US appeals court rules most of Trump’s sweeping global tariffs illegal – as it happened

Jim O’Neill, the former biotech investor and current deputy health secretary who was named acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week, might lack any experience in health care, but he does have a lot of opinions about the regulation of medicine as a business that could soon be very important.

In 2014, when O’Neill was managing director of Mithril Capital Management, a “family of long-term venture capital funds” founded by Peter Thiel, he represented Thiel on the board of the SENS Research Foundation, an organization dedicated to finding treatments for aging, with Thiel’s financial support.

That year, when O’Neill gave a talk at at the foundation’s “rejuvenation biotechnology” conference, he argued that development of drugs that might slow or reverse human aging was slowed down by the Food and Drug Administration’s efforts to ensure that drugs are safe and effective.

Instead of making sure that drugs work before approving their use by the public, O’Neill said, the FDA should adopt of a system its proponents call “progressive approval”.

“We should reform FDA, so that it is approving drugs after their sponsors have demonstrated safety and let people start using them, at their own risk, but not much risk of safety”, O’Neill said. “But let’s prove efficacy after they’ve been legalized”.

O’Neill, who was standing in front of a slide on how much less efficient biotech startups were than software startups, taken from a book by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters, got a round of applause for the observation.

As Jessica Hamzelou reported in the MIT Technology Review in June, O’Neill was suggesting that drugs be made available to the public “after the very first stage of clinical testing, which is designed to test whether a new treatment is safe. These tests are typically small and don’t reveal whether the drug actually works.”

That idea is popular though in the longevity community that O’Neill’s patron Thiel is at the center of.

It has also been proposed by O’Neill’s current boss, Robert F Kennedy Jr. In May, Kennedy told a longevity podcaster that he wanted to make it easier for people to experiment with treatments that might, or might not, work. “If you want to take an experimental drug … you ought to be able to do that”, Kennedy said.

But ditching FDA’s gold-standard of phase 2 and phase 3 trials strikes others as unethical. “It’s just absurd to think that the regulatory agency that’s responsible for making sure that products are safe and effective before they’re made available to patients couldn’t protect patients from charlatans: Holly Fernandez Lynch, a professor of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania, told MIT Technology Review. “It’s just like a complete dereliction of duty.”

Paul Krugman, the Nobel prize-winning economist, mocked Donald Trump, the Nobel prize-wanting president, for his hyperbolic claim, after a court ruled that his tariffs are almost all illegal, that “this Decision would literally destroy the United States of America” unless it is overturned.

“Yep, this Decision would literally destroy the United States of America,” Krugman wrote on Substack. “Take away these tariffs, and the county will revert to the blasted wasteland it was on … April 1, just before Trump made his big tariff announcement.”

Krugman added:

It’s important to be clear what just happened. The court didn’t say that tariffs per se are illegal. It said that the procedure Trump used to impose tariffs — declaring an economic emergency, then setting tariff rates without so much as consulting Congress, let alone passing legislation — is illegal. If Trump wants to pass a tariff bill, the same way he passed his One Big Beautiful Bill, OK. (I mean, terrible policy, but legal.)

But just saying “I am the Tariff Man, and here are my tariffs” isn’t OK.

True, the International Economic Emergency Powers Act gives the president substantial room to set tariffs during an, um, economic emergency. But Trump himself keeps saying that the economy is in wonderful shape, booming without inflation, and any claims to the contrary are fake news. So how can things both be terrific and an emergency calling for drastic action?

The Missouri governor, Mike Kehoe, has moved to help the Republican party gain an additional seat in Congress, calling a special legislative session to redraw congressional districts in his state.

Kehoe’s announcement on Friday followed a pressure campaign from Donald Trump, who has urged Republican states to reshape district boundaries to more heavily favor Republicans, boosting the party’s chances of maintaining control of the House of Representatives in 2026, despite the unpopularity of his policies.

The announcement came hours after Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, signed into law a new congressional map designed to help Republicans gain five more House seats in next year’s elections without winning more votes.

Trump has also pushed Indiana lawmakers to redraw that state’s maps, and has also pushed lawmakers in Florida and Ohio to help add three or more Republican-leaning seats.

Trump celebrated what he called the prospect of “a new, much fairer, and much improved, Congressional Map, that will give the incredible people of Missouri the tremendous opportunity to elect an additional MAGA Republican in the 2026 Midterm Elections”.

