WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court justices sounded skeptical Wednesday of President Trump’s claim that he has the power to set large tariffs on products coming from countries around the world.
Most of the justices, both conservative and liberal, said Congress, not the president, had the power to impose taxes and tariffs. And they agreed Congress did not authorize tariffs in an emergency powers law adopted in 1977.
It has “never before been used to justify tariffs, and no one had argued it before this case,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. told Trump’s top courtroom attorney. “The imposition of taxes on Americans … has always been a core power of Congress.”
Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer argued that tariffs involve the president’s power over foreign affairs. They are “regulatory tariffs, not taxes,” he said.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan disagreed.
Imposing a tariff “is a taxing power which is delegated by the Constitution to Congress,” Kagan said.
Justice Neil M. Gorsuch said he too was skeptical of the claim the president had the power to impose taxes based on his belief that the nation faces a global emergency.
If so, could a future president acting on his own impose a 50% tax on cars because of climate change? he asked.
Gorsuch said the court has recently blocked far-reaching presidential regulations by Democratic presidents that went beyond an old and vague law, and the same may be called for here.
Otherwise, presidents may feel free to take away the taxing power “from the people’s representatives,” he said.
But Justices Brett M. Kavanaugh and Samuel A. Alito Jr. questioned the challenge to the president’s tariffs.
Kavanaugh pointed to a round of tariffs imposed by President Nixon in 1971, and he said Congress later adopted its emergency powers act without clearly rejecting that authority.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett said she was struggling to understand what Congress meant in the emergency powers law when it said the president may “regulate” importation.
She agreed the law did not mention taxes and tariffs that would raise revenue, but some judges then saw it as allowing the authority to impose duties or tariffs.
The tariffs case heard Wednesday is the first major challenge to Trump’s presidential power to be heard by the court. It is also a test of whether the court’s conservative majority is willing to set legal limits on Trump’s executive authority.
Trump has touted these import taxes as crucial to reviving American manufacturing.
But owners of small businesses, farmers and economists are among the critics who say the on-again, off-again import taxes are disrupting business and damaging the economy.
Since Trump returned to the White House in January, the court’s six Republican appointees have voted repeatedly to set aside orders from judges who had temporarily blocked the president’s policies and initiatives.
While they have not explained most of their temporary emergency rulings, the conservatives have said the president has broad executive authority over federal agencies and on matters of foreign affairs.
Three lower courts have ruled President Donald Trump’s use of emergency powers to impose worldwide tariffs to be illegal. Now the Supreme Court, with three justices Trump appointed and generally favorable to muscular presidential power, will have the final word.In roughly two dozen emergency appeals, the justices have largely gone along with Trump in temporarily allowing parts of his aggressive second-term agenda to take effect while lawsuits play out.But the case being argued Wednesday is the first in which the court will render a final decision on a Trump policy. The stakes are enormous, both politically and financially.The Republican president has made tariffs a central piece of his economic and foreign policy and has said it would be a “disaster” if the Supreme Court rules against him.Here are some things to know about the tariffs arguments at the Supreme Court:Tariffs are taxes on importsThey are paid by companies that import finished products or parts, and the added cost can be passed on to consumers.Through September, the government has reported collecting $195 billion in revenue generated from the tariffs.The Constitution gives Congress the power to impose tariffs, but Trump has claimed extraordinary power to act without congressional approval by declaring national emergencies under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act.In February, he invoked the law to impose tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China, saying that the illegal flow of immigrants and drugs across the U.S. border amounted to a national emergency and that the three countries needed to do more to stop it.In April, he imposed worldwide tariffs after declaring the United States’ longstanding trade deficits “a national emergency.”Libertarian-backed businesses and states challenged the tariffs in federal courtChallengers to Trump’s actions won rulings from a specialized trade court, a district judge in Washington and a business-focused appeals court, also in the nation’s capital.Those courts found that Trump could not justify tariffs under the emergency powers law, which doesn’t mention them. But they left the tariffs in place in the meantime.The appeals court relied on major questions, a legal doctrine devised by the Supreme Court that requires Congress to speak clearly on issues of “vast economic and political significance.”The major questions doctrine doomed several Biden policiesConservative majorities struck down three of then-President Joe Biden’s initiatives related to the coronavirus pandemic. The court ended the Democrat’s pause on evictions, blocked a vaccine mandate for large businesses and prevented student loan forgiveness that would have totaled $500 billion over 10 years.In comparison, the stakes in the tariff case are much higher. The taxes are estimated to generate $3 trillion over 10 years.The challengers in the tariffs case have cited writings by the three Trump appointees, Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, in calling on the court to apply similar limitations on a signal Trump policy.Barrett described a babysitter taking children on roller coasters and spending a night in a hotel based on a parent’s encouragement to “make sure the kids have fun.”“In the normal course, permission to spend money on fun authorizes a babysitter to take children to the local ice cream parlor or movie theater, not on a multiday excursion to an out-of-town amusement park,” Barrett wrote in the student loans case. “If a parent were willing to greenlight a trip that big, we would expect much more clarity than a general instruction to ‘make sure the kids have fun.’”Kavanaugh, though, has suggested the court should not apply the same limiting standard to foreign policy and national security issues.A dissenting appellate judge also wrote that Congress purposely gave presidents more latitude to act through the emergency powers law.Some of the businesses that sued also are raising a separate legal argument in an appeal to conservative justices, saying that Congress could not constitutionally delegate its taxing power to the president.The nondelegation principle has not been used in 90 years, since the Supreme Court struck down some New Deal legislation.But Gorsuch authored a dissent in June that would have found the Federal Communications Commission’s universal service fee an unconstitutional delegation. Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas joined the dissent.“What happens when Congress, weary of the hard business of legislating and facing strong incentives to pass the buck, cedes its lawmaking power, clearly and unmistakably, to an executive that craves it?” Gorsuch wrote.The justices could act more quickly than usual in issuing a decisionThe court only agreed to hear the case in September, scheduling arguments less than two months later. The quick turnaround, at least by Supreme Court standards, suggests that the court will try to act fast.High-profile cases can take half a year or more to resolve, often because the majority and dissenting opinions go through rounds of revision.But the court can act quickly when deadline pressure dictates. Most recently, the court ruled a week after hearing arguments in the TikTok case, unanimously upholding a law requiring the popular social media app to be banned unless it was sold by its Chinese parent company. Trump has intervened several times to keep the law from taking effect while negotiations continue with China.
WASHINGTON —
Three lower courts have ruled President Donald Trump’s use of emergency powers to impose worldwide tariffs to be illegal. Now the Supreme Court, with three justices Trump appointed and generally favorable to muscular presidential power, will have the final word.
In roughly two dozen emergency appeals, the justices have largely gone along with Trump in temporarily allowing parts of his aggressive second-term agenda to take effect while lawsuits play out.
But the case being argued Wednesday is the first in which the court will render a final decision on a Trump policy. The stakes are enormous, both politically and financially.
The Republican president has made tariffs a central piece of his economic and foreign policy and has said it would be a “disaster” if the Supreme Court rules against him.
Here are some things to know about the tariffs arguments at the Supreme Court:
Tariffs are taxes on imports
They are paid by companies that import finished products or parts, and the added cost can be passed on to consumers.
Through September, the government has reported collecting $195 billion in revenue generated from the tariffs.
The Constitution gives Congress the power to impose tariffs, but Trump has claimed extraordinary power to act without congressional approval by declaring national emergencies under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
In February, he invoked the law to impose tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China, saying that the illegal flow of immigrants and drugs across the U.S. border amounted to a national emergency and that the three countries needed to do more to stop it.
In April, he imposed worldwide tariffs after declaring the United States’ longstanding trade deficits “a national emergency.”
Libertarian-backed businesses and states challenged the tariffs in federal court
Challengers to Trump’s actions won rulings from a specialized trade court, a district judge in Washington and a business-focused appeals court, also in the nation’s capital.
Those courts found that Trump could not justify tariffs under the emergency powers law, which doesn’t mention them. But they left the tariffs in place in the meantime.
The appeals court relied on major questions, a legal doctrine devised by the Supreme Court that requires Congress to speak clearly on issues of “vast economic and political significance.”
The major questions doctrine doomed several Biden policies
Conservative majorities struck down three of then-President Joe Biden’s initiatives related to the coronavirus pandemic. The court ended the Democrat’s pause on evictions, blocked a vaccine mandate for large businesses and prevented student loan forgiveness that would have totaled $500 billion over 10 years.
In comparison, the stakes in the tariff case are much higher. The taxes are estimated to generate $3 trillion over 10 years.
The challengers in the tariffs case have cited writings by the three Trump appointees, Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, in calling on the court to apply similar limitations on a signal Trump policy.
Barrett described a babysitter taking children on roller coasters and spending a night in a hotel based on a parent’s encouragement to “make sure the kids have fun.”
“In the normal course, permission to spend money on fun authorizes a babysitter to take children to the local ice cream parlor or movie theater, not on a multiday excursion to an out-of-town amusement park,” Barrett wrote in the student loans case. “If a parent were willing to greenlight a trip that big, we would expect much more clarity than a general instruction to ‘make sure the kids have fun.’”
Kavanaugh, though, has suggested the court should not apply the same limiting standard to foreign policy and national security issues.
A dissenting appellate judge also wrote that Congress purposely gave presidents more latitude to act through the emergency powers law.
Some of the businesses that sued also are raising a separate legal argument in an appeal to conservative justices, saying that Congress could not constitutionally delegate its taxing power to the president.
The nondelegation principle has not been used in 90 years, since the Supreme Court struck down some New Deal legislation.
But Gorsuch authored a dissent in June that would have found the Federal Communications Commission’s universal service fee an unconstitutional delegation. Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas joined the dissent.
“What happens when Congress, weary of the hard business of legislating and facing strong incentives to pass the buck, cedes its lawmaking power, clearly and unmistakably, to an executive that craves it?” Gorsuch wrote.
The justices could act more quickly than usual in issuing a decision
The court only agreed to hear the case in September, scheduling arguments less than two months later. The quick turnaround, at least by Supreme Court standards, suggests that the court will try to act fast.
High-profile cases can take half a year or more to resolve, often because the majority and dissenting opinions go through rounds of revision.
But the court can act quickly when deadline pressure dictates. Most recently, the court ruled a week after hearing arguments in the TikTok case, unanimously upholding a law requiring the popular social media app to be banned unless it was sold by its Chinese parent company. Trump has intervened several times to keep the law from taking effect while negotiations continue with China.
NEW YORK — At the top of his victory speech at a Brooklyn theater late Tuesday, Zohran Mamdani — the 34-year-old democratic socialist just elected New York’s next mayor — spoke of power being gripped by the bruised and calloused hands of working Americans, away from the wealthy elite.
“Tonight, against all odds, we have grasped it,” he said. “The future is in our hands.”
The imagery was apropos of the night more broadly — when a beaten-down Democratic Party, still nursing its wounds from a wipeout by President Trump a year ago, forcefully took back what some had worried was lost to them for good: momentum.
From coast to coast Tuesday night, American voters delivered a sharp rebuke to Trump and his MAGA movement, electing Democrats in important state and local races in New York, New Jersey and Virginia and passing a major California ballot measure designed to put more Democrats in Congress in 2026.
The results — a reversal of the party’s fortunes in last year’s presidential election, when Trump swept the nation’s swing states — arrived amid deep political division and entrenched Republican power in Washington. Many voters cited Trump’s agenda, and related economic woes, as motivating their choices at the ballot box.
The wins hardly reflected a unified Democratic Party nationally, or even a shared left-wing vision for a future beyond Trump. If anything, Mamdani’s win was a challenge to the Democratic Party establishment as much as a rejection of Trump.
His vision for the future is decidedly different than that of other, more moderate Democrats who won elsewhere in the country, such as Abigail Spanberger, the 46-year-old former CIA officer whom Virginians elected as their first female governor, or Mikie Sherrill, the 53-year-old former Navy helicopter pilot and federal prosecutor who won the race for New Jersey governor.
Still, the cascade of victories did evoke for many Democrats and progressives a political hope that they hadn’t felt in a while: a sense of optimism that Trump and his MAGA movement aren’t unstoppable after all, and that their own party’s ability to resist isn’t just alive and well but gaining speed.
“Let me underscore, it’s been a good evening — for everybody, not just the Democratic Party. But what a night for the Democratic Party,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said during his own remarks on the national wins. “A party that is in its ascendancy, a party that’s on its toes, no longer on its heels.”
“I hope it’s the first of many dominoes that are going to happen across this country,” Noah Gotlib, 29, of Bushwick said late Tuesday at a victory party for Mamdani. “I hope there’s a hundred more Zohrans at a local, state, federal level.”
On a night of big wins, Mamdani’s nonetheless stood out as a thunderbolt from the progressive left — a full-throated rejection not just of Trump but of Mamdani’s mainstream Democratic opponent in the race: former Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
Mamdani — a Muslim, Ugandan-born state assemblyman of Indian descent — beat Cuomo first in the Democratic ranked-choice primary in June. Cuomo, bolstered by many of New York’s moneyed interests afraid of Mamdani’s ideas for taxing the rich and spending for the poor, reentered the race as an independent.
Trump attacked Mamdani time and again as a threat. He said Monday that he would cut off federal funding to New York if Mamdani won. He even took the dramatic step of endorsing Cuomo over Curtis Sliwa, the Republican in the race, in a last-ditch effort to block Mamdani’s stunning political ascent.
Instead, city voters surged to the polls and delivered Mamdani a resounding win.
“To see him rise above all of these odds to actually deliver a vision of something that could be better, that was what really attracted me to the [Democratic Socialists of America] in the first place,” said Aminata Hughes, 31, of Harlem, who was dancing at an election-night party when Mamdani was announced the winner.
“A better world is possible,” the native New Yorker said, “and we’re not used to hearing that from our politicians.”
In trademark Trump fashion, the president dismissed the wins by his rival party, suggesting they were a result of two factors: the ongoing federal shutdown, which he has blamed on Democrats, and the fact that he wasn’t personally on people’s ballots.
Stephen Miller, one of Trump’s chief advisors, posted a paragraph to social media outlining the high number of mixed-status immigrant families in New York being impacted by the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown and mass deportation campaign, which Miller has helped lead.
Democrats in some ways agreed. They pointed to the shutdown and other disruptions to Americans’ safety and financial security as motivating the vote. They pointed to Trump’s immigration tactics as being an affront to hard-working families. And they pointed to Trump himself — not on the ballot but definitely a factor for voters, especially after he threatened to cut off funds to New York if the city voted for Mamdani again.
“President Trump has threatened New York City if we dare stand up to him. The people of New York came together and we said, ‘You don’t threaten New York,” said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). “We’re going to stand up to bullies and thugs in the White House.”
“Today we said ‘no’ to Donald Trump and ‘yes’ to democracy,” New Jersey Democratic Chair LeRoy J. Jones Jr. told a happy crowd at Sherrill’s watch party.
“Congratulations to all the Democratic candidates who won tonight. It’s a reminder that when we come together around strong, forward-looking leaders who care about the issues that matter, we can win,” former President Obama wrote on social media. “We’ve still got plenty of work to do, but the future looks a little bit brighter.”
In addition to winning the New York mayoral and New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races, Democrats outperformed Republicans in races across the country. They held several seats on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, and won the Virginia attorney general’s race. In California, voters passed Proposition 50, a ballot measure giving state Democrats the power to redraw congressional districts in their favor ahead of next year’s midterms.
Newsom and other Democrats had made Proposition 50 all about Trump from the beginning, framing it as a direct response to Trump trying to steal power by convincing red states such as Texas to redraw their own congressional lines in favor of Republicans.
Trump has been direct about trying to shore up Republicans’ slim majority in the House, to help ensure they retain power and are able to block Democrats from thwarting his agenda. And yet, he has suggested California’s own redistricting effort was illegal and a “GIANT SCAM” under “very serious legal and criminal review.”
Trump had also gone after several of the Democrats who won on Tuesday directly. In addition to Mamdani, Trump tried to paint Spanberger and Sherrill as out-of-touch liberals too, attacking them over some of his favorite wedge issues such as transgender rights, crime and energy costs. Similar messaging was deployed by the candidates’ Republican opponents.
In some ways, Trump was going out on a political limb, trying to sway elections in blue states where his grip on the electorate is smaller and his influence is often a major motivator for people to get out and vote against him and his allies.
