Closing summary
This brings our live coverage of the day in US politics to an end, but we will be back on Thursday to continue chronicling the second Trump administration in real time. Here are the latest developments:
A federal appeals court ruled on Wednesday that Donald Trump’s executive order declaring an end to birthright citizenship is unconstitutional, affirming a lower-court decision that blocked its enforcement nationwide.
The House oversight subcommittee on federal law enforcement voted to issue a subpoena to the justice department compelling “the full, unredacted release” of files from the federal investigations of Jeffrey Epstein.
Columbia University signed an agreement with the US government to pay $221m to settle multiple investigations into alleged violations of federal anti-discrimination and equal opportunity employment laws.
Trump repeated his tale that the king of Saudi Arabia told him during a visit to the kingdom in May: “You have the hottest country anywhere in the world”. Trump did not meet the king during his trip but was hosted by the crown prince, whom US intelligence says approved the murder of a US-based journalist.
The White House press secretary expressed “outrage” that, during the Obama administration, “the intelligence community was concocting this narrative … that the president’s son was holding secret meetings with the Russians”. Donald Trump Jr admitted in 2017 that he had secretly met a Russian who promised to deliver Russian government dirt on Hillary Clinton.
Trump signed executive orders, including one that would bar the US government from buying or promoting AI models that “embrace wokeism and critical race theory”.
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In 2017, Donald Trump Jr admitted meeting Russian who promised dirt on Hillary Clinton. Today, the White House press secretary called that a lie.
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, told reporters earlier on Wednesday that it was an “outrage” that, during the Obama administration, “the intelligence community was concocting this narrative that the president colluded with the Russians, that the president’s son was holding secret meetings with the Russians.”
“All of these lies”, Leavitt said, “that were never true”.
While Trump and his aides have for years tried to maintain that every accusation that his 2016 campaign was aware of or encouraged the Russian attempts to damage Hillary Clinton were false, it is very odd that Leavitt chose to call the idea that the president’s son met secretly with the Russians false, because Donald Trump Jr admitted it was true in 2017.
He even provided documentary evidence for how the meeting came about. On 11 July 2017, Donald Trump Jr tweeted a copy of an email exchange he had in June of 2016 with a publicist for a powerful Russian oligarch. The email showed that the British publicist, Rob Goldstone, on June 3, 2016, offered to pass on secret information about Clinton from one of the most senior officials in the Russian government.
“The Crown prosecutor of Russia” Goldstone wrote, in reference to the prosecutor general of Russia, Yuri Chaika, “offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father.”
“This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump”, Goldstone added.
The younger Trump replied to this offer of Russian government help: “if it’s what you say I love it”. Six days later the president’s son, along with his brother-in-law Jared Kushner and Trump’s campaign manager Paul Manafort, met in Trump Tower with Natalia Veselnitskaya, who was described to him by Goldstone as a “Russian government attorney who is flying over from Moscow for this.”
Federal appeals court blocks Trump's 'unconstitutional' attempt to end birthright citizenship
A federal appeals court ruled on Wednesday that Donald Trump’s executive order declaring an end to birthright citizenship is unconstitutional, affirming a lower-court decision that blocked its enforcement nationwide.
The 2-1 ruling from a divided panel of the ninth US circuit court of appeals comes after Trump’s plan was also blocked by a federal judge in New Hampshire. It brings the issue one step closer to coming back quickly before the supreme court.
The appeals court ruling blocks the Trump administration from enforcing the order that would deny citizenship to children born to people who are in the United States without permanent legal status or temporarily.
“The district court correctly concluded that the Executive Order’s proposed interpretation, denying citizenship to many persons born in the United States, is unconstitutional. We fully agree,” the majority wrote.
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Trump keeps saying Saudi king praised his leadership in May; there is no record they met
“When I traveled to the Middle East in May, every leader I met was thrilled to do business with American tech firms, and with America, and they were all thrilled to meet me”, Donald Trump boasted at an AI summit earlier on Wednesday.
He then regaled the assembled industry leaders with a story he has told dozens of times in the months since, despite the fact it seems to reveal that the president is confused about who hosted him on his visit to Saudi Arabia.
“The king of Saudi Arabia”, Trump recalled, “said, ‘You know what? One year ago, your country was dead, it was a dead country…. You had a dead country, and today, Mr President, you have the hottest country anywhere in the world’.
According to Trump, the leaders of Qatar and UAE echoed those comments by Saudi king. “They said that and they mean it so strongly”, the president said to widespread applause.
The problem with this anecdote is that Trump was not hosted by King Salman of Saudi Arabia, the 89-year-old monarch who has largely retreated from public life and took no part in the lavish ceremonies and meetings Trump attended in Riyadh.
Instead, Trump met with crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s de facto ruler, who approved the 2018 murder of the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, according to a US intelligence report made public three weeks after the end of Trump’s first term.
During a speech to a Saudi investment forum during his trip, Trump criticized his predecessor Joe Biden for keeping his distance from the crown prince and lavished praise on him.
