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Impeachment trial of Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte begins

Al Jazeera – News

2h ago

Impeachment trial of Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte begins

Summary

Impeachment trial of Philippines VP Sara Duterte begins The impeachment trial of Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte has begun in Manila, in a highly charged case that could determine her political future. Thousands of police were deployed around the Senate in the capital on Monday as protesters calling for Duterte’s conviction began gathering outside. The vice president’s office said she would not appear in person. Only a guilty verdict by two-thirds of the bitterly divided 24-seat Senate can strip her of the vice presidency and permanently bar her from elected office. Reporting from Manila, Al Jazeera’s Barnaby Lo said less than two years into the Marcos administration, the House of Representatives – then led by a cousin of the president – began investigating the vice president for alleged corruption. “The probe snowballed into the first impeachment complaint … which was voided by the Supreme Court,” he said. “But here we are now, with Duterte facing a second impeachment complaint.” Duterte and Marcos are heirs to two of the country’s most powerful political dynasties. The bitter fight has spilled into the Senate, raising questions about how the trial will unfold. In a dramatic turn on Monday, Duterte’s ally Senator Rodante Marcoleta was arrested on a plunder charge shortly before the start of the trial, throwing support for the vice president in the Senate into doubt. In May, just as the Senate was preparing to receive the impeachment complaint from the House of ⁠Representatives, Duterte ally Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa turned up in the chamber after being absent from public view ⁠since November and cast the decisive vote to install Alan Peter Cayetano as Senate president. Dela Rosa then holed up in the Senate before slipping away early on May 14, hours after chaos and gunfire erupted in the parliament building. About a month later, senators aligned with a rival bloc secured enough support to elect Senator Sherwin Gatchalian as Senate president.

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Senate trial outcome could permanently bar Duterte from office, shaking her frontrunner status for the 2028 election.

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Democrats are railing against Trump’s $1.4 billion in crypto income. Will his financial disclosure derail a key crypto bill in Congress?

President Donald Trump’s financial disclosure came at a bad time for the crypto industry—depending on who you ask. Last week, documents revealed that crypto business entities associated with Trump and his family raked in $1.4 billion in income in 2025, pushing Democrats in Congress to respond with alarm. In a post on social media, Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) alleged that the commander-in-chief was “blatantly profiteering off the presidency.” (“Neither the president nor his family has ever engaged—or will ever engage—in conflicts of interest,” Anna Kelly, a White House spokeswoman, told Fortune .) Schiff and his colleagues, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), weren’t railing against Trump purely because they saw an opportunity to take political shots. (That, of course, was likely one motivation.) They were also using the moment to highlight an ongoing demand as the Senate hashes out the CLARITY Act, a key piece of legislation that would regulate digital assets. The House of Representatives passed a version of the bill in 2025, and CLARITY has now passed markup in two key Senate bodies: the Agriculture and Banking committees. But, as proponents of the bill try to whip up the 60 bipartisan votes needed to pass the legislation, Democrats are pushing for an ethics provision that would prevent the president, his family, and his associates from profiting off of crypto businesses. That’s been a repeated stumbling block throughout the negotiations, and Trump’s recent financial disclosure gives Senate Democrats more ammunition to harp on a clause forbidding the president from participating in the industry. “I think [the disclosure] can have an effect in the sense that it emphasizes the Democrats’ argument for the need for there to be an ethics deal,” said one source close to crypto policy discussions on Capitol Hill, who asked for anonymity to speak frankly. But that same source said that talks are ongoing between staffers and the bill is inching forward, even as Congress is currently in recess. Still, as the midterms approach, and the GOP’s stranglehold on Congress appears fragile, the desire for a bill remains. “The remaining three weeks in July,” said the second source, “are critical.” Ben Weiss benjamin.weiss@fortune.com @bdanweiss A consortium of more than 140 companies—including Stripe , Visa , and Mastercard —announced that it would launch its own stablecoin called OUSD , or Open USD. ( Fortune ) The tokenization firm Securitize IPOed on Thursday , despite reluctance from other crypto companies to wade into the public markets. ( Fortune ) Trump reported more income from his crypto businesses in 2025 than any publicly traded U.S. company said it earned that year. ( Bloomberg ) Investors in Trump’s memecoin have lost more than $3.8 billion trading the cryptocurrency since its launch, according to a report from Nansen . ( NYT ) Spotify cracked down on bots believed to be boosting the streams of an artist after suspicious betting activity on the prediction market Kalshi . ( FT ) Last week, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire tried to allay investor concerns over the announcement of Open USD, a consortium effort from Stripe, Visa, and Mastercard and 140 other partners to challenge the dominance of the stablecoins USDC and USDT.

‘Why take those jobs away?’: the unionized workers decrying Trump’s war on wind

Workers proud of their efforts to grow renewable energy say US president pursuing ‘personal vendetta’ at their expense D onald Trump has blamed everything – from “national security” issues, the deaths of birds and whales , and cancer – in his decades-long campaign against windfarms. But as the Trump administration continues to undermine the industry, what worries workers most are their jobs. Since taking office for the second term, Trump has issued an executive order aiming to halt all wind-energy leases and permits, attempted to issue stop-work orders on wind projects under construction, and paid more than $2.6bn in settlements to buy out wind energy leases. And hundreds of workers have been affected. Thomas Kilday, a furnace electrician with IBEW local 99 in Providence, Rhode Island, was in the midst of a four-week shift onboard a vessel off the Atlantic coast working on the Revolution Wind Project in August last year when the Trump administration issued a stop-work order on the project. “No one really knew what was going on. We didn’t know what it meant for us. It’s not a great feeling to be worried about your job when you’re supposed to be home.” “We’re proud of the work that we do out here, and we want to be able to continue to do it. In Jine, the Trump administration abandoned an effort to try to halt all wind projects and leases across the US, giving up a challenge in court to a judge tossing Trump’s executive order to freeze all permitting and leasing for wind projects. Trump’s Department of Interior has completed four deals so far to cancel wind project leases, paying energy corporations a sum of more than $2.6bn , including paying $765m to Invenergy to abandon four wind projects in California, New York, and Maine and nearly $900m to Bluepoint Wind and Garden State Wind to cancel offshore wind leases in New York and California. “I think it’s a foolish policy that the Trump administration is engaging in trying to buy out these leases,” Pat Crowley, president of the Rhode Island AFL-CIO, told the Guardian. “These projects are not only helping to reduce our carbon emissions, they’re providing good-paying union jobs for thousands.” Crowley said that workers would have had long-term job stability from working on these projects. The spokesperson did not respond to a question asking for clarification and did not comment on Trump’s prior animus toward wind turbine projects involving his golf courses. “No jobs were eliminated because none of these leases were operational or supporting employment,” the spokesperson said. “Rather than waiting years for the projects to materialize, the Trump administration is prioritizing investments in existing infrastructure and functioning supply chains that can create jobs now and deliver economic benefits faster. “This approach puts more people to work more quickly, using proven, affordable, and reliable energy rather than relying on projects tied to leases that were not producing jobs in the first place.”

Impeachment trial of Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte begins

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