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      ‘Impossible to rebuild’: NIH scientists say Trump cuts will imperil life-saving research

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      Last week, the office of management and budget (OMB) revealed plans to freeze all outside funding for National Institutes of Health research this fiscal year, but reversed course later that day, leaving the scientific community in a state of whiplash. A senior official at the NIH who spoke on condition of anonymity said this was just the latest in a “multi-prong” approach by the Trump administration to destroy American scientific research.In July, the National Cancer Institute, which is part of the NIH, updated its website to reflect Trump administration plans to significantly cut cancer research spending as well. Since January, the administration has been cancelling NIH grants, in some cases targeting other specific research areas, such as HIV treatment and prevention.“It’s really, really bad at NIH right now,” said the official, who added that researchers working outside the NIH have been unaware of the severity of the situation until recently, even though they have also faced funding upheaval since the winter.“The Trump administration is, for the first time in history, substantially intervening inside NIH to bring it under political control,” the official said. “That’s what we saw this week with the OMB freeze on funding.”“I think the core of it is that they want to destroy universities, or at least turn them into rightwing ideological factories,” the official said, since the majority of the NIH’s grants are distributed to researchers in universities, medical schools and similar institutions.In 2021, JD Vance gave a speech entitled The Universities Are the Enemy. The official said they were alarmed at how little universities are fighting back – many have settled with the administration, which has “gotten Columbia to completely knuckle under. One of America’s most significant universities and a place that is a worldwide magnet for talents. Same thing at Penn. Now they’re going after UCLA.”Institutions such as the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine have also stayed on the sidelines, refusing to sufficiently resist Trump, the official said.If the administration does manage to freeze NIH funding, it will push to rescind the funds permanently using a rescission motion, the official said. This type of motion only requires a simple majority of 50 votes to pass the Senate, instead of the supermajority necessary to beat a filibuster. Republicans would have enough votes to “ram through these motions to effectively cut the budget without Democrats in Congress weighing in. It’s an ongoing disaster.”Researchers at the many universities where the administration has frozen funding, such as Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, are starting to feel the gravity of the situation, said the official. Carole LaBonne, a biologist at Northwestern, said “university labs are hanging by a thread”, explaining that even though the OMB reversed its decision to freeze outside NIH funding, “the baseline reality is not much better”.Other recent changes at the NIH include allocating research grants all at once rather than over multiple years, so that fewer projects are funded. Reductions in cancer research funding also mean that only 4% of relevant grant applications will move forward. “This will effectively shut down cancer research in this country and destroy the careers of many scientists. This is devastating,” LaBonne said.The extreme uncertainty surrounding scientific research is also negatively affecting scientists’ mental health. “I do not know any faculty who are not incredibly stressed right now, wondering how long they will be able to keep their labs going and if/when they will have to let laboratory staff go,” LaBonne said. “It also very hard to motivate oneself to write grants, a painstaking and time-intensive processes, when there is a 96% chance it will not be funded.”Ryan Gutenkunst, who heads the department of molecular and cellular biology at the University of Arizona, said: “The chaos at NIH is definitely freaking [faculty and students] out and wasting huge amounts of emotional energy and time. We were emailing about the latest pause, only to find it unpaused hours later.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe senior NIH official found last week’s events unsurprising, they said: “They’re throwing everything at the wall to stop NIH from spending. What struck me was that many of my colleagues at universities were like, ‘Oh, my God, they’re stopping grants.’ And it really seemed to activate people in a way that I hadn’t seen before, whereas a lot of us at NIH thought, ‘Oh, they just did another thing.’”Science is an engine for American economic dominance, and scientific clusters such as Silicon Valley could not exist without federal funding, the official said. “Once you break them, it will be impossible to rebuild them. We’re on the path to breaking them.”LaBonne said she worried about the impact on progress in cancer specifically. “My own research touches on pediatric cancers. Forty years ago more than 60% of children diagnosed with cancer would have died within five years of diagnosis. Today there is a 90% survival rate. We should not put progress like that in danger,” she said.Although many major scientific institutions have complied with the administration, grassroots organizations and individual scientists, including those within the NIH, are finding ways to resist.The senior NIH official said they were most hopeful about grassroots organizers who are resisting the Trump administration openly, rather than relying on older strategies such as litigation and negotiations with Congress. For example, Science Homecoming, a website to promote science communication, is encouraging scientists to get the word out about the importance of federal funding to their home towns.The Bethesda Declaration, signed by 484 NIH staff, directly accused NIH director Jay Bhattacharya of “a failure of your legal duty to use congressionally appropriated funds for critical NIH research. Each day that the NIH continues to disrupt research, your ability to deliver on this duty narrows.” More

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      Shared prayers and tears: how Lammy wooed JD Vance and the White House