His weighing in on the races only added to the sense that the Democrats’ wins marked something bigger — a broader repudiation of Trump, and a good sign for Democrats heading into next year’s midterms.
Marcus LaCroix, 42, who voted for the measure at a polling site in Lomita on Tuesday evening, described it as “a counterpunch” to what he sees as the excesses and overreach of the Trump administration, and Trump’s pressure on red states to redraw their lines.
“A lot of people are very concerned about the redistricting in Texas,” he said. “But we can actually fight back.”
Ed Razine, 27, a student who lives in the Bed-Stuy neighborhood of Brooklyn, was in class when he heard Mamdani won. Soon, he was celebrating with friends at Nowadays, a Bushwick dance club hosting an election watch party.
Razine said Mamdani’s win represented a “new dawn” in American politics that he hopes will spread to other cities and states across the country.
“For me, he does represent the future of the Democratic Party — the fact that billionaires can’t just buy our election, that if someone really cares to truly represent the everyday person, people will rise up and that money will not talk,” Razine said. “At the end of the day, people talk.”
The Associated Press and Times staff writer Connor Sheets contributed to this report.
South Asians have played a prominent role in President Trump’s universe, especially in his second term.
Second Lady Usha Vance is the daughter of Indian immigrants who came to California to study and never went back. Harmeet Dhillon, born in India and a devout Sikh, is currently his U.S. assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division. And the head of the FBI, Kash Patel, is (like potential New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani,) of Indian descent by way of Uganda.
Some Republicans have taken pride in this kind of diversity, citing it for the gains Trump made in 2024 with Black and Latino voters.
But these days, the MAGA big tent seems to be collapsing fast.
Last week, MAGA had a total anti-Indian meltdown on social media, revealing a deep, ugly racism toward South Asians.
It comes amid the first real rebellion about rampant and increasingly open antisemitism within the MAGAverse, creating a massive rift between traditional conservatives and a younger, rabidly anti-Jewish contingent called groypers whose leader, Nick Fuentes, recently posted that he is “team Hitler.”
Turns out, when you cultivate a political movement based on hate, at some point the hate is uncontrollable. In fact, that hate needs to be fed to maintain power — even if it means feasting on its own.
This monster of white-might ugliness is going to dominate policy and politics for the next election, and these now-public fights within the Republican party represent a new dynamic that will either force it to do some sort of soul searching, or purge it of anything but white Christian nationalism. My bet is on the latter. But if conservatives ever truly believed in their inclusive talk, then it’s time for Republicans to stand up and demand the big Trump tent they were hailing just a few months ago.
Ultra-conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, who opposes much of Fuentes’ worldview, summed up this Republican split succinctly.
Fuentes’ followers “are white supremacists, hate women, Jews, Hindus, many types of Christians, brown people of a wide variety of backgrounds, Blacks, America’s foreign policy and America’s constitution,” Shapiro explained. “They admire Hitler and Stalin and that splinter faction is now being facilitated and normalized within the mainstream Republican Party.”
MAGA’s anti-Indian sentiment had an explosive moment a few days ago when a South Asian woman asked Vice President JD Vance a series of questions during a Turning Point USA event in Mississippi. The young immigrant wanted to know how Vance could preach for the removal of nearly 18 million immigrants? And how could he claim that the United States was a Christian nation, rather than one that valued pluralism?
“How can you stop us and tell us we don’t belong here anymore?” the woman asked. “Why do I have to be a Christian?”
Vance’s answer went viral, in part because he claimed his wife, although from a Hindu family, was “agnostic or atheist,” and that he hoped she would convert to Christianity.
“Do I hope eventually that she is somehow moved by the same thing that I was moved in by church? Yeah, I honestly do wish that,” he said.
Vance later tried to do some damage control on social media, calling Usha Vance a “blessing” and promising to continue to “support her and talk to her about faith and life and everything else, because she’s my wife.”
But many South Asians felt Vance was dissing his wife’s heritage and attempting to downplay her non-whiteness. They vented on social media, and got a lot of MAGA feelings back.
“How can you pretend to be a white nativist politician who will ‘bring america back to it’s golden age’ … when your wife is an indian immigrant?” wrote one poster.
Dhillon received similar feedback recently for urging calm and fairness after a Sikh truck driver allegedly caused a fatal crash.
“[N]o ma’am, it is CRYSTAL CLEAR that sihks and hindus need to get the hell out of my country,” one reply stated. “You and your kind are no longer welcome here. Go the [expletive] home.”
Patel too, got it, after posting a message on Diwali, a religious holiday that celebrates the victory of light over darkness. He was dubbed a demon worshipper, a favorite anti-Indian trope.
Perhaps you’re thinking, “Duh, of course MAGA is racist.” But here’s the thing. The military has been scrubbed of many Black officers. The federal workforce, long a bastion for middle-class people of color, has been decimated. Minority cabinet members or top officials are few. Aside from another South Asian, Tulsi Gabbard, there’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez‑DeRemer and HUD head Scott Turner.
South Asians are largely the last visible sign of pluralism in Republican power, an erstwhile proof that the charges of racism from the left are unfair. But now, like Latinos, they are increasingly targets of the base.
At the same time anti-Indian hate was surfacing last week, a whole load of MAGA antisemitism hit the fan. It started when Tucker Carlson, who in his post-network life has re-created himself as a hugely popular podcaster with more than 16 million followers on X, invited Fuentes on his show.
In addition to calling for the death of American Jews, Fuentes has also said women want him to rape them and should be burned alive, Black people belong in prison and LGBTQ+ people are an abomination.
Anyone who is not his kind of Christian “must be absolutely annihilated when we take power,” he said.
Turns out far-right Charlie Kirk was a bulwark against this straight-up American Nazi. Kirk’s popularity kept Fuentes — who often trolled Kirk — from achieving dominance as the spirit guide of young MAGA. Now, with Kirk slain, nothing appears to be stopping Fuentes from taking up that mantle.
After the Fuentes interview, sane conservatives (there are some left) were apoplectic that Carlson would support someone who so openly admits to being anti-Israel and seemingly pro-Nazi. They demanded the Heritage Foundation, historical backbone of the conservative movement, creators of Project 2025 and close allies of Tucker, do something. The head of Heritage, Kevin Roberts, offered what many considered a sorry-not-sorry. He condemned Fuentes, saying he was “fomenting Jew hatred, and his incitements are not only immoral and un-Christian, they risk violence.”
But also counseled that Fuentes shouldn’t be banished from the party.
“Join us — not to cancel — but to guide, challenge, and strengthen the conversation,” Roberts said.
Are Nazis really all bad? Discuss!
The response from ethical conservatives — Jewish and non-Jewish alike — has been that you don’t politely hear Nazis out, and if the Republican Party can’t clearly say that Nazis aren’t welcome, it’s got a problem.
Yes, the Republican Party has a problem.
The right rode to power by attacking what it denigrates at “wokeism” on the left. MAGA declared that to confront fascism or racism or misogyny — to tell its purveyors to sit down and shut up — was wrong. That “canceling,” or banishment from common discourse for spewing hate, was somehow an infringement on 1st Amendment rights or even terrorism.
They screamed loud and clear that speaking out against intolerance was the worst, most unacceptable form of intolerance itself — and would not be tolerated.
You know who heard them loud and clear? Fuentes. He has checkmated establishment Republicans with their own cowardice and hypocrisy.
So now his young Christian white supremacists are empowered, and intent on taking over as the leaders of the party. Fuentes is saying what old guard Republicans don’t want to hear, but secretly fear: He already is dangerously close to being the mainstream; just read the comments.
Roberts, the Heritage president, said it himself: “Diversity will never be our strength. Unity is our strength, and a lack of unity is a sign of weakness.”
Trying to shut Fuentes up or kick him out will likely anger that vocal and powerful part of the base that enjoys the freedom to be openly hateful, and really wouldn’t mind a male-dominated white Christian autocracy.
So now this remaining vestige of traditional conservatives — including senators such as Ted Cruz and Mitch McConnell — is faced with a painful reckoning. Many mainstream Republicans for years ignored the racism and antisemitism creeping into the party. They can’t anymore. It has grown into a beast ready to consume its maker.
Will they let this takeover happen, call for conversation over condemnation to the glee of Fuentes and his followers?
Or will they find the courage to be not just true Republicans, but true Americans, and declare non-negotiable for their party that most basic of American ideals: We do not tolerate hate?
President Donald Trump on Thursday urged congressional Republicans to unilaterally end the government shutdown by eliminating the filibuster — an unprecedented step that GOP leaders have opposed taking until now.”It is now time for the Republicans to play their ‘TRUMP CARD,’ and go for what is called the Nuclear Option — Get rid of the Filibuster, and get rid of it, NOW!” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.Senate Republicans have so far ruled out changing the Senate rules to eliminate the 60-vote threshold needed for passing legislation, arguing that it would ultimately benefit Democrats the next time they retake power.But Trump, in his post, brushed off that concern, contending that Republicans should take advantage of the opportunity first.”Now I want to do it in order to take advantage of the Democrats,” Trump wrote.
President Donald Trump on Thursday urged congressional Republicans to unilaterally end the government shutdown by eliminating the filibuster — an unprecedented step that GOP leaders have opposed taking until now.
“It is now time for the Republicans to play their ‘TRUMP CARD,’ and go for what is called the Nuclear Option — Get rid of the Filibuster, and get rid of it, NOW!” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.
Senate Republicans have so far ruled out changing the Senate rules to eliminate the 60-vote threshold needed for passing legislation, arguing that it would ultimately benefit Democrats the next time they retake power.
But Trump, in his post, brushed off that concern, contending that Republicans should take advantage of the opportunity first.
“Now I want to do it in order to take advantage of the Democrats,” Trump wrote.
WASHINGTON — President Trump faces the most important international meeting of his second term so far on Thursday: face-to-face negotiations with Xi Jinping, who has made China a formidable economic and military challenger to the United States.
The two presidents face a vast agenda during their meeting in Seoul, beginning with the two countries’ escalating trade war over tariffs and high-tech exports. The list also includes U.S. demands for a Chinese crackdown on fentanyl, China’s aid to Russia in its war with Ukraine, the future of Taiwan and China’s growing nuclear arsenal.
Trump has already promised, characteristically, that the meeting will be a major success.
“It’s going to be fantastic for both countries, and it’s going to be fantastic for the entire world,” he said last week.
But it isn’t yet clear that the summit’s concrete results will measure up to that high standard.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Sunday that the two sides have agreed to a “framework” under which China would delay implementing tight controls on rare earth elements, minerals crucial for the production of high-tech products from smartphones and electric vehicles to military aircraft and missiles. He said China has also agreed to resume buying soybeans from U.S. farmers and to crack down on fentanyl components.
In return, Bessent said, the United States will back down from its stinging tariffs on Chinese goods.
Nicholas Burns, the U.S. ambassador in Beijing under then-President Biden, said that kind of deal would amount to “an uneasy trade truce rather than a comprehensive trade deal.”
“That may be the best we can expect,” he said in an interview Monday. Still, he added, “it will be a positive step to stabilize world markets and allow the continuation of U.S.-China trade for the time being.”
But U.S. and Chinese officials have been close-mouthed on what, if anything, has been agreed on regarding Xi’s other big trade demand: easier U.S. restrictions on high-tech exports to China, especially advanced semiconductor chips used for artificial intelligence.
Burns said the two superpowers’ technology competition is “the most sensitive … in terms of where this relationship will head, which country will emerge more powerful.”
Giving China easy access to advanced semiconductors “would only help [the Chinese army] in its competition with the U.S. military for power in the Indo-Pacific,” he warned.
Other former officials and China hawks outside the administration have said, even more pointedly, that they worry that Trump may be too willing to trade long-term technology assets for short-term trade deals.
In August, Trump eased export controls to allow Nvidia, the world leader in AI chips, to sell more semiconductors to China — in an unusual deal under which the U.S. company would pay 15% of its revenue from the sales to the U.S. Treasury.
Matthew Pottinger, Trump’s top China advisor in his first term, protested in a recent podcast interview that the deal risked trading a strategic technology advantage “for $20 billion and Nvidia’s bottom line.”
Underlying the controversy over technology, some China watchers warn, is a basic mismatch between the two presidents: Trump is focused almost entirely on trade and commercial deals, while Xi is focused on displacing the United States as the biggest economic and military power in Asia.
“I don’t think the administration has a strategy toward China,” said Bonnie Glaser, a China expert at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. “It has a trade strategy, not a China strategy.”
“The administration does not seem to be focused on competition with China,” said Jonathan Czin, a former CIA analyst now at Washington’s Brookings Institution. “It’s focused on deal making. … It’s tactics without strategy.”
“We’ve fallen into a kind of trade and technology myopia,” he added. “We’re not talking about issues like China’s coercion [of smaller countries] in the South China Sea. … China doesn’t want to have that bigger, broader conversation.”
It isn’t clear that Trump and Xi will have either the time or inclination to talk in detail about anything other than trade.
And even on the front-burner economic issues, this week’s ceasefire is unlikely to produce a permanent peace.
“As with all such agreements, the devil will be in the details,” Burns, the former ambassador, said. “The two countries will remain fierce trade rivals. Expect friction ahead and further trade duels well into 2026.”
“Buckle up,” Czin said. “There are likely more sudden moves from Beijing ahead.”
In the long run, Trump’s legacy in U.S.-China relations will rest not only on trade deals but on the larger competition for economic and military power in the Pacific Rim. No matter how this week’s meetings go, those challenges still lie ahead.
In an attempt to assert control over the immigrant population in the United States, President Donald Trump has fabricated numerous lies and issued empty threats. While this tactic has had some success in the past, it hasn’t always worked, particularly in Chicago, where despite Trump’s ongoing efforts, he has failed to deploy National Guard troops.
That said, Trump is once again threatening to fully use his power to control Americans, especially the leaders and citizens of Democrat-majority cities. In a previous interview, he hinted at invoking the Insurrection Act to address the large protests against ICE in response to their raids affecting several immigrant families. He reiterated this threat during a recent discussion with Fox News again. A clip that circulated widely on social media platforms like X (formerly Twitter) showed the President stating:
“Don’t forget…I can use the Insurrection Act. 50% of the presidents, almost, have used that. And that’s unquestioned power.”
He also mentioned that despite having that power, he chooses not to use it, but is constantly met with “politicians” who believe that cities that are part of the “radical left movement,” particularly those with a Democrat majority, do not deserve safety, claiming these cities are “exclusively” unsafe.
? BREAKING: President Trump just reminded Antifa, blue state governors and mayors of one VERY important fact
“Don’t forget…I CAN use the Insurrection Act. 50% of the presidents, almost, have used that. And that’s UNQUESTIONED POWER.”
The internet was quick to react to Trump’s statements, calling out his lies as soon as they reached the public. On X, users criticized Trump for his hypocrisy, noting that he is the one creating a hostile situation in the cities he claims are violent or, as he previously stated, “war” ravaged. This seems to be a tactic to provoke a reaction from the public that would legitimize his actions and the exercise of his power. One person highlighted:
“This is is rich. The guy who incited an insurrection is now fantasizing about invoking the Insurrection Act like it’s a magic obedience wand. But sure, let the twice impeached, four times indicted, 34 convictions chaos king keep threatening democracy like it owes him rent.”
Another user insisted that Trump should be “impeached” and “removed” for making such statements.
Sanchari Ghosh is a political writer for The Mary Sue who enjoys keeping up with what’s going on in the world and sometimes reminding everyone what they should be talking about. She’s been around for a few years, but still gets excited whenever she disentangles a complicated story. When she’s not writing, she’s likely sleeping, eating, daydreaming, or just hanging out with friends. Politics is her passion, but so is an amazing nap.
