House passes aid and broadcasting cuts – as it happened

The US House of Representatives has passed Donald Trump’s $9bn funding cut to public media and foreign aid, sending it to the White House to be signed into law.

The Republican-controlled chamber voted 216 to 213 early on Friday in favour of the funding cut package, altered by the Senate this week to exclude cuts of about $400m in funds for the global Pepfar HIV/AIDS prevention program, Reuters reports.

Only two House Republicans voted against the cut, Representatives Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Mike Turner of Ohio, along with Democrats.

“We are taking one small step to cut wasteful spending but one giant leap towards fiscal sanity,” said Representative Aaron Bean, a Florida Republican, advocating for a similar spending cut package from the White House every month.

House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries countered that the funding cut “undermines our ability to keep our people safe here and to project America’s soft power all over the globe”, arguing that rural Americans’ access to emergency information on public radio would be diminished.

The funding vote was delayed for hours amid Republican disagreements about other legislation and calls from some members of the party for more government transparency about Jeffrey Epstein.

The vice-president, and one of the nation’s most dedicated posters, JD Vance, responded to the Wall Street Journal’s report that the unreleased Epstein files include a letter Donald Trump sent to Jeffrey Epstein on his birthday in 2003 in a peculiar way.

In a post on X, Vance sounded like a loyal servant of the president, by attacking the report as “complete and utter bullshit” but the fact that he chose to do so by posting a long excerpt from the letter, which had been shared by another user, also helped to amplify the content of the letter to his 4.4 million followers on the platform.

While the Guardian generally avoids displaying posts from Elon Musk’s platform, it is worth seeing Vance’s post to understand how he might have both criticized the report and helped spread one of its most damning passages.

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, wrote in a social media post on Thursday that the bawdy birthday letter the Wall Street Journal reports Donald Trump sent to Jeffrey Epstein in 2003 is fake and “is like the Steele Dossier”, the collection of unverified rumors about Trump, and the Russian government’s effort to elect him in 2016.

“The WSJ refused to show us the letter and conceded they don’t even have it in their possession when we asked them to verify the alleged document they’re basing their ENTIRE fake story on,” Leavitt wrote on X, the platform owned by Trump’s former booster Elon Musk. “When has President Trump ever spoken like the conversation alleged in the fake WSJ story? That’s not at all how he speaks or writes.”

However, the Journal’s reporters never claimed to have the letter, supposedly sent to the late sex offender by Trump on 2003, in their possession; just that they had reviewed it, transcribed some of the text and were able to describe the lewd drawing, in thick marker, around the typewritten text.

Minutes after announcing that he intends to sue the Wall Street Journal, and Rupert Murdoch, for reporting that the unreleased justice department files on Jeffrey Epstein include a bawdy letter to the late sex offender from Donald Trump, the president said that he has asked the attorney general, Pam Bondi, to release a different set of documents from the investigation into Epstein.

“Based on the ridiculous amount of publicity given to Jeffrey Epstein,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, “I have asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to produce any and all pertinent Grand Jury testimony, subject to Court approval.”

Despite the fact that the grand jury testimony is a different set of documents, and could include information on Epstein’s victims, Trump suggested that doing so would end the controversy over his administration going back on its word to release all of the files.

“This SCAM, perpetuated by the Democrats, should end, right now!” Trump wrote.

Two minutes after Trump’s post was published, the attorney general replied to it on X with the comment: “President Trump – we are ready to move the court tomorrow to unseal the grand jury transcripts.”

Donald Trump announced that he “will be suing” the Wall Street Journal, its parent company News Corp and the company’s chairman emeritus, Rupert Murdoch, for reporting that one of the documents in the justice department’s files on Jeffrey Epstein is a bawdy letter Trump sent to Epstein for his 50th birthday in 2003.

Trump wrote in a social media post shared by the White House press secretary that he had warned the newspaper and Murdoch that the letter was a fake and they would be sued if they printed it.

“Mr Murdoch stated that he would take care of it,” Trump added, “but, obviously, did not have the power to do so.”

The newspaper quoted from the letter, which they said came from a leather-bound collection of birthday wishes presented to Epstein by Ghislaine Maxwell, who is currently in federal prison after being found guilty of child sex trafficking in 2021.

