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    Texas bill allowing residents to sue out-of-state abortion pill providers reaches governor

    A measure that would allow Texas residents to sue out-of-state abortion pill providers advanced to the desk of the governor, Greg Abbott, on Wednesday, setting up the state to be the first to try to crack down on the most common abortion method.Supporters say it’s a key tool to enforce the state’s abortion ban, protecting women and fetuses.Opponents see it not only as another way to rein in abortion but as an effort to intimidate abortion providers outside Texas who are complying with the laws in their states – and to encourage a form of vigilantism.If the measure becomes law, it’s nearly certain to spark legal challenges from abortion rights supporters.Under the measure, Texas residents could sue those who manufacture, transport or provide abortion-inducing drugs to anyone in Texas for up to $100,000. Women who receive the pills for their own use would not be liable.Under the bill, providers could be ordered to pay $100,000. But only the pregnant woman, the man who impregnated her or other close relatives could collect the entire amount. Anyone else who sued could receive only $10,000, with the remaining $90,000 going to charity.Lawmakers also added language to address worries that women would be turned in for seeking to end pregnancies by men who raped them or abusive partners. For instance, a man who impregnated a woman through sexual assault would not be eligible.The measure has provisions that bar making public the identity or medical details about a woman who receives the pills.It wasn’t until those provisions were added, along with the limit of a $10,000 payment for people who aren’t themselves injured by the abortion, that several major Texas anti-abortion groups backed the bill.The idea of using citizens rather than government officials to enforce abortion bans is not new in Texas. It was at the heart of a 2021 law that curtailed abortion there months before the US supreme court cleared the way for other state bans to take effect.In the earlier law, citizens could collect $10,000 for bringing a successful lawsuit against a provider or anyone who helps someone obtain an abortion. But that measure didn’t explicitly seek to go after out-of-state providers.Pills are a tricky topic for abortion opponents. They were the most common abortion method in the US even before the 2022 supreme court ruling that overturned Roe v Wade and allowed states to enforce abortion bans.They’ve become even more widely used since then. Their availability is a key reason that the number of abortions has risen nationally, even though Texas and 11 other states are enforcing bans on abortion in all stages of pregnancy.The pills have continued to flow partly because at least eight Democratic-led states have enacted laws that seek to protect medical providers from legal consequences when they use telehealth to prescribe the pills to women who are in states where abortion is illegal.Anna Rupani, executive director of Fund Texas Choice, said the measure is intended to threaten those out-of-state providers and women in Texas.“This is about the chilling effect,” she said. “This is yet another abortion ban that is allowing the state to control people’s health care lives and reproductive decisions.”Earlier this year, a Texas judge ordered a New York doctor to pay more than $100,000 in penalties for providing abortion pills to a Dallas-area woman.The same provider, Dr Maggie Carpenter, faces criminal charges from a Louisiana prosecutor for similar allegations.New York officials are invoking their state’s shield laws to block extradition of Carpenter and to refuse to file the civil judgment.If higher courts side with Louisiana or Texas officials, it could damage the shield laws.Meanwhile, the attorneys general of Texas and Florida are seeking to join Idaho, Kansas and Missouri in an effort to get courts to roll back US Food and Drug Administration approvals for mifepristone, one of the drugs usually used in combination for medication abortions, contending that there are safety concerns. They say it needs tighter controls because of those concerns.If the states are successful, it’s possible the drug could be distributed only in person and not by telehealth.Major medical organizations including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists say the drug is safe. More

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    Judge sides with Harvard and orders Trump to reverse billions in funding cuts – US politics live