Columbia University agrees to pay more than $220m as settlement to Trump administration
Columbia University announced on Wednesday that it has signed an agreement with the U S government to pay $200m to settle multiple investigations into alleged violations of federal anti-discrimination laws.
The university also agreed to pay a further $21m “to settle investigations brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission”.
In return for the massive payments, to be made over three years, “a vast majority of the federal grants which were terminated or paused in March 2025 – will be reinstated and Columbia’s access to billions of dollars in current and future grants will be restored”, according to the university.
The agreement was signed by the university trustees and three Trump administration cabinet members: Pam Bondi, the attorney general, Linda MacMahon, the education secretary, and Robert F Kennedy Jr, the health secretary.
The settlement comes after Columbia already gave in to many of the Trump administration’s demands, agreeing last week to adopt a controversial definition of antisemitism that precludes criticism of Israel and expelling or suspending over 70 students who briefly occupied a campus library reading room in May to protest the Israeli assault on Palestinians in Gaza.
On Monday, Harvard University argued in federal court that the Trump administration’s decision to cut $2.6bn in funding from that university, over similar claims, was an illegal, politically motivated attempt to pressure the school into adopting policies on student conduct, admissions, antisemitism and diversity more in line with the president’s own views.
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House oversight subcommittee votes to subpoena Epstein files from justice department
The House oversight subcommittee on federal law enforcement voted on Wednesday to issue a subpoena to the justice department compelling “the full, unredacted release” of files from the federal investigations of Jeffrey Epstein, the late sex offender who socialized with future president Donald Trump throughout the 1990s.
A motion introduced by congresswoman Summer Lee, a Pennsylvania Democrat, passed by a vote of 8-2, with three votes coming from Republicans Nancy Mace, Scott Perry and Brian Jack, requires that files be released to the subcommittee.
Trump signs executive order barring government from using 'woke' AI models
Donald Trump just completed his remarks to a summit of artificial intelligence industry leaders in Washington and signed three executive orders, including one that his aide, the White House staff secretary Will Scharf, said would bar the US government from buying or promoting AI models that “embrace wokeism and critical race theory and all of these terrible theories that have done so much damage to our country”.
In his earlier remarks, Trump claimed that his predecessor Joe Biden had “established toxic diversity, equity and inclusion ideology as a guiding principle of American AI development”.
“But the American people do not want woke Marxist lunacy in the AI models,” Trump said.
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Trump tells AI leaders they should not have to worry about copyright laws
In a rambling set of remarks at an AI summit at the Mellon Auditorium in Washington on Wednesday, Donald Trump just told assembled industry leaders that he wants them to “change the name” of artificial intelligence and that they should not be forced to pay the authors of articles or books they use to train their large language models.
The subject of the summit, Trump said at the start of his remarks, was “the greatest power of them all, the brain power”.
He went on to boast, as he does at political rallies, about the scale of his victory in the 2024 presidential election, saying that he won by “millions and millions of votes” (it was 2 million), and that he won far more “districts as they would call them” (he meant counties) than Kamala Harris.
“Around the globe, everybody is talking about artificial intelligence,” Trump said, before veering away from his prepared remarks to say: “Artificial – I can’t stand it. I don’t even like the name, you know I don’t like anything that’s artificial. So could we straighten that out please? We should change the name.”
As some in the crowd laughed, Trump added: “I actually mean that. I don’t like the name artificial, because it’s not artificial, it’s genius, it’s pure genius.”
Given that one of Trump’s first acts in office was to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, he might indeed mean it.
The president then called for what he called “a commonsense application of artificial and intellectual property rules”. Trump appeared to have accidentally added the word “artificial” to his prepared remarks.
“It’s so important,” the president continued. “You can’t be expected to have a successful AI program when every single article, book or anything else that you’ve read or studied, you’re supposed to pay for.”
“‘Gee, I read a book, I’m supposed to pay somebody,’” the president added, dismissing the intellectual property concerns of authors whose work has been used without payment in a sarcastic aside.
“You know, we appreciate that, but you just can’t do it, because it’s not doable,” the president went on. “And if you’re going to try and do that, you’re not going to have a successful program.”
“When a person reads a book or an article, you’ve gained great knowledge. That does not mean that you’re violating copyright laws or have to make deals with every content provider,” Trump said. “And that’s a big thing that you’re working on right now.”
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Yemen attack plans Hegseth shared in Signal chat were from classified email - report
An independent Pentagon inspector general reportedly has evidence that the detailed attack plans for strikes on Yemen shared in at least two Signal group chats by defense secretary Pete Hegseth in March were, in fact, classified, contradicting repeated claims to the contrary from Trump administration officials.
“The Pentagon’s independent watchdog has received evidence that messages from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s Signal account previewing a U.S. bombing campaign in Yemen derived from a classified email labeled “SECRET/NOFORN”, the Washington Post reports.