Trump also wrote that he had “already beaten” both ABC and CBS, which agreed to settle lawsuits brought by the president rather than go to trial, “and looks forward to suing and holding accountable the once great Wall Street Journal”.

“If there were any truth at all on the Epstein Hoax, as it pertains to President Trump, this information would have been revealed by Comey, Brennan, Crooked Hillary and other Radical Left Lunatics years ago,” Trump argued in the post on his Truth Social platform. “It would certainly not have been left in a file waiting for ‘TRUMP’ to have won three Elections.”

CBS announced on Thursday that it has decided to cancel the popular Late Show with Stephen Colbert at the end of the 2025-2026 broadcast season.

Colbert is a harsh critic of Donald Trump, but the network’s parent company Paramount, which recently agreed to pay the president $16m to settle his lawsuit over the editing of a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris last year, insisted that ending the shows was “purely a financial decision” and was “not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount”.

Colbert, who shot to fame playing a satirical version of a rightwing news anchor, initially avoided politics when he took over as host of the Late Show. But he found his footing during Trump’s first term when he relentlessly mocked Trump and thrilled his partisan audience.

As Variety reports: “There has been growing speculation that both Colbert and Jon Stewart, who hosts one broadcast of Comedy Central’s ‘Daily Show’ each week could be under growing scrutiny from executives at Skydance Media, which is slated to acquire Paramount Global, the parent of both CBS and Comedy Central. David Ellison, who leads Skydance, has projected an image of being intrigued by the politics espoused by President Donald Trump.”

Earlier this week, Colbert called Paramount’s payment to Trump a “big fat bribe”.

“CBS canceled Colbert’s show just THREE DAYS after Colbert called out CBS parent company Paramount for its $16M settlement with Trump – a deal that looks like bribery”, Senator Elizabeth Warren wrote on social media in response to the news. “America deserves to know if his show was canceled for political reasons.” Warren also shared the video of Colbert’s accusation that the settlement was a bribe in her post. “Watch and share his message”, she added.

Colbert announced the news to his audience during the taping of the show on Thursday, and shared the video on Instagram.

Colbert mentioned that he had just taped an interview with Adam Schiff, the Democratic senator from California who led the first impeachment of Trump and has recently been targeted by the president.

“If Paramount and CBS ended the Late Show for political reasons, the public deserves to know”, Schiff wrote on social media after the news broke. “And deserves better.”

One night earlier, Colbert had devoted his opening monologue on Wednesday to Trump’s flailing effort to keep his supporters from talking about Jeffrey Epstein.

Stewart was openly critical of Paramount for settling with Trump, and invited a former 60 Minutes anchor on to his show to discuss how baseless Trump’s accusations about its editing really were.

The Wall Street Journal reports that one of the documents in the justice department files on the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein is a bawdy letter Donald Trump sent to Epstein for his 50th birthday, in 2003.

According to the newspaper, which is owned by Trump supporter Rupert Murdoch, Trump had been asked to write a birthday letter to Epstein by Ghislaine Maxwell, who asked dozens of his friends and associates to contribute pages for a leather-bound album to mark his birthday.

Pages from the album – assembled before Epstein was first arrested in 2006 – were examined by justice department officials who later investigated Epstein and Maxwell, the Journal says.

The letter bearing Trump’s name, which was reviewed by the Journal’s reporters, “contains several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker. A pair of small arcs denotes the woman’s breasts, and the future president’s signature is a squiggly ‘Donald’ below her waist, mimicking pubic hair.”

The Journal reports that letter concludes: “A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday – and may every day be another wonderful secret.”

On Tuesday evening, Trump denied writing the letter or drawing the picture in an interview with the Journal. “This is not me. This is a fake thing. It’s a fake Wall Street Journal story,” he said.

The newspaper also reports that “after the Journal sought comment from the president about the letter, Trump told reporters at the White House that he believed some Epstein files were ‘made up’ by former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden and former FBI Director James Comey”.

Trump then told a friendly interviewer on Wednesday that the FBI should investigate what he called “the Jeffrey Epstein hoax” as part of a criminal conspiracy against him. He went on to suggest that Democrats might have fabricated information in the files on Epstein during the Biden administration. “I can imagine what they put into files,” he said.

In a letter to the White House budget office director, Russ Vought, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, responded to accusations from the White House that he has mismanaged the renovation of the Federal Reserve Board’s Eccles building and 1951 Constitution Avenue building.