Japan’s parliament elected ultraconservative Sanae Takaichi as the country’s first female prime minister Tuesday, a day after her struggling party struck a coalition deal with a new partner expected to pull her governing bloc further to the right.Takaichi replaces Shigeru Ishiba, ending a three-month political vacuum and wrangling since the Liberal Democratic Party’s disastrous election loss in July.Ishiba, who lasted only one year as prime minister, resigned with his Cabinet earlier in the day, paving the way for his successor.The LDP’s off-the-cuff alliance with the Osaka-based rightwing Japan Innovation Party, or Ishin no Kai, ensured her premiership because the opposition is not united. Takaichi’s untested alliance is still short of a majority in both houses of parliament and will need to court other opposition groups to pass any legislation – a risk that could make her government unstable and short-lived.“Political stability is essential right now,” Takaichi said at Monday’s signing ceremony with the JIP leader and Osaka Gov. Hirofumi Yoshimura. “Without stability, we cannot push measures for a strong economy or diplomacy.”The two parties signed a coalition agreement on policies underscoring Takaichi’s hawkish and nationalistic views.Their last-minute deal came after the Liberal Democrats lost its longtime partner, the Buddhist-backed Komeito, which has a more dovish and centrist stance. The breakup threatened a change of power for the LDP, which has governed Japan almost uninterrupted for decades.Later in the day, Takaichi, 64, will present a Cabinet with a number of allies of LDP’s most powerful kingmaker, Taro Aso, and others who backed her in the party leadership vote.JIP will not hold ministerial posts in Takaichi’s Cabinet until his party is confident about its partnership with the LDP, Yoshimura said.Takaichi is running on deadline — a major policy speech later this week, talks with U.S. President Donald Trump and regional summits. She needs to quickly tackle rising prices and compile economy-boosting measures by late December to address public frustration.While she is the first woman serving as Japan’s prime minister, she is in no rush to promote gender equality or diversity.Takaichi is among Japanese politicians who have stonewalled measures for women’s advancement. Takaichi supports the imperial family’s male-only succession and opposes same-sex marriage and allowing separate surnames for married couples.A protege of assassinated former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Takaichi is expected to emulate his policies including stronger military and economy, as well as revising Japan’s pacifist constitution. With a potentially weak grip on power, it’s unknown how much Takaichi would be able to achieve.When Komeito left the governing coalition, it cited the LDP’s lax response to slush fund scandals that led to their consecutive election defeats.The centrist party also raised concern about Takaichi’s revisionist view of Japan’s wartime past and her regular prayers at Yasukuni Shrine despite protests from Beijing and Seoul that see the visits as lack of remorse about Japanese aggression, as well as her recent xenophobic remarks.Takaichi has toned down her hawkish rhetorics. On Friday, she sent a religious ornament instead of going to Yasukuni.
, Tokyo —
Japan’s parliament elected ultraconservative Sanae Takaichi as the country’s first female prime minister Tuesday, a day after her struggling party struck a coalition deal with a new partner expected to pull her governing bloc further to the right.
Takaichi replaces Shigeru Ishiba, ending a three-month political vacuum and wrangling since the Liberal Democratic Party’s disastrous election loss in July.
Ishiba, who lasted only one year as prime minister, resigned with his Cabinet earlier in the day, paving the way for his successor.
The LDP’s off-the-cuff alliance with the Osaka-based rightwing Japan Innovation Party, or Ishin no Kai, ensured her premiership because the opposition is not united. Takaichi’s untested alliance is still short of a majority in both houses of parliament and will need to court other opposition groups to pass any legislation – a risk that could make her government unstable and short-lived.
“Political stability is essential right now,” Takaichi said at Monday’s signing ceremony with the JIP leader and Osaka Gov. Hirofumi Yoshimura. “Without stability, we cannot push measures for a strong economy or diplomacy.”
The two parties signed a coalition agreement on policies underscoring Takaichi’s hawkish and nationalistic views.
Their last-minute deal came after the Liberal Democrats lost its longtime partner, the Buddhist-backed Komeito, which has a more dovish and centrist stance. The breakup threatened a change of power for the LDP, which has governed Japan almost uninterrupted for decades.
Later in the day, Takaichi, 64, will present a Cabinet with a number of allies of LDP’s most powerful kingmaker, Taro Aso, and others who backed her in the party leadership vote.
JIP will not hold ministerial posts in Takaichi’s Cabinet until his party is confident about its partnership with the LDP, Yoshimura said.
Takaichi is running on deadline — a major policy speech later this week, talks with U.S. President Donald Trump and regional summits. She needs to quickly tackle rising prices and compile economy-boosting measures by late December to address public frustration.
While she is the first woman serving as Japan’s prime minister, she is in no rush to promote gender equality or diversity.
Takaichi is among Japanese politicians who have stonewalled measures for women’s advancement. Takaichi supports the imperial family’s male-only succession and opposes same-sex marriage and allowing separate surnames for married couples.
A protege of assassinated former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Takaichi is expected to emulate his policies including stronger military and economy, as well as revising Japan’s pacifist constitution. With a potentially weak grip on power, it’s unknown how much Takaichi would be able to achieve.
When Komeito left the governing coalition, it cited the LDP’s lax response to slush fund scandals that led to their consecutive election defeats.
The centrist party also raised concern about Takaichi’s revisionist view of Japan’s wartime past and her regular prayers at Yasukuni Shrine despite protests from Beijing and Seoul that see the visits as lack of remorse about Japanese aggression, as well as her recent xenophobic remarks.
Takaichi has toned down her hawkish rhetorics. On Friday, she sent a religious ornament instead of going to Yasukuni.
WASHINGTON — It has been four months since Elon Musk, President Trump’s bureaucratic demolition man, abandoned Washington in a flurry of recriminations and chaos.
But the Trump administration’s crusade to dismantle much of the federal government never ended. It’s merely under new management: the less colorful but more methodical Russell Vought, director of Trump’s Office of Management and Budget.
Vought has become the backroom architect of Trump’s aggressive strategy — slashing the federal workforce, freezing billions in congressionally approved spending in actions his critics often call illegal.
Now Vought has proposed using the current government shutdown as an opportunity to fire thousands of bureaucrats permanently instead of merely furloughing them temporarily. If any do return to work, he has suggested that the government need not give them back pay — contrary to a law Trump signed in 2019.
Those threats may prove merely to be pressure tactics as Trump tries to persuade Democrats to accept spending cuts on Medicaid, Obamacare and other programs.
But the shutdown battle is the current phase of a much larger one. Vought’s long-term goals, he says, are to “bend or break the bureaucracy to the presidential will” and “deconstruct the administrative state.”
He’s still only partway done.
“I’d estimate that Vought has implemented maybe 10% or 15% of his program,” said Donald F. Kettl, former dean of the public policy school at the University of Maryland. “There may be as much as 90% to go. If this were a baseball game, we’d be in the top of the second inning.”
Along the way, Vought (pronounced “vote”) has chipped relentlessly at Congress’ ability to control the use of federal funds, massively expanding the power of the president.
“He has waged the most serious attack on separation of powers in American history,” said Elaine Kamarck, an expert on federal management at the Brookings Institution.
He’s done that mainly by using OMB, the White House office that oversees spending, to control the day-to-day purse strings of federal agencies — and deliberately keeping Congress in the dark along the way.
“If Congress has given us authority that is too broad, then we’re going to use that authority aggressively,” Vought said last month.
Federal judges have ruled some of the administration’s actions illegal, but they have allowed others to stand. Vought’s proposal to use the shutdown to fire thousands of bureaucrats hasn’t been tested in court.
Vought developed his aggressive approach during two decades as a conservative budget expert, culminating in his appointment as director of OMB in Trump’s first term.
In 2019, he stretched the limits of presidential power by helping Trump get around a congressional ban on funding for a border wall, by declaring an emergency and transferring military funds. He froze congressionally mandated aid for Ukraine, the action that led to Trump’s first impeachment.
Even so, Vought complained that Trump had been needlessly restrained by cautious first-term aides.
“The lawyers come in and say, ‘It’s not legal. You can’t do that,’” he said in 2023. “I don’t want President Trump having to lose a moment of time having fights in the Oval Office over whether something is legal.”
Vought is a proponent of the “unitary executive” theory, the argument that the president should have unfettered control over every tentacle of the executive branch, including independent agencies such as the Federal Reserve.
When Congress designates money for federal programs, he has argued, “It’s a ceiling. It is not a floor. It’s not the notion that you have to spend every dollar.”
Most legal experts disagree; a 1974 law prohibits the president from unilaterally withholding money Congress has appropriated.
Vought told conservative activists in 2023 that if Trump returned to power, he would deliberately seek to inflict “trauma” on federal employees.
“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” he said. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work.”
When Vought returned to OMB for Trump’s second term, he appeared to be in Musk’s shadow. But once the flamboyant Tesla chief executive flamed out, the OMB director got to work to make DOGE’s work the foundation for lasting changes.
He extended many of DOGE’s funding cuts by slowing down OMB’s approval of disbursements — turning them into de facto freezes.
He helped persuade Republicans in Congress to cancel $9 billion in previously approved foreign aid and public broadcasting support, a process known as “rescission.”
To cancel an additional $4.9 billion, he revived a rarely used gambit called a “pocket rescission,” freezing the funds until they expired.
Along the way, he quietly stopped providing Congress with information on spending, leaving legislators in the dark on whether programs were being axed.
DOGE and OMB eliminated jobs so quickly that the federal government stopped publishing its ongoing tally of federal employees. (Any number would only be approximate; some layoffs are tied up in court, and thousands of employees who opted for voluntary retirement are technically still on the payroll.)
The result was a significant erosion of Congress’ “power of the purse,” which has historically included not only approving money but also monitoring how it was spent.
Even some Republican members of Congress seethed. “They would like a blank check … and I don’t think that’s appropriate,” said former Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
But the GOP majorities in both the House and Senate, pleased to see spending cut by any means, let Vought have his way. Even McConnell voted to approve the $9-billion rescission request.
Vought’s newest innovation, the mid-shutdown layoffs, would be another big step toward reducing Congress’ role.
“The result would be a dramatic, instantaneous shift in the separation of powers,” Kettl said. “The Trump team could kill programs unilaterally without the inconvenience of going to Congress.”
Some of the consequences could be catastrophic, Kettl and other scholars warned. Kamarck calls them “time bombs.”
“One or more of these decisions is going to blow up in Trump’s face,” she said.
“FEMA won’t be capable of reacting to the next hurricane. The National Weather Service won’t have the forecasters it needs to analyze the data from weather balloons.”
Even before the government shutdown, she noted, the FAA was grappling with a shortage of air traffic controllers. This week the FAA slowed takeoffs at several airports in response to growing shortages, including at air traffic control centers in Atlanta, Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth.
In theory, a future Congress could undo many of Vought’s actions, especially if Democrats win control of the House or, less likely, the Senate.
But rebuilding agencies that have been radically shrunken would take much longer than cutting them down, the scholars said.
“Much of this will be difficult to reverse when Democrats come back into fashion,” Kamarck said.
Indeed, that’s part of Vought’s plan.
“We want to make sure that the bureaucracy can’t reconstitute itself later in future administrations,” he said in April in a podcast with Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist who was slain on Sept. 10.
He’s pleased with the progress he’s made, he told reporters in July.
The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals appears poised to recognize President Trump’s authority to send soldiers to Portland, Ore., with members of the court signaling receptiveness to an expansive new read of the president’s power to put boots on the ground in American cities.
A three-judge panel from the appellate court — including two members appointed by Trump during his first term — heard oral arguments Thursday after Oregon challenged the legality of the president’s order to deploy hundreds of soldiers to Portland. The administration claims the city has become lawless; Oregon officials argue Trump is manufacturing a crisis to justify calling in the National Guard.
While the court has not issued a decision, a ruling in Trump’s favor would mark a sharp rightward turn for the once-liberal circuit — and probably set up a Supreme Court showdown over why and how the U.S. military can be used domestically.
“I’m sort of trying to figure out how a district court of any nature is supposed to get in and question whether the president’s assessment of ‘executing the laws’ is right or wrong,” said Judge Ryan D. Nelson of Idaho Falls, Idaho, one of the two Trump appointees hearing the arguments.
“That’s an internal decision making, and whether there’s a ton of protests or low protests, they can still have an impact on his ability to execute the laws,” he said.
U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut of Portland, another Trump appointee, previously called the president’s justification for federalizing Oregon troops “simply untethered to the facts” in her temporary restraining on Oct. 4.
The facts about the situation on the ground in Portland were not in dispute at the hearing on Thursday. The city has remained mostly calm in recent months, with protesters occasionally engaging in brief skirmishes with authorities stationed outside a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building.
Instead, Nelson and Judge Bridget S. Bade of Phoenix, whom Trump once floated as a possible Supreme Court nominee, questioned how much the facts mattered.
“The president gets to direct his resources as he deems fit, and it seems a little counterintuitive to me that the city of Portland can come and say, ‘No you need to do it differently,’” Nelson said.
He also appeared to endorse the Department of Justice’s claim that “penalizing” the president for waiting until protests had calmed to deploy soldiers to quell them created a perverse incentive to act first and ask questions later.
“It just seems like such a tortured reading of the statute,” the judge said. He then referenced the first battle of the U.S. Civil War in 1861, saying, “I’m not sure even President Lincoln would be able to bring in forces when he did, because if he didn’t do it immediately after Fort Sumter, [Oregon’s] argument would be, ‘Oh, things are OK now.’”
Trump’s efforts to use troops to quell protests and support federal immigration operations have led to a growing tangle of legal challenges. The Portland deployment was halted by Immergut, who blocked Trump from federalizing Oregon troops. (A ruling from the same case issued the next day prevents already federalized troops from being deployed.)
In June, a different 9th Circuit panel also made up of two Trump appointees ruled that the president had broad — though not “unreviewable” — discretion to determine whether facts on the ground met the threshold for military response in Los Angeles. Thousands of federalized National Guard troops and hundreds of Marines were deployed over the summer amid widespread protests over immigration enforcement.
The June decision set precedent for how any future deployment in the circuit’s vast territory can be reviewed. It also sparked outrage, both among those who oppose armed soldiers patrolling American streets and those who support them.
Opponents argue repeated domestic deployments shred America’s social fabric and trample protest rights protected by the 1st Amendment. With soldiers called into action so far in Los Angeles, Portland and Chicago, many charge the administration is using the military for political purposes.
“The military should not be acting as a domestic police force in this country except in the most extreme circumstances,” said Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Liberty and National Security Program at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice. “That set of circumstances is not present right now anywhere in the country, so this is an abuse of power — and a very dangerous one because of the precedent it sets.”
Supporters say the president has sole authority to determine the facts on the ground and if they warrant military intervention. They argue any check by the judicial branch is an illegal power grab, aimed at thwarting response to a legitimate and growing “invasion from within.”
“What they’ve done to San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles — they’re very unsafe places, and we’re going to straighten them out one by one,” Trump said in an address to military top brass last week. “That’s a war too. It’s a war from within.”
The 9th Circuit agreed to rehear the Los Angeles case with an 11-member “en banc” panel in Pasadena on Oct. 22, signaling a schism among Trump’s own judges over the boundaries of the president’s power.
Still, Trump’s authority to call soldiers into American cities is only the first piece in a larger legal puzzle spread before the 9th Circuit, experts said.
What federalized troops are allowed to do once deployed is the subject of another court decision now under review. That case could determine whether soldiers are barred from assisting immigration raids, controlling crowds of protesters or any other form of civilian law enforcement.
Trump officials have maintained the president can wield the military as he sees fit — and that cities such as Portland and L.A. would be in danger if soldiers can’t come to the rescue.
“These are violent people, and if at any point we let down our guard, there is a serious risk of ongoing violence,” Deputy Assistant Atty. Gen. Eric McArthur said. “The president is entitled to say enough is enough and bring in the National Guard.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom said Sunday that he intends to seek a court order in an attempt to stop President Trump’s deployment of California National Guard troops to Oregon.
Calling the president’s action a “breathtaking abuse of power,” Newsom said in a statement that 300 California National Guard personnel were being deployed to Portland, Ore., a city the president has called “war-ravaged.”
“They are on their way there now,” Newsom said of the National Guard. “This is a breathtaking abuse of the law and power.”
Trump’s move came a day after a federal judge in Oregon temporarily blocked the federalization of Oregon’s National Guard.
The president, who mobilized the California National Guard amid immigration protests earlier this year, has pursued the use of the military to fight crime in cities including Chicago and Washington, sparking outrage among Democratic officials in those jurisdictions. Local leaders, including those in Portland, have said the actions are unnecessary and without legal justification.
“The Trump Administration is unapologetically attacking the rule of law itself and putting into action their dangerous words — ignoring court orders and treating judges, even those appointed by the President himself, as political opponents,” Newsom said.
In June, Newsom and California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta filed a federal lawsuit over Trump’s mobilization of the state’s National Guard during immigration protests in Los Angeles. California officials are expected to file the court order over Sunday’s deployment using that existing lawsuit.