According to the Post, the Pentagon watchdog discovered that the 15 March strike plans Hegseth dropped in one Signal group that mistakenly included the editor of the Atlantic, and a second chat that included his wife, had first been shared “in a classified email with more than a dozen defense officials” sent through a secure, government system by General Michael Erik Kurilla, the top commander overseeing US military operations in the Middle East.
After the revelation that Hegseth had shared the secret attack plans on Signal with a journalist before the strikes, the defense secretary told reporters “nobody was texting war plans”. His chief spokesman, Sean Parnell, said at the time: “there were no classified materials or war plans shared”.
Another participant in the Signal group, Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, testified to congress in March that “there was no classified material that was shared” in the chat.
A federal judge ruled on Wednesday that Kilmar Ábrego García must be released from jail as he awaits trial on human smuggling charges.
The decision from judge Waverly Crenshaw means that Donald Trump’s administration can potentially attempt to deport the Maryland father of two to his native El Salvador or a third country for a second time.
Crenshaw, sitting in Nashville, agreed with an earlier decision by a magistrate judge, concluding that prosecutors had not provided enough evidence to show Ábrego is either a danger to the public or a flight risk.
The judge said in his decision that the government “fails to show by a preponderance of the evidence – let alone clear and convincing evidence – that Ábrego is such a danger to others or the community that such concerns cannot be mitigated by conditions of release”.
Despite the bail ruling, Ábrego is not expected to walk free. His legal team has requested a 30-day delay in implementing the decision, opting to keep him in criminal detention while they consider next steps.
Meanwhile, in a separate courtroom in Maryland, US district judge Paula Xinis, who is overseeing a civil case Ábrego filed, issued a 72-hour freeze on any further attempts by the Trump administration to deport him. Xinis ruled that Ábrego must be returned to Maryland on an order of supervision.
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Ghislaine Maxwell deposition set for 11 August at federal prison
The House oversight committee has officially subpoenaed Ghislaine Maxwell for a deposition to occur at the Federal Correctional Institution Tallahassee on 11 August.
“The facts and circumstances surrounding both your and Mr Epstein’s cases have received immense public interest and scrutiny,” Republican chairman James Comer, of Kentucky, wrote, addressing Maxwell.
“While the justice department undertakes efforts to uncover and publicly disclose additional information related to your and Mr Epstein’s cases, it is imperative that Congress conduct oversight of the federal government’s enforcement of sex trafficking laws generally and specifically its handling of the investigation and prosecution of you and Mr Epstein.”
An oversight subcommittee voted yesterday to subpoena Maxwell, the imprisoned sex trafficker who was a close associate of the notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, to testify amid a political firestorm over the Trump administration’s decision not to release its remaining Epstein files.
White House calls WSJ report on Trump being told name in Epstein files 'fake news'
“This is another fake news story, just like the previous story by the Wall Street Journal,” White House communications director Steven Cheung said in a statement in response to the WSJ’s report that the justice department informed Donald Trump in May about his name being in the Epstein files.
DOJ officials made Trump aware of decision not to continue investigations related to Epstein – report
In the WSJ’s report (paywall), according to the officials, attorney general Pam Bondi and her deputy informed the president at a meeting in the White House in May that his name was in the Epstein files, along with many other high-profile figures.
“The meeting set the stage for the high-profile review to come to an end,” the WSJ reports.
The publication notes that being mentioned in the documents is not a sign of wrongdoing:
The officials said it was a routine briefing that covered a number of topics and that Trump’s appearance in the documents wasn’t the focus.
They told the president at the meeting that the files contained what officials felt was unverified hearsay about many people, including Trump, who had socialized with Epstein in the past, some of the officials said. One of the officials familiar with the documents said they contain hundreds of other names.
They also told Trump that senior justice department officials didn’t plan to release any more documents related to the investigation of the convicted sex offender because the material contained child pornography and victims’ personal information, the officials said. Trump said at the meeting he would defer to the justice department’s decision to not release any further files.
Trump denied last week in response to a journalist’s question that Bondi had told him that his name was in the files.
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Justice department told Trump in May that his name is in the Epstein files – WSJ
“When justice department officials reviewed what attorney general Pam Bondi called a ‘truckload’ of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein earlier this year, they discovered that Donald Trump’s name appeared multiple times,” the Wall Street Journal is reporting, citing senior administration officials.
I’ll bring you more on this as we get it.
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US district judge Robin Rosenberg wrote that the court’s “hands are tied” and said the government had not requested the grand jury’s findings for use in a judicial proceeding, pointing out that district courts in the US are largely prohibited from unsealing grand jury testimony except in very narrow circumstances.
The ruling mentioned in my last post stems from federal investigations of Jeffrey Epstein in Florida in 2005 and 2007, according to court documents.
It doesn’t affect two other pending requests by the Department of Justice that seek to obtain transcripts of grand jury proceedings related to later federal investigations of Epstein and his accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, in New York, both of which led to separate criminal indictments.
Yesterday, the New York federal court said it would like to “expeditiously” resolve the Trump administration’s request, but it could not do so due to a number of missing submissions.