Powell refuted several of the claims made by Vought in a letter sent last week, informing his that the project was under investigation. “These renovations include terrace rooftop gardens, water features, VIP elevators, and premium marble,” Vought claimed.

“As explained on the Board’s public website, we take seriously the responsibility to be good stewards of public resources as we fulfill the duties given to us by Congress on behalf of the American people,” Powell wrote in his letter to Vought.

He then corrected Vought’s claims, point by point.

• There are no terrace rooftop gardens, Powell explained, just a front lawn that was referred to as a “garden terrace” in a planning document, and a green roof, “used to help with stormwater management and to increase building efficiency and roof longevity”.

• “There are no VIP dining rooms being constructed as part of the project,” Powell wrote. Conference rooms that are used for “mealtime meetings” are being renovated.

• The Fed buildings “were originally built with marble in the façades and stonework”, Powell wrote. “The project has salvaged the original exterior marble to be reinstalled and will use new domestic marble sourced from Georgia in places where the original was damaged or where needed to keep with historic preservation guidelines.”

• “There are no special, private, or VIP elevators being constructed as part of the project,” Powell explained.

• Although the Board’s initial design did include new water features for the 1951 Constitution Avenue building, “they have been eliminated”, Powell wrote. “Fountains that were original to the Eccles building are being restored.”

Powell sent his letter after the White House’s official “rapid response” account on X shared video with its 1.1 million followers of Vought telling Fox Business that he is investigating the costly renovation of the Federal Reserve headquarters. That renovation has been cited by Trump as a possible pretext he could use to fire Powell and claim it was “for cause”.

“As you know, Larry,” Vought said to Fox Business host Larry Kudlow, who advised Trump during his first term, “the president’s a builder, he finds it exasperating the extent to which this building is so expensive, and the extent to which it is cost overrun, and we’re going to look for as much information as we can get our hands on.”

Earlier on Thursday, representative French Hill, the Arkansas Republican who chairs the House financial services committee, had tried to pour cold water on speculation that Donald Trump might be on the verge of touching the third rail of the global economic system by firing Powell.

Asked by CBS correspondent Caitlin Huey-Burns if he thought there was “any circumstance in which the president could and should fire the Fed chair”, Hill replied: “He’s not gonna fire Jay Powell, and I don’t believe he can fire Jay Powell.”

But while Hill and other Republicans try to tamp down concerns that the president might cause financial panic by removing the US central bank’s chairman, Vought and others in the White House appear to be working to make life very uncomfortable for Powell, perhaps hoping that he can be pressured to resign.

The White House just released a copy of a memorandum from Donald Trump’s doctor to the press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, dated today in which Navy physician, Sean Barbabella, DO, describes the tests that revealed the 79-year-old president has chronic venous insufficiency.

The memo says that “there was no evidence of deep vein thrombosis (DVT) or arterial disease” and says that recent photographs of bruising on the back of Trump’s hand “is consistent with minor soft tissue irritation from frequent handshaking and the use of aspirin, which is taken as part of a standard cardiovascular prevention regimen.”

The memo concludes with this summary: “President Trump remains in excellent health.”

Dr Barbabella, a Navy emergency physician who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, is the third consecutive osteopathic physician to serve as Physician to the President.

Critics have slammed an agreement between Medicaid officials and Ice – which allows agents to examine a database of Americans’ personal information, including home addresses, social security numbers and ethnicities – as a privacy betrayal carrying serious civil rights and health risks.

“This is about the weaponization of data, full stop,” said Pramila Jayapal, a Democratic US representative from Washington state, who has worked extensively on US healthcare, in a statement on social media.

“Trump said he would go after the ‘worst of the worst’ immigrants, yet now is giving ICE EVERYONE’s Medicaid data, even as ICE targets US citizens. Oh, and undocumented immigrants can’t even enroll in Medicaid.”

Undocumented migrants are generally not eligible for Medicaid and only some lawfully present migrants may obtain coverage under the program. Eligible noncitizen immigrants represent only about 6% of people currently enrolled in Medicaid, according to the healthcare research non-profit Kaiser Family Foundation. The Trump administration has deeply cut Medicaid by adding bureaucracy and red tape.

It is unclear whether Ice agents have already accessed Medicaid information, according to the Associated Press, which first reported on the agreement. However, even the existence of such an agreement could deter people from seeking needed medical care, including for children.