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      It was famously something that Tony Blair did not do with George W Bush, or at least not something to which the then British prime minister wished to admit. But these are very different times.When the US vice-president, JD Vance, and his family join David Lammy at the foreign secretary’s grace and favour home in Kent at the start of their summer holiday in the UK, they are expected to deepen their relationship by praying together, it is understood.Within the grounds of Chevening lies the pretty 12th-century St Botolph’s church. It is Anglican but, security risks and denominational differences aside, it may present one option for a place to take communion, sources suggested.Vance is a Catholic and Lammy has described his faith as Anglo-Catholic. The two men previously took mass in Vance’s residence in Washington when the vice-president hosted Lammy and his family in March.The burgeoning relationship between the two men, freshly evidenced by word that they will spend time together before the Vances head to the Cotswolds, may surprise some.As a backbencher, Lammy described Donald Trump as “a woman-hating, neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath”. Now, Trump is “someone that we can build a relationship with” and Vance is a “friend”.The philosophy behind Lammy’s foreign policy has been described as “progressive realism” – taking the world as it is and not as we might wish it to be.Sceptics might be temped to describe such a pivot in different terms but the outcomes were difficult to argue with, said Michael Martins, formerly a political specialist in the US embassy in London and founder of the consultancy firm Overton Advisory.“I think they have done a pretty good job and you can see it with some of the incoming tariff increases which have not affected the UK as they have with other trading partners, like Canada,” Martins said.“I think it is paying off. I think President Trump’s view on Putin and Russia has changed, is changing and softening, in a way that I think the British government has been pushing for. I think the dividends from the relationship building are starting to come.”Lammy, a touchy-feely sort of politician, targeted Vance for a full charm offensive early on, when Labour was in opposition and Trump’s re-election was far from certain, sources said. The then shadow foreign secretary had a significant obstacle to overcome: Lammy has been a friend of Barack Obama since they met at a 2005 gathering of Harvard Law School’s black alumni.Such was the love-in that Lammy’s wife, Nicola Green, an artist, was given “unprecedented access” to chronicle Obama’s 2008 campaign. It was this political and personal relationship that has been front and centre of every US newspaper profile of Lammy in recent times. “A Friend of Obama Who Could Soon Share the World Stage With Trump” was the New York Times headline last April.View image in fullscreenLammy had a further card to play. He has spoken about how Vance’s bestselling memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, bore parallels to his own story of growing up with a single mother and an absent, alcoholic father. Lammy has said Vance’s book “reduced me to tears”.“I said to JD: ‘Look, we’ve got different politics, but we’re both quite strong Christians and we both share quite a tough upbringing,’” Lammy said of an early meeting.He recently elaborated in an interview with the Guardian. During drinks with Vance and the deputy Labour leader, Angela Rayner, in the US ambassador’s residence at the time of the new pope’s inauguration, Lammy had an epiphany. It struck him that they were “not just working-class politicians, but people with dysfunctional childhoods”, he said. “I had this great sense that JD completely relates to me and he completely relates to Angela.”Donjeta Miftari, a former foreign policy adviser to Keir Starmer in Downing Street who is now a director at Hanbury Strategy, said: “David is an incredibly pragmatic person and he likes to take the world as it is. Frankly, you don’t have influence over which populations elect certain individuals in the country.”Lammy had had a gut feeling that the Republicans would win the White House back, she said, and he worked for “years, not months” on building the necessary relationships.“I’ve known him for a few years now, and I’d say that he is also, just on a personal level, one of the most empathetic and relational kind of MPs and politicians,” she said.“You know, in the early days of opposition and in government, I think he had a strong sense of where the US was going, and that is grounded in the fact that he studied out there, lived out there. He knows America well and it’s a big part of who he is.“So I think he sort of clocked basically that that is the direction in which the country was going so built these relationships well before they came to power in the US. And I think that gives it, like, extra kind of credibility and authenticity as well, because you’re not just calling them when you need them when you’re both in post. He’s an incredibly effective operator. Frankly, he’s quite good company as well, which always helps.”There will be a formal bilateral meeting between the two politicians before Vance’s wife, Usha, and their three children join Lammy, his wife and their children for the weekend. After their stay with the Lammys, the Vances are understood to be heading to a Cotswolds period property near Charlbury, about 12 miles (19km) north-west of Oxford.Martins, who was working in the US embassy at the time of Trump’s first state visit, said he recalled the delight that the president took in the pomp and ceremony. “I think vice-president Vance has to walk a bit of a delicate line,” he said. “Obviously he is angling for his own White House bid at the end of the Trump presidency. You know, I think he has to be careful not to appear as the primary recipient of international flattery.” More

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      ‘Trump is a wrecking ball’: behind the president’s $200m plan to build a White House ballroom