Democratic congressman Emanuel Cleaver, whose district, which includes part of Kansas City, might be redrawn to make his re-election unlikely, denounced the proposed new map as much less fair.

“This attempt to gerrymander Missouri will not simply change district lines, it will silence voices. It will deny representation. It will tell the people of Missouri that their lawmakers no longer wish to earn their vote, that elections are predetermined by the power brokers in Washington,” Cleaver said in a statement.

“Roughly 40% of Missourians cast their ballots for Democratic candidates last year, and they deserve representation in the People’s House just as much as our Republican neighbors.”

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) pointed to a proposal to create a new Republican majority seat by splitting heavily Democratic Kansas City.

“Republicans are running scared, and they’ve decided their only hope for maintaining their majority is to pursue a cynical, unpopular scheme to gerrymander congressional maps,” Suzan DelBene, a Washington congresswoman who chairs the DCCC said.

“The Missouri constitution, business and community leaders, and common sense all support the idea of Kansas City remaining one, compact congressional district. Donald Trump and DC Republicans’ desire to hold on to power are the only rationale for this re-draw.”

The Liberty Justice Center, which filed a lawsuit in April to challenge Donald Trump’s so-called “Liberation Day” tariffs on behalf of five small businesses that would be damaged by the tariffs, issued a statement to celebrate what it called its second major victory in the case.

The lawsuit was filed with the constitutional scholar Ilya Somin and joined by other lawyers, including Neal Katyal, former acting solicitor general of the United States during the Obama administration, after Trump administration appealed against his initial loss in the US court of international trade.

“For the second time in this case, a federal court has held that the President’s so-called ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs are unlawful,” Jeffrey Schwab, director of litigation for the not-for-profit legal center said. “The President cannot lawfully impose tariffs on his own; and IEEPA does not give him unlimited unilateral tariff authority. This decision protects American businesses and consumers from the uncertainty and harm caused by these unlawful tariffs.”

“The decision today is a powerful reaffirmation of our nation’s core constitutional commitments from our nation’s founders, especially the principle that presidents must act within the rule of law,” Katyal said. “It is that commitment to the rule of law that brought my parents, and millions of others, to this country, and which stands as a beacon of freedom and hope around the globe.”

In an interview with MSNBC later on Friday, Katyal pointed out that Trump appeared to acknowledge during his first term that the constitution gave the power to impose tariffs to Congress. “He went and asked Congress for the authority to tariff and they said no. So President Trump this time around just did it on his own”, Katyal said.

The US court of appeals for the federal circuit, which ruled on Friday that most of Donald Trump’s tariffs are illegal, will allow the import taxes to stay in effect until 14 October, to give the president time to appeal to the supreme court.

After ruling, 7-4, that the so-called “reciprocal” tariffs imposed by Trump are not legal, the court paused its order until that date.

Donald Trump broke his uncharacteristic silence on the news in recent days by posting an outraged reaction to the federal appeals court ruling that most of his tariffs are illegal.

The president’s post, which was shared on an official White House account, began with the all-caps declaration: “ALL TARIFFS ARE STILL IN EFFECT!”

The court ruling against Trump did say that the tariffs can remain in place until 14 October, giving his administration time to appeal to the supreme court.

“Today a Highly Partisan Appeals Court incorrectly said that our Tariffs should be removed, but they know the United States of America will win in the end,” Trump added in his response.

The president was quite clear about what he sees as the vehicle for bringing about his preferred end, being granted the power to impose taxes reserved in the US constitution for Congress.

“For many years, Tariffs were allowed to be used against us by our uncaring and unwise Politicians,” Trump wrote. “Now, with the help of the United States Supreme Court, we will use them to the benefit of our Nation.”

A US appeals court ruled on Friday that most of Donald Trump’s new tariffs are illegal, upholding a ruling from the federal court of international trade that the president’s declaration of an economic emergency to justify sweeping tariffs violates a 1977 law and the US constitution, which reserves taxation for the Congress.

As our colleague Dominic Rushe explains, the New York-based US court of international trade previously ruled against Trump’s tariff policies in May, saying the president had exceeded his authority when he imposed both sets of challenged tariffs. The three-judge panel included a judge who was appointed by Trump in his first term.

The split decision from the US court of appeals for the federal circuit in Washington DC addressed the legality of what Trump calls “reciprocal” tariffs imposed as part of his trade war in April, as well as a separate set of tariffs imposed in February against China, Canada and Mexico.