“This is a privacy violation of unprecedented proportions and betrayal of trust, as the government has explicitly said, for decades, that this information will never be used for immigration enforcement,” said Ben D’Avanzo, a healthcare strategist at the National Immigration Law Center, on social media.

As we’ve just heard from his press secretary, Donald Trump will not name a special counsel in the Jeffrey Epstein case. And asked to clarify what aspect of the case Trump believes to be a “hoax” Karoline Leavitt said he was referring to “the fact that Democrats have now seized on this”.

But Trump’s efforts to dismiss and deflect the criticism over his administration’s handling of the Epstein case has showed no sign of working today, with more prominent figures from across the political spectrum – including his own allies – have emerged to attack the president. Some of his supporters even recorded videos burning their signature “Make America great again” hats.

Days after the Republican speaker of the House and Trump loyalist Mike Johnson called for the release of all documents relating to the late financier, a convicted sex offender and longtime former friend of Trump’s, rebellion has continued to simmer within the president’s normally diehard base.

Trump’s former vice-president, Mike Pence, told CBS News yesterday: “I think the time has come for the administration to release all of the files regarding Jeffrey Epstein’s investigation and prosecution”. And far-right conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, a frequent close adviser to Trump, called for the appointment of a special counsel to handle the Epstein files investigation.

“Obviously, this is not a complete hoax given the fact that [Epstein associate] Ghislaine Maxwell is currently serving 20 years in prison in Florida for her crimes and activities with Jeffrey Epstein, who we know is a convicted sexual predator,” Loomer said.

Donald Trump called Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address an Israeli strike on Gaza’s sole Catholic church, Leavitt says.

Asked for Trump’s reaction to the news, Leavitt says: “It was not a positive reaction.”

The strike killed three people and injured 10 others including the parish priest, who used to receive daily calls from the late Pope Francis.

Trump’s allies have been pushing the president to name a special counsel in the Epstein case, but Leavitt says he’s not interested in doing that.

“The president would not recommend a special prosecutor in the Epstein case. That’s how he feels,” the White House press secretary says.

Asked why the administration can’t simply release more information from the files, Leavitt says that would be up to the justice department, but if it includes grand jury information, “a judge would have to approve it. That’s out of the president’s control.”

Leavitt is asked by a reporter to clarify what aspect of the Jeffrey Epstein case Donald Trump believes is a hoax.

Leavitt says he’s referring to “the fact that Democrats have now seized on this”.

She says the idea of Democrats wanting transparency on Epstein is an “asinine” suggestion, and claims that the Biden administration “didn’t do a dang thing” about the case.

She goes on, getting to the crux of Trump’s frustration:

The president has been transparent, he has followed through on his promises to the American people. What he doesn’t like to see is Democrats and the mainstream media covering this like it’s the biggest story that the American people care about.

Reading from a doctor’s letter, Leavitt says that an evaluation of swelling in the president’s lower legs have revealed chronic venous insufficiency, “a common condition, particularly in individuals over the age of 70”.

“Additionally, recent photos of the president have shown minor bruising on the back of his hand,” Leavitt says. “This is consistent with minor soft tissue irritation from frequent handshaking and the use of aspirin, which is taken as part of a standard cardiovascular prevention regimen.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt is currently briefing reporters. I’ll bring you any key lines here.

Republican senators have advanced through the judiciary committee Emil Bove’s nomination to serve as a judge on a federal appeals court, after Democrats walked out of the session in protest of the GOP’s refusal to call a whistleblower who alleged the nominee advocated for ignoring court orders.

Donald Trump nominated Bove, his defense attorney who he appointed as a top justice department official in the early weeks of his new administration, for a seat on the third circuit court of appeals overseeing New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and the US Virgin Islands. Bove’s advancement through the judiciary committee clears the way for his confirmation to be voted on by the full Senate.

His nomination for the lifetime position has faced strident opposition from Democrats, after Erez Reuveni, a former justice department official who was fired from his post, alleged that during his time at the DoJ, Bove told lawyers that they “would need to consider telling the courts ‘fuck you’ and ignore any such court order” blocking efforts to remove immigrants to El Salvador. In testimony before the committee last month, Bove denied the accusation, and Reuveni later provided text messages supporting his claim.

