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      Trump says US will impose new tariffs on heavy trucks, drugs and kitchen cabinets

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      Donald Trump on Thursday announced a new round of punishing tariffs, saying the United States will impose a 100% tariffs on imported branded drugs, 25% tariff on imports of all heavy-duty trucks and 50% tariffs on kitchen cabinets.The US president also said he would start charging a 50% tariff on bathroom vanities and a 30% tariff on upholstered furniture next week, with all the new duties to take effect from 1 October.Drug companies warned earlier this year that Americans would suffer the most if Trump decided to impose tariffs on pharmaceuticals.In 2024, the US imported nearly $233bn in pharmaceutical and medicinal products, according to the Census Bureau. The prospect of prices doubling for some medicines could send shock waves to voters as healthcare expenses, as well as the costs of Medicare and Medicaid, potentially increase.Pascal Chan, vice-president for strategic policy and supply chains at the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, warned that the tariffs could harm Americans’ health with “immediate price hikes, strained insurance systems, hospital shortages, and the real risk of patients rationing or foregoing essential medicines”.“We are already being crushed by the highest prescription drug costs in the world and this will cause them to skyrocket further,” 314 Action, a US advocacy group that tries to elect scientists to office, said in a statement. “If [Trump] goes through with these tariffs, people across the country will die.”Trump had previously suggested that pharmaceutical tariffs would be phased in over time so that companies had time to build factories and relocate production, making the sudden announcement of a 100% tariff more of a shock. On CNBC in August, Trump said he would start by charging a “small tariff” on pharmaceuticals and raise the rate over a year or more to 150% and even 250%.Trump said on Truth Social that the pharmaceutical tariffs would not apply to companies that are building manufacturing plants in the United States, which he defined as either “breaking ground” or being “under construction”. It was unclear how the tariffs would apply to companies that already have factories in the US.Several major pharmaceutical companies, including AstraZeneca, Roche, Novartis, Eli Lilly, and Johnson & Johnson, had already announced plans to invest in or increase manufacturing of their drugs in the US in an attempt to prepare for potential tariffs. Trump’s White House has touted these changes as a win.Markets dropped following the news, as concerns about the impact of Trump’s tariffs mounted. All three main indexes on Wall Street were down, having already fallen every day since Monday.Tokyo, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Sydney, Seoul, Wellington, Taipei and Manila retreated on Friday, with some pharmaceutical companies in Japan and South Korea leading the way.While Trump did not provide a legal justification for the tariffs, he appeared to stretch the bounds of his role as commander-in-chief by stating on Truth Social that the taxes on imported kitchen cabinets and sofas were needed “for National Security and other reasons”.He said the new heavy-duty truck tariffs were to protect manufacturers from “unfair outside competition” and said the move would benefit companies such as Paccar-owned Peterbilt and Kenworth and Daimler Truck-owned Freightliner.“We need our Truckers to be financially healthy and strong, for many reasons, but above all else, for National Security purposes!” Trump added.The new tariffs are another dose of uncertainty for the US economy with a solid stock market but a weakening outlook for jobs and elevated inflation. These new taxes on imports could pass through to consumers in the form of higher prices and dampen hiring, a process that economic data suggests is already underway.“We have begun to see goods prices showing through into higher inflation,” Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, warned in a recent news conference, adding that higher costs for goods account for “most” or potentially “all” of the increase in inflation levels this year.Trump has pressured Powell to resign, arguing that the Fed should cut its benchmark interest rates more aggressively because inflation is no longer a concern.The US Chamber of Commerce urged the department not to impose new tariffs, noting the top five import sources are Mexico, Canada, Japan, Germany, and Finland “all of which are allies or close partners of the United States posing no threat to U.S. national security”.Trump has launched numerous national security inquiries into potential new tariffs on a wide variety of products. He said the new tariffs on kitchen, bathroom and some furniture were because of huge levels of imports which were hurting local manufacturers.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The reason for this is the large scale ‘FLOODING’ of these products into the United States by other outside Countries,” Trump said.Mexico is the largest exporter of medium- and heavy-duty trucks to the United States. A study released in January said imports of those larger vehicles from Mexico have tripled since 2019.Higher tariffs on commercial vehicles could put pressure on transportation costs just as Trump has vowed to reduce inflation, especially on consumer goods such as groceries.Tariffs could also affect Chrysler-parent Stellantis which produces heavy-duty Ram trucks and commercial vans in Mexico. Sweden’s Volvo Group is building a $700m heavy-truck factory in Monterrey, Mexico, due to start operations in 2026.Mexico is home to 14 manufacturers and assemblers of buses, trucks, and tractor trucks, and two manufacturers of engines, according to the US International Trade Administration.The country is also the leading global exporter of tractor trucks, 95% of which are destined for the United States.Mexico opposed new tariffs, telling the commerce department in May that all Mexican trucks exported to the United States have on average 50% US content, including diesel engines.Last year, the United States imported almost $128bn in heavy vehicle parts from Mexico, accounting for approximately 28% of total US imports, Mexico said.The Japanese Automobile Manufacturers Association also opposed new tariffs, saying Japanese companies have cut exports to the United States as they have boosted US production of medium- and heavy-duty trucks.Reuters and the Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      ‘Like Amazon Prime but with human beings’: inside Trump’s deportation machine – podcast