The Trump administration filed the petitions to unseal transcripts of the grand jury proceedings last week. It followed days of mounting pressure and criticism across the political spectrum over the DoJ’s decision not to release any further investigative evidence about Epstein despite many earlier promises that it would be released.
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Federal judge rejects bid to unseal Epstein grand jury transcripts from Florida inquiry
A US judge has denied a justice department bid to unseal grand jury transcripts related to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in South Florida, the first ruling in a series of attempts by Donald Trump’s administration to release more information on the case.
Reuters reports that US district judge Robin Rosenberg found that the justice department’s request in Florida did not fall into any of the exceptions to rules requiring grand jury material be kept secret.
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The new photos and videos published by CNN have emerged today in a context of ever-rising frustration in Trump’s White House over its inability to make the Epstein story go away. Per Politico:
Donald Trump is angry. His team is exasperated. The Republican-controlled House is in near rebellion.
Trump and his closest allies thought they’d spend the summer taking a victory lap, having coaxed Congress into passing the megabill, bullied foreign governments into a slew of new trade arrangements, convinced Nato allies to spend billions more on collective defense and pressed world leaders to bow to various other demands from Doha to The Hague.
Instead, questions surrounding Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender, who was found dead in his jail cell by suicide nearly six years ago, are overshadowing almost everything else.”
“POTUS is clearly furious,” a person close to the White House told Politico. “It’s the first time I’ve seen them sort of paralyzed.”
A senior White House official said the president is frustrated with his staff’s inability to tamp down conspiracy theories they once spread and by the wall of media coverage that started when attorney general Pam Bondi released information from the Epstein case that was already in the public domain.
“He feels there are way bigger stories that deserve attention,” the senior White House official said.
The frustration stems, in part, from an understanding that this is “a vulnerability,” said a White House ally. Trump has famously had his finger on the pulse of the Republican base for more than a decade but has, for now, lost the ability to dominate the narrative. That threatens to undermine the momentum and sense of invincibility the GOP felt at the beginning of the month when they were getting ready to boast about a slew of new tax cuts and border funding as their opening pitch to voters ahead of the 2026 midterms.
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New photos and videos highlight close ties between Epstein and Trump
Newly uncovered photos and video footage published by CNN show more links between the notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump, including Epstein’s attendance at Trump’s wedding to Marla Maples at the Plaza hotel in New York in 1993.
The media organization said on Wednesday that Epstein’s attendance at the wedding ceremony was not widely known.
CNN also published footage from 1999 of Trump and Epstein attending a Victoria’s Secret fashion event in New York, where they are seen talking and laughing alongside Trump’s future wife, Melania Trump.
The outlet noted that the newly published material pre-dates any of Epstein’s known legal troubles.
CNN also published photos of Trump and Epstein at the 1993 opening of the Harley-Davidson Cafe in New York, where Trump is seen with his arm around two of his children, Eric and Ivanka, while Epstein stands beside them.
When asked for comment by CNN on the newly unearthed videos and photos, Trump reportedly responded: “You’ve got to be kidding me.” He then reportedly called CNN “fake news” and hung up the phone.
Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, said in a statement to CNN that the videos and photos were “nothing more than out-of-context frame grabs of innocuous videos and pictures of widely attended events to disgustingly infer something nefarious”.
“The fact is that the President kicked him out of his club for being a creep,” Cheung added. “This is nothing more than a continuation of the fake news stories concocted by the Democrats and the liberal media.”
The Trump administration’s Department of Education announced on Wednesday that it has opened national-origin discrimination investigations into five US universities over what it described as “alleged exclusionary scholarships referencing foreign-born students”.
According to the announcement, the department’s office for civil rights has opened investigations into the University of Louisville, the University of Nebraska Omaha, the University of Miami, the University of Michigan and Western Michigan University.
The department said that the investigations will determine whether these universities are granting scholarships exclusively to students who are recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) program, who came to the US as children, or who are undocumented “in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964’s (Title VI) prohibition against national origin discrimination”.
The investigation stems from complaints submitted by the Legal Insurrection Foundation’s Equal Protection Project, a conservative legal group.
The group alleges in the complaints that certain scholarships at these schools are limited to students with Daca status or who are undocumented, which they argue is in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 “and its implementing regulations by illegally discriminating against students based on their national origin”.
For the full story, click here:
The state department is opening an investigation into Harvard University’s eligibility as a sponsor for the exchange visitor program, the latest in the Trump administration’s pressure campaign on the university over alleged failures to combat campus antisemitism and inadequate support of Israel.
The department announced the probe will examine whether Harvard maintains proper standards for hosting international students, professors, researchers and other exchange visitors. All program sponsors must demonstrate “transparency in reporting” and commitment to cultural exchange principles while ensuring their activities do not “undermine the foreign policy objectives or compromise the national security interests of the United States”, the agency said.
“The American people have the right to expect their universities to uphold national security, comply with the law, and provide safe environments for all students,” the state department said. “The investigation will ensure that State Department programs do not run contrary to our nation’s interests.”