At today’s hearing, the New Jersey senator Cory Booker attempted to formally delay the vote on confirming Bove, citing Reuveni’s whistleblower complaint as well as letters from state and federal prosecutors opposing his nomination. “There is no need to vote on this nominee today. It is a false urgency,” Booker said.

His request was rejected by the committee’s Republican chair, Chuck Grassley, and Democratic senators then walked out as the committee voted on Bove’s nomination.

Booker, who remained in the committee’s chambers and continued speaking as Republican senators called out their votes on Bove and other judicial nominees, continued:

What are you afraid of about even debating this, putting things on the record, hearing from every senator? Dear God, that’s what our obligations are.

This is outrageous that you’re not allowing senators to have their fair say before a controversial nominee is being done. This is unbelievable. This is unjust. This is wrong. It is the further deterioration of this committee’s integrity with a person like this. What are you afraid of?

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officials will be given access to the personal data of the nation’s 79 million Medicaid enrollees, including home addresses and ethnicities, to track down immigrants who may not be living legally in the US, according to an agreement obtained by The Associated Press.

The information will give Ice officials the ability to find “the location of aliens” across the country, says the agreement signed on Monday between the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Department of Homeland Security. The agreement has not been announced publicly.

The extraordinary disclosure of millions of such personal health data to deportation officials is the latest escalation in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, which has repeatedly tested legal boundaries in its effort to arrest 3,000 people daily.

Lawmakers and some CMS officials have challenged the legality of deportation officials’ access to some states’ Medicaid enrollee data. It’s a move, first reported by the AP last month, that health and human services officials said was aimed at rooting out people enrolled in the program improperly.

But the latest data-sharing agreement makes clear what Ice officials intend to do with the health data. “Ice will use the CMS data to allow Ice to receive identity and location information on aliens identified by Ice,” the agreement says.

Such disclosures, even if not acted upon, could cause widespread alarm among people seeking emergency medical help for themselves or their children. Other efforts to crack down on illegal immigration have made schools, churches, courthouses and other everyday places feel perilous to immigrants and even US citizens who fear getting caught up in a raid.

Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson Andrew Nixon would not respond to the latest agreement. It is unclear, though, whether homeland security has yet accessed the information. The department’s assistant secretary, Tricia McLaughlin, said in an emailed statement to the AP that the two agencies “are exploring an initiative to ensure that illegal aliens are not receiving Medicaid benefits that are meant for law-abiding Americans”.

Two months after Donald Trump floated the farfetched idea of reopening Alcatraz as a federal prison, his attorney general Pam Bondi and interior secretary Doug Burgum are expected to visit the tourist site today, KQED reports.

Burgum, whose department controls the land, and Bondi, who oversees the Bureau of Prisons, plan to visit the shuttered prison before it opens for the day for tours, Nancy Pelosi’s office confirmed to KQED.

“The planned announcement to reopen Alcatraz as a federal penitentiary is the Trump administration’s stupidest initiative yet,” the California Democratic congresswomen and former House speaker said in a statement.

“Make no mistake: this stupidity is a diversionary tactic to draw attention away from this administration’s cruelest actions yet in their Big, Ugly Law,” she said, referring to Trump’s sweeping tax and spending bill.

The Trump administration cannot simply reopen Alcatraz. Current legislation places the island under the control of the Department of the Interior and designates it as part of a national park. Therefore, a member of Congress would need to propose a bill to change things.

“Should reason not prevail and Republicans bring this absurdity before the Congress, Democrats will use every parliamentary and budgetary tactic available to stop the lunacy,” Pelosi said.

Further to that, House speaker Mike Johnson has said that while the vote is still planned for tonight, it could end up taking place tomorrow.

“We’re just looking at all the moving parts and the calendar and the timetable and all that,” Johnson said. The House is trying to fit all of the legislation planned for the entire week into one day after a group of Republicans blocked any action on crypto bills for two days.

“We know we’ve got a short fuse on rescissions for tomorrow, so we’re figuring it out,” he said. Per my last post, Congress faces a deadline tomorrow to approve the rescissions package if the Trump administration is to avoid having to spend the money.

“It may be tomorrow, but we’re doing it,” Johnson said when asked if the House could get it done tonight as planned. “We’re moving as fast as we can.”

The House of Representatives is expected to vote today on Donald Trump’s $9bn funding cut to public media and to foreign aid, after the Senate delivered a victory for the president when it approved the package last night.