Newsom has ratcheted up his rhetoric about Trump in recent days: On Friday, the governor lashed out at universities that may sign the president’s higher education compact, which demands rightward campus policy shifts in exchange for priority federal funding.
“I need to put pressure on this moment and pressure test where we are in U.S. history, not just California history,” Newsom said. “This is it. We are losing this country.”
WASHINGTON — Supreme Court justices like to talk about the Constitution’s separation of powers and how it limits the exercise of official authority.
But Chief Justice John G. Roberts and his conservative colleagues have given no sign so far they will check President Trump’s one-man governance by executive order.
To the contrary, the conservative justices have repeatedly ruled for Trump on fast-track appeals and overturned federal judges who said the president had exceeded his authority.
The court’s new term opens on Monday, and the justices will begin hearing arguments.
But those regularly scheduled cases have been overshadowed by Trump’s relentless drive to remake the government, to punish his political enemies, including universities, law firms, TV networks and prominent Democrats, and to send troops to patrol U.S. cities.
The overriding question has become: Are there any legal limits on the president’s power? The Supreme Court itself has raised the doubts.
A year ago, as Trump ran to reclaim the White House, the justices blocked a felony criminal indictment against him related to his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, mob attack on the Capitol as Congress met to certify Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election, for which Trump was impeached.
Led by Roberts, the court ruled for Trump and declared for the first time that presidents were immune from being prosecuted for their official actions in the White House.
Not surprisingly, Trump saw this as a “BIG WIN” and proof there is no legal check on his power.
This year, Trump’s lawyers have confidently gone to Supreme Court with emergency appeals when lower-court judges have stood in their way. With few exceptions, they have won, often over dissents from the court’s three liberal Democrats.
Many court scholars say they are disappointed but not surprised by the court’s response so far to Trump’s aggressive use of executive power.
The Supreme Court “has been a rubber stamp approving Trump’s actions,” said UC Berkeley law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. “I hope very much that the court will be a check on Trump. There isn’t any other. But so far, it has not played that role.”
Roberts “had been seen as a Republican but not a Trump Republican. But he doesn’t seem interested or willing to put any limits on him,” said UCLA law professor Adam Winkler. “Maybe they think they’re saving their credibility for when it really counts.”
Acting on his own, Trump moved quickly to reshape the federal government. He ordered cuts in spending and staffing at federal agencies and fired inspectors general and officials of independent agencies who had fixed terms set by Congress. He stepped up arrests and deportations of immigrants who are here illegally.
But the court’s decisions on those fronts are in keeping with the long-standing views of the conservatives on the bench.
Long before Trump ran for office, Roberts had argued that the Constitution gives the president broad executive authority to control federal agencies, including the power to fire officials who disagree with him.
The court’s conservatives also think the president has the authority to enforce — or not enforce — immigration laws.
That’s also why many legal experts think the year ahead will provide a better test of the Supreme Court and Trump’s challenge to the constitutional order.
“Overall, my reaction is that it’s too soon to tell,” said William Baude, a University of Chicago law professor and a former clerk for Roberts. “In the next year, we will likely see decisions about tariffs, birthright citizenship, alien enemies and perhaps more, and we’ll know a lot more.”
In early September, Trump administration lawyers rushed the tariffs case to the Supreme Court because they believed it was better to lose sooner rather than later.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the government could face up to a $1-trillion problem if the court delayed a decision until next summer and then ruled the tariffs were illegal.
“Unwinding them could cause significant disruption,” he told the court.
The Constitution says tariffs, taxes and raising revenue are matters for Congress to decide. Through most of American history, tariffs funded much of the federal government. That began to change after 1913 when the 16th Amendment was adopted to authorize “taxes on incomes.”
Trump has said he would like to return to an earlier era when import taxes funded the government.
“I always say ‘tariffs’ is the most beautiful word to me in the dictionary,” he said at a rally after his inauguration in January. “Because tariffs are going to make us rich as hell. It’s going to bring our country’s businesses back that left us.”
While he could have gone to the Republican-controlled Congress to get approval, he imposed several rounds of large and worldwide tariffs acting on his own.
Several small businesses sued and described the tariffs as “the largest peacetime tax increase in American history.”
As for legal justification, the president’s lawyers pointed to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977. It authorizes the president to “deal with any unusual or extraordinary threat … to the national security, foreign policy or economy of the United States.”
The law did not mention tariffs, taxes or duties but said the president could “regulate” the “importation” of products.
Trump administration lawyers argue that the “power to ‘regulate importation’ plainly encompasses the power to impose tariffs.” They also say the court should defer to the president because tariffs involve foreign affairs and national security.
They said the president invoked the tariffs not to raise revenue but to “rectify America’s country-killing trade deficits and to stem the flood of fentanyl and other lethal drugs across our borders.”
In response to lawsuits from small businesses and several states, judges who handle international trade cases ruled the tariffs were illegal. However, they agreed to keep them in place to allow for appeals.
Their opinion relied in part on recent Supreme Court’s decisions which struck down potentially far-reaching regulations from Democratic presidents on climate change, student loan debt and COVID-19 vaccine requirements. In each of the decisions, Roberts said Congress had not clearly authorized the disputed regulations.
Citing that principle, the federal circuit court said it “seems unlikely that Congress intended to … grant the president unlimited authority to impose tariffs.”
Trump said that decision, if allowed to stand, “could literally destroy the United States of America.” The court agreed to hear arguments in the tariffs case on Nov. 5.
A victory for Trump would be “viewed as a dramatic expansion of presidential power,” said Washington attorney Stephanie Connor, who works on tariff cases. Trump and future presidents could sidestep Congress to impose tariffs simply by citing an emergency, she said.
But the decision itself may have a limited impact because the administration has announced new tariffs last week that were based on other national security laws.
They did not seek a fast-track ruling, however. Instead, they said the court should grant review and hear arguments on the regular schedule early next year. If so, a decision would be handed down by late June.
The amendment says: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States.”
And in the past, both Congress and the Supreme Court have agreed that rule applies broadly to all children who are born here, except if their parents are foreign ambassadors or diplomats who are not subject to U.S. laws.
But Trump Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer said that interpretation is mistaken. He said the post-Civil War amendment was “adopted to grant citizenship to freed slaves and their children, not to the children of illegal aliens, birth tourists and temporary visitors.”
Judges in three regions of the country have rejected Trump’s limits on the citizenship rule and blocked it from taking effect nationwide while the litigation continues.
I hope that everybody recognizes now that there is *** hybrid war, and one day it’s Poland, the other day it’s Denmark, and next week it will probably be somewhere else that we see sabotage or we see drones flying or we see. Yeah you can you can there are many different kinds of episodes, so I see this from *** European perspective. There is only one country that are willing to threat us, and it is Russia, and therefore we need *** very strong answer back.
At least 5 dead in large-scale nighttime Russian strike on Ukraine
At least five civilians died after Russia launched drones, missiles and guided aerial bombs at Ukraine overnight into Sunday, in a major attack that officials there said targeted civilian infrastructure.Moscow sent over 50 ballistic missiles and around 500 drones into nine regions across Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Sunday morning.Four people died in a combined drone and missile strike on Lviv, according to regional officials and Ukraine’s emergency service. The historic western city is often seen as a haven from the fighting and destruction further east. At least four more people sustained injuries, the emergency service said. The strike left two districts without power and public transport suspended for a few hours early Sunday, Mayor Andriy Sadovyi reported. He added that a business complex on the outskirts of Lviv was on fire following the strike. In the southern city of Zaporizhzhia, a nighttime aerial assault killed a civilian woman and wounded nine other people, including a 16-year-old girl, regional Gov. Ivan Fedorov reported. He said Russia attacked with drones and guided aerial bombs. Fedorov said the strike destroyed residential buildings and left some 73,000 households in Zaporizhzhia and surrounding areas without power.
At least five civilians died after Russia launched drones, missiles and guided aerial bombs at Ukraine overnight into Sunday, in a major attack that officials there said targeted civilian infrastructure.
Moscow sent over 50 ballistic missiles and around 500 drones into nine regions across Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Sunday morning.
Four people died in a combined drone and missile strike on Lviv, according to regional officials and Ukraine’s emergency service. The historic western city is often seen as a haven from the fighting and destruction further east. At least four more people sustained injuries, the emergency service said.
The strike left two districts without power and public transport suspended for a few hours early Sunday, Mayor Andriy Sadovyi reported. He added that a business complex on the outskirts of Lviv was on fire following the strike.
In the southern city of Zaporizhzhia, a nighttime aerial assault killed a civilian woman and wounded nine other people, including a 16-year-old girl, regional Gov. Ivan Fedorov reported. He said Russia attacked with drones and guided aerial bombs.
Fedorov said the strike destroyed residential buildings and left some 73,000 households in Zaporizhzhia and surrounding areas without power.
There are six power banks on my desk right now. On the shelves behind me are a dozen (two dozen?) more. Over the past three years, I’ve tested more than 55 portable battery packs for Engadget — and can attest these handy devices are only getting better. If you often forget to charge your phone or find yourself traveling for work or leisure, having one of these in your bag can be a lifeline. Here you’ll find banks ranging from Qi2-enabled slabs for wireless phone refills to larger bricks that can save a dying laptop. Here are the best power banks you can buy, according to our tests.
Table of contents
Best power banks for 2025
Photo by Amy Skorheim / Engadget
Capacity: 10,000mAh | Maximum Output: 15W (wireless) | Ports: One USB-C in/out | Included cable: USB-C to USB-C | Number of charges iPhone 15: 1.64 | Charge time iPhone: 4 to 100% in 2h 26m and 0 to 70% in 1h 8m
Anker’s MagGo Power Bank was one of the first Qi2-certified products to come on the market, and the new standard has made the brand’s popular MagSafe/kickstand model much faster. It’s the most well-rounded best MagSafe battery I’ve tested, but if you’re looking for other options, we have an entire MagSafe power bank guide to peruse.
It brought an iPhone 15 from near-dead to half-full in about 45 minutes. For reference, it took our former top pick in this category an hour and a half to do the same. It’s similarly faster than Anker’s previous generation of this model, the 633, as well. After that initial refill, the MagGo 10K had enough left over to get the phone up to 70 percent on a subsequent charge.
In addition to faster charging speeds, this Anker power bank adds a LCD display to indicate the battery percentage left in the bank, plus the approximate amount of time before it’s full (when it’s refilling) or empty (when it’s doing the charging). A strong MagSafe connection makes it easy to use the phone while it charges and the small kickstand creates a surprisingly sturdy base for watching videos and the like. If you twist the phone to landscape, StandBy mode kicks in.
The power bank did a fine job of charging our Galaxy S23 Ultra — though that model doesn’t have Qi2 support. New , so those handsets will charge at a faster rate with this battery — and benefit from zero-effort magnetic alignment. The MagGo also has a USB-C port, so if you need to fill up something without wireless capabilities, you can.
Capacity: 5,000 mAh | Maximum Output: 22.5W | Ports: One USB-C and one USB-C connector | Cable: USB-C to USB-C | Number of charges Galaxy S23 Ultra: 0.65 | Charge time: 0 to 65% in 1h 2m
The Anker Nano power bank is impressive for how much charge it delivers in such a small package. It’s the exact size and shape of the lipstick case my grandma used to carry and has a built-in USB-C connector that folds down when you’re not using it. That means that, in addition to being ultra-portable, you don’t need to remember to grab a charging cable when you toss it in your bag. There’s also a built-in USB-C port that can refill the battery or be used to fill up a different device with an adapter cable. Four indicator lights let you know how much charge remains in the battery.
In my testing, the 5,000mAh battery provided enough charge to get a depleted Galaxy S23 Ultra back up to 65 percent in about an hour. That’s relatively quick, but the Nano is also small enough that, with its sturdy connection, you can use your phone while it’s charging without feeling too awkward. The charger’s small size also makes it a good pick for recharging earbuds.
For a little more juice and an equally clever design, Anker’s 30W Nano Power Bank is a good option for delivering a single charge. It’s bigger in size and capacity (10,000mAh) and includes a display indicating the remaining charge percentage. The built-in USB-C cable doubles as a carry handle, which is a nice touch. That cable is in/out and there’s another USB-C in-out port in addition to an out-only USB-A port.
Capacity: 10,000mAh | Maximum Output: 30W | Ports: One USB-C in/out port, one USB-C in/out cable, wall prongs | Cable: Built-in USB-C | Number of charges iPhone 15: 1.86 | Charge time iPhone: 5 to 100% 1h 53m and 5 to 91% 1h 5m | Number of charges Galaxy S23 Ultra: 1.45 | Charge time Galaxy: 5 to 100% 1h 2m, 5% to 50% 23m
The toughest thing about using a power bank is remembering to bring it along. You also have to remember a cable and, if you want to refill the bank itself, a wall adapter. Anker’s 10K Fusion solves two of those problems with its attached USB-C cable for your device and foldable two-prong plug for charging the bank itself (yes, you still have to remember to bring the thing with you).
Despite the attachments, it’s compact, just a smidge wider than a stick of butter, yet still packs a 10,000 mAh capacity. The 30 watts of power enabled the “Super Fast Charging” message on a Galaxy S23 android phone and got it from five percent to full in just over an hour. In just 20 minutes, the 10K Fusion bumped a near-dead iPhone 15 to 45 percent. Though it slowed down towards the end of the Apple handset’s charge.
There’s an additional USB-C port for charging devices that may require a different cable and both it and the built-in connector can be used to refill the power bank. The cable makes a neat loop that looks a lot like a handle. Even though I’m wary of carrying a device around by its cord, it felt sturdy enough.
The onboard display indicates the Fusion’s remaining charge in terms of a percentage and was one of the more accurate readouts I’ve tested. I also like the corduroy texture along the sides — very fidget-worthy.
Our previous pick in this low-capacity category, the BioLite Charge 40 PD, is still an excellent choice — it’s durable, delivers a quick charge and looks cool. I use it often myself. Plus BioLite has an admirable mission of bringing energy to places where it’s otherwise scarce. But Anker’s new release, the 10K Fusion simply delivers a faster charge and more features at a lower price.
Pros
Has a built-in USB-C cable
Also has built-in wall prongs
Display is fairly accurate
Affordable
Cons
iPhone charging is slower than other banks in its range
Capacity: 20,000mAh | Maximumoutput: 30W | Ports: One built-in USB-C in/out cable, one USB-A port, one USB-C port | Cable: USB-C | Number of charges iPhone 15: 3 – 3.5 | Charge time iPhone: 5 to 100% in 2h 6m | Number of charges Galaxy S23 Ultra: 2.5 – 3 | Charge time S23 Ultra: 1h 15m
An integrated cable seems to be the hot new feature in portable chargers — and I’m all for it. I can remember times when I’ve had a dead phone and power bank, but no way to connect the two. The Belkin Boost Charge 20K with Integrated Cable is the latest such bank I’ve tested and also one of the more affordable examples.
It can output a maximum of 30 watts, which doesn’t make it the fastest charger around, but it wasn’t a slouch. It charged a Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra from near-dead to full in an hour and 15 minutes and bumped an iPhone 15 from five to 87 percent in just over an hour. And the 20,000mAh capacity means it can achieve those numbers around three times over.
In addition to the built-in (and conveniently magnetized) USB-C cable, there are two other ports: an out-only USB-A and an in/out Type C. That means you can technically charge three devices at the same time, but just note that the amount of charge and the time it takes for things to refill will both take a hit.
There’s no digital screen to tell you how much charge remains in the battery, just four indicator LEDs. I’ve certainly found display readouts to be helpful in determining just how much more juice I can squeeze out of a battery, but the lighted pips here are accurate and still useful.
While color options probably won’t make or break your battery pack purchase, I appreciate that the BoostCharge 20K comes in something other than standard black. You can of course get it in that shade, but also in blue, pink or white. The pink of my tester unit was pale and pretty and the matte finish does a good job of staying clean — some black smudges from who-knows-what in my bag came off easily with some rubbing alcohol.
Capacity: 20,000mAh | Maximum Output: 65W | Ports: Two USB-C in/out | Cable: USB-C to USB-C | Number of charges iPhone 11: 2.95 | Charge time iPhone: 5 to 100% in 1h 39m average | Number of charges Galaxy S22 Ultra: 2.99 | Charge time Galaxy: 5 to 100% in 59m average | Number of charges iPad Air: 1.83 | Charge time iPad: 5 to 100% in 1h 55m and 83% in 1h 21m
Nimble’s Champ Pro battery delivers a screaming fast charge and got a Galaxy S23 Ultra from five percent to full in under an hour. That’s faster than every other battery I tested except for Anker’s Laptop Power Bank, our premium pick — and that model costs $30 more. It lent nearly three full charges to both an iPhone and Galaxy device and has enough juice to refill an iPad more than once. The battery pack itself also re-ups from the wall noticeably faster than other models, so it’ll get you out the door quicker.