The court ruled that the president does have the legal authority to impose narrow, sectoral tariffs, like those on steel and aluminum imports, but he far exceeded his power with the global tariffs on imports he first declared in April.

The case, which is expected to be appealed to the US supreme court, hinges of Trump’s broad interpretation of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).

That law gives the president the power to address “unusual and extraordinary” threats during national emergencies, which previous presidents haver used to sanction enemies or freeze their assets.

Trump, the first president to use IEEPA to impose tariffs, has claimed the import taxes were justified given trade imbalances, declining US manufacturing power and the cross-border flow of drugs.

The law does not mention tariffs, although it allows the president to take a wide range of actions in response to a crisis. Trump’s justice department has argued that the law allows tariffs under emergency provisions that authorize a president to “regulate” imports or block them completely.

In ruling against Trump’s interpretation of the law, the court’s majority writes: “we discern no clear congressional authorization by IEEPA for tariffs of the magnitude of the Reciprocal Tariffs and Trafficking Tariffs. Reading the phrase ‘regulate … importation’ to include imposing these tariffs is ‘a wafer-thin reed on which to rest such sweeping power.’”

In one of the opinions upholding the lower court’s finding that Trump exceeded his authority, the judges write: “Under the Government’s view, the President could make such a factual finding by merely pointing to a lack of taxes paid on imports from outside the country. But if the President can declare an emergency to cut the deficit by raising taxes in whatever way he wishes, not much remains of Congressional authority over taxation.”

The appeals court ruled on two cases, one brought by five small businesses and the other by 12 Democratic-led US states, which argued that IEEPA does not authorize tariffs.

The US constitution grants Congress, not the president, the authority to issue taxes and tariffs, and any delegation of that authority must be both explicit and limited, according to the lawsuits.

Another court in Washington DC ruled that IEEPA does not authorize Trump’s tariffs, and the government has appealed that decision as well. At least eight lawsuits have challenged Trump’s tariff policies, including one filed by the state of California.

The homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, fired two dozen “deep-state” employees of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s information technology department on Friday, including its top leaders, following what she called an unspecified “breach” of its network by a “threat actor”.

“While conducting a routine cybersecurity review, the DHS Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) discovered significant security vulnerabilities that gave a threat actor access to FEMA’s network”, the homeland security department said in a statement. “The investigation uncovered several severe lapses in security that allowed the threat actor to breach FEMA’s network and threaten the entire Department and the nation as a whole.”

The statement said that Fema’s chief information officer, Charlie Armstrong, chief information security officer, Greg Edwards, and 22 other IT employees “directly responsible” were fired.

“FEMA’s career IT leadership failed on every level. Their incompetence put the American people at risk”, Noem said. “When DHS stepped in to fix the problem, entrenched bureaucrats worked to prevent us from solving the problem and downplayed just how bad this breach was. These deep-state individuals were more interested in covering up their failures than in protecting the Homeland and American citizens’ personal data, so I terminated them immediately.”

The firings came minutes after the department released a long statement attacking the federal emergency management agency that Donald Trump is pushing to close. “FEMA has failed Americans for decades”, the department’s official X account posted at the start of a thread deriding the agency, in which is claimed that “the Biden administration hijacked FEMA to resettle illegal aliens”.

A federal appeals court in San Francisco has blocked homeland security secretary Kristi Noem from moving ahead with her plan to strip temporary protected status from 600,000 Venezuelans who have permission to live and work in the United States amid turmoil in their homeland.

A three-judge panel of the 9th US circuit court of appeals unanimously upheld a lower court ruling that maintained temporary protected status for Venezuelans while TPS holders challenge actions by Trump’s administration in court.

The judges found that plaintiffs were likely to succeed on their claim that Noem had no authority to vacate or set aside a prior extension of temporary protected status by the Biden administration because the governing statute written by Congress does not permit it.

“In enacting the TPS statute, Congress designed a system of temporary status that was predictable, dependable, and insulated from electoral politics,” judge Kim Wardlaw, who was nominated by Bill Clinton, a Democrat, wrote for the panel.

The ruling concluded:

“The TPS statute is designed to constrain the Executive, creating predictable periods of safety and legal status for TPS beneficiaries. Sudden reversals of prior decisions contravene the statute’s plain language and purpose. Here, hundreds of thousands of people have been stripped of status and plunged into uncertainty. The stability of TPS has been replaced by fears of family separation, detention, and deportation. Congress did not contemplate this, and the ongoing irreparable harm to Plaintiffs warrants a remedy pending a final adjudication on the merits.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security told the Associated Press decision was made by “unelected activist” judges and claimed that, for decades, “the TPS program has been abused, exploited, and politicized as a de facto amnesty program.”