For the full story, click here:
Over 130,000 sign 'Save Colbert' petition ahead of NYC rally
Over 130,000 people, including politicians and former late night staff, have signed a “Save Colbert” show ahead of the petition’s delivery in a mass rally to CBS’s headquarters in New York on Wednesday.
According to the Progressive Change Campaign Committee which is behind the petition, tens of thousands of Paramount Plus subscribers have checked a box on the petition saying that they would unsubscribe.
“If CBS cares about their integrity, our democracy, and protecting free speech, they must heed our petition, reverse their decision, and keep Stephen Colbert on the air,” said Sydney Register, a PCCC spokesperson.
“It looks like political cowardice and corruption at a time when too many are pre-emptively caving to the anticipated abuse of power by a would-be dictator, and CBS employees are saying it will chill free speech in America,” Register added.
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Behind closed doors at a New York City federal building, people are confined after being seized by officers on their way out of immigration court on the 12th floor. This rare look inside a closely guarded space captures part of Donald Trump’s anti-immigration crackdown:
Trump administration asks tiny Pacific nation of Palau to accept migrants deported from US
The Trump administration has requested that the small Pacific nation of Palau accept asylum seekers currently residing in the US, amid a wider push from the US to deport migrants to countries they are not from.
Palau, a country of about 18,000, is considering a draft agreement to resettle “third country nationals” from the US who “may seek protection and against return to their home country”. The draft agreement does not detail how many individuals may be sent to Palau, nor what the Pacific nation would receive in return.
“Both Parties shall take into account … requests by third country nationals for asylum, refugee protection, or equivalent temporary protection,” the draft agreement, seen by the Guardian, states. “The Government of the United States of America shall not transfer unaccompanied minors pursuant to this Agreement.”
A letter from Palau’s president Surangel Whipps Jr regarding the draft agreement and seen by the Guardian, makes clear the proposal is far from final and is subject to further discussion. It also states Palau would have “full discretion to decide whether or not to accept any individuals”.
The request to Palau marks the latest attempt by the Trump administration to remove migrants from within its borders. A supreme court ruling in June paved the way for the US government to remove migrants and transfer them to countries they are not from. Since then, the US has completed the transfer of migrants including South Sudan and Eswatini.
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Trump advisers abandon effort to find new chief of staff to serve Pete Hegseth
Donald Trump’s advisers have for now abandoned an effort to find a new chief of staff to serve the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, allowing senior adviser Ricky Buria, whom they once considered a liability, to continue performing the duties in an acting capacity, according to people familiar with the matter.
Buria is not expected to formally receive the White House’s approval to become the permanent chief of staff to Hegseth, a position that became vacant after the first chief of staff, Joe Kasper, left in the wake of major upheaval in the secretary’s front office earlier this year.
But the attempt by the Trump advisers to block Buria from getting the job has fizzled in recent months as the news cycle moved away from the controversies that dogged Hegseth at the start of Trump’s term and officials lost interest in managing personnel at the Pentagon, the people said.
As a result, Buria has become a regular presence in the West Wing for briefings in the situation room and with senior White House and administration officials, and secured his standing at the Pentagon, where he is widely referred to as “Chief Ricky”.
The developments are sure to also be a relief for Hegseth, who for months has been staring down the prospect of having his closest aide shunted aside because of concerns at the White House about a growing portrait of dysfunction in his front office.
White House officials may yet revisit installing a replacement for the chief of staff position, which plays a key role in managing Hegseth’s front office and setting the direction of the $1tn defense department that oversees more than 2 million troops around the world.
And it is uncertain if the extent to which senior White House and administration officials are now interacting with Buria is more because he is the only Hegseth aide empowered by the secretary to serve as his top staffer, rather than a vote of confidence by Trump’s advisers.
A spokesperson for the Pentagon referred reporting for this story to the White House. A spokesperson for the White House in a statement offered praise for Hegseth for “restoring readiness and lethality to our military and putting our warfighters first after four years of ineptitude and abject failure by the Biden administration”.
David Richardson, the acting director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), on Wednesday faced accusations that he had mismanaged his agency’s recent deadly floods in Texas.
“This wasn’t just incompetence. It wasn’t just indifference. It was both,” representative Greg Stanton, a Democrat from Arizona, told Richardson at the House transportation and infrastructure committee hearing. “And that deadly combination likely cost lives.”
The hearing came after a slew of reports saying Richardson was nowhere to be found during the flood. Earlier, the acting director, who has no previous response in disaster management, reportedly said he was unaware that hurricane season exists in the US – something the White House later said was a “joke.”
Richardson denied any agency wrongdoing in the Texas floods. “What happened in Texas was an absolute tragedy,” he said.
He and other Trump officials are aiming to restore the agency to its original goals, he said, encouraging states to take on more financial and logistical responsibility for disasters.
“Fema has lost sight of its original intent,” he said. “Under the leadership of the president and the secretary we are returning to this mission focus moving forward.”
In response to this argument, representative Rick Larsen, ranking member of the House committee, came to the hearing armed with the Congressional Research Service’s list of the 518 actions which fema is mandated to follow.