    A federal judge in Boston has sided with Harvard university in its court battle with the Trump administration, ordering that the federal government reverse funding cuts, the AP reports.The Trump administration had cut more than $2.6bn in research grants to the school as part of the president’s aggressive attacks on academic institutions.Judge Allison Burroughs ruled Wednesday the cuts constituted illegal retaliation after Harvard had refused the White House’s demands to change its policies and governance, the AP reported.Harvard’s complaint, filed in July, said:
    This case involves the government’s efforts to use the withholding of federal funding as leverage to gain control of academic decisionmaking at Harvard. All told, the tradeoff put to Harvard and other universities is clear: allow the government to micromanage your academic institution or jeopardize the institution’s ability to pursue medical breakthroughs, scientific discoveries, and innovative solutions.
    The NAACP has filed a lawsuit against the state of Missouri to block the red state’s special legislative session to redraw congressional maps and expand GOP representation.The civil rights group said in a press release that it was suing to “stop an unlawful attempt to convene a special legislative session aimed at redrawing political maps in ways that would diminish the voting power of Black Missourians”.The NAACP filed a similar lawsuit in Texas last month to block the state’s redistricting plan, which is expected to add five GOP seats to Congress.Derrick Johnson, NAACP president, said in a statement:
    This case is about defending democracy and protecting the voice of every voter. The Missouri legislature’s attempt to force a rushed, unconstitutional redistricting process in a special session is a blatant effort to silence Black voters and strip them of their fundamental rights. We will not stand by while elected officials manipulate the system to weaken our power and representation.”
    The redistricting effort pushed by Mike Kehoe, Missouri’s GOP governor, followed calls by Donald Trump for the state to redraw its maps so it could “elect an additional Maga Republican in the 2026 midterm elections”. States traditionally have only redrawn maps every ten years based on the US census, but Republican efforts to add seats this year, in the middle of the decade, have sparked a redistricting battle with Democrats.A federal judge in Boston has sided with Harvard university in its court battle with the Trump administration, ordering that the federal government reverse funding cuts, the AP reports.The Trump administration had cut more than $2.6bn in research grants to the school as part of the president’s aggressive attacks on academic institutions.Judge Allison Burroughs ruled Wednesday the cuts constituted illegal retaliation after Harvard had refused the White House’s demands to change its policies and governance, the AP reported.Harvard’s complaint, filed in July, said:
    This case involves the government’s efforts to use the withholding of federal funding as leverage to gain control of academic decisionmaking at Harvard. All told, the tradeoff put to Harvard and other universities is clear: allow the government to micromanage your academic institution or jeopardize the institution’s ability to pursue medical breakthroughs, scientific discoveries, and innovative solutions.
    Hundreds of federal agents are arriving to the Chicago area for Donald Trump’s deployment, with some already “practicing crowd control with shields and flash-bang grenades”, according to a new report in the Chicago Sun-Times.Roughly 230 agents, some who work for US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), are arriving from Los Angeles, the newspaper reported, with at least 30 of them training at a naval station near north Chicago.JB Pritzker, Illinois’ Democratic governor, has strongly condemned the deployment, which the president has claimed is meant to address crime. “Any kind of troops on the streets of an American city don’t belong unless there is an insurrection, unless there is truly an emergency. There is not,” the governor said on Sunday. “I’m going to do everything I can to stop him from taking away people’s rights and from using the military to invade states. I think it’s very important for us all to stand up.”More than 100 unmarked vehicles have been sent to the Navy training station, the Sun-Times reported.The deployment of troops and other federal agents in LA caused widespread outrage and protests. Some demonstrations were met with teargas and other munitions. Border patrol agents with CBP were also accused of injuring protesters in LA and were found to have made false statements about demonstrators they arrested.Jeff Landry, the Republican governor of Louisiana, said he backed the president’s threat to send federal troops to his state.“We will take President @realDonaldTrump’s help from New Orleans to Shreveport!” Landry said on social media, responding to a White House post that said Trump was determining whether to send federal forces to Chicago or New Orleans “where we have a great governor”.It’s unclear if Landry has formally requested that the president send in troops, and his office did not respond to questions from the Associated Press.New Orleans, like other cities attacked by Trump, has seen a sharp decline in crime. JP Morrell, president of the New Orleans city council, criticized Trump’s threats of deployment in a statement, saying:
    It’s ridiculous to consider sending the National Guard into another American city that hasn’t asked for it. Guardsmen are not trained law enforcement. They can’t solve crimes, they can’t interview witnesses and they aren’t trained to constitutionally police.
    Trump’s deployment of troops to US cities has been condemned as authoritarian, with scholars saying the president was increasingly acting like a dictator.Eric Adams, the mayor of New York, has denied, sort of, having conversations with the Trump administration about him being given a government job in exchange for dropping his re-election campaign.The New York Times reported on Wednesday that advisers to Donald Trump “have discussed the possibility” of giving Adams a position, in an attempt to thwart Zohran Mamdani, the 33-year-old Democratic socialist who is currently the frontrunner to be elected mayor in November.According to the Times, “intermediaries” for Trump have spoken to “associates” of Adams about leaving the race. Adams, who has proved to be deeply unpopular among New York Democratic voters and is running as an independent candidate, is well behind Mamdani in the polls, and is draining support from Andrew Cuomo, another independent candidate.There is a suggestion that if Adams, a centrist Democrat, and the Republican candidate, Curtis Sliwa, were to drop out of the race, Cuomo could consolidate enough support to challenge Mamdani. The Times reported that there have been talks in the Trump administration about also finding a job for Sliwa.Sliwa did not respond when asked about the Times story, but the Adams campaign did reply to the Guardian.