Congress authorized temporary protected status, or TPS, as part of the Immigration Act of 1990, which increased the limits on legal immigration to the United States and was signed into law by a Republican president, George H.W. Bush.

The law established “a program for granting temporary protected status and work authorization to aliens in the United States who are nationals of countries designated by the Attorney General to be subject to armed conflict, natural disaster, or other extraordinary temporary conditions.” The statute also made clear that it “Prohibits deportation during the period in which such status is in effect.”

When speaking about the ongoing turmoil at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Miller says, without evidence, that the agency lacked “credibility” and was staffed by “partisan” bureaucrats who weren’t “at all concerned about public health, and weren’t actually very knowledgable about public health”.

He goes on to defend health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, who is facing staunch criticism in the wake of firing CDC director Susan Monarez, and the resignation of several senior public health experts at the agency.

“Secretary Kennedy has been a crown jewel of this administration who’s working tirelessly to improve public health for all Americans, and again, to deal with the drivers of the chronic health crisis in this country,” Miller said.

Miller also claimed that Kennedy is “one of the world’s foremost voices, advocates and experts on public health”.

Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, just spoke with reporters at the White House. He said that the administration will be “prioritizing enforcement in these sanctuary jurisdictions as a matter of public safety and national security”, when asked about upcoming immigration raids in so-called “sanctuary cities”, which are predominantly run by Democratic officials.

Miller alleged that these cities do not cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), even when an immigrant commits a crime, saying they don’t comply with detainers issued by Ice. However, the American Immigration Council notes that sanctuary cities do not “shield immigrants from deportation or prosecution for criminal activities”.

In a week of chaos at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Donald Trump’s health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, has continued to make questionable medical and health claims – and has been slammed for them by experts and lawmakers alike.

After the deadly mass school shooting in Minneapolis this week where two children were killed and 17 others injured, Kennedy suggested that psychiatric drugs may be contributing to the rise in gun violence across the country.

During an appearance on Fox & Friends, the host Brian Kilmeade asked Kennedy if the health department was investigating whether medications used to treat gender dysphoria might be linked to school shootings.

According to court documents reviewed by the Guardian, the 23-year-old shooter, Robin Westman, had changed their birth name from Robert to Robin because they identified as a woman.

In response to Kilmeade’s question, Kennedy, without acknowledging the prevalence and easy accessibility of firearms across the US – said that his department was “launching studies on the potential contribution of some of the SSRI [selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors] drugs and some of the other psychiatric drugs that might be contributing to violence”.

This week, Kennedy also suggested that he could identify “mitochondrial challenges” in children at airports just by looking at them.

Speaking at an event in Texas alongside the state’s governor, Greg Abbott, Kennedy claimed: “I’m looking at kids as I walk through the airports today, as I walk down the street, and I see these kids that are just overburdened with mitochondrial challenges, with inflammation. You can tell from their faces, from their body movements, and from their lack of social connection. And I know that that’s not how our children are supposed to look.”

In response, Ashish Jha, former White House Covid-19 response coordinator under the Biden administration, said: “I’m sorry but what?”

“This is wacky, flat-earth, voodoo stuff, people. This is not normal,” Jha added on X.

Read more here:

The administration is planning to ramp up immigration enforcement in Boston, Politico is reporting, citing a current and former administration official.

According to the official, the latest plans are subject to change, but would involve an increase in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) personnel in the city.

Boston mayor Michelle Wu, a Democrat, has pushed back against the Trump administration, and said the city would “not back down” from engaging in “sanctuary city policies” outlined by the justice department, including limiting city police from helping Ice agents make arrests.

Last week, acting Ice director Todd Lyons also said the increase in immigration enforcement was coming. “Sanctuary does not mean safer streets. It means more criminal aliens out and about the neighborhood. But 100%, you will see a larger Ice presence,” Lyons said in a radio interview.

Meanwhile, border czar Tom Homan said this week that immigration raids across several Democratic-led cities would take place after Labor Day.

Donald Trump said he would not be spending $4.9bn in congressionally approved foreign aid, in a letter to Republican house speaker Mike Johnson.

The rare move, known as a “pocket rescission”, is a request to Congress for the president to not spend appropriated funds towards the end of the fiscal year –which ends on 30 September. Normally, the law stipulates that funding can be paused for 45 days while congress considers such a request. But a pocket rescission means that lawmakers don’t have enough time to act before the funds expire. This would be the first time a president has used the provision in 50 years.