The company, Nimble, is a certified B-Corp, meaning they aim for higher environmental and social standards and verify their efforts through independent testing. The Champ Pro uses 90 percent post-consumer plastic and comes in packaging made from paper scrap with a bag for shipping back your old battery (or other tech) for recycling.
The unit itself feels sturdy and has a compact shape that’s a little narrower than a smartphone and about as long. The attached adjustable lanyard is cute, if a little superfluous, and the marbled effect from the recycled plastics give it a nice aesthetic. You can charge devices from both USB-C ports simultaneously, and both are input/output plugs.
My only qualm was with the four indicator lights. On a second testing round, it dropped down to just one remaining pip, yet went on to deliver a full fill-up plus an additional top off after that. That said, I’m glad the indicator lights under-estimated the remaining charge rather than the other way around, and the accuracy seemed to improve after subsequent depletions and refills.
Capacity: 27,000mAh | Maximum Output: 85W | Ports: One in/out USB-C, two out only USB-A, three wireless pads | Cable: USB-C to USB-C | Number of charges iPhone 15: 5.67 | Charge time iPhone: 5 to 100% in 2h 22m average and 5 to 68% in 35m | Number of charges Galaxy S23 Ultra: 4.46 | Charge time Galaxy: 5 to 100% in 1h 21m average 5 to 46% in 25m | Number of charges iPad Air: 2.78 | Charge time iPad: 5 to 100% in 1h 55m average and 5 to 78% in 1h 11m | Number of charges MacBook Pro: 0.79 | Charge time MacBook Pro: 10-89% 1h 18m
Power banks that can charge a laptop are a category unto themselves. I recently put together a guide to those high-capacity portable chargers and Lion Energy’s Eclipse Mag made the cut as the best option for traveling with your laptop — but it’s also great for smaller devices.
The selling point here is supposed to be the three wireless charging pads on its topside, but I found its wired performance to be even more impressive. The 27,000mAh battery translates to about 100 watt hours, aka the TSA’s largest approved capacity for travel. It’s more compact than other 27K batteries, though at two pounds and 8.5 inches long, it’s hardly small. The soft-touch plastic on the exterior is thicker at the angled-off corners, which makes it feel like it could handle a tumble — Lion Energy doesn’t list any sort of mil spec or other ratings for drop endurance so I didn’t subject the tester unit to any rough handling.
Measuring the recharge time of the batteries from the wall isn’t one of the metrics I usually test, but Lion Energy claims a 90 minute refill and my experience lines up with that. It refilled our iPhone 15 five and a half times and the Galaxy S23 Ultra nearly five times. It revived a 16-inch MacBook Pro from 10 percent to 89 percent while it was in use. That works out to about 14 percentage points more than our current command center battery recommendation.
The previous pick in this category, Anker’s 737, charged up a Galaxy S22 Ultra slightly faster than the Eclipse Mag refilled a Galaxy S23 Ultra (which have the same battery capacity) but the Eclipse had more charge to give every device.
A double-press of the status button enables wireless charging and more than one device can be charged at once. It also supports pass-through charging, so you can have the battery charging from the wall as you charge your device.
Magnets align with an iPhone’s MagSafe circle to position the phone quickly. Finding the sweet spot for the Galaxy phone takes a little adjustment, but was easy enough. It took nearly three hours to fully charge the iPhone 15 from five to 100 percent, but getting it to 87 percent only took two hours. With any portable battery, the charge rate slows significantly as the device approaches 100 percent — and that’s even more noticeable with a wireless portable charger.
Lion Energy told me the Eclipse Mag is designed for Apple Watches only. Not surprising given the Pixel Watch 4 uses a special puck and Samsung recommends you only use its chargers to refill a Galaxy Watch. My Apple Watch snapped into place easily and started charging right away (after I remembered to double press the button to fire up the wireless pads). There’s also a pad for wirelessly recharging your AirPods.
At $149, it’s relatively affordable for a lot of power, particularly given the wireless charging feature. I wish it had more than one USB-C port, but I suppose the wireless pads make up for the lack. Overall, it’s a solid choice for long trips or for working away from an outlet for a day or two.
Pros
Massive 27,000mAh capacity
Quick charge wired charging times
Wireless charging works well for a portable battery
Capacity: 27,000mAh | Maximum Output: 140W | Ports: One USB-C in/out, one USB-C out, USB-A, 100W AC | Cable: USB-C to USB-C | Number of charges iPhone 11: 3.75 | Charge time iPhone: 0 to 100% in 1h 40m average and 75% in 46m | Number of charges iPad Air: 2.15 | Charge time iPad: 0 to 100% in 1h 56m and 15% in 19m | Number of charges 16” MacBook Pro: 0.65 | Charge time MBP: 10% to 75% in 1h 29m
The TSA’s 100-watt-hour battery limit translates to around 27,000mAh for lithium batteries. Mophie’s Powerstation Pro AC is so massive it necessitates a grab handle and get close to the edge of that max carry-on size. You probably won’t find a larger, acceptable portable power bank — after all, an on-the-go charging brick is pointless if you can’t travel with it. I took this one through security at two airports and no one gave it a second glance.
To power your laptop and the rest of your mobile work setup, the Powerstation has four ports. Three of them are the usual USBs, but there’s also a three-prong AC outlet. Most current devices charge via USB (and doing so is more efficient than using a power adapter between the cable and power bank), but older devices and certain mobile workstation accessories — speakers, lights and printers come to mind — might only power up through a basic wall plug. Just be sure to hold down the status button until the light turns red to turn on the AC port.
The AC plug powered most small appliances I plugged into it, including a small speaker, an HP printer and various LED lights. The 100 available watts isn’t enough to continuously push a charge through the 140W power adapter that ships with the 16-inch MacBook Pro, but via the USB-C port, it was able to charge that laptop from 10 percent to 75 percent in under 90 minutes.
The four lighted LED indicators will tell you when the battery is full. Unfortunately, it’s not the best indicator of when the bank will run out of juice. It charges for quite a while with four and three pips lit up, but then quickly cycles through the last two dots before it dies. So it might be better to just remember how much you’ve used the brick rather than relying too heavily on its indicators.
Smaller devices like a smartphone will get numerous charges; I got nearly five refills on an iPhone 11, and two charges and some change on an iPad. The Powerstation Pro AC was even a little faster at both tasks than our previous pick for a mobile command center. That said, this bank is overkill for a simple mobile device fill-up. At 2.6 pounds, it makes the most sense as a power source when you’re working in the field with multiple components.
Capacity: 25,000mAh | Maximumoutput: 165W | Ports: Two built-in USB-C in/out cables, one USB-A port, one USB-C port | Cable: USB-C to USB-C | Number of charges iPhone 15: 4 – 5 | Charge time iPhone: 5 to 100% in 1h 54m | Number of charges Galaxy S23 Ultra: 3.75 – 4 | Charge time S23 Ultra: 52m | Number of charges iPad Air: 1.75 – 2 | Charge time iPad: 5 to 100% in 1h 58m | Number of charges MacBook Pro: 0.68 | Charge time MacBook Pro: 53 m
The only thing worse than needing a power bank and not having one is having one but no way to connect it to your device. The Anker laptop power bank with built-in cable forgoes any clever naming scheme, but makes sure you’re never left without a way to charge your stuff. It has two attached USB-C cables: one attached to the side of the battery that acts as a carrying cable and another retractable cord that extends up to two feet. Both handle in/out functions so you can use them to refill a device or reup the battery itself.
The display tells you the amount of charge remaining in the battery pack as well as the output wattage that’s funnelling towards your devices from each port. When refilling the battery, you can see an estimate of how long it will be until the unit is full. Calculating and displaying info like that takes up a bit of power but, in my testing, the unit outputs the same or a higher amount of charge compared with other 25,000 mAh batteries.
It’s an attractive bank, with matte silver exterior and a smaller display area than Anker’s Prime bank (our previous pick for this category). One of my concerns with that battery was the huge display area which was easily scratched. This newer unit feels more durable.
This 25,000 mAh model is a great alternative to the 27.5K Prime model, delivering slightly less charge but selling for $80 less as well. It’s also a better deal than Anker’s popular Powercore bank, which is the same price as the laptop bank but doesn’t have built-in cables.
Pros
Two built-in USB-C cables so you’re never without a cord
Capacity: 15,000mAh | Maximum Output: 32W | Ports: One USB-C in/out, one USB-C in, one USB-A | Cable: USB-A to USB-C | Number of charges iPhone 11: 2.99 | Charge time iPhone 11: 0 to 100% 2h average and 0 to 99% in 1h 45m | Number of charges iPad Air: 1.17 | Charge time iPad: 0 to 100% 2h 23m and 0 to 17% 15m
Plenty of battery packs are built to withstand drops and other abuse, but very few are waterproof or even water resistance. It makes sense; water and electrical charges aren’t good companions. The Nestout Portable Charger battery has an IP67 rating, which means it can handle being submerged in water for a number of minutes, and Nestout claims a 30-minute dunk in a meter of water shouldn’t interfere with the battery’s operation. I couldn’t think of a likely scenario where a power bank would spend a half hour in three feet of water, but I could see a backpacker traversing a river and submerging their pack for a few minutes, or a sudden downpour drenching all of their gear. So I tested by dropping the battery in a five gallon bucket of water for five minutes. After drying it off, the unit performed as if it had never been wet.
The water resistance comes courtesy of screw-on caps with silicone gaskets that physically keep the water out, so you’ll need to make sure you tighten (but don’t over tighten) the caps whenever you think wetness is in your future. The company also claims the battery lives up to a military-standard shock/drop specification which sounds impressive, but it’s hard to pin down what exactly that means. I figured it should at minimum survive repeated drops from chest height onto a hard surface, and it did.
As for charging speeds, it wasn’t quite as quick as our recommendation for a mid-capacity bank. The Belkin charged an iPhone 15 to 80 percent in under an hour and the Nestout got the smaller iPhone 11 to 80 percent in a little more than that. Another thing to note is that the supplied cable is short, just seven inches total, so you’ll likely want to use your own cord.
Nestout also makes accessories for its batteries, which I found delightful. A dimmable LED worklight snaps on to the top of the battery while a small tripod holds them both up. The portable solar panel reminded me of a baby version of Biolite’s camping panels. Nestout’s version refilled the 15,000mAh bank to 40 percent in under three hours, which sounds slow, but is actually fairly impressive considering the compact size of the panels. This is also a blazingly hot summer, so I’d expect better performance in more reasonable weather.
Travelers — both international and domestic — will likely appreciate the clever design of the InfinaCore P3 Pro. It’s a compact square in the shape of a coaster and a little over an inch thick. There’s a Qi2 wireless charging pad on one side as well as a built-in, two-prong wall adapter at the edge. Those prongs fold down, not only to make it easier to pack the brick, but also to allow for three (included) international adapters to slide over the plug. That makes it ready for travel to countries with type G (UK, Saudi Arabia), type C (Europe) and type I (Australia, China) plugs.
The built-in plug lets the P3 Pro act as both a portable charger and a wall adapter. Because the brick is rather large, I worried it would fall out of the wall, but the standard prongs stayed firmly attached to my outlets at home (I, sadly, haven’t gone on any international trips, so I couldn’t test the adapters.) There are also two USB-C ports on the side, one for fast charging from the battery and one for in/out power transfers. There’s also a USB-A slot and a (very) small carry strap.
The display shows the remaining charge as well as the amount of charge currently being output. It has a 10,500mAh capacity, which filled an iPhone 15 once with about 25 percent left over. After filling a Galaxy S24 Ultra, the battery had about 33 percent remaining. That’s a little less charge than I would have expected for the listed capacity (most 10K banks I’ve tested deliver more). It’s also a touch slow in filling an iPhone, taking over three hours to fill one wirelessly, and nearly two hours to fill it with a cable. The speed on the Galaxy refill was better, clocking in at a little over an hour to go from four percent to full.
At the list price of $200, the P3 Pro really only makes sense for an international traveler who wants a wall adapter, wireless charger and power bank in one. But if you can find it on sale, grab it. It’s a clever design that works decently and comes with a 99-year warranty.
Nearly every rechargeable power bank you can buy (and most portable devices) contain a lithium-ion battery. These beat other current battery types in terms of size-to-charge capacity, and have even increased in energy density by eight fold in the past 14 years. They also don’t suffer from a memory effect (where a battery’s lifespan deteriorates due to partial charges).
Flying with portable batteries
You may have heard about lithium ion batteries overheating and catching fire — a recent Hong Kong flight was grounded after just such a thing happened in an overhead bin. Current restrictions implemented by the TSA still allow external batteries rated at 100Wh or less (which all of our recommendations are) to fly with you, but only in your carry-on luggage — they can’t be checked.
Recently, Southwest Airlines was the first in the industry to take that rule one step further. Now, flyers on that airline must keep power banks in clear view when using them to recharge a device. If the portable charger isn’t actively in use, however, it can stay in your carry-on bag in the overhead bin.
Capacity
Power bank manufacturers almost always list a battery’s capacity in milliamp hours, or mAh. Smaller batteries with a 5,000mAh capacity make good phone chargers and can fill a smartphone to between 50 and 75 percent. Larger batteries that can recharge laptops and tablets, or give phones multiple charges, can exceed 25,000mAh and we have a separate guide that covers that entire category.
Unsurprisingly, the prices on most batteries goes up as mAh capacity increases, and since batteries are physical storage units, size and weight go up with capacity as well. If you want more power, be prepared to spend more and carry around a heavier brick.
You might think that a 10,000mAh power bank could charge a 5,000mAh phone to 100 percent twice, but that’s not the case. In addition to simple energy loss through heat dissipation, factors like voltage conversion also bring down the amount of juice that makes it into your phone. Most manufacturers list how many charges a battery can give a certain smartphone. In our tests, 10,000mAh of battery pack capacity translated to roughly 5,800mAh of device charge. 20,000mAh chargers delivered around 11,250mAh to a device, and 25,000mAh banks translated to about 16,200mAh of charge. That’s an average efficiency rate of around 60 percent.
Wireless
Wireless charging, whether through a bank or a plugged-in charging pad, is less efficient than wired connections. But it is convenient — and in most cases, you can carry around and use your phone as it refills with a magnetically attached power bank.
Power banks with wireless charging are far better than they once were. Just a couple years ago, the ones I tested were too inefficient to recommend in this guide. When batteries adhering to the Qi2 wireless charging standard started arriving in 2023, performance markedly improved.
To gain Qi2-certification, a device has to support speeds of up to 15 watts and include magnetic attachment points. The MagSafe technology on iPhones were once the only handsets that were Qi2-compatible, but now Google’s Pixelsnap tech brings both the higher speed and magnetic grip to Pixel 10 phones. Samsung may follow up with its own version in future releases.
The latest wireless charging standard, Q12 25W, is supported by the new iPhone 17 phones as well as the Google Pixel 10 Pro XL. Battery packs that are Qi2 25W-enabled are starting to hit the market as well, and the Ugreen MagFlow was the first on the scene.
Ports
USB-C ports can deliver faster charges than USB-A ports, and most of the portable chargers we recommend here have Type-C connections. But Type-A jacks are still handy if you need to use a specialized cable for a certain device (my camera’s USB-A to micro USB cable comes to mind).
There’s also variation among USB-C ports. Larger banks with more than one port will sometimes list different wattages for each. For example, a bank with three ports may have two 65W ports and one 100W port. There will also be at least one in/out port on the bank, which can be used to charge the battery itself or to deliver a charge to your device. Wattages and in/out labels are printed right next to the port — and always in the tiniest font possible (remember, your phone is an excellent magnifying glass if you ever have trouble reading them).
As with standard wall chargers, the port’s wattage will determine what you can charge. A phone will happily charge off a 100W connection, but a 15W plug won’t do much for your laptop. And remember, the cable has to match the maximum wattage. A cable rated for 60W won’t deliver 100W speeds.
Luckily, some of the best power banks include a built-in USB-C cable. That’ll not only ensure you have the right cord, it’s one less thing you have to remember to bring along.