“Mayor Adams has made it clear that he will not respond to every rumor that comes up,” said Todd Shapiro, a spokesman for Adams.“He has had no discussions with, nor has he met with, President Donald Trump regarding the mayoral race. The Mayor is fully committed to winning this election, with millions of New Yorkers preparing to cast their votes. His record is clear: crime is down, jobs are up, and he has consistently stood up for working families. Mayor Adams is focused on building on that progress and earning four more years to continue delivering for the people of New York.”On Tuesday a poll found Adams with 9% of the vote in the election – Mamdani was at 42%, Cuomo 26%, and Sliwa 17%. It’s worth noting that the Times story did not claim that Adams himself had discussed leaving the race with Trump.Speaking in Mexico City, Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, warned that the US military would continue to target vessels belonging to alleged Venezuelan drug cartels.Arguing that previous interdiction efforts in Latin America have not worked, Rubio said: “What will stop them is when you blow them up, when you get rid of them.”“The president of the United States is going to wage war on narco-terrorist organizations,” Rubio said, adding that the strikes would continue, according to reporters covering the news conference. “It’ll happen again. Maybe it’s happening right now.”Rubio’s visit to Mexico, his first since taking office, comes after the US military launched what the president said was a “a kinetic strike” on a “drug-carrying boat” in the Caribbean Sea. Trump said 11 drug traffickers were killed in the attack.Defending Tuesday’s military operation, Rubio said of the Venezuelan vessel: “This one was operating in international waters, headed towards the United States, to flood our nation with poison. And under President Trump those days are over.”A handful of House Republicans helped tank a motion to censure Democratic congresswoman LaMonica McIver of New Jersey stemming from her indictment by a federal grand jury earlier this year for allegedly assaulting law enforcement during an altercation at an immigration facility in her home state – charges she denies.The censure, brought by Republicans congressman Clay Higgins, was expected to succeed in the GOP-led chamber where the once-rare form of public disapproval is now increasingly common. The House voted 215-207 to set aside the censure resolution, which would have stripped her of her position on the homeland security committee, a role the resolution claimed represented a “significant conflict of interest”.Nearly a half-dozen Republicans sided with Democrats in voting to table the resolution.Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, has crossed the pond and popped up at House judiciary committee, a guest of House Republicans.His testimony was met with scalding derision by Democrats on the panel, who accused the far-right leader of being a a “Putin-loving free speech impostor” working to “ingratiate yourself with tech bros”. At one point, Congressman Hank Johnson, asked Farage to confirm that Reform currently has four MPs.Farage, who missed prime minister’s questions to appear before the committee, testified to the “awful authoritarian” situation for free speech in the UK.Children in Florida will no longer be required to receive vaccines against preventable diseases including measles, mumps, chicken pox, polio and hepatitis, the state’s surgeon general, Joseph Ladapo, announced on Wednesday.In a speech announcing the move, Ladapo likened vaccine mandates to “slavery”.Ladapo, hand-picked for the role by Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican governor, is a long-time skeptic of the benefit of vaccines, and has previously been accused of peddling “scientific nonsense” by public health advocates.In his Wednesday speech he said that every state vaccine requirement would be repealed, and that he expected the move would receive the blessing “of God”.“All of them. All of them,” Ladapo said. “Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery.”In 2022, Ladapo altered data in a study about Covid-19 vaccines in an attempt to exaggerate the risk to young men who took one.The governors of California, Oregon and Washington announced on Wednesday the creation of a West Coast Health Alliance aimed at safeguarding access to vaccines, amid growing turmoil at the nation’s top public health agency under the leadership of Robert F Kennedy Jr.In a joint press release, governors Gavin Newsom of California, Tina Kotek of Oregon, and Bob Ferguson of Washington said the CDC had become a “political tool that increasingly peddles ideology instead of science”.“President Trump’s mass firing of CDC doctors and scientists – and his blatant politicization of the agency – is a direct assault on the health and safety of the American people,” the Democratic governors said in a joint statement, adding: “California, Oregon, and Washington will not allow the people of our states to be put at risk.”Speaking on Capitol Hill earlier, Chauntae Davies, one of Epstein’s victims, says the disgraced financier bragged often about his friendship with Trump.Epstein and Maxwell “were always very boastful about their friends – their famous or powerful friends”, she told reporters in Washington. “And his biggest brag forever was that he was very good friends with Donald Trump.”Davies added that Epstein kept an 8in x 10in framed photo of him and Trump on his desk. “They were very close,” she said.Vice-President JD Vance and second lady Usha Vance have arrived in Minneapolis, where they will meet with the families of the victims of the Annunciation Catholic church shooting that killed two schoolchildren and injured nearly two dozen people last week.“They will hold a series of private meetings to convey condolences to the families of those affected by the tragedy,” the White House said in a statement.Trump’s attorneys are asking the US supreme court to reverse a $5m sexual abuse and defamation lawsuit against him in the civil lawsuit brought by E Jean Carroll, Bloomberg News has reported.According to a new filing, the president’s lawyers are asking the justices to extend the deadline for him to formally ask the court to toss out the verdict.In 2023, a civil jury trial concluded that Trump had sexually abused Carroll, a former magazine columnist, in the 1990s, before he embarked on his political career, and then defamed her in 2022 when he denied the allegations as a hoax and said that she was “not my type”. Carroll was awarded $5m in damages.The petition was due on 11 September, but Trump’s legal team has asked for an extension, until 10 November, Bloomberg wrote.Here’s a look back at what’s gone on today so far:

    Democratic congressman Ro Khanna said only two more Republican signatures are needed for the success of a discharge petition to force a vote on legislation compelling the release of files related to the Jeffrey Epstein case.

    Donald Trump slammed the push for the files’ release as a “Democrat hoax that never ends” and mulled deploying federal agents into New Orleans to fight crime.

    Republican congressman Thomas Massie criticized how House GOP leaders handled the Epstein issue.

    At a separate press conference outside the US Capitol, Epstein survivors detailed abuse they suffered at the disgraced financier’s hands.

    The defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, said that the US would carry out more strikes like the one that targeted a suspected drug trafficking boat and killed 11 people on Tuesday off the coast of Venezuela.

    A federal appeals court ruled on Tuesday that Donald Trump unlawfully invoked the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelans he alleged were part of a criminal gang.
    Donald Trump teased the possibility of deploying federal resources into New Orleans to fight crime.“We’re going to be going to maybe Louisiana, and you have New Orleans, which has a crime problem. We’ll straighten that out in about two weeks. It’ll take us two weeks,” the president said.New Orleans has a homicide rate that is among the highest in the nation, but lies in a Republican-governed state – unlike Los Angeles and Washington DC, where Trump deployed federal troops earlier this year.Trump also confirmed that he was still sending federal agents into Chicago, saying: “We could straighten out Chicago”.Asked at the White House about the push in Congress to release the Epstein files, Donald Trump again accused Democrats of orchestrating the controversy, and attempted to change the subject to his own purported accomplishments.“This is a Democrat hoax that never ends,” Trump said. Referring to the recent release of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein, he said: “Nobody’s ever satisfied.”“They’re trying to get people to talk about something that’s totally irrelevant to the success that we’ve had as a nation since I’ve been president,” Trump said. He went on to claim credit for making Washington DC a “totally safe zone” with “no crime, no murders, no nothing” – though crime, including murders and robberies, have continued since he deployed the national guard and took control of its police department.Another boast from Trump: “I ended seven wars, nobody’s going to talk about it because they’re going to talk about the Epstein whatever.” It’s unclear which seven he is referring to, though his claims of having quelled recent fighting between Pakistan and India played a part in souring the relationship with New Delhi. He also has notably not ended the war in Ukraine – something he boasted, on the campaign trail, that he could do right after taking office.The White House has referred to signing the discharge petition to release the Epstein files as a “hostile act”, and discouraged Republicans from supporting it.Thomas Massie, the Republican congressman who introduced the petition and is one of four lawmakers from his party who signed it, replied:
    I don’t know if that’s precedented in this country to have a president call legislators to say that they’re engaged in a hostile act, particularly when the so-called hostile act is trying to get justice for people who’ve been victims of sex crimes.
    He also said that the fact that there was little new in the case documents released yesterday may spur more lawmakers to sign the petition:
    What people are waking up and discovering right now is the folks who stayed up all night to go through the 34,000 individual pages have found that they’re so redacted as to be useless and that many of them were already available.
    A reality check on the discharge petition that could force a vote in the House on legislation to release the Epstein files.The petition needs two more signatures – which will probably have to come from Republicans – to reach the majority threshold to compel the vote. But even if the petition receives that support and the bill passes the House, the legislation will still need to be approved by the Senate, where Republican majority leader John Thune has given no indication he will put it up for a vote.Should it pass the Senate, it faces another obstacle: Donald Trump. He’s condemned the furor over the Epstein files as a distraction created by the Democrats, and could veto the legislation. That would punt the issue back to Congress, where the bill would need two-thirds majority support to overcome his veto – a tall order.Marjorie Taylor Greene is among the most outspoken conservatives in Congress, but has made a rare pact with the Democrats by signing the discharge petition that could force a vote on legislation to release the Epstein files.“This is an issue that doesn’t have political boundaries. It’s an issue that Republicans and Democrats should never fight about. As a matter of fact, it’s such an important issue that it should bring us all together,” she said at the press conference convened by the petition’s sponsors outside the Capitol.“The truth needs to come out, and the government holds the truth. The cases that are sealed hold the truth. Jeffrey Epstein’s estate holds the truth. The FBI, the DoJ and the CIA holds the truth. And the truth we are demanding comes out on behalf of these women, but also as a strong message to every innocent child, teenager, woman and man that is being held captive in abuse. This should never happen in America, and it should never be a political issue that divides us.” More

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    Adams denies being offered Trump job in exchange for quitting mayoral race

    Eric Adams, the embattled mayor of New York, has denied having conversations with Donald Trump about being given a government job in exchange for dropping his re-election campaign.Politico reported on Wednesday that Adams has been offered a position at the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, citing a person with direct knowledge of the offer. The mayor met with the president’s team during his visit to Florida on Monday, according to the person.The New York Times also reported that advisers to Donald Trump “have discussed the possibility” of giving Adams a position, in an attempt to thwart Zohran Mamdani, the 33-year-old Democratic socialist who is currently the frontrunner to be elected mayor in November.According to the Times, “intermediaries” for Trump have spoken to “associates” of Adams about leaving the race. Adams, who has proved to be deeply unpopular among New York Democratic voters and is running as an independent candidate, is trailing Mamdani in the polls, and is draining support from former governor Andrew Cuomo, also running as an independent.There is a suggestion that if Adams, a centrist Democrat, and the Republican candidate, Curtis Sliwa, were to drop out of the race, Cuomo could consolidate enough support to challenge Mamdani. The New York Times reported that there have been talks in the Trump administration about also finding a job for Sliwa to get him out of the race.“Mayor Adams has made it clear that he will not respond to every rumor that comes up,” said Todd Shapiro, a spokesperson for Adams, told the Guardian.“He has had no discussions with, nor has he met with, President Donald Trump regarding the mayoral race. The mayor is fully committed to winning this election, with millions of New Yorkers preparing to cast their votes.“His record is clear: crime is down, jobs are up, and he has consistently stood up for working families. Mayor Adams is focused on building on that progress and earning four more years to continue delivering for the people of New York.”Sliwa told Politico he had not spoken to the White House and would not want a job anyway.“I have not been contacted by the White House, and I’m not interested in a job with the White House,” he said in a statement.“My focus is right here in New York. I’m the only candidate on a major party line who can defeat Mamdani, and I’m committed to carrying this fight through to election day. The people of New York City deserve a mayor who truly cares.”Mamdani, meanwhile, has been keen to underline his rivals’ associations with Trump, who is deeply unpopular in true-blue New York City.“Today’s news confirms it: Cuomo is Trump’s choice for Mayor. The White House is considering jobs for Adams and Sliwa to clear the field,” he wrote on X. “New Yorkers are sick of corrupt politics and backroom deals. No matter who’s running, we will deliver a better future on November 4.”On Tuesday a poll found Adams with 9% of the vote in the election – Mamdani was at 42%, Cuomo 26%, and Sliwa 17%. More