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      “Sir, why are you up on the roof?”The question was shouted by a reporter on Tuesday as Donald Trump scaled new heights at the White House. The US president explained that he was scoping out a new ballroom and boasted: “Just another way to spend my money for this country.”It emerged last week that Trump, who made his money in the New York construction industry, intends to build an enormous $200m ballroom for hosting official receptions, one of the biggest projects at the White House in more than a century.This will be just the latest step in a radical architectural overhaul intent on making the 225-year-old executive mansion less redolent of stuffy Washington and more evocative of Mar-a-Lago, his gaudy palace in Palm Beach, Florida.Trump has revamped the Oval Office by splashing the room in gold, from the stars surrounding the presidential seal on the ceiling to gold statues on the fireplace to the mantel itself. He crowded its walls with numerous portraits, while just outside the office is a framed photo of Trump’s mugshot as featured on the cover of a New York tabloid newspaper.View image in fullscreenOutside, Trump has erected a pair of towering flagpoles that fly the Stars and Stripes and paved over a grassy patch of the Rose Garden, and, he told NBC News, he intends to replace what he said was a “terribly” remodeled bathroom in the Lincoln Bedroom with one that is closer in style to the 19th century.But his most ambitious architectural gambit will be the new ballroom, which officials say he and unspecified donors will pay for, designed to host grand state dinners, given in honour of foreign leaders visiting Washington. Until now, these were generally done by erecting a huge tent on the White House grounds.“When it rains or snows, it’s a disaster,” Trump said in his NBC interview, bemoaning how the tents are stationed “a football field away from the White House”.View image in fullscreenWhereas the East Room, currently the biggest room in the White House, can accommodate about 200 people, the new structure will span more than 8,000 sq metres (90,000 sq ft) and have space to seat 650 people. Work will begin in September and is expected to be completed before the end of Trump’s second term, in January 2029.A model of the ballroom presented by the government shows it will be a white building with tall windows reminiscent of the main White House edifice. It will replace the East Wing, which usually houses the offices of the first lady, and it remains unclear where they will be relocated.View image in fullscreenTrump told reporters last week: “They’ve wanted a ballroom at the White House for more than 150 years, but there’s never been a president that was good at ballrooms. I’m good at building things and we’re going to build quickly and on time. It’ll be beautiful, top, top of the line.”He added: “It’ll be near it but not touching it and pays total respect to the existing building, which I’m the biggest fan of. It’s my favourite. It’s my favourite place. I love it.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDemocrats are sceptical, however. Chuck Schumer, the party’s minority leader in the Senate, told a press briefing: “Listen, I’m happy to eat my cheeseburger at my desk. I don’t need a $200m ballroom to eat it in. OK?”Others regard Trump’s transformation of the White House as a dark metaphor for his approach to US democracy. Mona Charen, policy editor of the Bulwark website, wrote this week: “Trump is a walking wrecking ball of law, tradition, civility, manners, and morals. Many visitors to the nation’s capital won’t know or understand much of that damage.“But starting now with the paving of the Rose Garden, and coming soon with the construction of a garish ballroom, they will see a physical representation of a low and shameful time. The once graceful executive mansion will be transformed into something tasteless and embarrassing. It will be both awful and fitting.”The ballroom is shaping up to be one of the most significant projects to break ground at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue since renovation and expansion works undertaken by Theodore Roosevelt at the start of the 20th century. Harry Truman also oversaw sweeping construction work between 1948 and 1952, including gutting the main building and adding the Truman Balcony.View image in fullscreenTruman drew his share of criticism at the time. Stewart McLaurin, president of the White House Historical Association, wrote in a recent essay published on LinkedIn: “Preservationists mourned the loss of original interiors, while media outlets questioned the project’s cost during post-war economic recovery.”Subsequent presidents have overseen facelifts, refreshes and renovations. Anita McBride, who was chief of staff to first lady Laura Bush, recalled on Wednesday: “Mrs Bush transformed every single room in the residence. The largest restoration of any room in the White House is the Lincoln Bedroom, done under her tenure. She helped to oversee the the redo of the White House theatre; the way that she designed it is the way it still looks to this day.”McBride acknowledged that Trump, a longtime property developer, is more engaged in remodelling the White House than many of his predecessors. “He’s certainly paying attention to things at the White House that he feels would be improvements for the occupants, not just him but those that come after him. Maybe it’s his background that lends itself to having a keen eye to enhancements.“This is the largest transformation we have seen since the Truman renovation when it needed improvement and to be structurally sound. President Truman took such criticism for wanting to add the balcony and you cannot imagine the White House without that balcony now.” More

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      Trump news at a glance: president hails progress on Ukraine war and threatens India with steep tariffs

