICs… these material increases in labour costs are likely to have pushed up food prices.”

There is also evidence that employers’ national insurance increases are causing businesses to curtail hiring, the Bank said. It comes as unemployment in the UK rose unexpectedly to a fresh four-year high of 4.7% in May. Separate data shows the number of employees on payroll has contracted for the fifth month in a row,

The Bank said the unemployment rate could hit 5% next year and warned of “subdued” economic growth, with one member – Alan Taylor – warning of an “increased risk of recession” in the coming years.

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Intel shares drop after Trump calls for CEO to resign immediately

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Intel shares drop after Trump calls for CEO to resign immediately

Intel’s CEO Lip-Bu Tan speaks at the company’s Annual Manufacturing Technology Conference in San Jose, California, U.S. April 29, 2025.

Laure Andrillon | Reuters

Intel shares were under pressure Thursday after President Donald Trump called for the chipmaker’s CEO to resign immediately.

In a Truth Social post, Trump said Intel Chief Executive Lip-Bu Tan “is highly CONFLICTED and must resign, immediately. There is no other solution to this problem.” Intel dropped in the premarket on the back of that post, last trading 5% lower.

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Tan was named as Intel CEO in March. This week, U.S. Republican Senator Tom Cotton questioned his ties to Chinese companies and referenced a past criminal case involving Cadence Design, where Tan was CEO until 2021, Reuters reported.

Cotton wrote to Intel’s chair to “express concern about the security and integrity of Intel’s operations and its potential impact on U.S. national security,” Reuters said.

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Technology

What the world’s biggest chipmakers are doing to stave off Trump’s tariffs

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What the world's biggest chipmakers are doing to stave off Trump's tariffs

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during an event with Apple CEO Tim Cook in the Oval Office of the White House on August 6, 2025 in Washington, DC.

Win Mcnamee | Getty Images

U.S. President Donald Trump’s proposed 100% tariffs on the import of semiconductors has brought major chip names into the spotlight.

Questions linger about how these duties will be implemented: will they apply to the raw chip itself that is imported, or the end product, like a smartphone or laptop? And how much manufacturing needs to actually be done in the U.S.?

Trump said that, if companies are “building in the United States or have committed to build, without question,” then “there will be no charge.”

A number of chip stocks moved higher on Thursday on investor hopes that pledges of U.S. investment and current footprint Stateside may help them avoid the worst of the semiconductor tariffs.

Based on Trump’s comments, here’s a breakdown of the major chip companies in the world and what their operations and investment commitments to the U.S.

TSMC

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the world’s biggest chipmaker, has pledged a total of $165 billion in investments to the U.S.

This includes an ongoing $65 billion investment in advanced chip making operations in Phoenix, Arizona and a fresh $100 billion announced in March.

TSMC shares rose nearly 5% in Taiwan on Thursday, as investors bet the company will ride out the semiconductor tariffs.

Samsung

Samsung operates chipmaking facilities in Texas and has also committed billions of dollars in investment to the U.S.

Apple on Wednesday said that Samsung would produce image sensors of the iPhone maker out of the Korean tech giant’s facility in Austin, Texas.

Samsung shares also ended the day higher in South Korean trading.

How major chip names could mitigate the effect of Trump's seminconductor tariffs

GlobalFoundries

U.S.-headquartered chipmaker GlobalFoundries saw shares surge nearly 10% in premarket trade on Thursday.

The company has a manufacturing footprint in the U.S., but it does not make cutting-edge chips like TSMC. Instead, it makes less advanced products that are widely used across various industries.

On Wednesday, GlobalFoundries announced an agreement with Apple for a “deeper collaboration that will advance semiconductor technologies and strengthen U.S. manufacturing.”

The company said it will “accelerate” investments at its factory in Malta, New York.

Given its U.S. base, investors see GlobalFoundries as a winner of Trump’s semiconductor tariffs.

SK Hynix

Nvidia

In April, Nvidia said it plans to produce up to $500 billion of AI infrastructure in the U.S. via its manufacturing partnerships over the next four years.

Its Blackwell AI chips have started production at TSMC’s Phoenix facility.

Nvidia shares were 1% higher in premarket trade.

Apple

While not strictly a semiconductor company, Apple does design its own chips. Trump on Wednesday announced that Apple will spend an additional $100 billion on U.S. companies and suppliers over the next four years.

Apple said that its U.S.-based supply chain would produce more than 19 billion chips for its products this year, which includes manufacturing from TSMC in Arizona.

Apple shares rose more than 3% in premarket trade on Thursday, following a 5% jump on Wednesday.

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