Design
Once, most rechargeable batteries were black with a squared-off, brick-like design, but now they come in different colors and shapes with attractive finishes and detailing. While that doesn’t affect how they perform, it’s a consideration for something you’ll interact with regularly. Some portable power banks include extra features like MagSafe compatibility, a built-in wall plug or even a kickstand. Nearly all have some sort of indicator to let you know how much available charge your power bank has left, usually expressed with lighted pips near the power button. Some of the newer banks take that a step further with an LED display indicating remaining battery percentage.
How we test best power banks
Before I even put my hands on a battery pack, I did extensive research. I considered brands Engadget reviewers and staff have tried over the years and checked out customer ratings on retail sites like Amazon and Best Buy. Then, I acquire the most promising candidates and test them in my home office.
Amy Skorheim for Engadget
Here’s the full list of power banks we’ve tested, which range from small wireless banks to large, multi-device batteries:
We’re continuously updating this guide as companies release new products and we test them. We remove some products as we find picks that are more worthy of the best portable charger designation. We also add updated specs and prices where necessary.
For testing, I used each battery with some combination of an iPhone 16, iPhone 15, iPhone 14 Plus, iPhone 11, a Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra, a Galaxy S23 Ultra, a 5th-gen iPad Air and an M1 Pro 16-inch MacBook Pro. I charged one phone battery at a time, even though some packs are capable of multiple-device charging. I charged the phones and tablets from between zero and five percent until they were 100 percent full (or until the power bank was dead), and didn’t use the phones or tablets while they charged other than to power them on and enter the unlock code. In the case of the MacBook, I used it while it was charging (it’s my work computer).
I used the charging cable included with each power bank to charge the Galaxy S22 Ultra, MacBook Pro and the iPad Air. For the iPhones, I used the USB-C to Lighting cable that Apple provides. In the case of the lower-capacity power banks that didn’t include a cord or included one with USB-C to USB-A connectors, I used this 60W-rated USB-C to USB-C cable.
For reference, here are the battery capacities of each device we used for testing:
I noted the times for each charge and the number of charges each bank provided. I also paid attention to things like ease of use and overall design.
Other power banks we tested
HyperJuice 245W
Hyper’s massive-but-sleek brick is one nice looking power bank. The HyperJuice 245W packs a hefty 27,000mAh capacity, enough to refill my tester phone about four times and get a MacBook Pro from near-dead to 75 percent. It only has USB-C ports, but you at least get four of them. USB-C only is probably fine for most situations, but a USB-A port would be nice for charging the occasional older peripheral. The 245 wattage is pretty high for a power bank and it was indeed speedy. It filled a Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra in just over an hour. But it’s the same price and capacity as our Mophie Powerstation pick for laptop banks, and that one has a better variety of ports. Hyper’s battery is also comparable to Anker’s laptop battery, which is cheaper, has built-in cables and has nearly the same capacity. Plus, that bank is just as swanky looking.
Anker Prime 20,000 mAh power bank
Anker’s Prime bank was our previous pick for the best premium power bank, but I thought it worked best with the expensive (yet very convenient) base. Considering it also doesn’t have any built-in cables, we decided to bump the Prime battery from its position and replace it with the Anker Retractable Cable Laptop Bank. There’s still plenty to like about the Prime battery: it’s solid, attractive and tells you just how much charge it has left with its onboard display. When you add the optional base, you not only get a convenient drop-and-go way to recharge, it also acts as a charging hub with three additional USB ports.
EcoFlow Rapid magnetic power bank
I was curious to try out the first power bank from EcoFlow, a company that primarily makes larger power stations and whole-home backup batteries. The first offering in the brand’s Rapid series is a Qi2-enabled magnetic charger with a 5,000mAh capacity. It looks quite nice with shiny silver accents and soft-touch grey plastic on the MagSafe-compatible front. There’s a little pull-out leg that sturdily displays your phone as it charges and the attached USB-C cable lets you refill devices directly, then tucks out of the way when it’s not in use. But it didn’t outperform our top pick in the MagSafe category, in terms of both charging speeds and the amount of charge delivered.
Baseus Blade 2
The Blade 2 from Baseus has a unique, flat shape that’s just a little wider than an ereader — which may make it easier to slip into a low profile laptop bag. It charged a Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra considerably faster than any other battery bank we tried, getting it from four percent to full in just over an hour. It then filled the phone back to 62 percent from dead on a second charge in about a half an hour. But $100 is a lot for a standard power bank that holds fewer than two full charges. But if you can find the Blade 2 on sale, snap it up.
Anker MagGo (6.6K)
Anker’s 6.6k MagGo is pretty similar to our top pick for a MagSafe-compatible battery pack. It supports the Qi2 charging standard and props up your iPhone so you can use it or enable StandBy mode while powering up. This one even lets you set the viewing angle from 30 to 65 degrees. It was speedy in getting an iPhone 15 up to 50 percent in about 40 minutes. But for the added bulk, it doesn’t have as much capacity as the 10K MagGo, holding just enough juice for a single full charge plus about 5 percent. But it is $20 cheaper, which may be key for some.
Mophie Snap+ Powerstation Mini
The Mophie snap+ Powerstation Mini is terribly well-built. It feels premium with a rubberized contact point for the MagSafe charging pad and a stand that runs the entire width of the bank itself, making it extra sturdy. It’s compact, too, but only carries a 5,000mAh capacity, which gets you a partial charge on most newer or larger phones. Our current MagSafe/iPhone pick has double the capacity, a stand and a digital display — for just $20 more than the Powerstation Mini.
Power bank FAQs
What’s the difference between a portable power bank and a portable charger?
A slew of terms are used to describe power banks, including portable batteries, portable chargers, external battery packs and even, somewhat confusingly, USB chargers, which is what wall chargers are often called. They all mean the same thing: a lithium ion battery that stores a charge so you can refill a smartphone, tablet, earbuds, console controller, ereader, laptop, or just about any other device with its own built-in, rechargeable battery.
There’s little difference between the terms, so the specs you’ll want to pay attention to are capacity (expressed in mAh), size and weight so you can find the right balance between recharging what you need and portability.
Power stations, on the other hand, are distinct. These are bigger units (often around the size of a car battery) that can be used to charge multiple devices multiple times, but notably, they can’t be taken on airplanes.
Does fast charging actually ruin your battery?
Not exactly. The real enemy of a battery’s longevity is heat. The faster you charge a battery, the more heat is generated. Modern phones have features that keep the battery cool while charging, like physical heat shields and heat sinks, as well as software features that slow down processes that generate too much heat. Phone manufacturers are keen to promote a phone’s fast-charging abilities, so they had to figure out ways to make faster charging work.
While there aren’t long-term studies on what fast charging does to a phone, a study on EV batteries (which use the same general concept of charged lithium ions flowing from one side of the battery to the other, absorbing or releasing a usable charge) showed a very slight decrease in capacity over time with only fast charging — though what actually made a larger difference was how hot the battery itself was, due to ambient temperatures, when it was charged.
In short, fast charging could be slightly harder on your battery than normal charging. But the safeguards most smartphones have make that difference fairly negligible. To really ensure you’re taking the best care of your battery, limiting heat exposure overall is one of the best things you can do.
Can you use a power bank for all your devices?
That depends on the size of the bank and the size of your device’s battery. A small 5,000mAh battery isn’t strong enough to charge laptops, but a portable charger with a 20,000mAh capacity will give your computer a partial refill. You also have to consider port compatibility. If your device has a USB port, you’ll be able to easily find a cable to connect it to a battery. If your device has a more unique port, such as a DC port, you won’t be able to use a battery. Devices with an AC cable and plug can be charged, and sometimes powered (such as in the case of a printer or speaker), by larger laptop batteries with AC ports.
So Jimmy Kimmel is coming back, fast enough that there are still folks out there who didn’t know he was gone.
Hallelujah? Praise be to ABC? Free speech triumphs?
It all depends on Tuesday night, when we see if Kimmel returns undaunted, or if he has been subdued. Of all the consequential, crazy, frightening events that have taken place in recent days, Kimmel’s return should be a moment we all watch — a real-time, late-night look at how successful our president is at forcing us to censor ourselves through fear.
Please, Jimmy, don’t back down.
If Kimmel tempers his comedy now, pulls his punches on making fun of power, he sends the message that we should all be afraid, that we should all bend. Maybe he didn’t sign up for this, but here he is — a person in a position of influence being forced to make a risky choice between safety and country.
That sounds terribly dramatic, I know, but self-censorship is the heart of authoritarianism. When people of power are too scared to even crack a joke, what does that mean for the average person?
If Kimmel, with his celebrity, clout and wealth, cannot stand up to this president, what chance do the rest of us have?
Patriotism used to be a simple thing. A bit of apple pie, a flag on the Fourth of July, maybe even a twinge of pride when the national anthem plays and all the words pop into your mind even though you can’t find your car keys or remember what day it is.
It’s just something there, running in the background — an unspoken acknowledgment that being American is a pretty terrific thing to be.
Now, of course, patriotism is the most loaded of words. It’s been masticated and barfed out by the MAGA movement into a specific gruel — a white, Western-centric dogma that demands a narrow and angry Christianity dominate civic life.
The one that put a knot in my stomach was the speech by Stephen Miller, Trump’s immigration czar, speaking, without humor, at the memorial for Charlie Kirk.
That’s disturbing, but actually mild compared with what he said next, a now-familiar Christian nationalist rant.
“Our lineage and our legacy hails back to Athens, to Rome, to Philadelphia, to Monticello,” Miller said. “Our ancestors built the cities they produced, the art and architecture they built. The industry.”
Who’s going to tell him about Sally Hemings? But he continued with an attack on the “yous” who don’t agree with this worldview, the “yous,” like Kimmel, one presumes (though Kimmel’s name did not come up) who oppose this cruel version of America.
“You are wickedness, you are jealousy, you are envy, you are hatred, you are nothing,” Miller said. “You can build nothing. You can produce nothing. You can create nothing.”
Humor, of course, ain’t nothing, which is why this administration can’t stand it.
Humor builds camaraderie. It produces dopamine and serotonin, the glue of human bonding. It drains away fear, and creates hope.
Which is why autocrats always go after comedians pretty early on. It’s not thin skin, though Trump seems to have that. It’s effective management of dissent.
Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels knew it. In 1939, after his party had set up a Chamber of Culture that required all performers to adhere to certain rules, he banned five German comedians — Werner Finck, Peter Sachse, Helmuth Buth, Wilhelm Meissner and Manfred Dlugi — for making political jokes that didn’t support the regime. He basically ended their careers for daring satire against Nazi leaders, claiming people didn’t find it funny.
“(I)n their public appearances they displayed a lack of any positive attitude toward National Socialism and therewith caused grave annoyance in public and especially to party comrades,” the New York Times reported the German government claiming at the time.
Sounds familiar.
Kimmel, of course, is not the only comedian speaking out. Jon Stewart has hit back on “The Daily Show,” pretending to be scared into submission, perhaps a hat tip to Finck, who famously joked, “I am not saying anything. And even that I am not saying.”
And there are plenty of others pushing back. Gov. Gavin Newsom has taken to all-caps rebuttals. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, whom Trump called “nothing,” is also vocal in his opposition, especially of National Guard troops in Chicago.
The collective power of the powerful is no joke. It means something.
But all the sober talk in the world can’t rival one spot-on dig when it comes to kicking the clay feet of would-be dictators. Mark Twain said it best: Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand. Which is what makes Kimmel so relevant in this moment.
Can he come back with a laugh — proving we have nothing to fear but fear itself — or are we seriously in trouble?
Evacuations were almost called in north Sacramento after a railcar caught fire on Monday morning in a mostly industrial part of the city, officials said. Crews were dispatched around 2:08 a.m. to the 3900 block of Roseville Road underneath the Highway 80 overpass near Del Paso Park.A railcar caught fire with the potential to spread to two other railcars, one tank containing ethanol and another containing diesel, both explosive materials. A three-alarm fire was called for additional units to help, the Sacramento Fire Department said. The fire extended into some grass, six vehicles in a tow yard and a trailer containing lead-acid batteries. Power lines were damaged and people lost power, the fire department said.The SMUD outage map showed 1,859 customers lost power in the area around 2:52 a.m. due to damaged equipment. Power had been restored to all but 31 customers as of 5:20 a.m. Roseville Road is shut down between Marconi Avenue and Longview Drive. I-80 was not closed as the fire was contained. It was unclear what caused the fire or where it originated. No injuries have been reported at this time. Sacramento Valley Railroad, under Patriot Rail, operates the railcar that caught fire. Patriot Rail told KCRA3 that the railcar that caught fire was carrying telephone poles and the fire didn’t spread to any other railcars. See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel
NORTH HIGHLANDS, Calif. —
Evacuations were almost called in north Sacramento after a railcar caught fire on Monday morning in a mostly industrial part of the city, officials said.
Crews were dispatched around 2:08 a.m. to the 3900 block of Roseville Road underneath the Highway 80 overpass near Del Paso Park.
A railcar caught fire with the potential to spread to two other railcars, one tank containing ethanol and another containing diesel, both explosive materials. A three-alarm fire was called for additional units to help, the Sacramento Fire Department said.
The fire extended into some grass, six vehicles in a tow yard and a trailer containing lead-acid batteries. Power lines were damaged and people lost power, the fire department said.
The SMUD outage map showed 1,859 customers lost power in the area around 2:52 a.m. due to damaged equipment. Power had been restored to all but 31 customers as of 5:20 a.m.
Roseville Road is shut down between Marconi Avenue and Longview Drive. I-80 was not closed as the fire was contained. It was unclear what caused the fire or where it originated. No injuries have been reported at this time.
Sacramento Valley Railroad, under Patriot Rail, operates the railcar that caught fire. Patriot Rail told KCRA3 that the railcar that caught fire was carrying telephone poles and the fire didn’t spread to any other railcars.
If you travel or sometimes work away from your desk, a laptop power bank may come in handy. These larger portable chargers pack enough power to refill a phone multiple times, a tablet a couple times over and get most laptops from near-dead to work-ready in around an hour. Over the past few years, I’ve tested dozens of batteries for our power banks guide and a number of them make great options for laptops. These are the best laptop power banks based on our testing, along with a bit of info on how to fly with a portable battery and what to look for in a good one.
Table of contents
Best laptop power banks for 2025
Photo by Amy Skorheim / Engadget
Capacity: 27,000 mAh, 99.9 Wh | Ports: One USB-C in/out, two USB-A out and three wireless pads | Cable included: USB-C to USB-C and wall adapter | Charge time iPhone 15: 5 to 100% in 2h 56m (wireless) 5 – 100% 2h 22m (wired) | Remaining charge after iPhone: ~ 81% | Charge time Galaxy S23 Ultra: 5 to 100% in 1h 20m | Remaining charge after S23 Ultra: ~ 77% | Charge time iPad Air: 5 to 100% in 1h 55m | Remaining charge after iPad: ~ 64% | Charge time MacBook Pro: 10% to 89% in 1h 18m
Traveling is one of the top reasons people need to use a portable laptop charger — planes, trains, buses and airports aren’t exactly the easiest places to find a power source. Lion Energy’s Eclipse Mag battery pack has a big 27,000 capacity, which is enough to power a laptop through a couple days of use. I also like how its three wireless charging pads cut down on cable chaos, letting you charge a Qi-enabled phone, earbuds case and Apple Watch at the same time.
You certainly could charge all three of those accessories and a laptop at one time, but as with all batteries, that increased drain will quickly empty it and your charge times will slow down quite a bit. From what I’ve seen, the unit works best as an as-needed power supply when you’re out and about, then, after a recharge, it can moonlight as a three-in-one wireless charger in your hotel room. You can even rely on the pass-through charging capabilities to power up the battery while using the wireless pads, making it a sort of travel-ready multi-device charger.
At two pounds, no one would call this light, but the angled corners and narrow design make it feel more compact than other big batteries. There’s no display to tell you how much charge is left, just four lighted pips at one edge, but I found them to provide a fairly accurate estimate. One thing to note is that the wireless watch pad only works with Apple Watches. Since Pixel watches don’t support wireless charging and Samsung only recommends its own chargers for Galaxy Watches, that’s not surprising.
The only other drawback is the single USB-C port. The three wireless pads and the two USB-A ports will likely be enough for a days’ work, but one more type-C port would be ideal. Compared to other 27,000 maAh battery packs, the $174 price tag on the Eclipse Mag is a decent deal — and it even comes with a five-year warranty.