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    Democrats foil justice department lawsuit by negotiating to keep 98,000 North Carolina voters

    Democrats notched a victory against the civil rights division of the Department of Justice, negotiating an agreement to keep about 98,000 North Carolina voters from being prevented from voting.The justice department, which under Donald Trump has moved away from its historical focus on expanding voting rights, sued the North Carolina state board of elections earlier this year, demanding that the state deny a ballot to voters who had not provided a driver’s license number or the last four digits of their social security number when they registered, as required under the Help America Vote Act.The North Carolina court of appeals ordered the board to seek the information from voters before allowing them to vote in future elections, and the Republican-majority board was going to comply before the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and voting rights groups in the state intervened.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe DNC asserted that the actions demanded by the justice department violated the National Voter Registration Act and had partisan purposes.The proposed consent order and agreement between the justice department and the state of North Carolina settles the justice department lawsuit and allows voters who had not provided the information to do so while voting with a provisional ballot, which would cure the problem at the polling place. Judge Richard E Myers II, chief of the US district court for the eastern district of North Carolina, must still approve the agreement, said Patrick Gannon, public information director at the state board of elections.The voting rights section of the Department of Justice’s civil rights division has historically been an enforcer of the Voting Rights Act and the principles of greater ballot access and universal suffrage. Under Harmeet Dhillon, the division’s assistant attorney general, that tradition has been turned on its head. Dhillon gutted the department’s leadership and staff in April shortly after being confirmed, and has refocused the department’s mission on preventing voter fraud and prosecuting noncitizen voting – both of which are exceedingly rare. More

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    Trump unlawfully cancelled $2.2bn in Harvard research grants, judge rules

    A federal judge on Wednesday ruled Donald Trump’s administration unlawfully terminated about $2.2bn in grants awarded to Harvard University and can no longer cut off research funding to the Ivy League school.The decision by US district judge Allison Burroughs in Boston marked a major legal victory for Harvard as it seeks to cut a deal that could bring an end to the White House’s multi-front conflict with the country’s oldest and richest university.The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based school became a central focus of the administration’s broad campaign to leverage federal funding to force change at US universities, which Trump says are gripped by antisemitic and “radical left” ideologies.Three other Ivy League schools stuck deals with the administration, including Columbia University, which in July agreed to pay $220m to restore federal research money that had been nixed because of allegations the university allowed antisemitism to fester on campus.As with Columbia, the Trump administration took actions against Harvard related to the pro-Palestinian protest movement that roiled its campus and other universities after the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel and Israel’s war in Gaza.Trump during a 26 August cabinet meeting demanded Harvard pay “nothing less than $500 million” as part of a settlement. “They’ve been very bad,” he told education secretary, Linda McMahon. “Don’t negotiate.“Among the earliest actions the administration took against Harvard was the cancellation of hundreds of grants awarded to researchers on the grounds that the school failed to do enough to address harassment of Jewish students on its campus.The Trump administration has since sought to bar international students from attending the school; threatened Harvard’s accreditation status; and opened the door to cutting off more funds by finding it violated federal civil rights law.Harvard has said it has taken steps to ensure its campus is welcoming to Jewish and Israeli students, who it acknowledges experienced “vicious and reprehensible” treatment following the onset of Israel’s war in Gaza.But Harvard president Alan Garber has said the administration’s demands went far beyond addressing antisemitism and unlawfully sought to regulate the “intellectual conditions” on its campus by controlling who it hires and who it teaches.Those demands, which came in an 11 April letter from an administration task force, included calls for the private university to restructure its governance, alter its hiring and admissions practices to ensure an ideological balance of viewpoints and end certain academic programs.After Harvard rejected those demands, it said the administration began retaliating against it in violation of the free speech protections of the US constitution’s first amendment by abruptly cutting funding the school says is vital to supporting scientific and medical research.Burroughs, an appointee of Democratic president Barack Obama, in a separate case has already barred the administration from halting its ability to host international students, who comprise about a quarter of Harvard’s student body. More

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    DC mayor Bowser signs order aligning city with Trump’s federal police takeover