It’s already attracted ire from several legislators. Susan Collins, the Republican senator from Maine who chairs the appropriations committee called the president’s actions a “clear violation of the law”.

Meanwhile, Democrats decried Trump’s actions. Senator Elizabeth Warren, the ranking member of the finance committee, said the president is a “wannabe king is defunding support that prevents hunger and sickness worldwide”, while congressman Joaquin Castro of Texas said the decision to scrap billions in foreign funding was “wrong and illegal”, and urged his Republican colleagues to “say hell no”.

The US air force has said it is offering military funeral honors to Ashli Babbitt, a supporter of Donald Trump who was shot and killed by a police officer during the 6 January 2021, attack on the US Capitol.

Babbitt, 35, a US air force veteran who lived in California, was fatally shot in the shoulder while she tried to enter a room near the House of Representatives during the riot.

“After reviewing the circumstances of [senior airman] Babbitt’s death, the Air Force has offered Military Funeral Honors to [senior airman] Babbitt’s family,” the air force said in a statement seen by Reuters.

The funeral honors would mark the latest gesture of support from Trump’s administration toward those who stormed the Capitol in a failed bid to block Congress from certifying his 2020 election loss. Trump has repeatedly made false claims that his 2020 loss to Joe Biden was due to voter fraud.

He and his supporters have sought to portray Babbitt as a martyr who was unjustly killed as she attempted to climb through a broken window of a barricaded door leading to the speaker’s lobby, a few feet from where members of Congress were waiting to be evacuated to safety during the attack.

An internal investigation by the US Capitol Police cleared the officer who shot Babbitt of wrongdoing in 2021 and said he would not face internal discipline. More than 1,500 people were criminally charged for participating in the riot. Trump pardoned nearly all of them, and released those who had been imprisoned.

A controversial portrait of General Robert E Lee, which shows an enslaved man holding the Confederate leader’s horse, is being returned to the library at West Point, according to Pentagon officials who spoke with the New York Times.

The nearly 20ft canvas, which had hung in the US military academy since 1952, was removed following a 2020 law that ordered Confederate names and tributes to be stripped from military installations.

That same law established a commission to rename bases and review monuments. By 2022, the commission directed West Point to clear away all items that “commemorate or memorialize the Confederacy”. Shortly after, the Lee portrait was taken down and placed in storage.

Exactly how the painting is being reinstalled without countering the legislation remains uncertain. The measure was passed in the wake of nationwide demonstrations after George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police.

Both Donald Trump and the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, have pushed for the restoration of Confederate symbols that were removed in recent years. Hegseth, in particular, has pressed for reinstating a Confederate memorial at Arlington national cemetery that Congress recommended removing. In an August social media post, he wrote that the statue “never should have been taken down by woke lemmings”.

Hegseth moved to reinstate Confederate general names at army bases such as Fort Bragg and Fort Lee earlier this summer, but did so in a way that attempted to stay within the boundaries of the 2020 law. The new names honored different soldiers, none of whom had fought for the Confederacy, yet the names were the same as those of the original Confederate honorees.

Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, has signed a new redistricting bill that will redraw the state’s congressional map to heavily favor Republicans.

Abbott signed today the highly controversial bill which prompted state Democrats to stage a weeks-long walkout earlier this month.

In a video on X, Abbott can be seen signing the bill and says it “creates the one big, beautiful map that ensures fairer representation in the United States Congress for Texas”.

Abbott’s signing comes after the Texas house of representatives approved the new map – which is set to create as many as five additional Republican congressional districts – on an 88-52 party-line vote. The state senate then approved the bill early on Saturday.

After the house’s approval, Donald Trump took to Truth Social and wrote: “Big WIN for the Great State of Texas!!! Everything Passed, on our way to FIVE more Congressional seats and saving your Rights, your Freedoms, and your Country, itself.”

“Texas never lets us down. Florida, Indiana, and others are looking to do the same thing,” he added.

The bill’s passage follows Trump’s request for the state to draw new congressional maps. Currently, 25 of Texas’s 38 districts have Republican majorities. The new redistricting will bring the Republican-favored districts to 30.

The new districting plans will remove Democratic-majority districts in several major cities including Houston, Austin and the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex.

The US is denying and revoking visas from members of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority ahead of the United Nations general assembly meeting in September, the US state department has said in a statement.