Pros
Wireless charging is convenient for travel
Compact design for such a large battery
Delivers a fast, 79 percent charge to a large laptop
Capacity: 25,000mAh, 90 Wh | Ports: Two built-in USB-C in/out cables, one USB-A port, one USB-C port | Cable: USB-C to USB-C | Number of charges iPhone 15: 4 – 5 | Charge time iPhone: 5 to 100% in 1h 54m | Number of charges Galaxy S23 Ultra: 3.75 – 4 | Charge time S23 Ultra: 52m | Number of charges iPad Air: 1.75 – 2 | Charge time iPad: 5 to 100% in 1h 58m | Number of charges MacBook Pro: 0.68 | Charge time MacBook Pro: 53 m
If you try (and sometimes succeed in) packing as light as possible when travelling, you may want to look for battery packs with built-in cables. This Anker laptop power bank sports two built-in USB-C cables: one attached to the side of the battery that doubles as a carrying strap and another retractable cord that extends up to two feet. Both can accommodate in/out charges so you can use them to refill a device or reup the battery itself.
The brick has a display to tell you the amount of charge remaining, as well as the output wattage that’s funneling towards your devices from each port. When refilling the battery, you can see an estimate of how long it will be until the unit is full. Calculating and displaying info like that takes up a bit of power but, in my testing, the battery output the same or a higher amount of charge compared with other 25,000 mAh packs.
This 25,000 mAh model replaces our previous pick in this category, the 27.5K Prime model, which was compatible with Anker’s convenient charging base. While this model isn’t, I feel the included cables provide more convenience. It also sells for $80 less than our prior choice. True, it delivers a bit less charge than that older bank, but a 70 percent charge for a 16-inch MacBook Pro is still a considerable refill.
Capacity: 20,000 mAh, 74 Wh | Ports: Two USB-C in/out and two USB-A out | Cable: USB-C to USB-C | Charge time iPhone 15: 0 to 100% in 1h 54m | Remaining charge after iPhone: 73% | Charge time Galaxy S23 Ultra: 5 to 100% in 1h 11m | Remaining charge after S23 Ultra: 66% | Charge time iPad Air: 3 to 100% in 2h 13m | Remaining charge after iPad: 42% | Charge time MacBook Pro: 10% to 62% in 1h 6m
I hadn’t even heard of Baseus before I started testing products for these guides. But after reading the many positive reviews, I gave a few of the brand’s offerings a try and have been repeatedly impressed by their value-to-performance ratio. The Baseus Blade is a compact and flat battery that weighs just over a pound. The shape is more tablet-like than the standard block of most power banks, which makes it easier to slide into a backpack or messenger bag alongside a laptop — it’s also the lightest of the banks I tried in this capacity category.
The display underestimates the amount of charge left, which is always better than the alternative. When the Blade was down to just one percent, it gave my laptop a few more percentage points before giving up the ghost. It has two USB-C and two USB-A ports along with little feet at the bottom that keep from moving around as you plug charging cables into it. The speeds were admirable, clocking in just a few minutes longer than batteries with larger capacities.
That’s the main trade off here: At 20,000 mAh, it’s not going to deliver the same amount of charge as a bigger bank. It boosted my 16-inch MacBook Pro from 10 percent to 62 percent, which is about 20 percentage points lower than the bigger batteries could do. But for $100, it’s still a speedy portable charger with a convenient shape and a good number of ports.
Pros
Great value
Charges devices quickly
Sleek design is easy to carry along with your laptop
Capacity: 25,600 mAh, 95Wh | Ports: One USB-C in/out, one USB-C out, one USB-C in, two USB-A, one AC port, one solar input and one wireless pad | Cable: USB-C to USB-C | Charge time iPhone 15: 0 to 100% in 1h 49m | Remaining charge after iPhone: 83% | Charge time Galaxy S23 Ultra: 5 to 100% in 1h 3m | Remaining charge after S23 Ultra: 77% | Charge time iPad Air: 4 to 100% in 2h 11m | Remaining charge after iPad: 62% | Charge time MacBook Pro: 6% to 72% in 1h 21m
Let’s get the bad news out of the way first: Goal Zero’s Sherpa 100AC costs $250. That makes it the most expensive power bank I’ve tested so far. But it’s a high-quality unit that gives you what you pay for. There’s a wireless charging pad up top, three USB-C ports (though one is input only), plus a couple of USB-A ports, an AC port and an 8mm port that can pair up with a Goal Zero solar panel or 12V adapter cable to recharge from your car. There’s even an internal fan to keep everything cool as it deals with all the output and a status display you can turn on or off.
Goal Zero is probably best known for its outdoor-focused power products — power stations for camping, portable solar panels and camping lights, to name a few. The Sherpa has the same rugged/industrial aluminum unibody design, which would make it an ideal productivity companion for field work. I could see this coming in handy for outdoor photo shoots, job-site projects or just snagging some nature-side office hours.
The ability to recharge from a car’s 12V port or even from solar panels is another nice-to-have, but of course, you’ll need extra equipment. In the case of the car charger, that’s another $40, but the solar panels will add another $250 to your mobile set up. If you find yourself working out in the field relatively often you might appreciate the flexibility.
Pros
Wireless charging pad and an AC port
Can recharge from solar or a car’s 12V port (with accessories)
Capacity: 27,000mAh, 99.9 Wh | Ports: One USB-C in/out, one USB-C out, USB-A, 100W AC | Cable: USB-C to USB-C | Charge time iPhone 11: 0 to 100% in 1h 40m | Remaining charge after iPhone: ~ 73% | Charge time iPad: 0 to 100% in 1h 56m | Remaining charge after iPad: ~ 53% | Charge time MBP: 10% to 75% in 1h 29m
Mophie’s Powerstation Pro AC is a bit of a beast, weighing over two pounds and hitting the upper limit of the TSA’s 100-watt-hour battery limit (I flew with it twice and never had any issue, though). It even has a handle strap to help lug it around. There’s one USB-A port and two USB-C connections, one with a lower 20W rating and one that can deliver 60W. Then there’s the AC port.
The AC port on any portable charger is a novel thing to have; as mentioned previously, it’s the USB-C port that should power your laptop because it makes no sense to convert a portable battery’s charge twice. That said, if you need to power a light, a portable printer or some other appliance that only has a standard two-prong plug, this port will come in handy. Just be sure to hold down the status button to enable the AC function.
Mophie’s pack has enough juice to give a smartphone three to four charges, fill an iPad twice with a charge left over and it can charge a 16-inch MacBook Pro from 10 percent to 75 percent in under 90 minutes, while in use. The four lighted LED indicators aren’t the best: I found it cycled through the last two dots far quicker than the first two, which might make you think you have more charge left than you actually do.
is a compact, low-frills bank that delivers a speedy charge to smartphones — my tester iPhone 15 in particular. I clocked a refill from four percent to full in about an hour and a half. That’s among the faster speeds from any power bank I’ve tested and is thanks to its 145W max output. It performed on par with other bricks when it came to refilling a Galaxy Ultra, iPad Air and MacBook Pro.
A small digital display indicates the amount of charge left and it tested accurately. There are just three ports — two USB-C and one Type-A — but that’s more than enough to handle a laptop and a smartphone at the same time, if you must. But I’ve found portable chargers work best when handling just one device at a time. Adding an extra device seems to drain it quicker than charging one then another.
Upon its debut, the UGreen Power Bank 25,000mAh went for $120 so the value wasn’t quite there. But now it’s been reduced to an MSRP of $100 and is regularly on UGreen’s site and Amazon for around $75. I’ve noticed some in-stock issues, but if you can find it, snap it up. It’s a high-performing, low-frills battery with a surprising amount of oomph for its compact size.
Most portable batteries top out at around 27,000mAh so you can fly with them. The TSA currently limits the capacity carry-on batteries to 100Wh, which works out to around 27,500mAh for 3.6 volt lithium-ion batteries. Note that you’re not allowed to pack any batteries in your checked luggage, regardless of capacity. The TSA rules are intended to limit fire danger — and some airlines are implementing further restrictions due to recent on-board incidents.
In March 2025, a Hong Kong flight was grounded after a battery pack caught fire in an overhead bin. A similar situation happened in July on a domestic Delta flight, and again in August on a transatlantic KLM flight. As a result, some airlines, including Emirates, Southwest and others have announced further restrictions on flying with battery packs.
Rules include limiting the number of allowed portable chargers and requiring flyers to keep power banks in clear view when using them to recharge a device. If the battery pack isn’t actively in use, however, most rules allow them to stay in your carry-on bag in the overhead bin. Before flying, it’s wise to check your airline’s policies.
Capacity
If you just need to keep a smartphone from dying before you can make it home, just about any of the best power banks will do. But if you need to revive multiple devices or the substantial battery of a laptop, you’ll want something with a high milliamp-hour (mAh) capacity. A power bank capable of delivering enough power to a laptop will have a capacity between 20,000 and 27,000 mAh.
If you want something even bigger than a laptop power bank, and don’t need to fly with it, you’ll likely want to look into portable power stations. These can be the size of a car battery or larger and can potentially fuel an entire weekend away.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the capacity listed in a power bank’s specs is not what will be delivered to your devices. As I mentioned, the capacity of these banks is around 25,000mAh. Even the huge battery on a 16-inch MacBook Pro or a Dell XPS 16 has a mAh rating of around 5,000 – 6,000mAh, so you might think you’d get five full charges but in reality, you only get about a single 70-percent charge. The voltage is different (typically 3.7V for the power bank and 11.4V for a laptop) which makes the watt-hours, or the amount of energy each battery can hold, different (working out to 92Wh for the battery and 72Wh for the built-in laptop batteries). On top of that, in order to feed a charge from a power bank to a laptop, a voltage conversion takes place and that dissipates a decent amount of energy.
Without turning this into a physics lesson, this all means that a power bank with a 25,000mAh (or 92Wh) capacity will typically fill a 5,000mAh (or 72Wh) laptop battery to about 75 percent. In my tests, I averaged about a 60-percent efficiency rate between a power bank’s listed capacity and the actual charge delivered.
Ports
Every large power bank I’ve tested has at least three USB ports, with a mix of USB-C and USB-A, which should cover nearly any portable device you need to recharge — earbuds, phones, tablets, laptops, you name it. In addition to the different plug formats, some ports supply power at different wattages. For example, one built-in USB-C port might be rated for 60 watts, while the one next to it is rated for 100 watts. So if you’ve got a device that’s capable of 70W fast charging, such as the new MacBook Air, you’d want to opt for the 100W port to get the best charging speeds possible.
Note that devices with a smaller wattage draw won’t be negatively affected by connecting to ports with high ratings. For example, a Galaxy S24 Ultra, capable of 45W super fast charging, is perfectly compatible with the 100W port. A device will only draw what it can take, regardless of what a port can supply. Just remember that the port, device and charging cable need to be at or above the desired wattage rating to achieve maximum charging rates.
Some of these larger batteries also have AC ports. It might seem like a natural fit to plug in your laptop’s power adapter for a recharge. But really, the AC port should only be for devices that can’t use USB — such as a lamp or a printer. Plugging a power adapter into the AC port only wastes energy through conversion. First, the battery converts its DC power to supply the port with AC power, then the power adapter converts that AC power back to DC so your laptop can take it in. And as you’ll remember from physics class, each time energy is converted, some is lost to heat and other dissipations. Better to cut out the middleman and just send that DC power straight from the battery to the device.
Also, you can use more than one port at a time with these devices; just remember that the speed of whatever you’re charging will likely go down, and of course, the battery is going to drain proportionally to what you’re refilling.
Wireless charging
Just in the last year and a half that I’ve been testing portable power banks, wireless charging capabilities have noticeably improved. The first few I tried were painfully slow and not worth recommending. Now the wireless pads built into power banks are impressively fast — particularly, in my experience, when charging Samsung Galaxy phones (though the lack of a stabilizing magnetic connection like Apple’s MagSafe means they only work when rested flat on a pad). Most wireless charging connections can be used while other ports are also being employed, making them convenient for some mobile battlestation setups.
Of course, wireless charging is always less efficient than wired, and recharging from an external battery is less efficient in general. If you want to waste as little energy as possible, you’re better off sticking to wired connections.
Design
All power banks are designed to be portable, but there’s a big difference between a pocket-friendly 5,000mAh battery and one of these laptop-compatible bruisers. Most of the latter weigh between a pound and a half to two pounds, which is a considerable addition to a backpack. Many of the options listed here have a display to tell you how much charge remains in the battery, which is helpful when you’re trying to judiciously meet out charges to your devices. If a bank has a wireless connection, the pad is usually on the flat top and any available AC connection is usually at one end. Both may require you to engage those charging methods. Don’t be like me and grumble loudly that you got a bum unit without pressing (and sometimes double pressing) all the buttons first.
How we test portable laptop chargers
For the past two years, I’ve been testing and using dozens of portable batteries for our other battery guide. Some of those batteries include the higher-capacity power banks you see here. I also got a hold of a few extra banks just for this guide to make sure we covered what’s available. I went for brands I’m already familiar with, as well as battery packs from well-received manufacturers I hadn’t tried before (like UGREEN and Lion Energy). I only considered banks with at least a 20,000mAh capacity and mostly stuck with those that rated 25,000mAh and higher.
Here’s everything we tested:
I tested each power bank with an Apple phone (iPhone 15), an Android phone (Galaxy S23 Ultra), a tablet (M1 iPad Air) and a laptop (16-inch MacBook Pro with the M1 Pro chip). Even though these banks can charge multiple devices at once, I refilled one at a time, to make side-by-side comparisons more straightforward. I drained the batteries of the phones and tablets to between zero and five percent and then didn’t use any device as it refilled.
For the MacBook, I let it run down to 10 percent before plugging in the power bank. That’s when most laptops give display a “connect to power” warning, as draining any battery to empty will compromise the battery life. I then used it as one might in a mobile office, with a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, while connected to Wi-Fi and a VPN.
For each test, I noted how long a completely charged battery took to get a device back to full and how much of the battery’s capacity was used up in one charge. I also noted things like portability, apparent durability, helpful features and overall design.
For reference, here are the battery capacities of the devices I used:
Galaxy S23 Ultra: 4,855mAh
iPad Air (5th gen): 7,729mAh
16-inch M1 Pro MacBook Pro: 27,027mAh
Other laptop power banks we tested
HyperJuice 245W
Hyper’s HyperJuice 245W brick looks great and has a hefty 27,000mAh capacity. The four USB-C ports can combine to output 245W of power and it got my MacBook Pro from nearly dead to 75 percent before depleting itself. When testing it with a Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra, the handset got back up to a full charge in just over an hour. The screen tells you what each port is doing as well as displaying the amount of charge remaining in the pack itself.
But the lack of port variety makes it feel less versatile than other picks on this list — the price is higher than our other options, too.
Laptop power bank FAQs
How do laptop power banks differ from phone power banks?
The main difference is size. Phone power banks tend to have a capacity ranging from 5,000mAh to 20,000mAh and laptop powerbanks are typically rated between 20,000mAh and 27,000mAh. There’s no official definition, however. Laptop batteries are simply larger and need a bigger supply of power to give them a meaningful charge.
How do you fast charge a power bank?
You can charge a power bank exactly as fast as the power bank’s internal mechanisms will allow. Most batteries are limited in how quickly they can accept and deliver a charge to avoid dangerously overheating. But to make sure you’re charging a bank as quickly as possible, make sure the wall adapter and the USB-C cable you are using have a high wattage rating — using a 5W power brick and a 10W cable will take a lot longer to refill your bank than a 65W wall charger and a 100W cord.
What size power bank do I need for a laptop?
Look for a power bank with a rating of at least 20,000mAh. Slightly smaller batteries may work, but they won’t deliver a significant charge laptops.
How many mAh to charge a laptop?
A milliamp hour (mAh) is how much a battery can hold, and most portable batteries list their capacity using mAh. If you get a battery rated at 20,000mAh or above, it should be able to charge your laptop.
Using mAh to discuss laptop batteries can be confusing. Due to differing voltages, you can’t directly compare the mAh ratings of a power bank battery to a laptop battery. Using watt-hours is a better gauge, as that calculation takes voltage into account.
Recent updates
August 2025: Changed our runner up travel pick for a new Anker battery. Updated information about flying with power banks. Added a section about other batteries we tested.