“Currently, Fema doesn’t follow all these laws,” he said. In response, Richardson said the agency had done it “own mission analysis.”
“What we did, and I can commit to, is that we developed eight mission essential tasks that we have to do by statute,” he said.
Study after study shows that flooding like this summer’s in Texas is becoming more severe and more common amid the climate crisis. Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, a Democrat from Washington, DC, asked Richardson if he believes fossil fuels are the primary cause of the climate crisis, and if he thinks extreme weather is increasing.
Richardson was noncommittal in his answer. “What I believe is that we will address disasters regardless of their origin,” he said.
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Here is my colleague Nina Lakhani’s report on Zia, the Afghan wartime translator granted a US immigration visa after risking his life to help US troops who has been detained by masked Ice agents.
The case is the latest sign that the Trump administration is willing to flout legal agreements and promises to allies in pursuit of its unprecedented immigration crackdown, Nina writes.
Zia fled Afghanistan with his family after the Taliban takeover in 2021, and legally entered the US in October 2024 through JFK airport with humanitarian parole – and an approved special immigrant visa (SIV). This visa is a pathway to permanent residency, or a green card, for certain foreign nationals who have worked for the US government or military in specific capacities, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Zia is the third known Afghan ally who helped US troops to have been seized by Ice since Trump returned to power, amid growing outrage at the administration’s actions.
More than 70,000 Afghans were granted permission to enter the US under Joe Biden’s “Operation Allies Welcome” initiative, which followed the bungled America exit and subsequent Taliban takeover in 2021.
Some, like Zia, have a SIV and pathway to permanent residency, while about 12,000 or so have temporary protected status (TPS) – a type of work visa granted to people already in the US who cannot return to their home countries due to armed conflicts, natural disasters or other extraordinary events.
The Trump administration is seeking to terminate TPS status for multiple countries including Venezuela, Haiti and Afghanistan – despite ongoing unstable and dangerous conditions in those countries.
Top adviser to Netanyahu will meet US envoy amid spiraling Gaza starvation crisis
An official familiar with the negotiations has said today that US special envoy Steve Witkoff planned to head to Rome for talks with an Israeli official as the US tries to reach a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, the Associated Press reports.
It comes as more than 100 aid agencies today issued a dire warning that “mass starvation” is spreading across Gaza and urged Israel to let humanitarian aid into the besieged strip to alleviate the growing man-made crisis.
“Just outside Gaza, in warehouses – and even within Gaza itself – tons of food, clean water, medical supplies, shelter items and fuel sit untouched with humanitarian organisations blocked from accessing or delivering them,” the agencies wrote. “The Government of Israel’s restrictions, delays, and fragmentation under its total siege have created chaos, starvation, and death.”
The statement quoted an aid worker in Gaza who said: “Children tell their parents they want to go to heaven, because at least heaven has food.”
The letter comes as increasing numbers of people in Gaza have begun dying from lack of food, the result of a starvation crisis that aid groups warned for months was imminent. Israel continues to claim with no evidence that Hamas is stealing food.
Israel’s military assault on Gaza has killed at least 59,000 Palestinian people, thousands of whom were children.
You can find our live coverage of the crisis here:
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State department opens investigation into Harvard's participation in exchange visitor program
The state department has opened an investigation into Harvard University’s eligibility as a sponsor in its exchange visitor program, secretary of state Marco Rubio has said in a statement.
“The investigation will ensure that State Department programs do not run contrary to our nation’s interests,” he said.
Donald Trump has reiterated his criticism of Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell – who he said “just doesn’t get it” – amid his ongoing call for lower rates, and called on the central bank’s board to act.
“Our Rate should be three points lower than they are, saving us $1 Trillion per year (as a Country). This stubborn guy at the Fed just doesn’t get it — Never did, and never will. The Board should act, but they don’t have the Courage to do so!” Trump wrote on his social media platform.
Earlier, treasury secretary Scott Bessent told Bloomberg TV in an interview that the Trump administration was not in a rush to nominate a new Fed chair to replace Powell.
The president can’t fire the Fed chair, but he has recently been trying to find a legal workaround, accusing Powell of potentially lying to Congress about the $2.5bn renovations taking place at the Fed’s headquarters in Washington.
Powell has asked an inspector general to review the costs of the renovations, which were originally slated to cost $1.9bn but rose to $2.5bn due to “unforeseen conditions”, according to the Fed’s website.
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Lawmakers call for release of Afghan interpreter detained by Ice at green card appointment
Lawmakers are calling for the release of an Afghan interpreter, who worked with the US military for years in his home country, who was seized by armed, masked Ice agents after a routine appointment for his green card.
The former wartime interpreter, identified only as Zia for his safety and that of his family, aided American troops in Afghanistan for about five years during the war and fled the country with his family after the Taliban resumed power in 2021.
Zia entered the US legally in October 2024 through JFK airport with humanitarian parole and an approved Special Immigrant Visa. Ice arrested him following a routine biometrics appointment for his green card in East Hartford, Connecticut, last week.