The restrictions mean that Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas would likely not be able to travel to New York to deliver an address to the annual gathering, as he typically does, Reuters reports.

It follows the imposition of US sanctions on Palestinian Authority officials and members of the Palestine Liberation Organization in July, even as other western powers have moved toward recognition of Palestinian statehood.

In a statement, the state department said that “it is in our national security interests to hold the PLO and PA accountable for not complying with their commitments, and for undermining the prospects for peace”.

Officials with the Palestinian Authority, which has limited self-rule in parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, reject that they have undermined peace prospects, Reuters reports.

Under the 1947 UN “headquarters agreement” the US is generally required to allow access for foreign diplomats to the UN in New York. But Washington has said it can deny visas for security, terrorism and foreign policy reasons.

The state department said that the Palestinian Authority’s mission to the UN would not be included in the restrictions. It did not elaborate.

CBS News is reporting that Republican senator Joni Ernst of Iowa plans to reveal next week that she won’t seek reelection in 2026.

Ernst, 55, who has served in the Senate since 2015, plans to make the announcement on Thursday, CBS reported citing multiple sources familiar with the matter.

Per CBS’s report:

Some Iowa Democrats have already jumped into the race, including state Sen. Zach Wahls, state Rep. Josh Turek, and Des Moines School Board chairwoman Jackie Norris.

Ernst has been evasive about whether she would run for a third term in 2026, but in public remarks earlier this month, predicted continued GOP control of Iowa.

“Every day we get a new Democratic member of the House or Senate that decides to run for this Senate seat — bring it on,” she said at a meeting of the Westside Conservative Club. “Bring it on, folks. Because I tell you, at the end of the day, Iowa is going to be red.”

White House officials had hoped Ernst would run again, instead of joining other Republicans who are leaving the Senate, including North Carolina’s Thom Tillis, Alabama’s Tommy Tuberville and Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell.

Cook’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, is arguing that her firing does “irreparable harm”. He says that Cook ultimately took an oath before Congress, and what she’s being “deprived of” is more than a paycheck, but the ability “to satisfy the oath” she took and “not to be removed from anything but cause”.

He added that while this lawsuit works its way through the court, the “status quo” should stay in place:

She [Cook] should not be taken out of her office. She shouldn’t be disconnected to her electronics. She should be able to participate in the meeting. She should do all the things that she did a week ago before all this started, because that is the status quo.

Doctors at the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) would be barred from performing abortions, even in cases of rape and incest, under new rules proposed by the Trump administration.

The draft regulations, which also forbid providers from counseling female veterans about terminating a pregnancy, have generated nearly 20,000 comments in the federal register from conservative activists, abortion rights supporters and female veterans, many of them survivors of sexual assault.

“I am a veteran, a mother, and my abortion saved my life,” wrote Mary Dodson-Otten, a 41-year-old nurse and air force veteran who lives outside Atlanta, Georgia.

Dodson-Otten told the Guardian she ended a pregnancy in her 20s after she got pregnant by an abusive boyfriend who was a fellow service member. Without the abortion, she said, “I don’t think I would have survived, whether it would have been him hurting me or me hurting me.”

The rule proposed by the Trump administration has an exception that allows abortions to take place “when a physician certifies that the life of the mother would be endangered if the fetus were carried to term”. But abortion rights advocates said the exception was too limited.

“Women are going to die,” predicted Caitlin Russell, a former US army captain who served two tours in Afghanistan and studies female veterans’ health at the University of Pennsylvania.

A hearing in Lisa Cook’s lawsuit, challenging the president attempts to remove her from the Federal Reserve board of governors, has started.

Cook’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, confirms that they’re seeking a temporary restraining order to block the president’s from firing the governor.

We’ll bring you the latest developments here.

Attorney general Pam Bondi said that federal law enforcement had made 86 arrests in Washington DC on Thursday.

This includes a “suspected Tren de Aragua gang member”, she wrote in a post on X.

Bondi added that 1,369 arrests had been made since the beginning of the federal law enforcement surge earlier this month.

Donald Trump has revoked Secret Service protection for the former vice-president and 2024 Democratic presidential nominee, Kamala Harris, according to a letter obtained by CNN, and confirmed to the Guardian by a senior White House official.

The letter, dated on Thursday and titled “Memorandum for the Secretary of Homeland Security”, instructs the Secret Service to “discontinue any security-related procedures beyond those required by law” effective 1 September 2025.

