Closing summary
This concludes our live coverage of the second Trump administration for the day. Here are some of the day’s top developments:
A federal judge in Boston blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to revoke Harvard’s ability to enroll international students, mere hours after the university sued the DHS.
Trump said that a 25% tariff he said he will impose on Apple will also apply to Samsung and other smartphone makers who don’t make their products in the United States. “When they build their plant here, there’s no tariffs,” he said.
Trump said he’s not looking for a trade deal with the EU – which he announced earlier today will be slapped with 50% tariffs from 1 June – but said he’d be open to talking about a delay if companies were willing to build their plants in the US.
The US department of defense announced that it has a new press secretary, Kingsley Wilson, who has repeatedly shared an antisemitic conspiracy theory promoted by neo-Nazis.
Paul Weiss, the law firm that agreed to provide $40m in free legal services to support Donald Trump’s administration after he targeted it in an executive order in March, lost four senior litigators on Friday.
The US departments of state and treasury acted on Friday to lift sanctions on Syria, following Donald Trump’s meeting with the new Syrian leader, the former Islamist rebel Ahmad al-Sharaa, last week in Saudi Arabia.
A US judge on Friday overturned a Trump executive order targeting Jenner & Block, a big law firm that employed Andrew Weissmann, who helped lead special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of the Russian government’s effort to help elect Donald Trump.
A Pentagon social media account dedicated to 'Fighting Against Fake News' misleads followers
One of the stranger aspects of Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon is the creation of a social media account, DOD Rapid Response, dedicated, it says, to supporting the defense secretary’s work and “Fighting Against Fake News”.
The account, which was run until Friday by the right-wing podcaster Graham Allen, who stepped down after spending much of his time arguing with reporters on X, has been used for nakedly political posts, to boost Trump administration officials and attack critics.
On Friday, for instance, the account lavished praise on the vice-president, JD Vance, for what it suggested was an incredible feat of physical stamina: shaking the hands of all of this year’s graduates of the naval academy.
“It’s nice to have a Leader like @vp who can stand for hours just to honor the accomplishments of our newest officers. He literally is shaking every single hand” the account posted along with 54 seconds of video of Vance at the naval academy graduation ceremony.
While it is indeed true that Vance stood on stage at Annapolis on Friday and shook the hands of graduates for an hour and seven minutes straight, the feat is hardly unusual. The previous vice-president, Kamala Harris, did exactly the same in 2021, for an hour and 19 minutes. And in 2015, in Joe Biden’s final year as vice-president, he did the same for an hour and eighteen minutes.
The Pentagon Press Association denounced the new restrictions on reporters imposed by the defense secretary Pete Hegseth on Friday.
The press group’s statement begins:
There is no way to sugarcoat it. Today’s memo by Secretary Hegseth appears to be a direct attack on the freedom of the press and America’s right to know what its military is doing.
The Pentagon Press Association is extremely concerned by the decision to restrict movement of accredited journalists within the Pentagon through non-secured, unclassified hallways.
The decision is purportedly based on concerns about operational security. But the Pentagon Press Corps has had access to non-secured, unclassified spaces in the Pentagon for decades, under Republican and Democratic administrations, including in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, without any concern about OP-SEC from DoD leadership.
And this decision does not come in a vacuum: It follows the unprecedented move by the Defense Department this year to evict many of America’s largest news organizations from their dedicated workspaces. Journalists working from the Pentagon everyday will now have less freedom of movement than officers from foreign countries who are assigned to the U.S. military’s headquarters, as well as maintenance staff and concessions workers scattered throughout one of the world’s largest office buildings.
A large restructuring of the US National Security Council got under way on Friday as Donald Trump moved to reduce the size and scope of the once-powerful agency, five sources briefed on the matter told Reuters.
Staff dealing with a variety of major geopolitical issues were sent termination notices on Friday, said the sources, who requested anonymity as they were not permitted to speak to the media.
The move comes just weeks after the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, took over from Mike Waltz as national security adviser. The NSC declined to comment.
The restructuring of the NSC is expected to further reduce the agency’s influence, transforming it from a powerful policymaking body into a small organization focused more on implementing the president’s agenda than on shaping it, the sources said.
The aim is to reduce the size of the NSC, which had more than 300 staffers during the Biden administration, to just a few dozen people. Four sources with knowledge of the plans said they expect the final headcount at the NSC to come out to around 50 people.
Paul Weiss, firm that caved to Trump, loses four senior partners
Paul Weiss, the law firm that agreed to provide $40m in free legal services to support Donald Trump’s administration after he targeted it in an executive order in March, lost four senior litigators on Friday.
The four partners — Karen Dunn, Bill Isaacson, Jeannie Rhee and Jessica Phillips — plan to form their own law firm.
Dunn, who was co-chair of the firm’s litigation department, helped prepare Kamala Harris for her debate victory over Trump last year.
Dunn and Phillips, with support from Isaacson, also helped win over $25 million in damages by suing the organizers of the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, in which a white supremacist killed a counter-demonstrator. Their litigation work on behalf of nine pro bono clients who were injured in the violence was featured in the HBO documentary No Accident.
In the film, Dunn recalls that she was invited to join the civil rights suit by Robbie Kaplan, a lawyer who later represented E. Jean Carroll in her successful sexual abuse and defamation lawsuits against Donald Trump. “Robbie called me out of the blue and said, ‘Do you want to sue the nazis with me?’”
When he was pressed to condemn the violence in Charlottesville that year, Trump, who was near the start of his first term as president, claimed that there were “some very fine people on both sides”.
Rhee was part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of the Russian government’s effort to help Trump win the 2016 election.
The resignations from the firm came the same day that a federal judge ruled that another Trump’s executive order targeting another firm, Jenner & Block, for employing a lawyer who had investigated him, was unconstitutional. Trump’s order punishing Jenner & Block had cited the firm’s decision to hire Andrew Weissmann after he served as the lead prosecutor on Mueller’s special counsel team. Weissman left the firm in 2021.
The executive order against Paul Weiss, which Trump withdrew after the firm agreed to donate $40 million of pro bono services to support his agenda, had also specified that the firm was to be punished for employing a lawyer, Mark Pomerantz, who worked for Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance on an investigation of then former president Trump’s finances.
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After appointing an antisemitic conspiracy theorist to serve as his chief spokesperson on Friday, the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, also announced a new set of restrictions on the physical access of reporters to areas of the Pentagon deemed sensitive, “in the interest of national security”.
In a memo outlining the newly designated no-go areas for reporters, Hegseth claimed the restrictions were necessary “to reduce the opportunities for in-person inadvertent and unauthorized disclosures” of classified national intelligence information “which could put the lives of U.S. Service members in danger”.
Hegseth did not offer any examples of what such disclosures might look like, or how they would differ from the national intelligence information he accidentally disclosed to a journalist in March when he posted operational details of US strikes on Yemen in a Signal group chat.