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      US president Donald Trump may meet with Russian leader Vladimir Putin as early as next week to discuss the war in Ukraine, White House officials have said.The development comes as senior administration officials have also warned that serious “impediments” remain to achieving a ceasefire.Secretary of state Marco Rubio said he was hopeful the progress could lead to a meeting between Putin and Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy in future, but that he did not want to overstate progress made during US special envoy Steve Witkoff’s visit to Moscow.“What we have is a better understanding of the conditions under which Russia would be willing to end the war,” he said. The US would then need to compare that with “what the Ukrainians are willing to accept”.Here are today’s key stories at a glance:Trump hails ‘progress’ after Witkoff meets PutinDonald Trump has claimed “great progress was made” during talks on ending the war in Ukraine between his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, and Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin on Wednesday. The three-hour talks came two days before a deadline the US president set for Russia to reach a peace deal in the war or face fresh sanctions.Read the full storyTrump threatens 50% tariffs on IndiaThe White House is placing an additional 25% tariff on imports from India, bringing total tariffs up to 50%, in retaliation for the country’s purchase of oil from Russia, according to an executive order signed on Wednesday morning.India has 21 days to respond to the potential tariffs before they go into effect. The tariffs will be tacked on to a 25% tariff on India Donald Trump set last week as a “penalty” for the country’s trading relationship with Russia.Read the full story Apple to invest $100bn in US manufacturing, Trump says Donald Trump on Wednesday celebrated a commitment by Apple to increase its investments in US manufacturing by an additional $100bn over the next four years.Apple’s plan to up its domestic investment comes as it seeks to avoid Trump’s threatened tariffs, which would increase the tech giant’s costs as it relies on a complex international supply chain to produce its iPhones.Read the full storyTrump plans 100% tariffs on chips but spares companies ‘building in US’Donald Trump said he would impose a 100% tariff on foreign computer chips, likely raising the cost of electronics, autos, household appliances and other goods deemed essential for the digital age.Read the full storyTexas redistricting standoff escalates with bomb threatTexas Democrats who left the state say they experienced a bomb threat at their Illinois hotel amid an ongoing clash with Republicans over their effort to block a new congressional map from going into place.Read the full storyReport reveals abuse of women and children at Ice facilitiesA new report has found hundreds of reported cases of human rights abuses in US immigration detention centers. The alleged abuses uncovered include deaths in custody, physical and sexual abuse of detainees, denial of access to attorneys, and child separation.Read the full storyBorder patrol agents ambush people at LA Home DepotThe report comes on the same day that US border patrol agents carried out a raid outside a Home Depot in Los Angeles on Wednesday, with officers jumping out of an unmarked rental truck and chasing and arresting more than a dozen people. The raid raised questions about whether the US government was complying with a federal court order.Read the full storyTrump administration freezes $584m in grants for ‘life-saving research’ at UCLAIn a sweeping escalation of its attacks on institutions of higher education, Trump administration has suspended $584m in federal funding for the University of California, Los Angeles – nearly double the amount that was previously expected, the school’s chancellor announced on Wednesday.Read the full storyJD Vance’s team had water level of Ohio river raised for family’s boating tripJD Vance’s team had the army corps of engineers take the unusual step of changing the outflow of a lake in Ohio to accommodate a recent boating excursion on a family holiday, the Guardian has learned.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      Republican senator and Trump ally Marsha Blackburn announced she will run for governor of Tennessee.

      Donald Trump is threatening to strip Washington DC of its local governance and place it under direct federal control after an alleged assault on a Doge employee.

      JD Vance was reportedly to host a meeting on Wednesday evening at his residence with a handful of senior Trump administration officials to discuss their strategy for dealing with the ongoing scandal surrounding the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

      Donald Trump is threatening to strip Washington DC of its local governance and place the US capital under direct federal control, citing what he described as rampant youth crime.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 5 August 2025. More

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      Texas Democrats who left state in protest can ‘stay out long enough to stop this deal’, Beto O’Rourke says – live updates

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      Former Democratic congressman Beto O’Rourke, who has emerged as a top funder covering the costs of Texas lawmakers’ exodus, told CNN earlier that he believes they can “stay out long enough to stop this deal in Texas”.Donald Trump, Texas governor Greg Abbott, and Texas attorney general Ken Paxton are, O’Rourke said, “trying to steal these five seats in Texas because without them Trump’s going to lose a majority in the House of Representatives”.