House Republicans were poised to vote in favor of the funding cut package, altered by the Senate this week to exclude cuts of about $400m in funds for a HIV/Aids prevention program. The vote, scheduled for this evening, could be close. In June, four Republicans joined Democrats to vote against the package, which passed 214-212.

House Republicans are feeling extra pressure now, as Trump’s administration would be forced to spend the money if Congress does not approve the cuts by the end of the week.

The $9bn at stake amounts to roughly one-tenth of one percent of the $6.8tn federal budget. On the package’s approval last night, Senate majority leader John Thune called it a “small, but important step toward fiscal sanity”.

In the 51-48 Senate vote, only two Republicans, Susan Collins from Maine and Lisa Murkowski from Alaska, voted against the funding cut. Both questioned why the legislative body – constitutionally responsible for the power of the purse – was taking direction from the executive branch to slash funding through the so-called “rescissions” package that was passed by the Republican-controlled Congress in March.

The Coca-Cola company has defended its use of corn syrup after Donald Trump’s claim yesterday that he had apparently convinced the brand to switch to using cane sugar in its US drinks, as it does in Mexico and the UK.

“I have been speaking to Coca-Cola about using REAL Cane Sugar in Coke in the United States, and they have agreed to do so. I’d like to thank all of those in authority at Coca-Cola,” Trump said in a social media post late on Wednesday. “This will be a very good move by them — You’ll see. It’s just better!”

Initially, the drinks giant responded with a neutral statement of appreciation for “President Trump’s enthusiasm” for Coke, and a vague message about “new innovative offerings within our Coca-Cola product range” to come.

Today, however, it released an additional statement making positive claims for high-fructose corn syrup, a product that some blame for soaring US obesity rates and which has become a target of health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr’s “Make America healthy again” movement.

“The name sounds complex, but high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) – which we use to sweeten some of our beverages – is actually just a sweetener made from corn,” Coca-Cola said in a statement. “It’s safe; it has about the same number of calories per serving as table sugar and is metabolized in a similar way by your body.”

It added that the American Medical Association “has confirmed that HFCS is no more likely to contribute to obesity than table sugar or other full-calorie sweeteners”, and said: “Please be assured that Coca-Cola brand soft drinks do not contain any harmful substances.”

In 2023, the AMA released a statement saying it recognized “that at the present time, insufficient evidence exists to specifically restrict use of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) or other fructose-containing sweeteners in the food supply or to require the use of warning labels on products containing HFCS”.

A switch by Coca-Cola to using sugar cane could have trade implications for the $285bn US soft drinks market. Coca-Cola in Mexico is made with cane sugar and packaged in glass bottles. Some is imported into the US, where it sells unofficially as “Mexican Coke” at a premium over its domestic counterpart.

In the 1980s Coca-Cola’s US arm changed its formulation to use high-fructose corn syrup, supported by US farming subsidies, and not imported sugar cane subjected to import tariffs. But turning back the clock could prove costly if Trump’s high US tariffs on nations that produce sugar cane continue to apply.

Despite the Trump administration’s claims to be focusing on the “worst of the worst” offenders in its highly aggressive and controversial deportation campaign, the latest Ice data suggests many undocumented immigrants without violent criminal records have been ensnared in the process, CBS News reports.

Of the estimated 100,000 people who were deported between 1 January and 24 June by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 70,583 were convicted criminals, according to an Ice document obtained by CBS. But most of these documented transgressions were traffic or immigration offenses.

In fact the data shows that serious criminal convicts make up a small minority of the people taken into custody by Ice. Less than 1% had murder convictions and fewer than 2% had convictions for sex crimes or sexual assault. Around 15% were convicted of assault. Just under 30% had no criminal convictions at all.

“There’s a deep disconnect between the rhetoric and the reality,” Ahilan Arulanantham, co-faculty director of the UCLA Law School’s Center for Immigration Law and Policy, told the Associated Press this week. “This administration, and also in the prior Trump administration, they consistently claim to be going after the worst of the worst and just talk about immigration enforcement as though it is all about going after violent, dangerous people with extensive criminal histories.

“And yet overwhelmingly, it’s people they’re targeting for arrest who have no criminal history of any kind.”