    Washington DC’s mayor, Muriel Bowser, appeared to bow to Donald Trump’s military occupation of the nation’s capital on Tuesday, signing an executive order that formalizes cooperation with federal forces even as residents push back against the city’s takeover.The Tuesday order establishes the “Safe and Beautiful Emergency Operations Center” – borrowing from Trump’s own branding – to institutionalize collaboration between city officials and various federal agencies including the FBI.On Wednesday, Bowser pushed back against accusations that she’s willing to continue Trump’s federal takeover.“I want the message to be clear to the Congress, we have a framework to request or use federal resources in our city,” Bowser told reporters during a press conference. “We don’t need a presidential emergency.”The comments come as Trump’s 30-day takeover is set to expire on 10 September.“Let me tell you, without equivocation, that the mayor’s order does not extend the Trump emergency,” she added. “In fact, it does the exact opposite. What it does is lays out a framework for how we will exit the emergency. The emergency ends on September 10.”The Pentagon previously said the national guard troops deployed to Washington will remain “until law and order is restored”. The more than 2,000 troops could stay through December to continue service member benefits, according to a senior official who spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity, although the mission may not last until then.Bowser’s executive order mandates that federal officers adhere to transparent policing practices, requiring them to avoid wearing masks, display clear agency identification, and provide proper identification during arrests and public encounters.But DC residents have criticized Bowser for opting for collaboration with the federal government over resistance. Polling from late August shows only 17-20% of residents support the federalized policing or armed national guard presence. Troops have been visibly patrolling tourist areas, metro stations and transit hubs rather than high-crime neighborhoods, and some unarmed troops have been assigned beautification tasks such as trash collection rather than crime-fighting duties.In a statement on Wednesday, Todd A Cox, the Legal Defense Fund associate director counsel, called Bowser’s decision “alarming, misguided, and profoundly disappointing”.“An increased presence of armed federal law enforcement officers in the District will not make our communities safer,” he said. “Safety for DC residents must include protection from police violence, yet the mayor’s decision subjects DC residents to an increased risk of it. Evidence has shown that this tactic is not only ineffective but actively harmful, disproportionately targeting Black communities, escalating tensions and undermining public safety.”Washington residents have organized a resistance to fill the void left by the muted local government response. Free DC, a grassroots coalition that has campaigned for home rule since the 1990s, has soared as a central organizing force – staging nightly “noise protests” with pots and pans at curfew and launching an “Adopt a Curfew Zone” program to protect the most heavily patrolled neighborhoods from what they describe as federal occupation meant to strip the district of its autonomy. The organization gained tens of thousands of new followers on Instagram over the last few weeks.Grand juries – composed of DC residents – have also refused to indict defendants in at least six cases, nullifying federal prosecutions through community defiance, including the case of the infamous “sandwich guy” who threw his Subway snack at an officer and was later tracked down and arrested. Residents in neglected neighborhoods such as Congress Heights have also condemned the military deployment’s focus on protecting tourists while ignoring their communities, instead pushing for local investment.A federal judge this week ruled that Trump’s similar national guard deployment to Los Angeles violated the Posse Comitatus Act, which restricts military involvement in civilian law enforcement, potentially undermining the legal foundation for the DC operation.Trump has so far claimed substantial results from the operation, posting on Truth Social that “Carjacking in DC is down 87%” and that “ALL other categories of crime are likewise down massively” along with 1,599 arrests and 165 illegal weapons seized as of 1 September, according to the attorney general, Pam Bondi. On Tuesday he called DC a model for other states and in an Oval Office meeting said he would be “honored” to take a call from the Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, to send national guard troops to his state.“I would love to have Governor Pritzker call me,” Trump said. “I’d gain respect for him and say we do have a problem, and we’d love to send in the troops because, you know what, the people they have to be protected.” More

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    From Uncle Sam to social media memes: inside homeland security’s push to swell Ice ranks