      Without that majority, there’s a check on his lawlessness, accountability for his crimes and corruption, and the possibility of free and fair elections going forward.
      The 56 Texas Democrats who left the state are, O’Rourke said, “all that stand between that future and where we are right now”.
      I think what they’re doing is the highest form of public service. They’re trying to stop the consolidation of authoritarian power in America.
      They are the champions for this democracy, for America, for the rule of law and for our constitution.
      Paxton has called their leaving a “dereliction of the duty as elected officials” and said he would pursue a court ruling to declare the seats of “any rogue lawmakers” vacant if they do not return to work at the statehouse by Friday.“This matters more than any other priority,” said O’Rourke. “We have to stop their power grab.” He added:
      The election of 2026 is going to be decided in the summer of 2025, so we have to fight now and every day going forward.
      During a White House event to announce new investments in manufacturing by Apple, Donald Trump said the United States will impose a tariff of about 100% on semiconductor chips imported into the country.Trump told reporters in the Oval office that the new tariff rate would apply to “all chips and semiconductors coming into the United States,” but would not apply to companies that had made a commitment to manufacture in the United States.“So 100% tariff on all chips and semiconductors coming into the United States”, Trump said. “But if you’ve made a commitment to build [in the US], or if you’re in the process of building, as many are, there is no tariff”, Trump said.The White House has released a statement to reporters in which the press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, suggests that the idea of a direct meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, was proposed by the Russians during Putin’s meeting with US special envoy Steve Witkoff in Moscow on Wednesday.“As President Trump said earlier today on TRUTH Social, great progress was made during Special Envoy Witkoff’s meeting with President Putin”, Leavitt said. “The Russians expressed their desire to meet with President Trump, and the President is open to meeting with both President Putin and President Zelensky. President Trump wants this brutal war to end.”I asked Trey Martinez Fischer, a Democrat who represents San Antonio in the Texas state legislature what it was like away from the cameras as he and his colleagues live out of a hotel room in Illinois with no idea of how long they’ll be there.“It’s important to just have the right mental focus and to stick to routines”, he said. “We’re still, you know, we’re still parents, and we’re still spouses. And we’re still trying to run our business or explain to our boss why we’re not there. We try to live, you know, we try to live a normal life, and we will rely on each other”.Texas’ part-time lawmakers earn just $600 a month, so many have other jobs and have been forced to work remotely from outside the state, if they can.Martinez Fischer wanted to make sure people knew that he and his colleagues are still doing legislative work, even though they’re not in Austin. He mentioned that he filed two bills yesterday.He said this was his fourth quorum break. He said he was a “one bag guy” and had packed some leisure wear to wear with polos and his best suit he could stretch out a few days. “I’m wearing some clothes today that I haven’t worn yet. So, you know, that’s a small success for me”.“When we talk about the grand scheme of what we, what we’re doing here and why we’re here, I mean, there are people who have had it a whole lot worse than me”, he said.He also said this quorum break feels different than the one in 2021, when Democrats fled the state for several weeks to try and stop a bill with sweeping new voting restrictions from going into effect.“2021, we spent more time trying to convince the country that there was an issue, right? This time, you know, there is no tutorial necessary and everybody is laser focused on the issue before us”, he said. “We don’t have to debate somebody on the merits of this walkout. I mean, they know the implications”.I just got off the phone with Trey Martinez Fischer, a Democrat who represents San Antonio in the Texas state legislature, and is one of dozens in his party who fled the state to try and stop Republicans from passing new Congressional maps.I asked Martinez Fischer if he could lend any insight into how long Democrats would hold out before returning. He declined to say.“These quorum checks and the strategies and end games are kind of best left undiscussed”, he said. “It’s a very fluid, it’s a very fluid dynamic. The idea that we had on Sunday may be different next Sunday”.Martinez Fischer said he’s not really concerned about the $500 per day fines lawmakers are accruing under state legislature rules enacted in 2023. “Not concerned about it at all”, he said. “We’ve had rules set aside before, and courts don’t have to interpret the rules the way Republicans want them to be interpreted”.He said he also wasn’t fazed by threats from top Texas Republicans to ask courts to remove Democratic lawmakers from office. Abbott filed a long-shot legal bid to do so against Gene Wu, the chair of the Democratic caucus, on Tuesday evening.“I think he recognizes that he’s on the losing side of this narrative”, Martinez Fischer said. “I think that the theories by which the governor is trying to remove people from office has a much more structured procedure than just filing some papers with the supreme court. So I don’t think that that kind of stuff happens overnight”.