The new restrictions limit where reporters can go inside the building and require them to wear new badges with a “clearer PRESS identifier.”
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Donald Trump’s administration is attempting to dismiss criminal charges against a top MS-13 leader in order to deport him to El Salvador, according to newly unsealed court records – igniting accusations from critics and the defendant’s legal team that the US president is trying to do a favor for his Salvadorian counterpart, who struck a deal with the gang in 2019.
According to justice department records, the MS-13 figure in question, Vladimir Antonio Arevalo-Chavez, has intimate knowledge of that secretive pact, which – before eventually falling apart – involved Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele’s government ceding money and territory to the gang, who in return promised to reduce violence from its side and provide Bukele’s party with electoral support.
Attempts by the Trump administration to expel Arevalo-Chavez are part of its own deal with Bukele to allow for the US to incarcerate immigrants in a maximum security Salvadoran prison. CNN reported in April that Bukele’s government had specifically asked for nine top MS-13 leaders to be brought back to El Salvador from the US.
Read more:
New Pentagon spokesperson promoted antisemitic conspiracy theory last year
The US department of defense, which has held just one news conference this year, announced on Friday that it has a new press secretary, Kingsley Wilson, who has repeatedly shared an antisemitic conspiracy theory promoted by neo-Nazis.
As NPR’s Tom Dreisbach reported in March, Wilson claimed in a post on X last summer that Leo Frank, a Jewish man who was lynched by an antisemitic mob in Georgia in 1915 after being falsely accused of raping and murdering a young girl, “raped & murdered a 13-year-old girl” and “ tried to frame a black man for his crime”.
Wilson posted that false claim in response to a post from the Anti-Defamation League commemoration the 109th anniversary of Frank’s lynching, and noting that Frank had received a posthumous pardon from the state of Georgia in 1986. The 1915 lynching spurred the creation of the ADL.
As NPR explained, neo-Nazis have continued to claim that Frank was guilty, and a group of neo-Nazis protested the Broadway musical “Parade,” which dramatizes Frank’s trial and lynching, in 2023.
Wilson previously endorsed the neo-Nazi conspiracy theory that same year, in response to a tweet from the head of the ADL.
“White supremacists and other antisemites have long used conspiracy theories about the Leo Frank case to cast doubt on the circumstances of the antisemitic lynching,” an ADL spokesperson told the Guardian in March. “We are deeply disturbed that any public official would parrot these hateful and false conspiracy theories, and we hope Kingsley Wilson will immediately retract her remarks.”
Wilson has served in the Pentagon press office since January, before being promoted on Friday. When her repeated endorsement of the attacks on Leo Frank were first reported in March, the American Jewish Committee said in a statement that she was “clearly unfit for her role”.
“Anyone who posts antisemitic conspiracy theories lifted right out of the neo-Nazi playbook should not be in public office”, the AJC wrote in March. Two months later, and just days after two Israeli embassy staffers were murdered as they left an AJC event in Washington, Wilson has been given a much more prominent role in the Trump administration, as the Pentagon’s chief spokesperson.
Tom Malinowski, a former diplomat and Democratic member of Congress, noted on X that Wilson was promoted by Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, despite Wilson’s recently revealed history of promoting an antisemitic conspiracy theory. “Please don’t tell me this administration gives a damn about anti-Semitism”, Malinowski wrote.
Last year, Wilson also endorsed the “great replacement theory”, which has inspired antisemitic violence. “The Great Replacement isn’t a right-wing conspiracy theory”, she wrote on X last August,” it’s reality”.
Wilson previously served as a spokesperson for the Center for Renewing America, a Christian nationalist group founded by Russ Vought, a Project 2025 architect who is now the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget. Wilson in the daughter of Steve Cortes, a Fox News contributor and former Trump campaign operative who served on Trump’s National Hispanic Advisory Council.
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US offers 'immediate sanctions relief' to new Syrian government
The US departments of state and treasury acted on Friday to lift sanctions on Syria, following Donald Trump’s meeting with the new Syrian leader, the former Islamist rebel Ahmad al-Sharaa, last week in Saudi Arabia.
A statement from the treasury explained that the Office of Foreign Assets Control had issued a license “to provide immediate sanctions relief for Syria” which “ authorizes transactions prohibited by the Syrian Sanctions Regulations, effectively lifting sanctions on Syria”.
The state department also issued a waiver required by the 2019 Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act to suspend sanctions. “This is just one part of a broader U.S. government effort to remove the full architecture of sanctions imposed on Syria due to the abuses of the Bashar al-Assad regime”, the treasury said.
The 2019 law was named for a Syrian military photographer, code-named Caesar, who defected with tens of thousands of photographs documenting war crimes perpetrated by the Syrian government. After Assad’s fall, he revealed his identity as Farid Nada al-Madhan, the former head of the judicial department for the military police in Damascus.
The treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, said the authorizations would “encourage new investment into Syria. Syria must also continue to work towards becoming a stable country that is at peace”.
“I have issued a 180-day waiver of mandatory Caesar Act sanctions to ensure sanctions do not impede the ability of our partners to make stability-driving investments, and advance Syria’s recovery and reconstruction efforts”, Marco Rubio, the secretary of state wrote in a statement. “These waivers will facilitate the provision of electricity, energy, water, and sanitation, and enable a more effective humanitarian response across Syria.”
The 2019 law limits any presidential waiver of sanctions to six months. For more permanent relief, administration officials are debating the extent to which Syria’s transitional government should be required to meet tough conditions.
After meeting Sharaa, Trump told reporters that he was impressed with the former commander of al Qaeda’s franchise in the Syrian civil war. Sharaa, he said, was a “young, attractive guy; tough guy, you know. Strong past. Very strong past. Fighter.”
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A US federal judge did not mince words when calling a Trump executive order unconstitutional, which sought to target Jenner & Block, a big law firm.
According to the judge, the Trump administration went after the law firm because of the causes it champions, the clients it represents and a lawyer the firm once employed.
“Going after law firms in this way is doubly violative of the Constitution,” US District Judge John D Bates said in a ruling on Friday.
Trump signed an executive order in March, targeting Jenner & Block by suspending security clearances and restricting their access to government buildings, officials and federal contracting work. This was, Trump claimed, because of politically motivated “lawfare” the firm engaged in.
By attempting to push forward this executive order, Trump attempted to “chill legal representation the administration doesn’t like, thereby insulating the Executive Branch from the judicial check fundamental to the separation of powers”.
Bates added that the Trump executive orders against law firms “follow the same recipe: other than personalized touches in their first sections, they generally direct the same adverse actions towards each firm and decry the threat each firm poses to national security and the national interest.”
Bates was appointed to the District of Columbia in 2001 by President George W Bush. He blocked Trump’s executive order completely.
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Judge overturns Trump order targeting law firm Jenner & Block
A US judge on Friday overturned a Trump executive order targeting Jenner & Block, a big law firm that employed a lawyer who investigated him.
Trump’s executive order, called Addressing Risks from Jenner & Block, suspended security clearances for the firm’s lawyers and restricted their access to government buildings, officials and federal contracting work.
Trump accused the law firm of engaging in activities that “undermine justice and the interests of the United States”, claiming that it participated in politically driven legal actions. In the executive order, Trump specifically criticized the firm for hiring Andrew Weissmann, an attorney who worked on Robert Mueller’s investigation into allegations of Russian influence in Trump’s 2016 campaign.
The firm sued to block Trump’s order, arguing it violated the constitution’s first and fifth amendments.
A US district judge ruled on Friday that Trump’s directive violated core rights under the US constitution, mirroring a 2 May ruling that struck down a similar executive order against law firm Perkins Coie.
Apart from Jenner and Perkins Coie, two other firms – WilmerHale and Susman Godfrey – have sued the Trump administration to permanently block executive orders he issued against them.
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Cases of measles, a viral infection that was considered eliminated from the US since 2000, have climbed slightly to 1,046.
There have been 22 new cases in the past week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said, a small increase that signals outbreaks are slowing down.
Ten of those cases came from Texas. Other states with active measles outbreaks include Michigan, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Tennessee. Indiana said its state’s outbreak was over.
Two young children and an adult have died from measles-related illnesses this year, the AP reports. The virus that causes measles is airborne and highly contagious, although preventable through vaccines.
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Here are the key takeaways from Harvard’s legal battle over the Trump administration’s international student ban, from my colleague Anna Betts.
Trump’s Harvard visa threat could wipe out several of school’s sports teams
Some of Harvard’s sports teams would be virtually wiped out by the Trump administration’s move to make the Ivy League school with the nation’s largest athletic program ineligible for international student visas.
Harvard’s 42 varsity sports teams are the most in the nation, and Sportico reported last month that 21% of the players on the school’s rosters for the 2024-25 seasons – or 196 out of 919 athletes – had international home towns. The site noted that some could be US citizens or green card holders who wouldn’t need one of the international visas at issue in the Trump administration’s escalating fight with the university.
Seven of the eight rowers on the men’s heavyweight crew team that just won the Eastern Sprints title – and is headed to the national championships – list international home towns on the school’s website. Mick Thompson, the leading scorer last season, and Jack Bar, who was a captain, are among a handful of Canadians on the men’s hockey roster; 10 of the 13 members of the men’s squash team and more than half of the women’s soccer and golf rosters also list foreign home towns.
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Supreme court temporarily halts access sought by watchdog group to Doge records
The supreme court temporarily paused judicial orders requiring the so-called “department of government efficiency”, established by Donald Trump and spearheaded by his billionaire adviser Elon Musk, to turn over records and answer questions in the coming days and weeks concerning its operations.
The court put on hold Washington-based US district judge Christopher Cooper’s orders for Doge to respond to a government watchdog group’s requests for information after finding that Doge is probably a government agency covered by the federal Freedom of Information Act.
The supreme court’s action, called an administrative stay, gives it additional time to consider the justice department’s formal request to block Cooper’s order while litigation proceeds in a lower court.
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The day so far
This morning a federal judge in Boston swiftly blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to revoke Harvard’s ability to enrol international students, mere hours after the university sued the DHS. In its lawsuit Harvard condemned the administration for unconstitutional retaliation over its refusal to surrender to the White House’s political demands. It said the government’s move would “erase a quarter of Harvard’s student body”, force it to retract admissions for thousands of people, and has already thrown “countless” academic programs, clinics, courses and research laboratories into disarray. “Without its international students, Harvard is not Harvard,” the university wrote in its legal complaint.
Harvard’s president Alan Garber wrote in a letter to the university’s community:
The revocation continues a series of government actions to retaliate against Harvard for our refusal to surrender our academic independence and to submit to the federal government’s illegal assertion of control over our curriculum, our faculty, and our student body.
We condemn this unlawful and unwarranted action. It imperils the futures of thousands of students and scholars across Harvard and serves as a warning to countless others at colleges and universities across the country who have come to America to pursue their education and fulfill their dreams.
US district judge Allison Burroughs granted the university’s request for an immediate temporary restraining order, which she said was necessary because Harvard had “made a sufficient showing … that, unless its motion for a temporary restraining order … is granted, it will sustain immediate and irreparable injury before there is an opportunity to hear from all parties”. She has set a hearing for 29 May to consider the administration’s actions.
Trump doubled down earlier, telling reporters that “Harvard’s going to have to change its ways” and said he was also “looking at a lot of things” when asked if his administration was looking at stopping other universities besides from taking in foreign students. Before Burroughs’s ruling, a White House spokesperson had also earlier dismissed Harvard’s lawsuit as “frivolous”.
While there are now two weeks of reprieve, there were reports of Chinese students at Harvard cancelling flights home today and seeking legal advice on staying in the United States as the Trump administration continues to wage war on the Ivy League university – and others - and amid years of tensions between the two countries. Per the New York Times (paywall), Trump’s attacks on elite institutions like Harvard have the potential to “reshape the broader relationship between [the US and China] by cutting off one of the few remaining reasons that people in China still admire the United States”.
The Trump administration accused Columbia University of violating the civil rights of Jewish students by “acting with deliberate indifference” toward what it described as a “hostile environment” for Jewish students on campus.
Trump ordered the nation’s independent nuclear regulatory commission to narrow regulations and expedite new licenses for reactors and power plants, seeking to shrink a multi-year process down to 18 months. The requirement was part of a batch of executive orders signed by Trump earlier today aiming to boost US nuclear energy production amid a boom in demand from data centers and AI.
Vice-president JD Vance said that the US under Trump will choose carefully when to use military force and will avoid involvement in open-ended conflicts in a speech that signalled a huge shift in 21st-century US foreign policy.
Trump said that a 25% tariff he said he will impose on Apple will also apply to Samsung and other smartphone makers who don’t make their products in the United States. “When they build their plant here, there’s no tariffs,” he said.
Trump said he’s not looking for a trade deal with the EU – which he announced earlier today will be slapped with 50% tariffs from 1 June – but said he’d be open to talking about a delay if companies were willing to build their plants in the US.
US special envoy Steve Witkoff held more than two hours of talks with an Iranian delegation in Rome today about Tehran’s nuclear program and agreed to meet again in the near future, a senior US official said.
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US-Iran talks 'continue to be constructive', says US official after two-hour meeting in Rome
US special envoy Steve Witkoff held more than two hours of talks with an Iranian delegation in Rome today about Tehran’s nuclear program and agreed to meet again in the near future, a senior US official said.
“The talks continue to be constructive – we made further progress, but there is still work to be done. Both sides agreed to meet again in the near future. We are grateful to our Omani partners for their continued facilitation,” the official said.
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Trump says he's not looking for a deal with the EU
Trump says he’s not looking for a trade deal with the EU – who he announced earlier today will be slapped with 50% tariffs from 1 June.
He says the EU is “too slow-moving” and “if they build their plants [in the US] then they have no tariff at all”.
I’m not looking for a deal. We’ve set the deal, it’s at 50%. But there’s no tariff if they build their plant here … If somebody wants to build a plant here I can talk to them about a little bit of a delay, while they’re building their plant, which is something that might be appropriate, maybe.
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Trump says his tariffs on Apple will also apply to Samsung
Trump says that a 25% tariff he said he will impose on Apple will also apply to Samsung and other smartphone makers.
“Or it would not be fair,” he says, adding that the White House will “appropriately have that done by the end of June”.
“When they build their plant here, there’s no tariffs. So they’re going to be building plants here,” he says.
When Trump first announced the tariff Friday morning, he targeted Apple CEO Tim Cook, who said recently that the company was shoring up manufacturing in India.
“I said that’s okay to go to India, but not going to sell into here without tariffs,” Trump says.
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Trump says his administration “will do something very soon” to make it possible for people to come to the US and “have a road towards” citizenship.
'Harvard's going to have to change its ways,' says Trump
Following the signing of those executive orderes, Trump has been taking questions from the media.
Asked by a reporter if his administration was looking at stopping other universities besides Harvard from taking in foreign students, Trump said:
We’re taking a look at a lot of things.
Citing the “billions of dollars” Harvard receives, Trump adds:
Harvard’s going to have to change its ways.
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Here’s the clip of JD Vance saying the Trump administration has “reversed course” on US foreign policy, affirming that there will be “no more undefined missions, no more open-ended conflicts”.
Trump signs executive orders seeking to fast-track new nuclear licenses and overhaul regulatory agency
Donald Trump has ordered the nation’s independent nuclear regulatory commission to narrow regulations and expedite new licenses for reactors and power plants, seeking to shrink a multi-year process down to 18 months, Reuters reports.
The requirement was part of a batch of executive orders signed by Trump just now aiming to boost US nuclear energy production amid a boom in demand from data centers and AI.
Licensing for reactors in the US can take over a decade at times, a process designed to prioritize nuclear safety but which has discouraged new projects.
“With these actions, President Trump is telling the world that America will build again, and the American nuclear renaissance can begin,” said Michael Kratsios, director of the White House office of science and technology policy.
The moves include a substantial overhaul of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that includes looking at staffing levels and directing the energy and defense departments to work together to build nuclear plants on federal lands, a senior White House official said.
The administration envisions the Department of Defense taking a prominent role in ordering reactors and installing them on military bases.
The orders also seek to reinvigorate uranium production and enrichment in the United States, the senior White House official said.
Trump declared a national energy emergency in January as one of his first acts in office, saying the US had inadequate supplies of electricity to meet the country’s growing needs, particularly for data centers that run artificial intelligence systems.
Most of Trump’s actions have focused on boosting fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas, but administration officials also support nuclear power, which in recent years has attracted growing bipartisan support.
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I spoke too soon. Reuters is reporting that Donald Trump is making the nuclear announcement now and signing his executive orders.
His secretary of the interior, Doug Burgum, said there will be four orders signed.
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Trump expected to sign executive orders to boost nuclear industry – Reuters
Executive orders were on Donald Trump’s schedule for 1pm ET today. It’s obviously now way past that time but, as you may know, Trump often runs a tad late to these things. He has also been unusually quiet on Truth Social for the past six hours … so I’ll bring you the latest on what’s happening with the orders when we know more.
Earlier, Reuters reported that as early as today Trump was due to sign executive orders meant to accelerate nuclear energy development. Trump is expected to streamline the regulatory process for new reactor approvals and enhance fuel supply chains, the news agency reported citing four sources familiar with the matter. The report saw shares of nuclear power companies surge.
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'No more open-ended conflicts': JD Vance says use of military force under Trump will be 'cautious and decisive'
Earlier, vice-president JD Vance said that the US under Donald Trump will choose carefully when to use military force and will avoid involvement in open-ended conflicts in what he called a break from recent US policies.
Delivering the commencement address at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, also said that the US faces serious threats from China, Russia and other nations and will have to maintain its technological edge. He told graduates, who will become officers in the navy and marine corps:
The era of uncontested US dominance is over.
Vance said Trump’s order to use force against Houthi rebels in Yemen ultimately led to a ceasefire as part of a deal in which the group agreed to halt attacks on American shipping targets in the Gulf.
“We ought to be cautious in deciding to throw a punch, but when we throw a punch, we throw a punch hard, and we do it decisively.
Vance, who served in the marines, said some recent presidents got the US involved in conflicts that were not essential to American national security. While he didn’t identify past presidents for criticism, his comments suggested he was talking about George W Bush, who launched US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and his successor Barack Obama, who kept up the war in Afghanistan. The US’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 under Joe Biden also continues to be sharply criticized by Trump.
“We had a long experiment in our foreign policy that traded national defense and the maintenance of our alliances for nation building and meddling in foreign countries’ affairs, even if those foreign countries had very little to do with core American interests,” Vance said.
No more undefined missions, no more open-ended conflicts.
Vance said the United States enjoyed a period of dominance after the fall of the Soviet Union and that American policies aimed at the economic integration of US competitors had backfired.
The vice-president’s sharp rhetoric echoed the isolationist tendencies of Trump and marks a huge shift in 21st-century US foreign policy.
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Chinese students at Harvard were cancelling flights home today and seeking legal advice on staying in the United States after the Trump’s administration attempt to block the Ivy League university from enrolling foreign students.
The order, which a judge has swiftly blocked for two weeks, accused the university of coordinating with the Chinese Communist party (CCP), among other accusations, sought to force current foreign students to transfer to other schools or lose their legal status.
“I think the Chinese community definitely feels like a more targeted entity compared to other groups,” Zhang, a 24-year-old studying for the PhD in physics, told Reuters.
Some friends gave me advice that I should try not to stay in my current accommodation if things escalate, because they think it’s possible that an [Ice] agent can take you from your apartment.
The number of Chinese international students in the United States has dropped to about 277,000 in 2024 from a high of around 370,000 in 2019, driven partly by growing tension between the world’s two biggest economies and heightened US government scrutiny of some students from China.
Chinese nationals made up a fifth of Harvard’s foreign student intake in 2024, the university says.
Zhang Kaiqi, a master’s student in public health, had packed his luggage and souvenirs ready for a flight back to China today. But upon hearing the news, he urgently cancelled the expensive flight, losing his internship at an American NGO in China. The 21-year-old told Reuters:
I was sad and irritated. For a moment I thought it was fake news.
The most anxious among the Chinese students at Harvard are those with summer jobs as research assistants tied to their visa status, crucial for future PhD applications, he said.
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Judge says in ruling that Harvard had showed it would 'sustain immediate and irreparable injury'
As we just reported, in her brief ruling granting Harvard’s restraining order against the Trump administration’s attempt to revoke its ability to enrol foreign students, district judge Allison Burroughs wrote that the university “made a sufficient showing … that, unless its motion for a temporary restraining order … is granted, it will sustain immediate and irreparable injury before there is an opportunity to hear from all parties”.
As we’ve been reporting, international students at Harvard University were ordered this week to transfer schools or lose their legal status following the Trump administration’s revocation of the university’s eligibility to enroll students from abroad.
While that order was swiftly blocked by a judge, it is one of a series of events creating uncertainty on campuses across the US. It follows the US government’s revocation of hundreds of student visas on various grounds, including minor infractions or participation in protests against the war in Gaza. (Some of those visas have been reinstated.) Academics have also felt the impact of funding cuts and subsequent hiring freezes, leading to hundreds looking to leave the US to work elsewhere.
Whether you are a student or an academic, we would like to hear how you have been affected. Are you considering leaving the US and working abroad? If you are an international student who had plans to study in the US, are you now considering studying elsewhere?
You can tell us if you are planning on leaving the US or changing your mind about studying there using the form via link below, or messaging us. Please share your story if you are 18 or over, anonymously if you wish.
Reuters reports that in her brief order blocking the policy for two weeks, district judge Allison Burroughs said Harvard had shown it could be harmed before there was an opportunity to hear the case in full.
Burroughs, an Obama appointee, scheduled hearings for 27 May and 29 May to consider next steps in the case.
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District judge Allison Burroughs’ order provides temporary relief to the thousands of international students who were faced with being forced to transfer under a policy that Harvard called part of the administration’s broader effort to retaliate against it for refusing to “surrender its academic independence”.
Harvard enrolled nearly 6,800 international students in its current school year, equal to 27% of total enrolment.
The Trump administration may appeal Burroughs’ ruling. Spokespeople for the justice department and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.
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Judge issues temporary order blocking the White House from revoking Harvard's ability to enroll foreign students
A US federal judge has blocked the government from revoking Harvard University’s ability to enroll foreign students just hours after the elite college sued the Trump administration over its abrupt ban the day before on enrolling foreign students.
US district judge Allison Burroughs in Boston issued the temporary restraining order late this morning, freezing the policy that had been abruptly imposed on the university, based in nearby Cambridge, Massachusetts, yesterday.
Harvard University announced earlier this morning that it was challenging the Trump administration’s decision to bar the Ivy League school from enrolling foreign students, calling it unconstitutional retaliation for the school previously defying the White House’s political demands.
In a lawsuit filed in federal court in Boston, Harvard said the government’s action a “blatant violation” of the first amendment of the US constitution and will have an “immediate and devastating effect for Harvard and more than 7,000 visa holders”.
“Without its international students, Harvard is not Harvard,” the 389-year-old school said in its suit.
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The “department of government efficiency” (Doge), the group run by the billionaire Elon Musk tasked by the Trump administration to cut back on federal spending, has slashed US Census Bureau surveys it claims are “wasteful”.
According to a Doge post on X, the group “terminated” five separate surveys by the bureau. The group claims the surveys cost $16.5m. It did not specify which surveys were terminated.
The Associated Press reports there is a public process for changing government surveys and that Doge may be violating the law by canceling surveys without going through the proper process.
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The US ambassador to Turkey, Tom Barrack, has been named the US’s special envoy for Syria. His appointment comes after the Trump administration announced this month that the US will be lifting its sanctions on the country, after Bashar al-Assad’s ouster.
“President Trump has outlined his clear vision of a prosperous Middle East and a stable Syria at peace with itself and its neighbors,” Barrack said on X. “I am proud to assume the role of the U.S. Special Envoy for Syria and support Secretary Rubio in the realization of the President’s vision.”
The US was one of many countries that placed sanctions on Syria during the decades-long rule of former Assad regime. The Assad government was overthrown in December.
“There’s a new government that will hopefully succeed in stabilizing the country and keeping peace,” Trump said during a visit to the Middle East this month. “I will be ordering the cessation of sanctions against Syria in order to give them a chance at greatness.”
According to Barrack’s post on X, the cessation of sanctions against Syria will help lead to the defeat of the Islamic State militant group.
Barrack, a private equity investor, has been a longtime friend of Trump.
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Trump threatens 25% tariff on iPhones if they are not made in US
Donald Trump has threatened to impose a 25% tariff on iPhones if they are not made in the United States, as he stepped up the pressure on Apple to build its signature product in America.
The US president caused a pre-trading dip in Apple shares with a post on the Truth Social platform stating that iPhones sold inside the US must be made within the country’s borders. Trump said in the post
I have long ago informed Tim Cook of Apple that I expect their iPhones that will be sold in the United States of America will be manufactured and built in the United States, not India, or anyplace else. If that is not the case, a Tariff of at least 25% must be paid by Apple to the US.
Apple shares dropped 2.5% in premarket trading on Trump’s comments, dragging down US stock index futures.
Trump alarmed Apple investors last month with a series of escalating tariff announcements on goods from China, where the majority of iPhones are assembled, which ratcheted up to total 145%. A couple of days later, however, the administration announced an exemption for smartphones and computers.
Soon afterwards, it was reported that Apple was planning to switch assembly of all iPhones for the US market to India in a bid to swerve the impact of a China trade war. The $3tn (£2.2tn) company is secretive about details of its production processes but analysts estimate that about 90% of its iPhones are assembled in China.
According to the Financial Times, Apple is considering sourcing from India the more than 60m iPhones sold in the US annually by the end of 2026. This would require more than doubling iPhone assembly in India.
Trump rebuked the tech company and its chief executive, Tim Cook, earlier this month over the switch. “I had a little problem with Tim Cook,” the president said, adding:
I said to Tim … we’ve treated you really good, we’ve put up with all the plants that you’ve built in China for years, now you got to build [for] us. We’re not interested in you building in India, India can take care of themselves … we want you to build here.
The US ambassador in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Ervin Massinga, has changed a harshly toned message that was posted on the embassy’s social media earlier today in which it initially called on Ethiopia to “cease the use of drone strikes against its own people”. Another almost identical message by the ambassador was posted afterwards, urging Ethiopia to “continue seeking peaceful resolutions and violence and prioritize the safety and wellbeing of its own citizens”.
The note by the ambassador was posted marking another year of fast-spreading conflicts across Ethiopia which have caused mass-displacement and created large lawless zones in the country. Government forces have been battling armed groups in the states of Oromia and Amhara and have reportedly used armed drones.
The change in language has been blasted by Ethiopians, including Jawar Mohammed, a prominent opposition figure, who accused the US of choosing “diplomatic convenience over moral clarity”. “This is a dangerous concession to the regime’s pressure that risks legitimizing state violence,” Mohammed posted on Facebook.
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Reuters reports that Harvard’s case has been assigned to US district judge Allison Burroughs.
White House doubles down on stance on Harvard, calling lawsuit 'frivolous'
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson dismissed the lawsuit in comments reported by Reuters.
“If only Harvard cared this much about ending the scourge of anti-American, anti-Semitic, pro-terrorist agitators on their campus they wouldn’t be in this situation to begin with,” Jackson said.
“Harvard should spend their time and resources on creating a safe campus environment instead of filing frivolous lawsuits,” she added.
Harvard's president says school's 'refusal to surrender' behind Trump administration's 'unlawful' and 'unwarranted' action
Here’s more from the university’s president Alan Garber’s letter today to the Harvard community:
The revocation continues a series of government actions to retaliate against Harvard for our refusal to surrender our academic independence and to submit to the federal government’s illegal assertion of control over our curriculum, our faculty, and our student body.
We condemn this unlawful and unwarranted action. It imperils the futures of thousands of students and scholars across Harvard and serves as a warning to countless others at colleges and universities across the country who have come to America to pursue their education and fulfill their dreams.
You can read the letter in full here via the Harvard Crimson student newspaper.
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Per Michael’s report, homeland security secretary Kristi Noem said yesterday that Harvard could have the “opportunity” to restore its Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification by turning over within 72 hours a raft of records about international students, including video or audio of their protest activity over the past five years.
Reuters reports that in a letter to Harvard, which was attached to the complaint, Noem said the information was needed because the university had “created a hostile learning environment for Jewish students due to Harvard’s failure to condemn antisemitism”.
In a letter to the Harvard community today, the university’s president Alan Garber said Harvard had in fact already responded to those requests for information. He wrote:
The government has claimed that its destructive action is based on Harvard’s failure to comply with requests for information from the US Department of Homeland Security. In fact, Harvard did respond to the Department’s requests as required by law.
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Here is an extract from my colleage Michael Sainato’s story on Harvard University suing the Trump administration over its abrupt ban yesterday on enrolling foreign students.
Harvard announced this morning that it was challenging the Trump administration’s decision to bar the Ivy League school from enrolling foreign students, calling it unconstitutional retaliation for the school previously defying the White House’s political demands.
The institution added that it plans to file for a temporary restraining order to block the Department of Homeland Security from carrying out the move.
The dramatic developments at Harvard came a week before many students at Harvard are set to graduate.
The Harvard Crimson student newspaper reported that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) gave Harvard 72 hours to turn over all documents on all international students’ disciplinary records and paper, audio, or video records on protest activity over the past five years in order to have the “opportunity” to have its eligibility to enroll foreign students reinstated.
“The government’s action is unlawful,” said a statement from Harvard on the DHS action yesterday. “This retaliatory action threatens serious harm to the Harvard community and our country, and undermines Harvard’s academic and research mission.”
Meanwhile overseas governments expressed alarm at the Trump administration’s actions against Harvard as part of its latest assault on elite higher education in the US.
Prior to Harvard filing suit, the Chinese government early on Friday said the move to block foreign students from the school and oblige current ones to leave would only hurt the international standing of the US. The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology extended an open invitation to Harvard international students and those accepted in response to the action against Harvard.
Former German health minister and alumnus of Harvard Karl Lauterbach called the action against Harvard “research policy suicide”. Germany’s research minister Dorothee Baer had also, before Harvard sued, urged the Trump administration to reverse its decision, calling it “fatal”.
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My colleague Alice Speri reports that Harvard, for now the only university barred from hosting international students, anticipated such a move from the Trump administration.
Last month, the university told admitted foreign students that they could simultaneously accept offers at both Harvard and at universities abroad – something it had never allowed before. In an email, admissions officials cited “recent events here in the United States and at Harvard” and recognised that foreign students may want a “backup plan”.
But Harvard’s current and prospective international students are not the only ones whose education in the US is on the line. Advocates had already warned of dropping enrollment in light of the recent visa revocations as well as the targeting of some pro-Palestinian students for detention and deportation. Those only add to pre-existing bureaucratic obstacles, including rising visa denial rates – from 15% a decade ago to 41% last year – and slow visa processing.
A full accounting of the impact of Trump’s policies won’t be possible until the fall, when universities are required to report their matriculation data. But a global survey of universities published earlier this month shows some early signs, including graduate student enrollment that dropped 13% this spring, while a separate analysis of student visas showed a 14% drop in the number of visas issued so far this year.
Those trends will only be compounded by billions in funding cuts that have already destabilised research institutions and risk sending talented students elsewhere, analysts warn.
“It certainly adds to the stress of a prospective or current international student who, in addition to worrying about immigration policy, has to worry about whether they will have uninterrupted funding if they’re doing a PhD,” said Julia Kent, vice-president, best practices and strategic initiatives, at the Council of Graduate Schools, a group promoting graduate education and research. She noted that some foreign students were so anxious about the administration’s campaign against foreign students that they feared driving their cars.
It’s creating a climate of chaos and uncertainty.
So far, universities have attempted to mitigate the impact of Trump’s policies, discouraging foreign students from traveling abroad during breaks and offering to connect them with immigration attorneys. But that’s not much in the face of an administration willing to go to unprecedented lengths in its effort to submit universities to its will.
'Without its international students, Harvard is not Harvard,' university writes in legal complaint
Reuters has more from Harvard’s complaint against the Trump administration’s move to block its ability to enrol international students.
In its complaint Harvard said the revocation would force it to retract admissions for thousands of people, and has thrown “countless” academic programs, clinics, courses and research laboratories into disarray, just a few days before graduation.
“Without its international students, Harvard is not Harvard,” the 389-year-old school said.
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Let’s recap quickly on how we got here.
The latest decision from the homeland security department to block Harvard’s ability to enrol foreign students and the university’s subsequent (and second) lawsuit against the Trump administration comes amid escalating tensions between federal officials and Harvard over the administration’s claims that the university has implemented inadequate responses to antisemitism on its campus – and Harvard’s refusal to capitulate to Donald Trump’s political demands.
The Trump administration terminated a further $450m in grants to the university earlier this month, following its cancellation of $2.2bn in federal funding in April over which Harvard first sued the administration. It is the first, and so far only, university to do so.
A Trump-appointed antisemitism taskforce has pointed to “just how radical Harvard has become” as nationwide anti-war protesters – including students – demonstrated against Israel’s military assault on Gaza, which has killed at least 53,000 Palestinian people in the last 18 months.
The Trump administration has also ordered the university to dismantle its diversity, equity and inclusion programming, restrict student protests and disclose admission details to federal officials.
Harvard refused to bow to those demands, with its president, Alan Garber, saying in April that “no government – regardless of which party is in power – should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue”. He went on:
The university will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights … The administration’s prescription goes beyond the power of the federal government. It violates Harvard’s first amendment rights and exceeds the statutory limits of the government’s authority under Title VI. And it threatens our values as a private institution devoted to the pursuit, production and dissemination of knowledge.
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An extract from Harvard’s complaint reads:
With the stroke of a pen, the government has sought to erase a quarter of Harvard’s student body, international students who contribute significantly to the University and its mission.
It is the latest act by the government in clear retaliation for Harvard exercising its First Amendment rights to reject the government’s demands to control Harvard’s governance, curriculum, and the ‘ideology’ of its faculty and students.
Homeland security secretary Kristi Noem yesterday ordered the termination of Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification, effective with the 2025-2026 academic year, accusing the university of “fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party”.
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Harvard sues Trump administration for blocking enrollment of foreign students, calling it a 'blatant violation' of US constitution
Harvard University has sued the Trump administration over its decision to revoke the Ivy League school’s ability to enrol international students, a move the school called unconstitutional and retaliatory.
Reuters reports that in a complaint filed in Boston federal court, Harvard called the revocation a “blatant violation” of the US constitution’s first amendment and other federal laws.
It also said the revocation had an “immediate and devastating effect” on the university and more than 7,000 visa holders.
The administration’s severe escalation in its weeks-long showdown with Harvard would force more than 6,000 international students currently enrolled there to transfer to other universities or lose their legal status, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
My colleague Alice Speri has more:
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Trump administration accuses Columbia University of violating civil rights law with 'hostile environment' for Jewish students
The Trump administration is accusing Columbia University of violating the civil rights of Jewish students by “acting with deliberate indifference” toward what it described as a “hostile environment” for Jewish students on campus, the Associated Press reports.
The finding was announced late yesterday by the Health and Human Services Department, marking the latest blow for an Ivy League school already shaken by federal cutbacks and sustained government pressure to crack down on student speech.
It came hours after the Department of Homeland Security said it would revoke Harvard University’s ability to enroll international students, a major escalation in the administration’s months-long attack on higher education.
The civil rights division of HHS said it had found Columbia in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which blocks federal funding recipients from discrimination based on race, color or national origin. That final category, the press release notes, includes “discrimination against individuals that is based on their actual or perceived Israeli or Jewish identity or ancestry”.
The announcement did not include new sanctions against Columbia, which is already facing $400m in federal cuts by the Trump administration over its response to pro-Palestine campus protests.
A spokesperson for Columbia said the university is currently in negotiations with the government about resolving its claims of antisemitism.
“We understand this finding is part of our ongoing discussions with the government,” the spokesperson said in an email. “Columbia is deeply committed to combatting antisemitism and all forms of harassment and discrimination on our campus.”
The civil rights investigation into Columbia was based on witness interviews, media reports and other sources, according to HHS. The findings were not made public. A spokesperson did not response to an AP request for further information.
“The findings carefully document the hostile environment Jewish students at Columbia University have had to endure for over 19 months, disrupting their education, safety, and well-being,” Anthony Archeval, acting director of the HHS civil rights office, said in a statement.
Last spring, Columbia became the epicenter of protests against Israel’s war in Gaza, spurring a national movement of campus demonstrations that demanded universities cut ties with Israel.
At the time, some Jewish students and faculty complained about being harassed during the demonstrations or ostracized because of their faith or their support of Israel.
Those who participated in Columbia’s protests, including some Jewish students, have said they are protesting Israel’s actions against Palestinians and have forcefully denied allegations of antisemitism.
Many have also accused the university of capitulating to the Trump administration’s demands - including placing its Middle East studies department under new leadership - at the expense of academic freedom and protecting foreign students.
At a commencement ceremony earlier this week, a speech by Columbia’s acting president, Claire Shipman, was met with loud boos by graduates and chants of “free Palestine”.
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Trump recommends 50% tariff on the European Union starting 1 June
Donald Trump has just announced he is recommending a 50% tariff on goods from the European Union, from the start of next month.
Ratcheting up the trade war, Trump claimed in a Truth Social post that the EU has been “very difficul” to deal with, and that the current US trade in goods deficit is “totally unacceptable”.
Trump also claims that the EU was set up to take advantage of the US on trade.
He says:
The European Union, which was formed for the primary purpose of taking advantage of the United States on TRADE, has been very difficult to deal with.
Their powerful Trade Barriers, Vat Taxes, ridiculous Corporate Penalties, Non-Monetary Trade Barriers, Monetary Manipulations, unfair and unjustified lawsuits against Americans Companies, and more, have led to a Trade Deficit with the U.S. of more than $250,000,000 a year, a number which is totally unacceptable. Our discussions with them are going nowhere!
Therefore, I am recommending a straight 50% Tariff on the European Union, starting on June 1, 2025. There is no Tariff if the product is built or manufactured in the United States. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
You can follow all the latest tariff developments on our business live blog:
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President Donald Trump said on Friday that Apple would have to pay a 25% tariff if phones sold in the country were not made within its borders.
Shares of Apple dropped 2.5% in premarket trading on Trump’s warning, dragging down U.S. stock index futures lower.
“I have long ago informed Tim Cook of Apple that I expect their iPhones that will be sold in the United States of America will be manufactured and built in the United States, not India, or anyplace else,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.
“If that is not the case, a Tariff of at least 25% must be paid by Apple to the U.S.”
It is not clear if Trump can levy a tariff on an individual company.
The Department of Veterans Affairs, the nation’s largest integrated healthcare system, has been plunged into crisis amid canceled contracts, hiring freezes, resignations, layoffs and other moves by the Trump administration and Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), internal agency documents obtained by the Guardian show.
The documents paint a grim picture of chaos across the department’s sprawling network of 170 veterans affairs (VA) hospitals and more than 1,300 outpatient clinics, which serve 9 million US military veterans.
At the Danville VA medical center, in rural Illinois near the Indiana border, so many nurses resigned that hospital administrators were forced to close the acute care unit to new patients.
The dysfunction has also included a backlog of 2,298 unread radiology exams in Orlando, Florida, and the cancellation of a dozen rheumatology appointments in Montrose, New York. In Battle Creek, Michigan, a spate of resignations, early separation offers and a hiring freeze has led to a “critical” shortage of police officers responsible for protecting VA patients.
The Guardian’s investigation, based on a review of “issue briefs” filed within the last month to the agency’s central office by staff at more than a dozen hospitals, comes at a time of increased scrutiny of the Trump administration’s handling of the VA.
US and Iran to resume nuclear talks amid clashing red lines *
Iranian and US negotiators will resume talks on Friday in Rome to resolve a decades-long dispute over Iran’s nuclear ambitions, despite Tehran’s supreme leader warning that clinching a new deal might be insurmountable amid clashing red lines.
The stakes are high for both sides, Reuters reports. President Donald Trump wants to curtail Tehran’s potential to produce a nuclear weapon that could trigger a regional nuclear arms race. The Islamic Republic, for its part, wants to be rid of devastating sanctions on its oil-based economy.
Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araqchi and Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff will hold a fifth round of talks, through Omani mediators, despite both Washington and Tehran taking a tough stance in public over Iran’s uranium enrichment.
Although Iran insists the talks are indirect, US officials have said the discussions – including the latest round on 11 May in Oman – have been both “direct and indirect”.
Araqchi, who arrived in Rome with his two deputies, wrote on X: “ … Zero nuclear weapons = we Do have a deal. Zero enrichment = we do NOT have a deal. Time to decide”.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Thursday that Trump believes negotiations with Iran are “moving in the right direction”.
Tehran and Washington have both said they prefer diplomacy to settle the impasse, but remain deeply split on several red lines that negotiators will have to circumvent to reach a new nuclear deal and avert future military action.
A federal judge extended on Thursday a temporary block on a bid by president Donald Trump’s administration to lay off hundreds of thousands of federal employees, saying he needed permission from Congress before restructuring the US government.
In her order, US district judge Susan Illston barred agencies from mass layoffs, a key piece of Trump’s plans to downsize or eliminate many federal agencies, pending the outcome of a lawsuit by unions, nonprofits and municipalities, Reuters reported.
On 9 May, Illston had blocked about 20 agencies from making mass layoffs for two weeks and ordered the reinstatement of workers who had already lost their jobs.
In Thursday’s order, she largely continued the relief provided in the temporary restraining order, with some refinement.
The administration has asked the US supreme court to pause Illston’s temporary ruling, saying she improperly infringed on Trump’s constitutional powers to control the executive branch.
That bid is likely to be moot after Thursday’s ruling, which the Trump administration can immediately appeal.
Trump pushes EU to cut tariffs or face extra duties, FT reports
President Donald Trump’s trade negotiators are pushing the EU to make unilateral tariff reductions on US goods, saying without concessions the bloc will not progress in talks to avoid additional 20% “reciprocal” duties, the Financial Times reported on Friday.
US trade representative Jamieson Greer is preparing to tell European trade commissioner Maroš Šefčovič on Friday that a recent “explanatory note” shared by Brussels for the talks falls short of US expectations, the newspaper said citing unnamed sources.
The FT added that the European Union has been pushing for a jointly agreed framework text for the talks but the two sides remain too far apart.
The US imposed 25% tariffs on EU cars, steel and aluminium in March and 20% tariffs on other EU goods in April.
It then halved the 20% rate until 8 July, setting a 90-day window for talks to reach a more comprehensive tariff deal.
South Korea's defence ministry says no talks held with US on troop withdrawal
South Korea’s defence ministry said on Friday that Seoul and Washington had not had discussions about the withdrawal of some US troops stationed in the country.
The ministry made the comment in response to a report by the Wall Street Journal that said the US was considering pulling out roughly 4,500 troops from South Korea, Reuters reported.
One option being considered was to relocate some of the troops to other locations in the Indo-Pacific region including Guam, according to the report, which cited unnamed US military officials.
There are currently 28,500 US troops stationed in South Korea.
China pledges support for overseas students after Trump's Harvard curb
Good morning and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you the latest news lines over the next few hours.
The Trump administration revoked Harvard University’s ability to enroll international students in its escalating battle with the Ivy League school, saying thousands of current students must transfer to other schools or leave the country.
The Department of Homeland Security announced the action Thursday, saying Harvard has created an unsafe campus environment by allowing “anti-American, pro-terrorist agitators” to assault Jewish students on campus. It also accused Harvard of coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party, saying it hosted and trained members of a Chinese paramilitary group as recently as 2024.
“This means Harvard can no longer enroll foreign students and existing foreign students must transfer or lose their legal status,” the agency said in a statement.
Harvard enrolls almost 6,800 foreign students at its campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, accounting for more than a quarter of its student body. Most are graduate students, coming from more than 100 countries.
It comes as China’s foreign ministry said today that it will safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of its overseas students and scholar.
US actions will undoubtedly affect its image and credibility, said Mao Ning, spokesperson for the ministry, during a regular press briefing, adding that educational cooperation between China and the US benefits both parties.
In other news:
The US justice department charged the lone suspect in a brazen attack that killed two young Israeli embassy staff members outside the Jewish museum in downtown Washington DC with murder of foreign officials and other crimes. Court documents released on Thursday charged Elias Rodriguez, 31, of Chicago, with the Wednesday night killings that left the US capital in shock and were condemned by world leaders as “horrible” and “antisemitic”. According to the filing, the suspect told police after his arrest: “I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza.”
Mahmoud Khalil, the detained Palestinian activist, was allowed to hold his one-month-old son for the first time after a federal judge blocked the Trump administration’s efforts to keep the father and infant separated by a plexiglass divider, reports the Associated Press. The visit today came ahead of a scheduled immigration hearing for Khalil, a legal permanent resident and Columbia University graduate who has been held in a Louisiana jail since 8 March.
The North Dakota governor Kelly Armstrong accidentally vetoed $35m for the state’s housing budget. When Armstrong took up an agency budget bill approved by the legislature, he thought he vetoed a couple of line items. But he vetoed millions for North Dakota’s housing budget. Now the state is figuring out how to deal with the unusual problem of a mistaken veto.
The supreme court declined to reinstate independent agency board members fired by Donald Trump. The court’s action extended an order chief justice John Roberts issued in April that had the effect of removing two board members whom Trump fired from agencies that deal with labor issues, including one with a key role for federal workers as the president aims to drastically downsize the workforce. The decision Thursday keeps on hold an appellate ruling that had temporarily reinstated Gwynne Wilcox to the National Labor Relations Board and Cathy Harris to the Merit Systems Protection Board.
Donald Trump announced on Truth Social that Bernie Navarro, the founder of the Miami lender Benworth Capital, will be the ambassador to Peru. Navarro is an ally and donor to secretary of state, Marco Rubio. Benworth was sued last year by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
Donald Trump showed a screenshot of a Reuters video taken in the Democratic Republic of Congo as part of what he falsely presented on Wednesday as evidence of mass killings of white South Africans, Reuters itself reports. “These are all white farmers that are being buried,” said Trump, holding up a print-out of an article accompanied by the picture during a contentious Oval Office meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. In fact, the video published by Reuters on February 3 and subsequently verified by the new agency’s fact check team, showed humanitarian workers lifting body bags in the Congolese city of Goma. The image was pulled from Reuters footage shot following deadly battles with Rwanda-backed M23 rebels.