Under federal law, former vice-presidents are entitled to receive Secret Service protection for six months after leaving office.

For Harris, that period ended on 21 July. However, CNN reports that her protection had been extended for an additional year, under an undisclosed directive signed by then president Joe Biden before leaving office.

Trump’s new directive cancels that extension.

“You are hereby authorized to discontinue any security-related procedures previously authorized by Executive Memorandum, beyond those required by law, for the following individual, effective September 1, 2025: Former Vice President Kamala D. Harris,” the letter reads.

All Democrats on the Senate banking, housing, and urban affairs committee have signed a letter to Republican chair Tim Scott, the senator from South Carolina, to postpone Stephen Miran’s confirmation hearing to the Federal Reserve’s board of governors – scheduled for next week.

The lawmakers say that Donald Trump’s decision to fire Lisa Cook earlier this week is an “unprecedented attempt” to “undermine” the US central bank’s independence. Instead, the Democrats say the committee should “hold an oversight hearing on the legal and economic implications of the President’s actions”.

The added in the letter:

We have a responsibility to the American public to ensure that the Federal Reserve is making decisions that are in the best interest of businesses and households, pursuant to its congressional mandate, not based on the whims of the President.

Important to note that Miran was announced as the president’s pick to replace Adriana Kugler, who resigned early from her post. If confirmed, Miran would fulfill the remainder of Kugler’s term, which expires at the end of January.

If Trump’s attempt to oust Cook from the Federal Reserve board is successful, that would create another vacancy for him to nominate a governor.

Hernán was at the Latin American restaurant that he owns with his brother in north-west Washington DC last week when his staff started getting phone calls and messages about Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) checkpoints in the neighborhood. The employees, scared that they might be targeted and racially profiled, asked if they could go home.

Within hours, Hernán had to close their doors, and the restaurant hasn’t been open since.

“Literally after President Trump brought the national guard on DC, everything stopped,” said Hernán, who requested his last name not be used due to fears of Ice retaliation. “Everything disappeared because the bike delivery guys, they’re scared. They’re not on the streets right now. My people, most of my cooks are Spanish[-speaking] and they don’t want to go to DC right now.”

Hernán, who also owns a restaurant in Maryland, said he was hoping to be able to reopen in a few weeks if and when the Trump administration’s takeover of the DC police ends and immigration enforcement arrests become less frequent. But the future is unclear for him and many restaurant owners in the US capital.

Already suffering from fewer customers due to the administration’s almost three-week-long crackdown, restaurants are also having to contend with staff shortages because many immigrants, both documented and undocumented, fear coming into DC and being on the streets, and some have been detained by Ice.

A visit to Taiwan by two US senators has drawn criticism from China, which claims the island as its own and objects to any contact between officials of the two sides.

The chair of the Senate armed services committee, Roger Wicker, and the Nebraska senator Deb Fischer arrived in Taipei on Friday for a series of high-level meetings with senior Taiwanese leaders to discuss US-Taiwan relations, regional security, trade and investment, according to the American Institute in Taiwan, Washington’s de facto embassy in lieu of formal diplomatic relations with the self-governing island democracy.

Upon arrival, Wicker said:

A thriving democracy is never fully assured … and we’re here to talk to our friends and allies in Taiwan about what we’re doing to enhance worldwide peace.

Wicker told Taiwan’s president, Lai Ching-te, during a meeting at the presidential office in Taipei that he and Fischer were visiting to get a better understanding of Taiwan’s needs and concerns.

“We come here from the United States bringing a message from the Congress of commitment, of long-term friendship and a determination that a free country like Taiwan absolutely has the right to remain free and preserve self-determination,” Wicker said.

“At a time of global unrest, it is extremely significant for us to be here,” Fischer added, noting that discussions would include “security, opportunities and progress for this part of the world”.

Nearly 1,000 “worker over billionaire” protests are being planned in all 50 states starting this weekend as part of a Labor Day week of action organized by labor unions and advocacy groups in opposition to the Trump administration’s policies.

The actions include marches and rallies in cities such as Chicago and Los Angeles, a Labor Day parade in New York City, rallies in Palmer, Alaska, Freeport, Maine, and a planned protest at the state capitol in Honolulu, Hawaii.

The protests are organized by the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of labor unions in the US, and dozens of partner organizations, including Public Citizen, Indivisible, Democracy Forward, MoveOn and Patriotic Millionaires.