      Texas Democrats are still hunkering down in blue states across the country. It comes after they broke quorum for two consecutive days this week, in protest of a new GOP-drawn congressional map. It’s now evolved into a nationwide redistricting battle.

      Former Democratic congressman Beto O’Rourke has emerged as a top funder, covering the costs of the lawmakers’ exodus through his political group ‘Powered by People’. In an interview with CNN earlier he said that state reps can “stay out long enough to stop this deal in Texas”.

      Meanwhile, many of the Texas legislators who decamped to Illinois were forced to evacuate from their hotel today when they experienced a bomb threat. The area was secured as bomb squad units conducted their investigation. No device was found according to local police. Illinois governor JB Pritzker said he was aware of the threats, in a post on X. “Threats of violence will be investigated and those responsible will be held accountable,” he added.

      In a post on Truth Social, the president said that “great progress” was made at a “highly productive” three-hour meeting today between special envoy Steve Witkoff and Russian president Vladimir Putin. This comes just two days ahead of a deadline Trump set for Russia to reach a peace deal in the war with Ukraine, or face fresh sanctions.

      The New York Times also reports that Donald Trump plans to meet with Russian president Vladimir Putin as early as next week. Trump will then organise a follow-up for Putin, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and himself, sources tell the Times.

      Trump also followed through on his threats to increase tariffs on India. Earlier he issued an executive order today imposing an additional 25% on goods from India, saying the country directly or indirectly imported Russian oil. It brings the total levies against India to 50%.
      The president plans to meet with Russian president Vladimir Putin as early as next week, according to reporting from the New York Times.Sources tell the Times that Trump plans to follow up with a meeting between himself, Putin and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy.The newspaper reports that Trump disclosed the details on a call with European leaders. Although, the meeting with Trump, Putin and Zelenskyy will not include any European counterparts, two people familiar with the plan tell the Times.This comes after a three-hour meeting today between special envoy Steve Witkoff and Putin, which Trump described as “highly productive” in a post on Truth Social.Facing images of violent white mobs defending racial segregation, the condemnation of the world and of its own citizens, Congress in 1965 passed the Voting Rights Act, a law meant to end the hypocrisy of a democratic country that denied Black people the power of their vote.Sixty years later, race remains at the center of American politics. Cases before the US supreme court, and a platoon of Texas legislators fleeing the state to prevent redistricting, demonstrate how the Voting Rights Act – and its erosion – remains on the frontline of the political battlefield.“Democracy is at stake,” said Todd Cox, associate director-counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Even as voting rights advocates use the act to win additional congressional representation in Alabama and press cases in Louisiana and North Carolina, a conservative supreme court makes gains precarious, he said.Read more about how the Voting Rights Act is confronting its biggest threats in the 60 years since its passage.White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said, in a post on X, that Donald Trump has been briefed on the shooting at Fort Stewart in Georgia, and the White House is monitoring the situation.Five soldiers were shot and wounded today on the military base in south-east Georgia, before the shooter was taken into custody.Parts of the base had been locked down earlier on Wednesday after a shooter was reported on the sprawling army post, a spokesperson said.In an analysis by Politico, Democratic lawmakers from Texas stand to amass almost $400,000 in penalties, for leaving the state in protest during the special session that ends on 19 August.Politico crunched the numbers and worked out the total based on the fewest lawmakers needed to break quorum, the anticipated length of their out-of-state trips, and the $500-per-day fee they’re being charged.“Should Democrats refuse to return for the length of the entire special legislative session, which will end on Aug. 19, they could rack up fines totaling at least $382,500,” Politico estimated.In a post on Truth Social, the president said that “great progress” was made at the meeting between special envoy Steve Witkoff and Russian president Vladimir Putin.“Afterwards, I updated some of our European Allies. Everyone agrees this War must come to a close, and we will work towards that in the days and weeks to come,” Trump added.The meeting comes just two days before a deadline the president set for Russia to reach a peace deal in the war with Ukraine, or face fresh sanctions.Texas state lawmakers – many of whom decamped to Illinois to break quorum over the new GOP-drawn congressional map – were forced to evacuate from their hotel earlier near Chicago today.The St Charles police department said they responded to a report of a potential bomb threat at the Q-Center hotel and convention complex. Four hundred people were immediately evacuated, and the area was secured as bomb squad units conducted their investigation. No device was found.On social media, Democratic state representative John Bucy III said that “this is what happens when Republican state leaders publicly call for us to be ‘hunted down’,” referring to the Texas attorney general’s earlier calls to bring absent lawmakers back to the state house.Illinois governor JB Pritzker said he was aware of the threats, in a post on X. “Threats of violence will be investigated and those responsible will be held accountable,” he added.JD Vance will reportedly host top administration officials at his residence tonight, where they will discuss a strategy to address the fallout of the government’s mishandling of the Jeffrey Epstein case and come up with a “unified response”, CNN reports.Among the attendees will reportedly be, attorney Pam Bondi, her deputy Todd Blanche, FBI director Kash Patel and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles.It comes as the administration weighs whether to release the contents of Blanche’s interviews, including over 10 hours of audio and a transcript, with Epstein accomplice and convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. Two officials told CNN that the materials could be made public as early as this week.One official told CNN that some of the conversation within the White House has focused on whether making the details from the interview public would bring the Epstein controversy back to the surface, at a time when many officials close to Trump believe the story has finally died down.Former Democratic congressman Beto O’Rourke, who has emerged as a top funder covering the costs of Texas lawmakers’ exodus, told CNN earlier that he believes they can “stay out long enough to stop this deal in Texas”.Donald Trump, Texas governor Greg Abbott, and Texas attorney general Ken Paxton are, O’Rourke said, “trying to steal these five seats in Texas because without them Trump’s going to lose a majority in the House of Representatives”.
      Without that majority, there’s a check on his lawlessness, accountability for his crimes and corruption, and the possibility of free and fair elections going forward.
      The 56 Texas Democrats who left the state are, O’Rourke said, “all that stand between that future and where we are right now”.
      I think what they’re doing is the highest form of public service. They’re trying to stop the consolidation of authoritarian power in America.
      They are the champions for this democracy, for America, for the rule of law and for our constitution.
      Paxton has called their leaving a “dereliction of the duty as elected officials” and said he would pursue a court ruling to declare the seats of “any rogue lawmakers” vacant if they do not return to work at the statehouse by Friday.“This matters more than any other priority,” said O’Rourke. “We have to stop their power grab.” He added:
      The election of 2026 is going to be decided in the summer of 2025, so we have to fight now and every day going forward.
      US envoy Steve Witkoff’s meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Wednesday went well, a White House official has told Reuters, adding that Washington still planned to proceed with secondary sanctions on Friday.
      The Russians are eager to continue engaging with the United States. The secondary sanctions are still expected to be implemented on Friday.
      My colleague Jakub Krupa is covering this in greater detail over on our Europe live blog:It follows a Reuters report that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Donald Trump spoke on the phone earlier today, according to a source familiar with the matter.Hours earlier, US special envoy Steve Witkoff held talks with Vladimir Putin in Moscow. There haven’t been any immediate indication from either side as to how the talks went.We’re seeing lines on Reuters quoting a White House official that secondary US sanctions on Russia are expected to be implemented on Friday, the deadline Trump gave Putin to reach a peace deal to end its war in Ukraine.Up until this point Trump had been unusually reticent to punish the Russian president, my colleague Patrick Wintour wrote in a piece published this morning, so “what Trump – who some had claimed was a Russian asset – does next to punish Putin could define his presidency.”I’ll bring you more on this as we get it.If state legislators in California move ahead with governor Gavin Newsom’s plan to hold a special election – and begin the process of redrawing the state’s congressional maps in response to Texas’s plans – they’ll have just five days to announce their decision.The California legislature returns from its recess on 18 August, and it will have to declare a special election by 22 August, according to KCRA News.“They’re doing a midterm rejection of objectivity and independence, an act that we could criticise from the sideline, or an act that we can respond to in kind – fight fire with fire,” Newsom said in a press conference last week, referring to Texas Republicans’ plans to pass a new congressional map.Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke with Donald Trump on the phone today, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.This comes after US special envoy Steve Witkoff wrapped up a three-hour meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin earlier today.My colleagues are tracking the latest here. More

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      Texas Democrats receive bomb threat in escalating standoff over redistricting