    The pinned post on the X account of the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is an image of Uncle Sam with the caption “We Need You.”“America has been invaded by criminals and predators,” the post reads. “We need YOU to get them out.”DHS posts on Instagram are similar. One pinned post features a highly produced video that starts with a family walking in a field and urges viewers to “defend” their “homeland”. Another displays an image of a younger and older man in military garb, designed to look like a first world war-era army recruitment poster. Under it, in big bold capital letters: “NO AGE CAP JOIN ICE NOW”. The caption: “We’re taking father/son bonding to a whole new level.”The posts are part of the DHS’s push to quickly hire more than 10,000 new US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officers and 3,000 border patrol agents in order to meet the Trump administration’s aggressive arrest and deportation quotas.To meet those goals, the DHS has made several changes to its job and eligibility requirements in what experts say is a rushed attempt to expand its hiring pool – including appealing to a younger set of potential recruits. In addition to lowering the age minimum to 18, DHS is working to incentivize more hires with promises of forgiving up to $60,000 in college loans.And it has heavily invested in advertising on social media. In early August, 404 Media spotted Ice documents that solicited pitches from advertising companies that could help the agency “dominate digital media with messages that reflect the urgency and scale of Ice’s hiring effort”.Ice identified three audiences as its targets: former military and law enforcement; legal professionals; gen Z and early-career professionals. The deadline for companies to submit proposals was 11 August.It is unclear whether Ice has selected a vendor, though there have been no new posted contracts as of yet and Meta’s ad library, which is one of the few public repositories of brand advertising activity on social media, has no new entries for the DHS or Ice as of the publication of this article.Meanwhile, Ice and the DHS have already been ramping up their social media recruitment efforts on various platforms.Its photos and videos depict the US at war, with Ice and border patrol agents part of a heroic effort to save the country from criminals and predators, even though numerous studies have shown immigrants commit fewer crimes than those born in the US. Many of the ads conjure a feeling of nostalgia for a country that once was. And some have thinly veiled references to white supremacist messages.Marketing experts say that taken together, the various posts show a scattered strategy, probably because the agency is targeting such a wide array of audiences.The posts depict a country that the younger generation has never known, says Mara Einstein, the author of Hoodwinked, How Marketers Use the Same Tactics as Cults. “This is a generation that has lived through permacrisis and has never known that shiny city on the hill that people of older generations think of when they think of the US,” Einstein said. “Even if you have a dual target, advertisers have to ask how do you talk to both of these people.”Many of the ads juxtapose Uncle Sam and other American symbols with images of mostly brown immigrants being arrested. On X, DHS regularly posts intentionally antagonistic memes commonly used in far-right corners of the internet in its responses to other people’s posts.The overall campaign strategy also appears to attempt to replicate in some ways the US army’s “Be All You Can Be” campaign – likening the recruitment of immigration enforcement officers to a military recruitment campaign and an act of patriotism, experts say. One video shows supposed immigration officers training in a military facility and people jumping out of planes. The caption: “Hunt cartels. Save America.”In its latest video the DHS boasts about its 5,000th arrest in Los Angeles that starts with Hollywood-style footage of immigration officers putting on their military tactical gear and ends with a compilation of mostly brown men being arrested or detained.“The targeting of Black and brown immigrants with false information and using pictures of Uncle Sam as if this is military recruitment at the time of war is an unprecedented use of propaganda for civil immigration enforcement,” said Nayna Gupta, the policy director at the American Immigration Council.“The social media messaging links this anti-immigration narrative to patriotism to some all-American identity,” Gupta continued. “But part of the American identity has always been this is a country that welcomes people that want to build something better.”While the messaging is muddled, the choice to post images or text that either enrage or excite an already polarized audience is a strategy that builds on Donald Trump’s ongoing success with capturing attention on social media by posting hateful and inflammatory content, according to Ramesh Srinivasan, aUCLA professor of information studies.“It’s a messaging strategy that has worked well within algorithmic systems that are optimized for content that is predicted to capture attention,” Srinivasan said. “It’s a negative populism that has been part of the Trump team’s strategy from the get-go.”The campaign also seeks to put a glossy sheen on the realities of working for Ice – making it look like a scene out of Bad Boys while simultaneously demonizing and dehumanizing America’s immigrant communities, experts say.It’s not a totally unprecedented approach to recruitment for the DHS to take but it’s historically been a far cry from the realities of working for Ice, according to Michelle Brané, a former DHS official under the Biden administration. “The recruitment videos have always looked like an episode of Cops, so these new videos are not necessarily that different,” Brane said. “It was always about: ‘We’re going to catch the bad guys,’ with videos of raiding a house, a car chase, wrestling someone to the ground. And that always seemed problematic.“Many people in the field were very dissatisfied with the day-to-day of their jobs,” Brané said of her time working at the DHS. “They did arrest criminals, but a very large part of their job is just processing regular people who have immigration violations or who crossed the border and are requesting asylum. But they’d insist, ‘That’s not the job I signed up for – I signed up to catch the bad guys.’”Experts worry that the rapid pace of recruitment, paired with the polarizing messaging the DHS is using will attract a group of people desperate for work who may share the xenophobic and anti-immigrant stances of the administration.“This feels like a multi-level marketing thing where you’re going to get the people who are really vulnerable and desperate and looking for some type of job who is willing to do this,” said Einstein.It may further push Ice, as an agency, into an extreme political posture, Gupta said.“What’s worrisome is that any folks that this kind of dehumanizing propaganda would work on are more likely to share xenophobic views of non-citizens,” Gupta said. “Combined with decreasing training and vetting practices by Ice as they look to speed up hiring creates a situation where the agency is likely to be hiring enforcement officers who have an explicit history of racism or don’t meet the usual standards of law enforcement officers.” More

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    It’s time for Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries to step down | Mehdi Hasan