Over the weekend, President Trump shared a doctored AI image of himself as Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore, the crazed cavalry commander in the 1979 Vietnam War film, “Apocalypse Now,” crouched in a black Stetson hat in front of a flaming Chicago skyline abuzz with black helicopters.
“‘I love the smell of deportations in the morning,’” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.”
Trump has long promised to deploy the National Guard to America’s major urban hubs. But his unprecedented push this summer to deploy military convoys into Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. — and drumbeat of threats to send yet more into cities from Baltimore to San Francisco — has left many Americans divided on whether his administration is trying to protect people in Democratic-controlled cities or wage war on them.
When Trump first sent troops into L.A. in June, he argued federal immigration agents needed protection from locals who tried to obstruct them from fulfilling their mission. In August, he deployed the National Guard to Washington, D.C., seizing on instances of violent crime to claim a public emergency.
And now he has paired the issues of crime and immigration as he threatens Chicago, deploying militaristic imagery and rhetoric that break longstanding American norms.
As Trump goads Democratic-led cities, dubbing them poorly run “hellholes,” Americans are grappling with a fundamental question of American democracy: Is Trump simply fulfilling his election mandate to ramp up deportations and combat crime, as he and his supporters argue, or ushering in a new era of American authoritarianism?
Trump’s critics warn that he is exaggerating crime in American cities to score political points. In deploying troops to Los Angeles and D.C., they argue, Trump is setting up a military police state that targets political opponents, tramples on due process, installs loyalists over institutionalists, and erodes longstanding distinctions between the military and domestic law enforcement.
“This is how authoritarians behave, this is not how the leader of a free democracy behaves.” said Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. “He is taking a page from authoritarian rulers around the world who have used crime as an excuse to consolidate power and suppress rights.”
Conservatives tend to brush aside such concerns, arguing that Trump’s deployment of troops simply delivers on a campaign promise. They note he ran on a platform of mass deportations and fighting crime in major cities.
“There’s a problem to be dealt with there,” said James E. Campbell, professor emeritus of political science at the University at Buffalo. “He has the constitutional authority to employ the National Guard, and that’s part of the powers of commander in chief in Article II. What’s peculiar here is some cities don’t want the help — or at least the leaders of the cities.”
While the courts will ultimately settle the legal questions of what Trump can do, he seems to be betting that he can put Democratic leaders in a defensive position at a time when polls show the vast majority of Americans are worried about crime.
When Illinois’ Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker pushed back this weekend against Trump’s Chicago plans, accusing the president of “threatening to go to war with an American city,” Trump insisted he was not spoiling for a fight.
“We’re not going to war,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “We’re going to clean up our cities.”
Democrats say Trump is scaremongering about crime in American cities to score points against his political enemies, noting that homicides and other violent crimes have dropped over the last five years in cities across the nation.
According to a recent analysis by the Council on Criminal Justice, a policy think tank, violent crime is lower in most cities than the pandemic peak of 2020-21. But the report noted that most of the decline in the national homicide rate has been driven by large drops in cities with high homicide rates, such as Baltimore and St Louis. More than half of sample cities continue to experience homicide levels above pre-2020 rates.
For many Americans, crime remains a potent political issue.
But it remains to be seen if Americans will warm to Trump’s hard-line tactics: about 55% of Americans in the AP poll said it’s acceptable for the U.S. military and National Guard to assist local police in big cities, but less than a third support federal troops taking control of city police departments.
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Throughout the 2024 election, Trump threatened to deploy the National Guard to fight crime.
“In cities where there has been a complete breakdown of law and order, where the fundamental rights of our citizens are being intolerably violated,” he promised in his Agenda47 campaign platform. “I will not hesitate to send in federal assets including the National Guard until safety is restored.”
Still, there was some shock when Trump deployed the National Guard and U.S. Marines to L.A. in June after a clash erupted in the heavily Latino city of Paramount as immigration agents ratcheted up his deportation agenda.
The conflict fell short of an all-out collapse of law and order. After Border Patrol agents were spotted setting up a staging area outside a Home Depot, hundreds of protesters gathered, some hurled rocks at federal vehicles as agents fired tear gas and flash-bang grenades at the crowd. Within hours, Trump ordered 2,000 National Guard soldiers to L.A.— against the will of California Gov. Gavin Newsom — to protect federal agents and property.
Sending in the National Guard without a governor’s consent was a highly unusual step. The last time it happened was in 1965, when Lyndon B. Johnson federalized the Alabama National Guard to protect civil rights marchers marching from Selma to Montgomery.
But L.A. was not a one-off for Trump. In August, Trump announced he would take federal control of Washington, D.C.’s police department and activate National Guard troops to help “reestablish law and order.” The city, he said, had been “overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged-out maniacs and homeless people.”
Dist. Atty. Brian Schwalb, the elected attorney general of the District of Columbia, argued “there is no crime emergency” in D.C. “Violent crime in DC reached historic 30-year lows last year,” Schwalb noted, “and is down another 26% so far this year.”
And he has adopted a similar strategy as he threatens to send troops to Chicago, highlighting a violent Labor Day weekend, in which nine people were killed and more than 50 injured across the city.
Chicago has long struggled with violent crime, but city officials note that homicides and shootings have declined, putting the city on track for its lowest homicide rate in half a century.
Mayor Brandon Johnson said homicides are down 30% in the last year in Chicago and his police department has taken 24,000 guns off the street, most of which came from Republican-led states, since he took office in May 2023.
“This stunt that this president is attempting to execute is not real. It doesn’t help drive us towards a more safe, affordable, big city,” Johnson said last month as he called on Trump to release $800 million in violence prevention funds that the federal government cut in April.
Already, Trump has declared implausibly quick results in curbing crime in Washington, D.C..
“D.C. was a hellhole and now it’s safe,” the president declared less than two weeks after deploying troops to the nation’s capital. “Within one week, we will have no crime in Chicago.”
When asked about Trump’s strategy, Adam Gelb, the president and chief executive of the Council on Criminal Justice, said the obvious challenge was the Trump administration’s solutions tended to be, “by definition, short term dopamine hits and not sustainable long term solutions.”
“That’s what history tells us: we can have short-term impact with shocks to the system like this, but they tend to be fleeting.”
Asked what would happen if the shock to the system was permanent, Gelb said he did not know.
“It hasn’t been tested,” Gelb said, “not in this country with respect to deployment of troops in massive numbers.”
Ultimately, Gelb said, Trump’s incursion into cities was “testing Americans’ tolerance for crime and militarization.”
“If there’s a perception that these tactics are responsible for dramatic reductions in crime,” he asked, “will people become more tolerant of them?”
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Trump has suggested that Americans will allow him unlimited powers if he is perceived as stopping crime.
“Most people are saying, ‘If you call him a dictator, if he stops crime, he can be whatever he wants,’ ” Trump said last month in a televised Cabinet meeting. “I am not a dictator, by the way,”
“I’m the president of the United States,” he added. “If I think our country is in danger — and it is in danger in these cities — I can do it.”
Daniel Treisman, a professor of political science at UCLA, said Trump is “the most extreme case yet of a leader who comes to power in a long-established democracy and wants to act like an authoritarian — to break down all restrictions on his power and intimidate his enemies.”
Most alarming of all, he said, was the Trump administration’s purging of professionals from federal agencies such as the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation in favor of loyalists.
The co-author of “Spin Dictators: The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 21st century,” Treisman said Trump’s aims appeared to closely resemble those of Viktor Orbán, prime minister of Hungary, or Nayib Bukele, president of El Salvador.
“I would like to believe that he will face a lot more obstacles than those leaders did,” Treisman said.
Even if a majority of Americans think Trump is right that crime is a problem — or a substantial number support indefinite occupations of American cities or the elimination of due process — some argue that doesn’t make it democratic.
“There’s no such thing as electing a president to undo democracy and violate the rule of law,” Goitein said. “He can’t say, ‘Well, the American people elected me to shred the Constitution.’ ”
SEOUL — At a military parade in Beijing featuring China’s next-generation weaponry, another momentous scene was on display: Chinese President Xi Jinping standing side by side with Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
Their joint appearance on Wednesday at a parade commemorating the end of World War II, is the first time that the leaders of the three countries have appeared together in public. It comes amid growing concern about the increasing collaboration of the “axis of upheaval,” a term that denotes China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea and their opposition to the U.S.-led world order.
It marks Kim’s first foray into multilateral diplomacy since assuming power in 2011. While in the past the reclusive leader has tended to avoid overseas trips due to security concerns, he arrived Tuesday in Beijing on a heavily armored train known as “The Sun,” stepping out to a welcome that even Kim’s grandfather Kim Il Sung didn’t get as the last North Korean leader to attend the Victory Day parade in 1959.
“The trip was an undeniable political victory for Kim Jong Un,” said Park Won-gon, a professor of North Korea studies at Seoul’s Ewha Womans University. “To be seen standing shoulder to shoulder with two superpowers in China is an incredibly powerful image of propaganda to show to North Korean residents.”
Kim’s growing diplomatic ambitions have in recent years involved a defense pact with Russia and the deployment of North Korean soldiers to the war in Ukraine in exchange for technological and military assistance.
In a statement posted on the website of North Korea’s foreign ministry a day before the parade, Vice Minister Pak Myong Ho accused the U.S. and other Western governments of openly inflicting “tyranny” against “countless countries around the world,” while expressing support for a new balance of power led by Beijing.
Experts at South Korea’s Institute for National Security Strategy (INSS), a government think tank, say that Kim’s most pressing agenda item in Beijing will be reviving its economic exchange with China, which has slowed in recent years amid Beijing’s frustrations with Pyongyang’s ongoing nuclear missile program.
“In economic matters, the importance of China’s assistance is absolute,” INSS researchers wrote in a report published ahead of the parade.
While Moscow in recent years has reportedly violated U.N. sanctions to provide North Korea with assistance ranging from refined petroleum to military drones, China is by far North Korea’s largest trading partner, accounting for up to 98% of the latter’s exports in 2023, according to an analysis by the Seoul-based Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency.
Noting that trade between North Korea and China currently sits at around 80% of pre-pandemic levels, the INSS researchers highlighted that the shortage of Chinese economic support — and once-steady tourist flows — was being acutely felt in places like the Wonsan Kalma resort, a newly opened beachside vacation destination that Kim called the country’s “greatest achievement” of 2025.
Despite North Korea’s vocal embrace of the so-called “new Cold War” order, Russia and China have been reluctant to do the same, analysts said.
“China doesn’t gain anything by forming a bloc with North Korea,” Park, the professor, said. “Xi Jinping knows all too well that at most, any attempt of this kind will at most be a loose gathering of countries who are positioned against the U.S. without any real power or the cohesiveness of a bloc.”
In a joint statement issued after a meeting in May 2024, Putin and Xi said that the China-Russia partnership is “a more advanced form of interstate interaction compared to the military-political alliances of the Cold War era and not of a bloc or confrontational nature.”
While a trilateral summit between the three leaders is widely regarded as unlikely for this reason, Kim’s appearance in Beijing may, on the other hand, provide the leverage he needs for a potential round two of summits with President Trump.
“I think North Korea may be willing to discuss a rollback of its nuclear program and demanding in return things like a permanent end to any joint U.S.- South Korea military drills or halting the deployment of any strategic assets,” Park said.
Though Trump expressed a willingness to sit down with Kim during a summit with South Korean president Lee Jae Myung last month, Park says that Pyongyang no longer sees the U.S.’ long-standing goal of North Korean denuclearization as a viable starting point — and that Kim’s parade appearance is likely to be seen as yet another vindication of that position.
During the trial, though, a concerning but little-noticed exchange popped up between lawyers for the state of California and Maj. Gen. Scott Sherman, who was in charge of the federalized National Guard forces in L.A. It should have been an explosive, red-flag moment highlighting the pressure our military leaders are under to shake off their oath to the Constitution in favor of fealty to Trump.
Sherman testified that he objected to National Guard involvement in a show-of-force operation in MacArthur Park, where Latino families often congregate.
That action, Sherman said, was originally slated for Father’s Day, an especially busy time at the park. Internal documents showed it was considered it a “high-risk” operation. Sherman said he feared his troops would be pushed into confrontations with civilians if Border Patrol became overwhelmed by the crowds on that June Sunday.
Gregory Bovino, in charge of the immigration efforts in L.A. for the Border Patrol, questioned Sherman’s “loyalty to the country,” Sherman testified, for just showing hesitation about the wisdom and legality of an order.
It’s the pressure that “you’re not being patriotic if you don’t blow by the law and violate it and just bend the knee and and exhibit complete fealty and loyalty to Trump,” California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said Tuesday. And it’s a warning of what’s to come as Trump continues to press for military involvement in civilian law enforcement across the country.
For the record, Sherman has served our country for decades, earning along the way the prestigious Legion of Merit, the Bronze Star and the Meritorious Service Medal among other accolades.
The MacArthur Park operation, according to the Department of Homeland Security, was itself little more than a performative display of power “to demonstrate, through a show of presence, the capacity and freedom of maneuver of federal law enforcement within the Los Angeles,” according to agency documents presented in court. It was dubbed Operation Excalibur, in honor of the legendary sword of King Arthur that granted him divine right to rule, a point also included in court documents.
But none of that mattered. Instead, Sherman was pushed to exhibit the kind of blind loyalty to a dear leader that you’d expect to be demanded in dictatorships like those of North Korea or Hungary. Loyalty that confuses — or transforms — a duty to the Constitution with allegiance to Trump. Military experts warn that Sherman’s experience isn’t an isolated incident.
“There’s a chilling effect against pushing back or at least openly questioning any kind of orders,” Rachel E. VanLandingham, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, told me. She’s former active duty judge advocate in the U.S. Air Force who now teaches at Southwestern Law School and serves as a national security law expert.
VanLandingham sees the leadership of our armed forces under pressure “to not engage in the critical thinking, which, as commanders, they are required to do, and to instead go along to get along.” She sees Sherman’s testimony as a “telling glimpse into the wearing away” of that crucial independence.
Such a shift in allegiance would undermine any court order keeping the military out of civilian law enforcement, leaving Trump with exactly the boots on the ground power he has sought since his first term. This is not theoretical.
Through Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Trump has purged the top ranks of the military of those who aren’t loyal to him. In February, Hegseth fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a Black soldier who championed diversity in the armed forces. Hegseth has also purged the head of the Pentagon’s intelligence agency, the head of the National Security Agency, the chief of Naval Operations, multiple senior female military staff and senior military lawyers for the Army, Navy and Air Force. In August, he fired the head of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency after that general gave a truthful assessment of our bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites, angering Trump.
At the same time, the military is being pushed farther into civilian affairs, and not just as erstwhile cops. The Associated Press reported Tuesday that Hegseth ordered 600 military lawyers to serve as temporary immigration judges.
Not to dive too deep into the convoluted immigration system, but these are civilian legal positions, another possible violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, VanLandingham points out.
And beyond that, can a military lawyer — trained and bound to follow orders — really act as an impartial judge in proceedings where the administration’s wish to deport is clearly known?
Goodbye due process, goodbye fair trial.
That “looks like martial law when you have militarized … judicial proceedings,” VanLandingham said. “How can we trust they are making unbiased decisions? You can’t.”
And even though Sherman pushed back on a full-blown military presence in MacArthur Park, that raid did happen. Federal agents marched through, about three weeks after Father’s Day, with National Guard troops remaining in their vehicles on the perimeter. It was Hegseth himself who authorized the mission.
Sherman also said on the stand that he was told there were “exceptions” to the Posse Comitatus Act — the law being debated in the trial that prevents the military from being used as civilian law enforcement — and that the president had the power to decide what those exceptions were.
“So your understanding is that while [some actions] are on the list of prohibited functions, you can do them under some circumstances?” Judge Charles Breyer asked.
“That’s the legal advice I received,” Sherman answered.
“And the president has the authority to make that decision?” Breyer asked.
“The president has the authority,” Sherman answered.
But does he?
Breyer also asked during the trial, if the president’s powers to both command troops and interpret law are so boundless, “What’s to prevent a national police force?” What, in effect, could stop Trump’s Excalibur-inspired inclinations?
For now, it’s the courts and ethical, mid-level commanders like Sherman, whose common-sense bravery and decency kept the military out of MacArthur Park.
Men and women who understand that the oaths they have sworn are to our country, not the man who would be king.