The Senate judiciary committee is expected to vote this morning on whether to advance the nomination of Emil Bove, a top justice department official and Trump’s former personal defense attorney, for a lifetime judicial appointment on the Philadelphia-based third circuit court of appeals.

Bove has been accused of dropping federal corruption charges against embattled New York mayor Eric Adams in exchange for his cooperation on immigration enforcement, which Bove and Adams have denied.

A former justice department lawyer has also accused Bove of suggesting that subordinates defy court orders aimed at stopping deportations to El Salvador, which Bove also has denied. “DoJ would need to consider telling the courts ‘fuck you’ and ignore any such order,” the whistleblower claims Bove said.

And in his first few weeks as acting justice department deputy attorney general, Bove fired prosecutors who brought charges against January 6 rioters and requested a list of FBI agents who worked on the cases.

More than 900 former justice department lawyers sent a letter to the Senate judiciary committee urging them not to confirm his appointment, per the New York Times (paywall).

Donald Trump’s huge spending boost for the Pentagon will produce an additional 26 megatons (Mt) of planet-heating gases – on a par with the annual carbon equivalent (CO₂e) emissions generated by 68 gas power plants or the entire country of Croatia, new research reveals.

The Pentagon’s 2026 budget – and climate footprint – is set to surge to $1tn thanks to Trump’s sweeping tax and spending bill, a 17% rise on last year.

Military emissions are closely tied to military spending.

The budget bonanza will push the Pentagon’s total greenhouse emissions to a staggering 178 Mt of CO₂e, resulting in an estimated $47bn in economic damages globally, according to new analysis by the Climate and Community Institute (CCI), a US-based research thinktank, shared exclusively with the Guardian.

The huge increase in military spending comes amid worsening climate breakdown, and as Americans – many of them Trump voters – are being hit by destructive extreme weather events such as wildfires, extreme heat and the recent floods in Texas, as well as sea-level rise and other slow-onset climate effects.

Trump’s 2026 budget legislation slashes federal funding for science, education, Medicaid, food stamps, emergency management, the National Weather Service and humanitarian aid – in order to pay for the military expansion, tax cuts for the wealthy, and Trump’s violent immigration crackdown. Trump has also withdrawn the US from the Paris climate accords for the second time, and rolled back Biden-era investments in renewable energies such as solar and wind that are key to weaning the US off fossil fuels in order to curtail climate catastrophe.

The US is the largest historical contributor to the climate crisis, and currently the second worst emitter after China – a country with quadruple the population.

“Every extra dollar grows the Pentagon’s carbon bootprint – and shrinks the chances for a livable future. With this additional funding from the big beautiful bill, the US’s trillion-dollar war machine will be responsible for more emissions than 138 individual countries,” said Patrick Bigger, lead author and CCI research director.

“Supposedly this spending is for national security. But what security is there in more droughts, floods, hurricanes, and rising seas?”

Congressional Republicans are pushing for passage of a rescissions package, legislation requested by Donald Trump that will claw back $9bn in funding intended for foreign aid programs and public broadcasting.

The bill, which is part of the president’s campaign to slash government spending, passed the House last month, and has now passed the Senate in a narrow 51-48 vote. It is due to go back to the House before Friday’s deadline.

What is a rescissions package?

Congress controls the power of the purse by approving a budget and then appropriating money. But under the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, the president may request the rescission of previously authorized funds, and Congress has 45 days to approve it, otherwise the money must be spent.

Why are Republicans rushing to pass the rescissions package?

The 45 days on Trump’s package of rescissions requests expires on Friday, hence the reason why the GOP is moving to quickly pass the bill. It also explains why the House speaker, Mike Johnson, on Tuesday pleaded with the Senate to “pass it as is” – meaning the version of the bill that passed his chamber last month.

What funding does Trump want to cancel?

The White House has proposed cancelling a total of $9bn in authorized funding, including $1.1bn budgeted for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds NPR and PBS, and about $8bn meant for foreign assistance programs. On the chopping block is money meant for organizations affiliated with the United Nations and other international organizations, including the World Health Organization and the UN human rights council, as well as for refugee assistance and some USAID programs.

Read the full explainer piece here:

Protests and events against president Donald Trump’s controversial policies that include mass deportations and cuts to Medicaid and other safety nets for poor people are planned Thursday at more than 1,600 locations around the country.

The “Good Trouble Lives On” national day of action honors the late congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis. Protests are expected to be held along streets, at court houses and other public spaces. Organizers are calling for them to be peaceful, AP reported.

“We are navigating one of the most terrifying moments in our nation’s history,” Public Citizen co-president Lisa Gilbert said during an online news conference Tuesday. “We are all grappling with a rise of authoritarianism and lawlessness within our administration ... as the rights, freedoms and expectations of our very democracy are being challenged.”

Public Citizen is a nonprofit with a stated mission of taking on corporate power. It is a member of a coalition of groups behind Thursday’s protests.

Major protests are planned in Atlanta and St Louis, as well as Oakland, California, and Annapolis, Maryland.

Most Americans think President Donald Trump’s administration is hiding information about accused sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and give it poor marks on the issue after pledging to make public documents in the case, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found.

The two-day poll, which closed Wednesday, showed 69% of respondents thought the federal government was hiding details about Epstein’s clients, compared to 6% who disagreed and about one in four who said they weren’t sure.

Epstein, a wealthy financier and convicted sex offender, was facing federal charges of sex-trafficking minors when he died by suicide in jail in 2019. He had pleaded not guilty, and the case was dismissed after his death.

The case has captivated swaths of Trump’s political base who were expecting lurid details after some of Trump’s top law enforcement officials said they would be releasing documents that would lead to major revelations about Epstein and his alleged clientele.

The Trump administration last week reversed course on its pledge, enraging some of the president’s followers. Close to two-thirds of Republicans think the administration is hiding details on Epstein’s business, the Reuters/Ipsos poll found.

Just 17% of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of the case, a weaker rating than the president received on any other issue in the poll. Among Republicans, 35% approved, compared to 29% who disapproved and the rest who said they weren’t sure or didn’t answer the question.

A new US assessment has found that American strikes in June destroyed only one of three Iranian nuclear sites, NBC News reported on Thursday, citing current and former US officials familiar with the matter.

President Donald Trump rejected a military plan for further comprehensive strikes on Iran’s nuclear program, which would have lasted several weeks, the report added.

Reuters could not immediately verify the report.

Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news lines over the next few hours.

We start with the news that the US Senate has approved Donald Trump’s plan for billions of dollars in cuts to funding for foreign aid and public broadcasting, handing the Republican president another victory as he exerts control over Congress with little opposition.

The Senate voted 51 to 48 in favour of Trump’s request to cut $9bn in spending already approved by Congress.

Most of the cuts are to programmes to assist foreign countries stricken by disease, war and natural disasters, but the plan also eliminates the $1.1bn the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was due to receive over the next two years.

Trump and many of his fellow Republicans argue that spending on public broadcasting is an unnecessary expense and reject its news coverage as blighted by “anti-right bias”.

Standalone rescissions packages have not passed in decades, with lawmakers reluctant to cede their constitutionally mandated control of spending. But the Republicans, who hold narrow majorities in the Senate and House, have shown little appetite for resisting Trump’s policies since he began his second term in January.

Read the full story here:

In other news:

• In an interview with Real America’s Voice, the far-right network created to host Steve Bannon’s podcast, Donald Trump said that the FBI should investigate what he called “the Jeffrey Epstein hoax” as part of a criminal conspiracy against him.

• In a series of posts on his social media platform X, Elon Musk mocked Trump’s wild claim that files related to the federal investigation of Epstein, the late sex offender and longtime Trump friend, are “a hoax”.

• Trump told reporters that he was “surprised” when Jerome Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, was appointed by Joe Biden. But Powell was appointed by Trump himself in 2017, before being reappointed by Biden in 2022.

• Trump claimed that Epstein had “died three or four years ago”. But Epstein died in federal custody in 2019, when Trump was president, not during the Biden administration.

• The Daily Show’s Jordan Klepper explained that Trump’s claims of a conspiracy makes no sense. “According to Trump, all the top Democrats got together and said: ‘Let’s create some fake files that destroy Trump’s political career’. They don’t ever use them,” Klepper said. “They let Trump get elected. Don’t use them. Let Trump get elected again. Still don’t use them. And then, once he’s the president, hope he releases the files without ever looking at them.”

• In a lengthy Truth Social post Trump dismissed the backlash over the Epstein files as a “scam” perpetuated by Democrats and accused supporters who have called for more transparency of “doing the Democrats’ work” by buying into the “hoax”.