“This is about organic, grassroots organizing, and we intentionally wanted it to be outside of Washington DC, because that’s where the impacts are being felt,” Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, said.

“Whether it’s teachers or nurses or construction workers, they’re all determined to stand up and fight back, because they’re experiencing the cuts, they’re experiencing the change in policies, they’re experiencing the attacks of this White House on their unions, and so they’re determined to make their voices heard and mobilize to fight forward regardless of what’s happening around us, no matter the obstacles.”

President Donald Trump has threatened to deploy the National Guard to Chicago, New York, Seattle, Baltimore, San Francisco and Portland, Oregon, to fight what he says is runaway crime.

Yet data shows most violent crime in those places and around the country has declined in recent years.

Homicides through the first six months of 2025 were down significantly compared to the same period in 2024, continuing a post-pandemic trend across the US, AP reports.

Trump, who has already taken federal control of police in Washington, DC, has maligned the six Democratic-run cities that all are in states that opposed him in 2024. But he hasn’t threatened sending in the Guard to any major cities in Republican-leaning states.

John Roman, a data expert who directs the Center on Public Safety & Justice at the University of Chicago, acknowledged violence in some urban neighborhoods has persisted for generations. But he said there’s no US city where there “is really a crisis.”

“We’re at a remarkable moment in crime in the United States,” he said.

The White House has chosen a top aide to health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr to temporarily lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – an appointment that is expected to bolster Kennedy’s goals of remaking federal vaccine policy.

Jim O’Neill, a biotech investor and speechwriter for the health department during the George W Bush administration, was tapped as acting director of the agency that oversees vaccine recommendations, a White House official confirmed to the Guardian.

O’Neill, unlike Monarez, has no training in medicine or infectious disease science. He is a former speechwriter for the health department, during the Bush years, who went on to work for the tech investor and conservative megadonor Peter Thiel.

But who is O’Neill and what does he want to do at the CDC? Read our full explainer here:

Senior CDC vaccine research and public health leaders who resigned in protest told hundreds of supporters across the street from the campus on Thursday that the Trump administration needs to “get politics out of public health”.

The agency is reeling from the firing of the CDC chief, Susan Monarez, but Monarez, who was confirmed as CDC chief just a month ago, has refused to be removed. Three senior leaders – Debra Houry, Demetre Daskalakis and Daniel Jernigan – resigned shortly after in protest, citing the alleged spread of misinformation under the Trump administration and political interference in their work. The staffers cheered and applauded them at the event on Thursday.

“You are the people that protect America, and America needs to see that you are the people that protect America, and we are going to be your loudest advocates,” said Daskalakis to the throng. Daskalakis, who was accompanied at the rally by Houry and Jernigan, is now the former director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases and is known for his leadership in HIV prevention and vaccination programs and the Biden administration’s response to the mpox outbreak.

The three, plus Jennifer Leyden, who led the office of public health data, resigned together on Thursday to make a statement about the damage the administration had done to public vaccine research, and in protest of the administration’s response to vaccine disinformation, they said.

“We agreed to do this together. We’ve been talking about it for months, and the past few days, it was just escalating,” said Houry, the CDC’s former chief medical officer. “If one of us retired, it would have been a blip. When the three of us do it together, it’s more powerful and just shows the state of our agency.” She and the others are asking for Congress to intervene, to put a stop to political interference in the organization’s work.

The chaos at the CDC is far from the president’s only battleground todat. Later on, Donald Trump’s battle to exert control over the Federal Reserve faces a key legal test, with a governor of the central bank seeking a temporary block on his extraordinary attempt to fire her.

Lisa Cook sued the US president on Thursday, with her lawyers describing his attempt to dismiss her as “unprecedented and illegal”, and based on “pretextual” allegations.

The case is widely expected to be ultimately decided by the supreme court. While it makes it way through the courts, Cook is seeking a temporary restraining order against Trump’s attempt to “immediately” dismiss her from the Fed’s board.

A hearing on the motion is set for 10am in Washington on Friday. The case has been assigned to US district judge Jia Cobb, an appointee of Joe Biden.

Trump wrote to Cook on Monday, telling her that he was removing her from her position “effective immediately”, based on the allegation from one of his allies that she had obtained a mortgage on a second home she incorrectly described as her primary residence.

The president has spent months attacking the Fed, where most policymakers – including Cook – have so far defied his calls for interest rate cuts. He has spoken of rapidly building “a majority” on the central bank’s board, calling into question the future of its longstanding independence from political oversight.

Read the full report here: