Trump’s meeting with tax bill holdouts ‘moved ball in right direction’, says White House – as it happened

Nearly all of the 400 books that the US Naval Academy removed from its library after being told by the office of the defense secretary to review and get rid of any that promote diversity, equity and inclusion, have been returned to the shelves after a new Pentagon-ordered review.

Defense officials told the Associated Press that about 20 books are still under review at the Naval Academy, including some that weren’t part of the original purge of 381 titles. At the Air Force Academy and other Air Force libraries, a few dozen books have also been pulled for review, the officials said.

Pulling books off shelves part of a broader campaign to eliminate so-called DEI content from federal agencies, including policies, programs, online and social media postings and curriculum at schools.

Defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has aggressively pushed the department to erase DEI programs and online content, but the campaign has been met with questions from angry lawmakers, local leaders and citizens over the removal of military heroes and historic mentions from defense department websites and social media pages.

Donald Trump said he will make a decision in the near future about taking Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac public, a move which he said he is giving “very serious consideration”.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump said he will speak with treasury secretary Scott Bessent; commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick; and federal housing finance director, William Pulte, about doing so.

He added: “Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are doing very well, throwing off a lot of CASH, and the time would seem to be right. Stay tuned!”

These two companies are the backbone of the US housing market. Together they support about 70% of US mortgages.

Republicans have blocked a vote on legislation by Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, that would ban the US from using a foreign plane as Air Force One.

Schumer went to the floor to ask for a vote on his bill the same day that the defense department accepted a $400m plane from Qatar for Trump to use as Air Force One. Schumer said it is “outrageous” that the Trump administration accepted the plane.

“This gift screams national security risk,” Schumer said.

Republican senator Roger Marshall, of Kansas, objected, blocking a vote. He did not offer an explanation for his objection.

Tensions rose during EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin’s testimony before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on Wednesday as he clashed with Democratic senators over the Trump administration’s push to cut the agency’s budget and roll back environmental regulations.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island questioned Zeldin about the abrupt termination of nearly 800 EPA grants. Whitehouse cited a court statement claiming the reviews were done in a single day by one official. Zeldin insisted multiple staff conducted the reviews over time. The exchange quickly escalated into both men shouting over each other.

“We’re not going to waste taxpayer dollars just because you want us to,” Zeldin snapped. Whitehouse countered by accusing Zeldin of contradicting official court testimony.

Senator Adam Schiff of California told Zeldin that a plan to cut EPA spending by 55% means that, to Zeldin and Trump, “more than half of the environmental efforts of the EPA ... to make sure Americans have clean air and clean water are just a waste.”

If approved by Congress, the budget cuts “will mean there’s more diesel and more other particulate matter in the air” and that “water that Americans drink is going to have more chemicals,” Schiff said.

A federal court has ruled that Mahmoud Khalil, a detained Columbia University student and pro-Palestinian activist, must be allowed to meet with his wife.

The order comes after Khalil’s wife, Noor Abdalla, said US Immigration and Customs Enforcement denied her request to visit him at the detention center in Jena, Louisiana, where he has been held for more than two months.

Abdalla, a dentist who gave birth to their first child last month, said she wants Khalil to have the chance to hold his newborn son.

The ruling comes after a graduation ceremony at Columbia University in New York City was filled with boos and chants of “Free Mahmoud” as students voiced their displeasure that the activist remains in detention and was unable to join the rest of the class of 2025 in graduating.

His wife accepted a diploma for Khalil on his behalf at an alternative graduation ceremony on Sunday.

The Trump administration arrested Khalil, 30, on 8 March and is seeking to deport him over his participation in protests against Israel’s military campaign in Gaza that has resulted in the deaths of thousands of Palestinians.

The judge said in a written ruling that Khalil must be allowed to meet with his lawyers and his wife before 10.30am CDT (1530 GMT) on Thursday.

Robert F Kennedy Jr’s “Make America Healthy Again” report about childhood diseases is raising questions among farmers and some Republican lawmakers.

President Donald Trump promised a review within 100 days that would analyze the ramifications that US lifestyle — from the medications prescribed for children to the food served on their school lunch trays — has on childhood diseases like obesity, depression or attention deficit disorder.

Farmers and Republicans are nervous about what the report might say about glyphosate, the ingredient commonly used in pesticides sprayed on crops. Kennedy has denied the report will be unfavorable to farmers.

The report, led by a so-called “MAHA Commission,” is expected to be released on Thursday.

Here’s what some lawmakers had to say:

“I hope there is nothing in the MAHA report that jeopardizes the food supply or the livelihood of farmers,” Iowa Republican Senator Chuck Grassley said.

“There’s a reason why we still use: It works,” said Blake Hurst, a Missouri farmer who is past president of the Missouri Farm Bureau, said about glyphosate.

Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday dismissed speculation of a falling out with the US administration following a visit to the Gulf by Donald Trump that left out Israel.

With the coupling of the US president’s Gulf visit – excluding Israel – and his decision to end US airstrikes on Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis despite their continued attacks on Israel, media speculation grew over a possible rift with Washington.

The Israeli prime minister, who had previously made no public comment on the issue, told reporters at a news conference that he had spoken to Trump about 10 days ago and Trump had told him: “‘Bibi I want you to know, I have a complete commitment to you and I have a complete commitment to the state of Israel.’”

Amid growing international pressure on Israel, Trump has acknowledged that people are starving in Gaza and the US would have the situation in the territory “taken care of” as it suffered a further wave of intense Israeli airstrikes.

In a separate conversation a few days ago, Netanyahu said JD Vance had told him: “Don’t pay attention to all these fake news stories about this rupture between us.”.

The UN’s humanitarian chief, Tom Fletcher, said yesterday that 14,000 babies could die in Gaza in 48 hours if aid did not reach them in time.

Cyril Ramaphosa said that Elon Musk was present during lunch today with Donald Trump.

“The only issue he raised is that he’d like his Tesla cars to be in South Africa,” Ramaphosa told reporters. “He wants to import them. And of course, there are tariffs, and the tariff discussion becomes part of what we are going to discuss between the DTIC as well as the commerce department.”

Ramaphosa also said that, although the secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, was present as well, “the discussions never veered towards issues of security”.

Instead, Ramaphosa said, they were more about combating criminal activities, and he pointed to the need to “up our game” in that area.

UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, was not consulted regarding the US decision to deport eight migrants to South Sudan, a country where fears of civil war are rising.

A federal judge on Wednesday ruled that the Trump administration violated a court order on deportations to third countries. Judge Brian E Murphy in Boston said the eight migrants, accused by the US of being dangerous criminals, were not given a meaningful opportunity to object that the deportation could put them in danger.

Dujarric told UN reporters that since the UN wasn’t consulted, he had no comment “except to say that, obviously, as a principled position, refugees or people in need of international protection must not be sent back to a place where they face risk”.

Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, appeared to strike a hardline maximalist position on Iran’s nuclear programme in his second successive day of testifying on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, suggesting that the country must end its uranium enrichment activities if it is to gain relief from US sanctions.

Appearing before a subcommittee of the House appropriations committee, Rubio was asked to comment on current negotiations led by Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, and Abbas Araghchi, the Iranian foreign minister, aimed at reaching at deal that would limit Tehran’s nuclear programme, which the US, Israel and other western powers have long suspected of being aimed at building an atomic bomb. Rubio - who also holds the national security adviser’s portfolio - said:

“The President and his entire team has been very clear, Iran cannot have an enrichment capability, because that ultimately makes them a threshold of nuclear power. There are sanctions related to terrorism, sanctions related to their ballistic missiles program and the like. Those sanctions, if they’re not part of the deal, they’ll remain in place if those things are not addressed. But the enrichment piece is the key piece, and we continue to say that Iran cannot have an enrichment capability.”

The comments suggested that the administration was seeking the total elimination - rather than restricting - Iran’s uranium enrichment programme, a demand repeatedly made by Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Witkoff has sent mixed signals about whether Washington would seek the dismantlement of the Iranian programme, although he has previously suggested Iran might be allowed to retain some enrichment capacity. Iran has previously rejected demands for it to end enriching uranium, insisting it is for civilian purposes. Announcing negotiations to reporters last month, Trump was unspecific on Tehran’s enrichment activities but said: “Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.”

According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran has enriched its uranium stockpile to 60% since Trump unilaterally withdrew in 2018 from an agreement reached under Barack Obama’s presidency that permitted the country’s Islamic regime to retain a strictly limited enrichment programme. Uranium enriched to 90% is considered to be weapons grade, with experts saying Iran is now just a short technical step from reaching that level.

After Donald Trump confronted president Cyril Ramaphosa with false claims of mass killings and land seizures from white people, the South African leader said the meeting went “very well”.

As Ramaphosa exited the White House after a private session with Trump, he was asked whether he thought Trump listened to him. “Yes, he did,” Ramaphosa said. “It went very well.”

Here is an extract from this week’s edition of The Long Wave by my colleague Nesrine Malik that I think provides helpful context for what we witnessed in the Oval Office today. And if you haven’t already (!) you can sign up for the newsletter here.

Since the early days of his presidency, Donald Trump has made white farmers in South Africa one of his pet projects. It is an obsession that dates to his first term, where he amplified allegations by some Afrikaners that they are victims of “mass killings” and suffer from violence and discrimination by vengeful Black South Africans. There is nothing to support this claim. And yet, in March, Trump expelled the South African ambassador to the US, cut off aid and extended an invitation for political asylum to white farmers, even as the US all but halts all refugee admissions to the country. The first of those white South African “refugees” arrived in the US two weeks ago.

The source of this odd fixation is those around Trump, who “doesn’t have a sense of the world outside the United States”, Jonathan Jansen, a professor of education in Stellenbosch, tells me, adding: “To know about South Africa, let alone its politics, [the president] must have whisperers,” who are telling him that there is a “white genocide”. Jansen suspects one of those is the South African-born Elon Musk, who has “a grievance against the country”.

Jansen believes South Africa’s hard line against Israel has fuelled animosity in Washington. Taking the Israeli government to the international court of justice “is not cool in the world of Trump”. I suggest a provocative factor may also have been how uncompromising and measured the South African government has been on the issue of white farmers when goaded by Trump. “This is true,” Jansen says. “[Cyril] Ramaphosa, with all his faults – and they are many – is a man of restraint.”

Despite the media focus on the [white supremacy] issue, Jansen calls for some perspective. He says that some white South Africans who claim racial discrimination are a small group of people who nurse an inflated sense of resentment because they still cannot accept that apartheid is over. “There are grievances with a Black government, which is very hard for some of my white brothers and sisters to accept, even after 30 years.”

Jansen says if one is to consider violent crime, “more Black people die than white people, even as a proportion of the population. Make no mistake, these are white supremacists who are drawn to a white supremacist. Their capacity for reflection is not very high.”

Despite the understanding in South Africa that the issue of white discrimination is a political stunt, Jansen notes the galling hypocrisy of it all, considering the effort that Black South Africans made to ensure peace after apartheid. “What riles is that you’re giving attention to people who for 350 years were oppressing us. My argument is: don’t get into a tizzy. But I also regard it quite seriously as a slap in the face for Black South Africans.”

Here’s my colleague David Smith’s write-up of the most tense Oval Office encounter since Trump’s bullying of Volodymyr Zelenskyy in February. In this encounter, Cyril Ramaphosa refused to take the bait as Trump ambushed him with false claims of white “genocide” and suggested that they “talk about it very calmly”.

David writes:

The biggest bone of contention [for the Trump administration] has been a South African land-expropriation law signed in January that aims to redress the historical inequalities of white minority rule. Ramaphosa denied that the law will be used to arbitrarily confiscate white-owned land, insisting that all South Africans are protected by the constitution.

And right at the end of David’s story is this helpful reminder of the post-apartheid context:

South Africa is one of the most unequal societies in the world. White people make up 7% of the country’s population but own at least half of the land. They are also better off economically by almost every measure.

Read the full story here:

South Africa’s foreign ministry spokesperson said in a post on X that “there is no land confiscation”, after that chaotic White House meeting in which Donald Trump confronted president Cyril Ramaphosa with false claims of mass killings and land seizures from white people.

Congressman Greg Casar, chair of the House progressive caucus, wants to talk to conservatives about the Republican effort to cut Medicaid. So he joined Donald Trump’s Truth Social.

In his first post, @repgregcasar stated the obvious: “I’m a progressive Democrat, and I know most users of this platform are more conservative than me.”

But the congressman said he shared some common ground with many of the president’s supporters.

“If you oppose cutting healthcare and want to take back our government from the billionaire class, I want to talk to you,” he said.

Polls have consistently found that most Americans, across party lines, oppose cuts to Medicaid.

The move is somewhat unusual. Few elected Democrats have joined Truth Social, the platform where Trump began regularly sharing his all-caps musings, often at odd hours, after being kicked off X and Facebook. His accounts have since been reinstated.

But after their 2024 loss to Trump, Democrats have been consumed by the debate over how to, in Washington parlance, “meet voters where they are”.

Casar, unveiling his new account in a Fox News op-ed, wrote that part of his rationale was ensuring “people know they are welcome in the Democratic Party even if they do not agree with us on every issue”.

I am a progressive Democrat and I do not plan on changing or obscuring my position on anything, but I want people to know that we are focused on making the lives of all working class people better. That means we as Democrats need to sound less judgmental and more focused on the issues that matter most to peoples’ lives, like the GOP cuts to Medicaid and Social Security.

South African billionaire Johann Rupert tells Donald Trump that South Africa needs technological help in stopping deaths in the country, which he said were not just of white farmers but across the board.

We have too many deaths ... It’s not only white farmers, it’s across the board, and we need technological help. We need Starlink at every little police station. We need drones.

Here’s the moment Trump displayed printed copies of news articles that he said showed white South Africans who had been killed, saying “death, death” as he flipped through them.

Trump calls the G20 summit – countries representing about 85% of global GDP and three-quarters of world trade - a big deal and says he wants South Africa to “look good”.

South Africa holds the G20 presidency until November, when it will hand over the role to the United States.

Trump says his issues South Africa “have got to be resolved” and he says he’d like to see the relationship between the two countries resolved.

Trump claims there are “thousands” of people fleeing South Africa.

Elon Musk is present and Trump highlights that he’s South African before adding he doesn’t want to involve him.

Ramaphosa suggests they have a “really good discussion” outside of the media to reach good outcomes together.

Ramaphosa says: “There is criminality in our country … people who do get killed are not only white.”

Ramaphosa says that what they’ve all just seen is not government policy.

He says: “Our government policy is completely against what [Trump was describing].”

Trump says he doesn’t know what he wants Ramaphosa to do about the videos they’ve all just watched.

He holds up printouts of news stories of white farmers he alleges were killed recently, saying as he flips through them: “Death, death.”

Trump doesn’t comment on the acceptance of the Qatari jet and attacks the NBC reporter: “You’re a disgrace, no more questions from you.”

Trump then says videos are showing aerials of white crosses marking the resting places of killed white farmers.

Ramaphosa says he’s never seen these images before.

I’d like to know where that is because this I’ve never seen.

Trump claims there are “thousands of stories” documenting the alleged white genocide.

Asked by a reporter what it would take for Trump to be convinced that there’s no white genocide in South Africa.

Ramaphosa answers for him, saying:

It will take President Trump listening to the voices of South Africans.

Trump says he does not “expect anything” to come of South Africa’s International Court of Justice case against Israel.

Trump moves on swiftly to take the next question and Ramaphosa doesn’t get a chance to respond to that.

Trump says “many people feel they’re being persecuted” and he floats that buzzword “genocide” as he talks about white farmers “fleeing South Africa”.

We have many people that feel they’re being persecuted, and they’re coming to the United States. So we take from many ... locations, if we feel there’s persecution or genocide going on.

Generally, they’re white farmers and they’re fleeing South Africa, and .... it’s a very sad thing to see. But I hope we can have an explanation of that, because I know you don’t want that.

And we’re straight in with a question for Trump about why the US should admit white Afrikaners as “refugees” when others from places such as Venezuela, Afghanistan and Haiti are having their protected status revoked.

Trump attacks NBC News as fake news.

He then says: “They say there’s a lot of bad things going on in Africa and that’s what we’re going to be discussing today.”

He denies that the US isn’t letting others in, citing illegal immigration via the southern border and his usual tropes about what kind of people they are.

Ramaphosa says he wants to “recalibrate relations”, saying the two have geopolitical issues to discuss and adds that he wants to discuss with Trump South Africa’s critical minerals.

Ramaphosa says South Africa and the US are “longstanding partners” and he wants to “reset” the relationship in light of Trump’s trade announcements.

Trump has begun this meeting with some (backhanded?) compliments for Ramaphosa, who he says is “respected in some circles, in others a little bit less respected”.

He adds the South African president is “considered controversial in some circles”.

After complimenting South African’s golfers, Trump says the two leaders will be discussing “some things you’ve read in the media” including the G20, and says: “We’ll see if we can help on some things in South Africa.”

This Oval Office meeting has the potential go full Zelenskyy, noted Politico this morning, given the months-long feud that has been brewing between Trump and Ramaphosa on a number of issues.

You will remember that last week the Trump administration admitted 49 white Afrikaners to the US as refugees, with Trump repeating the falsehood that South Africa’s white minority faces “genocide” at home, a claim echoed by South African-born Elon Musk. Trump will no doubt press the South African president on this issue today. Per the Washington Post:

Trump has for years focused on the plight of Afrikaners descended from the colonists who built and led the nation’s brutal apartheid regime. Trump’s focus on South Africa’s relationship to its White minority appears to center on a new law that allows the government to expropriate land without compensation in rare cases — a measure leaders have cast as a ‘moral, social and economic imperative’ intended to help dismantle the legacy of racial apartheid.

Cyril Ramaphosa himself has said the Trump administration has “got the wrong end of the stick” on this issue of the legacy of the racial injustice of apartheid and his government’s efforts to rebalance South African society in the face of inequalities that persist three decades after white minority rule ended.

Indeed, the Trump administration has taken a number of aggressive actions on South Africa since Trump returned to power, which Politico notes include expelling its ambassador, ending all US aid to the country, and threatening to boycott the G20 summit that will be hosted by the nation later this year.

What is more, the GOP more generally has taken issue with South Africa’s efforts to hold Israel to account for its assault on Gaza, via its case against Israel at the UN’s International Court of Justice which alleges that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza.

It’s bound to be interesting, and I’ll bring you all the key lines here.

Republican House speaker Mike Johnson and conservatives from the House Freedom Caucus will go to the White House this afternoon over Donald Trump’s tax and immigration bill, Associated Press reports.

Members of the House Freedom Caucus said progress is being made toward an agreement, but that they are not ready yet to support the package.

Andy Harris, a Maryland congressman and the group’s chair, said the White House had offered a proposal late on Tuesday that would be acceptable to his members, but that he did not think the package would be done by Wednesday. “The runway is short,” he told reporters.

Chip Roy, a Texas congressman and another member of the far-right caucus, said “there’s a long way to go”.

The justice department has reportedly opened a criminal investigation into Andrew Cuomo, the former New York governor and current frontrunner in the New York City mayoral race.

The investigation was launched after Republicans accused Cuomo of mishandling the state’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic, multiple outlets reported on Tuesday.

In a criminal referral made by James Comer, a Republican representative of Kentucky and chair of the House committee on oversight and government reform, Comer recommended Cuomo be “charged with making false statements to Congress”, saying that Cuomo lied on “numerous occasions about material aspects of New York’s Covid-19 nursing home disaster and the ensuing cover-up”.

Cuomo faced widespread calls for his resignation in February 2021 after allegations emerged that his administration was underreporting Covid-19-related deaths across the state’s nursing homes by as much as half.

The US army will change the records of transgender soldiers to show only their sex at birth, according to a report.

The army considers a person’s sex to be “unchanging during a person’s life”, according to an internal memo seen by Reuters. It states:

Commanders will take immediate measures to update personnel records and administrative systems to reflect biological sex for all individuals.

The memo states that pronoun use when referring to individuals “must reflect their biological sex”, and that access to “intimate spaces” will be determined by an individual’s biological sex.

The move is the latest by the Trump administration taking aim at trans members of the military despite years of service alongside all the other 2 million US troops.

Here’s more on the Trump administration’s acknowledgment that it deported eight migrants after reports of a migrant flight to South Sudan.

In a briefing on Wednesday, immigration authorities said the eight migrants had been convicted of crimes in the United States, the Associated Press reported.

The eight men were from Cuba, Laos, Mexico, Myanmar, Vietnam and South Sudan, homeland security officials said, Reuters reported.

Authorities said they had been convicted of murder, armed robbery and other serious crimes, according to Reuters. It cites homeland security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin as saying:

We conducted a deportation flight from Texas to remove some of the most barbaric, violent individuals illegally in the United States. These are the monsters that the district judge is trying to protect.

Immigration authorities refused to say what the migrants’ final destinations would be, but said their home countries had refused to receive the migrants.

US district judge Brian E Murphy in Massachusetts ordered an emergency hearing on Wednesday after immigrant rights advocates accused the Trump administration of deporting about a dozen migrants from countries including Myanmar and Vietnam to South Sudan in violation of a court order.

Judge Murphy ruled that the Trump administration must retain custody and control of those “currently being removed to South Sudan or to any other third country, to ensure the practical feasibility of return” if he finds such removals were unlawful.

Fellow lawmakers have called Gerry Connolly, who died this morning, a tireless public servant, and noted his work in recent months as his constituents - many tied to the federal government - grappled with cuts from the Trump administration and Elon Musk’s Doge task force.

“Even as he battled a difficult cancer diagnosis, Ranking Member Connolly continued to push back against the unprecedented attacks on the federal workers in his district and across the country,” House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said in a statement.

Virginia’s Republican governor Glenn Youngkin also offered his condolences in a post on X: “His decades of public service reflect a deep commitment to Virginia.” He did not say what steps would be taken to fill the House seat.

Germany and the European Union are in talks with all concerned parties in the United States on new sanctions against Russia over Moscow’s war in Ukraine, a German government spokesperson said in comments reported by Reuters.

“I cannot comment on these internal American debates, but rest assured that Europe and the [German] federal government are also talking to all the players in the USA,” the spokesperson said at a regular government press conference.

China said on Wednesday that trade talks with the United States were an important step to bridge gaps but that multilateralism is “indispensable” to find a way out from global trade turmoil.

“While bilateral talks may sometimes work, China believes multilateralism is the inevitable and ultimate choice to address global challenges,” China said. “We need to find the way out,” it added.

China and dozens of other countries were stung by a slew of so-called reciprocal tariffs imposed by Donald Trump in recent months, before talks were held between the two major trading partners earlier in May to reduce rising trade tensions.

Immigrant rights advocates have accused the Trump administration of deporting about a dozen migrants from countries including Myanmar and Vietnam to South Sudan in violation of a court order, and asked a judge to order their return.

Lawyers for the migrants made the request in a court filing on Tuesday directed to US district judge Brian Murphy, who had barred the Trump administration from swiftly deporting migrants to countries other than their own without first hearing any concerns they had that they might be tortured or persecuted if sent there.

They said they learned that nearly a dozen migrants held at a detention facility in Texas were flown to South Sudan on Tuesday morning. Murphy told a lawyer with the US Department of Justice during a hastily arranged virtual hearing that the potential violation might constitute criminal contempt and he was weighing ordering a plane carrying the migrants to the African country to turn around.

Those migrants included an individual from Myanmar, identified by the initials NM in court documents, whose lawyer received an email on Monday from an official with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement informing the attorney of the intent to deport his client to South Sudan.

According to court documents, NM – who has “limited English proficiency” – refused to sign the notice of removal, which was provided to him only in English, in violation of a previous court order.

The migrant’s lawyers said they learned their client had been flown to South Sudan on Tuesday morning.

A small southern California school district must immediately pause its ban on critical race theory (CRT), a California appeals court ruled on Thursday morning.

The 4th district court of appeals ruling put a halt to the Temecula Valley unified school district ban until its litigation is settled in the California legal system. The decision is the latest in a long-running legal battle over the CRT ban, which was first adopted as a resolution by the Temecula Valley board of education in December 2022 as they attempted to purge elementary school textbooks that reference gay rights icon Harvey Milk.

The recent decision, authored by Judge Kathleen O’Leary, and concurred by the panel’s other two judges, said that the vague nature and lack of legal or academic terminology in the resolution jeopardized its constitutionality.

“The Resolution defined CRT as ‘a divisive ideology that assigns moral fault to individuals solely on the basis of an individual’s race’ and, therefore, is itself a racist ideology,” O’Leary’s ruling said. “The Resolution operates as if this definition is universally accepted, but the text does not indicate where this definition is derived, or whether it is shared with anyone else besides the Board.”

The ruling pointed to the resolution’s lack of examples of CRT, and lack of guidance for teachers looking to modify their curriculum.