After originally being detained in Connecticut, Zia was transported to a detention facility in Plymouth, Massachusetts. His attorney, Lauren Petersen, told a press call on Tuesday:
Zia has done everything right. He’s followed the rules. He has no criminal history.
Zia has been placed in expedited removal proceedings, Petersen said. Reuters has a statement from the Department of Homeland Security saying that he is under investigation for a “serious criminal allegation,” adding: “All of his claims will be heard by a judge. Any Afghan who fears persecution is able to request relief.”
While a judge has temporarily stayed Zia’s removal, he remains in detention. Petersen said he is terrified he’ll be returned back to Afghanistan.
Following the rules are supposed to protect you. It’s not supposed to land you in detention. If he is deported, as so many of the people have articulated today, he faces death.
During the press conference, Democratic senator Richard Blumenthal, of Connecticut, called Ice arrests of Afghan allies like Zia “a violation of basic trust” and vowed to fight for his release.
What happened to him is the worst kind of abhorrent violation of basic decency. Put aside the legal causes and the issues here for unmasked agents to snatch someone off the street with no warning, no counsel, no opportunity even to know who is doing it while it’s in process is un-American.
To Zia, we have your back. We’re going to fight for you. We’re going to leave no stone unturned.
Democratic representative Jahana Hayes, of Connecticut, said she had been contacted by Zia’s family directly following the arrest because they didn’t know where he was being held.
Our credibility is at stake. We have families who have risked everything not just for themselves, but for their entire family. They have risked their health and safety. And in the name of standing up for the promises of our American democracy, that could not have been easy at the time. So this betrayal has to be that much more difficult in this moment.
Democratic representative Bill Keating, of Massachusetts, told the press call:
This isn’t about one person. This is about thousands of people. This is about our veterans. If their word means nothing when they’re on the battlefield, risking their lives, and being saved in so many instances by the support of people like Zia who are giving this services as their family and their own lives are being threatened and tortured, then what does that mean for our word going forward?
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Revealed: How Trump has supercharged the US’s immigration crackdown
Maanvi Singh, Will Craft and Andrew Witherspoon
In the six months since Donald Trump took office, the US president has supercharged the country’s immigration enforcement apparatus – pushing immigration officials to arrest a record number of people in June.
A Guardian analysis of arrest and deportation data has revealed that Trump is now overseeing a sweeping mass arrest and incarceration scheme.
The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agency does not publish daily arrest, detention and deportation data. But a team of lawyers and academics from the Deportation Data Project used a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit to obtain a dataset that provides the most detailed picture yet of the US immigration enforcement and detention system under Trump.
A Guardian analysis of the dataset found:
In June this year, average daily arrests were up 268% compared with June 2024.
Ice is increasingly targeting any and all unauthorized immigrants, including people who have no criminal records.
Despite Trump’s claims that his administration is seeking out the “worst of the worst”, the majority of people being arrested by Ice now have no criminal convictions.
Detention facilities have been increasingly overcrowded, and the US system is over capacity by more than 13,500 people.
The number of deportations, however, has fluctuated as the administration pursues new strategies and policies to swiftly expel people from the US.
The US government has deported more than 8,100 people to countries that are not their home country.
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Trump administration not in a rush to replace Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Wednesday told Bloomberg TV in an interview that the Trump administration was not in a rush to nominate a new Federal Reserve Chair to replace Jerome Powell.
After years of heated attacks on Powell, the Trump administration has begun suggesting recent costly renovations at the central bank’s Washington DC buildings could justify firing Powell.
Donald Trump’s antipathy for Powell stems mainly from the central bank boss’s refusal to lower interest rates – something the president has repeatedly called for.
Bessent said he continues to have regular meetings with Powell and that Powell had not told him whether he would leave his board seat.
For a full explainer on whether Trump could fire Powell, read here:
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US President Donald Trump has created a lot of leverage on trade with his letters on tariff rates, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Bloomberg Television in an interview on Wednesday.
“President Trump is creating this leverage by saying: if you don’t want to negotiate with me, I’ve sent you a letter with a high rate. Have at the high rate or come and negotiate in better fashion,” Bessent said.
The European Commission plans to submit counter-tariffs on €93bn ($109bn) of US goods for approval to EU members, while its trade chief will hold talks with US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.
The Commission said on Wednesday its primary focus was to achieve a negotiated outcome with the United States to avert 30% US tariffs that US President Donald Trump has said he will impose on the 27-nation bloc on 1 August.
European Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič will speak with Lutnick on Wednesday afternoon, the Commission said, before Commission officials brief EU ambassadors on the state of play.
The Commission said it would in parallel press on with potential countermeasures. It said it would merge its two sets of possible tariffs of €21bn and €72bn into a single list.
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A German court on Wednesday acquitted a satirist who was charged with having approved of an assassination attempt against Donald Trump during last year’s US election campaign in a social media post and disturbed the public peace.
In a quickly deleted post under his alias “El Hotzo” on X in July last year, Sebastian Hotz drew a parallel between Trump and “the last bus” and wrote “unfortunately just missed.” In a follow-up post, he wrote: “I find it absolutely fantastic when fascists die.”
A gunman opened fire at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, while Trump was campaigning for president last July, grazing Trump’s ear and killing one of his supporters in the crowd. Trump went on to win the White House in November.
Judge Andrea Wilms said in her ruling that Hotz’s post was satire that should go unpunished, even if the comments may have been tasteless. She argued that no one would feel called upon to commit acts of violence by “such clearly satirical utterances,” according to a court statement.
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The US Federal Reserve’s independence is under threat from mounting political interference, according to a clear majority of economists polled by Reuters, although no one expects a July interest rate cut despite a recent divergence in views among policymakers.
President Donald Trump has made it almost a daily routine to personally attack Fed Chair Jerome Powell over the central bank’s stance of holding rates due to tariff-related risks of higher inflation. A recent jump in inflation suggests businesses are now passing some of the tariffs onto consumers.
Most Federal Market Open Committee members favor holding rates steady, but a few, including Governor Chris Waller and Trump appointee Fed Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle Bowman, have recently advocated a reduction as soon as July 30.
Powell’s term is set to expire in May 2026. Waller last week said he would accept the job as the bank’s head if he was offered it by Trump.
Representatives from China and the United States will meet next week in the Swedish capital Stockholm to try and hammer out a deal before an August 12 deadline agreed in May.
China said it will send its vice premier to US trade talks next week to secure its own agreement after US President Donald Trump announced a “massive” trade deal with Japan.
In an attempt to slash his country’s colossal trade deficit, the US president has vowed to hit dozens of countries with punitive “reciprocal” tariffs if they do not hammer out a pact with Washington by August 1.
As the clock ticks down, China said Wednesday it will seek to “strengthen cooperation” with Washington at the talks, and confirmed vice premier He Lifeng would attend.
Trump to outline blueprint to win the AI race
The Trump administration is set to release a new artificial intelligence blueprint on Wednesday that aims to relax American rules governing the industry at the center of a technological arms race between economic rivals the US and China.
President Donald Trump will mark the plan’s release with a speech outlining the importance of winning an AI race that is increasingly seen as a defining feature of 21st-century geopolitics, with both China and the US investing heavily in the industry to secure economic and military superiority.
According to a summary seen by Reuters, the plan calls for the export of US AI technology abroad and a crackdown on state laws deemed too restrictive to let it flourish, a marked departure from former President Joe Biden’s “high fence” approach that limited global access to coveted AI chips.
Top administration officials such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio and White House National Economic Adviser Kevin Hassett are also expected to join the event titled “Winning the AI Race,” organized by White House AI and crypto czar David Sacks and his co-hosts on the “All-In” podcast, according to an event schedule reviewed by Reuters.
Afghan man moving to US seized by immigration agents after green card application appointment
The Trump administration is continuing its deportations policy, which has been described as “human trafficking disguised as a deportation deal” by the largest opposition party in Eswatini. Civil society and opposition groups expressed outrage after the US deported five men to the country. You can read our full story here.
Attorneys and members of Congress have also told how an Afghan man who moved to America after working for the US military in his home country was seized by armed, masked immigration agents, put in a van and taken out of state. Identified only as Zia by members of Congress and his attorney out of concern for his safety and that of his family, the man had worked as an interpreter for the military during the war in Afghanistan. He was in the United States legally and was arrested after an appointment in Connecticut related to his application for a green card.
In other news:
Bryan Kohberger, 30, a former criminal-justice doctoral student, faces life in prison without the possibility of parole or appeal under a deal with prosecutors that spared him the death penalty in return for his guilty plea to four counts of first-degree murder. The proceedings today in a county courtroom in Boise, the state capital, also will afford family members the chance to directly address Kohberger through the presentation of victim impact statements.
China’s foreign ministry said Washington’s decision – to pull the US out of what Donald Trump called the “woke” and “divisive” UN culture and education agency Unesco – was “not the behaviour expected of a responsible major country”, and expressed China’s staunch support of Unesco’s work, its spokesperson told reporters during a press briefing on Wednesday.
European shares climbed more than 1% on Wednesday, led by automobile stocks, after the US president revived hopes for a trade deal with the European Union after an agreement with Japan.
US-funded contraceptives worth nearly $10m (£7.39m) are being sent to France from Belgium to be incinerated, after Washington rejected offers from the United Nations and family planning organisations to buy or ship the supplies to poor nations, two sources told Reuters.
The US embassy in the Philippines has said the US has announced PHP 3bn (£39m) in foreign assistance for the country.
The dollar struggled on Wednesday, while the yen was choppy after Trump announced a trade deal with Japan, bolstering optimism for more agreements ahead of an impending tariff deadline. The dollar index, which tracks the greenback against major peers, was at 97.48 after a three-day decline, hovering near its lowest level since 10 July. The gauge has lost 6.6% since Trump’s “liberation day” tariff announcement on 2 April.
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