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      Texas Democrats who left the state say they experienced a bomb threat at their Illinois hotel on Wednesday morning amid an ongoing clash with Republicans over their effort to block a new congressional map from going into place.John Bucy III, a Democrat who represents Austin in the state legislature, confirmed the threat on X on Wednesday and said the lawmakers were evacuated. “This is what happens when Republican state leaders publicly call for us to be ‘hunted down’. Texas Democrats won’t be intimidated,” he said.“We are safe, we are secure, and we are undeterred,” three other members of the Texas house Democratic caucus, representatives Gene Wu, Ramón Romero and Barbara Gervin-Hawkins, said in a statement. They thanked Illinois’s governor, JB Pritzker, and law enforcement officials “for their quick action to ensure our safety”.The showdown between Texas Republicans and the Democrats who fled the state to block redistricting plans escalated late on Tuesday when Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, filed an emergency petition asking the state supreme court to remove Wu, the top Democrat in the state house of representatives, and declare his seat vacant.“Fearing one of eighteen items on the Special Session agenda, Democrat members of the Texas House claim an entitlement to abdicate their official duties by refusing to show up for work,” lawyers for Abbott’s office wrote in the filing, asking the court to rule on his request by Thursday. “These members have abandoned their official duties required by the Constitution.”In a statement on Tuesday evening, Wu said he would not be intimidated by Abbott’s request.“This office does not belong to Greg Abbott, and it does not belong to me. It belongs to the people of House District 137, who elected me. I took an oath to the constitution, not a politician’s agenda, and I will not be the one to break that oath,” he said in a statement. “Let me be unequivocal about my actions and my duty. When a governor conspires with a disgraced president to ram through a racist gerrymandered map, my constitutional duty is to not be a willing participant.”Texas Republicans already hold 25 of Texas’s 38 congressional seats, but Abbott agreed to redraw the state’s congressional districts at the request of Donald Trump to add more GOP-friendly districts. Republicans hold a narrow 219-212 advantage in the US House, and the Texas redraw is a brazen effort to try to shore up Republicans’ advantage before next year’s midterm elections, when Republicans are expected to lose seats.A new map unveiled last week would favor Republicans in 30 of 38 seats and weaken the influence of Hispanic voters throughout the state.Abbott’s effort is considered a long shot, legal experts told the Texas Tribune. In 2021, the Texas supreme court made clear that the state constitution both allows state lawmakers to break quorum and allows for mechanisms for lawmakers to bring them back.“I am aware of absolutely no authority that says breaking quorum is the same as the intent to abandon a seat,” Charles “Rocky” Rhodes, a constitutional law expert at the University of Missouri law school, told the Tribune. “That would require the courts extending the premise to the breaking point. It’s inconsistent with the very text of the Texas Constitution.”The Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, a Republican, has said he also plans to take legal action to try to remove the lawmakers from office.On Tuesday, Senator John Cornyn asked the FBI to assist in returning the lawmakers to Texas. Trump said on Tuesday that the FBI may have to get involved. “The governor of Texas is demanding they come back,” Trump said. “You can’t just sit it out. You have to go back. You have to fight it out. That’s what elections are all about,” he said. The FBI has declined to comment.Under rules enacted by the legislature, lawmakers also face a $500 daily fine for each day they are not present in the capitol. Many of the costs so far, including a private charter to Illinois, meals and lodging have been picked up by Powered by People, a political group started by former Representative Beto O’Rourke, the Texas Tribune reported. Paxton announced on Wednesday he was investigating the group’s funding of the effort.Trey Martinez Fischer, a Democratic representative of San Antonio in the state legislature, said in an interview he was unfazed by the possibility of racking up fines.“Not concerned about it at all,” he said. “We’ve had rules set aside before, and courts don’t have to interpret the rules the way Republicans want them to be interpreted.”“The group is very committed and we recognize that this is much bigger, it’s much bigger than anybody’s individual congressional district, it’s much bigger than anybody’s individual city, and it’s even bigger than the state of Texas,” he added.Other states appear to be following Texas’s lead and considering mid-cycle redistricting. Ohio is already set to redraw its congressional map this year because of a unique state law, and is expected to add more GOP-friendly seats. Republicans in Missouri and Indiana are also reportedly considering redrawing maps to add GOP-friendly districts.Democratic governors have threatened to redraw the maps in their states too to offset Republican gains, though they do not have the power to draw as many seats as Republicans do. The biggest opportunity for Democrats is in California, which has 52 seats in Congress. Governor Gavin Newsom is reportedly moving ahead with a referendum this fall to ask to adopt a new map that would add Democratic seats and override an independent redistricting commission. More

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      Trump to announce Apple’s plan to invest $100bn in US manufacturing