    In a recent podcast conversation, the former spokesperson for Jeb Bush sat down with the leader of the House Democrats. Guess which one of them endorsed the Democratic candidate for mayor of New York?“I was a Republican up until two minutes ago and I’m a capitalist, and I had Zohran on … it’s not really a close call, is it?” Tim Miller said to Hakeem Jeffries on his Bulwark podcast, to which a defensive-sounding House Minority leader replied: “What I can say is that he’s the only one I’m scheduled to talk to.”Time and time again, Jeffries has refused to endorse his own party’s official candidate for mayor in his own city, two months after Zohran Mamdani won the Democratic mayoral primary in New York by double digits – including Jeffries’ own congressional district by eight points.This is the same Democratic party leader who has insisted in the past that progressives should “vote BLUE (no matter who)”. But centrists? Apparently, they’re under no such obligation.Jeffries is not alone in his brazen hypocrisy. Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader who represents the state of New York and lives in the city of New York, has also refused to endorse his own party’s official candidate for mayor of New York.If you want to understand why the Democrats are polling at their lowest point for more than three decades, look no further than these two uninspiring Democratic leaders in Congress.If you want to understand why 62% of Democratic voters say “the leadership of the Democratic party should be replaced with new people,” again, look no further than Jeffries and Schumer.Week after week, month after month, they embarrass themselves, undermine their colleagues and demoralize their voters. Theirs is a record of cowardice and capitulation.Let’s start with Jeffries. In February, the hapless House minority leader wondered aloud: “I’m trying to figure out what leverage we actually have. They control the House, the Senate. And the presidency. It’s their government. What leverage do we have?” It was a shrug of impotence; a sign of pre-emptive submission only weeks after Trump’s inauguration.That same month, just days before Bernie Sanders began his “Fighting Oligarchy” tour in front of packed arenas across the country, Jeffries “quietly met with more than 150 Silicon Valley-based donors … in tony Los Altos Hills”, reported Politico, in order to “mend fences” with the billionaire big tech bosses.In April, when Democratic members of Congress such as Senator Chris Van Hollen and Representative Maxwell Frost were visiting El Salvador and raising the issue of Kilmar Ábrego García’s detention, the Bulwark reported: “The minority leader has discouraged further excursions to the country” (reporting that Jeffries later denied). Subsequent polling suggests those trips helped change public opinion on immigration and, especially, on the fate of Ábrego. Jeffries, though, can claim no credit for that shift in American sentiment.In June, in the wake of the Trump administration’s decision to file ludicrous charges of assault against the Democratic congresswoman LaMonica McIver after a protest outside an immigration detention center, the dead-eyed Jeffries appeared on CNN with host Dana Bash.
    BASH: You previously warned that the administration charging members of Congress was a, quote, ‘red line’. What are you doing now that the red line you talked about has apparently been crossed?
    JEFFRIES: We will make that decision in a time, place and manner of our choosing. But the response will be continuous, and it will meet the moment that is required.
    BASH: What exactly does that mean? Have you not decided how to respond?
    JEFFRIES: We will respond in a time, place, and manner of our choosing if this continues to happen.
    Bash looked bewildered. And we’re now coming up to three months since Jeffries made those bizarre, tone-deaf remarks. Has the time not arrived yet? Has he still not found the place?Last month, Jeffries refused, again, to endorse Mamdani but then went further, telling CNBC that Andrew Cuomo’s baseless attack on Mamdani’s rent-stabilized apartment was a “legitimate issue” and that his campaign was “going to have to address it”. Can you imagine a Republican leader in Congress going on live television to throw their party’s mayoral candidate under the bus in this way?Jeffries has become almost a parody of a weak, spineless Democratic leader. When he was asked recently about Trump’s fascistic deployment of troops to the streets of Washington DC, his response was to praise the DC attorney general’s “strongly worded letter”.Well, you know who else likes to bring a “strongly worded letter” to a gunfight with Republicans? Yep. You guessed it. Chuck Schumer. The Senate minority leader bragged to CNN earlier this year about how he had reacted to Donald Trump’s attack on US universities by sending him “a very strong letter just the other day”.To be clear: Schumer’s record on resisting Trump and fighting back against his authoritarian takeover of the US government has been as feeble and feckless as Jeffries’.Remember that cringe chant of ‘We will win’ and ‘We won’t rest’ that he led outside the Treasury building in February, as Elon Musk’s Doge teams rampaged through the federal government?Or when he shamefully backed down from a confrontation with Trump over a government shutdown in March and earned the scathing soubriquet “Surrender Schumer”? (One anonymous House Democrat joked at the time that the Senate minority leader’s popularity was “hovering somewhere between Elon Musk and the Ebola virus”.)How about when he told NPR that same month that accusing Israel of genocide – now the view of 77% of Democratic voters – was antisemitic, or when he declared to the neoconservative Brett Stephens that his job was “to keep the left pro-Israel”?Who can forget also his hawkish denunciation of “Taco Trump” in June for not being “tough” enough on the “terrorist government” of Iran, just weeks before Trump illegally bombed Iran?It makes no sense to me that Schumer is still the leader of the Democrats in the Senate. The party lost the upper chamber on his watch, under his leadership, but Schumer chose to stay on and his colleagues let him. But when you lead your party to defeat in an election, shouldn’t you … lose your job?As for Jeffries, the Democrats may win back the House of Representatives next November on the back of an anti-Trump wave, but what then? What vision will a Speaker Jeffries offer? What resistance will he provide to the wannabe dictator in the White House? What actual plan does he have to preserve and protect democracy in 2028?Since Trump was inaugurated for a second time in January, Jeffries and Schumer have demonstrated time and again that they are not built for this particular moment. While Trump seeds the ground for an American dictatorship, these two top Dems pine for bipartisanship. While millions of rank-and-file Democrats across the country say they want leaders who will fight, Jeffries and Schumer fold. While younger Democrats like Mamdani and AOC offer energy and charisma, these two lackluster leaders in the House and Senate offer cringe chants and even cringier photo ops.It is past time for both Jeffries and Schumer to step down and step aside. This fascist moment, this age of Trump, demands outspoken, unrelenting and fearless opposition. Whether you are a Democrat, or simply a democrat, we all deserve better.

    Mehdi Hasan is the founder, CEO and editor-in-chief of the media company Zeteo and a Guardian US columnist More