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      Donald Trump on Wednesday is expected to celebrate a commitment by Apple to increase its investments in US manufacturing by an additional $100bn over the next four years.“Today’s announcement with Apple is another win for our manufacturing industry that will simultaneously help reshore the production of critical components to protect America’s economic and national security,” a White House spokesperson, Taylor Rogers, said.Apple’s plan to up its domestic investment comes as it seeks to avoid Trump’s threatened tariffs, which would increase the tech giant’s costs as it relies on a complex international supply chain to produce its iPhones. Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, warned during an earnings call in May that the tariffs could cost the company up to $900m that fiscal quarter alone.Apple had previously said it intended to invest $500bn domestically, a figure it will now increase to $600bn. Apple also claimed that it would directly hire 20,000 US workers over the next four years.“Today, we’re proud to increase our investments across the United States to $600 billion over four years and launch our new American Manufacturing Program,” Cook said in a statement. “This includes new and expanded work with 10 companies across America. They produce components that are used in Apple products sold all over the world, and we’re grateful to the President for his support.”Trump in recent months has criticized the tech company and Cook for efforts to shift iPhone production to India to avoid the tariffs his Republican administration had planned for China. The same day as the White House announcement, Trump doubled US tariffs on India from 25% to 50%.While in Qatar earlier this year, Trump said there was “a little problem” with Apple and recalled a conversation with Cook in which he said he told the CEO: “I don’t want you building in India.”India has incurred Trump’s wrath, as the president signed an order on Wednesday to put an additional 25% tariff on the world’s most populous country for its use of Russian oil. The new import taxes to be imposed in 21 days could put the combined tariffs on Indian goods at 50%.Apple had attempted to get ahead of any tariffs on India in April by shipping as many as 1.5m iPhones from the country into the US, according to Reuters.The company has been uniquely threatened by Trump’s tariffs as iPhones include parts manufactured in dozens of countries and the devices themselves are largely assembled in China. Shifting production of the devices to the US would drastically increase the cost to the point that most analysts view an American-made iPhone as a pipe dream, leaving Apple to navigate the uncertainty surrounding Trump’s trade wars.As part of the Apple announcement, the investments will be about bringing more of its supply chain and advanced manufacturing to the US.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionApple’s new pledge comes just a few weeks after it forged a $500m deal with MP Materials, which runs the only rare earths mine in the US. That agreement will enable MP Materials to expand a factory in Texas to use recycled materials to produce magnets that make iPhones vibrate.Speaking on a recent investors call, Cook emphasized that “there’s a load of different things done in the United States”. As examples, he cited some of the iPhone components made in the US, such as the device’s glass display and module for identifying people’s faces and then indicated the company was gearing to expand its productions of other components in its home country.“We’re doing more in this country, and that’s on top of having roughly 19bn chips coming out of the US now, and we will do more,” Cook told analysts last week, without elaborating.Despite Apple’s struggles with looming tariffs and concern from investors over its lag in fully embracing artificial intelligence, the company’s latest earnings report showed that it made huge gains in iPhone sales and easily beat Wall Street’s expectations for its year-over-year revenue. Apple’s stock, which was down double digits so far this year, spiked upward over 5% on Wednesday following news of Trump’s announcement. More

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      The Guardian view on Putin’s propaganda: the strongman myth hides great strategic weakness | Editorial

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      For a quarter of a century, Russian media have cultivated a myth of Vladimir Putin’s inspired leadership. State propaganda allows no hint of presidential fallibility. When things go wrong, official news ignores the setbacks. When problems cannot be downplayed, Mr Putin is portrayed as the wise corrector of errors made by underlings.Foreign perceptions of Mr Putin have been shaped by this image. It has been boosted online by Kremlin influence operations and embraced by nationalist politicians who admire the Russian president’s methods of domestic control and contempt for the rule of law.Until recently, Donald Trump was the most powerful figure in that category. The US president is no convert to democratic pluralism but he has become notably more suspicious of Russia and less effusive in his admiration for its president. He has threatened Moscow with tightened sanctions if there is not progress towards a ceasefire in Ukraine by the end of this week. Steve Witkoff, the White House special envoy, met Mr Putin on Wednesday for talks. The substance of the discussion was unclear.Uncertainty also shrouds the reasons for Mr Trump’s shifting stance and its durability. June’s Nato summit appears to have been critical in nudging the president towards greater appreciation of the alliance and scepticism about Mr Putin’s claims to want peace.The presidential ego is also a factor. Mr Trump campaigned on a pledge to end the Ukraine war and imagined it could be done swiftly. His initial method was to sideline and bully Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president, while offering sweeping territorial concessions to Russia. That was a disgraceful betrayal of an embattled democracy and a reward for unprovoked military aggression. It was a gift for the Russian president. Yet Mr Putin was not satisfied and instead intensified the onslaught.Mr Trump has no record of sympathy with Ukraine’s plight, but he is notoriously sensitive to a snub. Mr Putin embarrassed him by refusing to do a quick deal.The Russian president’s motives are also obscure. He may be betting on the US staying keen to secure a ceasefire on a land-for-peace basis, and so grabbing more land before White House patience runs out altogether. But he is also trapped by his own maximalist demands. He has sent hundreds of thousands of young Russians to their deaths on the grounds that the nation is locked in an existential struggle with the west. He has cast Ukraine as a rogue province to be reintegrated into the greater Russian motherland. He has geared the country’s economy for perpetual war. His image as a great military leader is in jeopardy if Mr Zelenskyy is still the president of a viable sovereign country when the guns fall silent.There seems no brilliant plan behind Mr Putin’s determination to continue a brutal war of attrition. He does it through inertia and paranoia. He appears afraid to end the fighting on terms that risk ordinary Russians fully grasping the horrific pointlessness of the whole bloody business.History will surely record Mr Putin’s conduct in Ukraine as the action of a delusional murderer. The myth of the Russian president as some kind of mastermind is just another weapon of propaganda. Its function is to project strength where there is weakness, and make victory seem inevitable when the facts of the war describe a litany of Kremlin failure.

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