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      Near the 13th hole of a golf course in Alexandria, rural Louisiana, the Guardian US’s southern bureau chief, Oliver Laughland, could see ‘a telling image of where America is at the moment’. On one side, golfers teeing off on a scorching hot day; on the other, in the distance and through a fence, ‘lines of people shackled at the feet and hands, loaded on to planes’.They were people being held at the Alexandria staging facility, a detention and removal centre that has become central to Donald Trump’s deportation regime.The centre’s role was revealed by a Guardian investigation of leaked data, detailing tens of thousands of flights transporting immigrants across the US, carried out for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (Ice).Laughland and the immigration reporter Maanvi Singh talk about what the investigation tells us about the inner workings of the Trump administration’s hardline immigration policies – and concerns about the denial of due process and the ‘disappearance’ of people from lawyers and their families.Is the chaos and the cruelty by accident, asks Helen Pidd, or is it by design? More

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      Don’t look up: how Trump’s deregulation drive could obscure the stars and threaten our access to space

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      Donald Trump has spent eight months attempting to remake the United States through a massive programme of cuts and deregulation. His administration has left almost no part of American life untouched – from classrooms to college campuses, offices to factory floors; museums, forests, oceans and even the stars.An executive order signed last month to streamline rocket launches has been celebrated by officials in the commercial space sector, who see it as integral to securing America’s primacy as the world leader in space exploration.But it’s also causing a wave of alarm – from scientists, environmental activists and astronomers, who say a growing network of satellite constellations are crowding the skies, obscuring the stars and threatening our very access to Earth’s orbit.From her her isolated farm in Saskatchewan, Samantha Lawler is just one of the many astronomers who has noticed the effect that satellites are having on her work. Lawler can see the Milky Way from her window, but the clear views afforded to her in Canada’s rural heartland are being overwhelmed by Elon Musk’s mission to bring internet to every corner of the Earth.“It has changed how the sky looks,” says Lawler. “I look up and I’m like, ‘oh that constellation looks wrong.’ There’s a Starlink flying through it.”Starlink is the network of satellites, operated by Musk’s SpaceX company, orbiting the Earth providing internet to those in remote, rugged and war-torn locales. But the venture’s lofty goal has come at a price for astronomers like Lawler, who have seen their work become more difficult as the sky fills up with satellites.View image in fullscreenStarlink alone owns two-thirds of all satellites in space. With 8,000 in low Earth orbit, the company currently has permission to launch a further 4,000, and has reportedly filed paperwork to raise the total number to 42,000. Amazon and a state-backed project from China have their own rivals to Starlink in the works, all of which would see the numbers vastly multiply, with some estimates that in a decade there could be 100,000 satellites in orbit.Trump has appeared to back the expansion of America’s commercial space industry, signing an executive order last month that could accelerate the number of rockets and their massive payloads of new satellites, potentially exacerbating the difficulties for astronomers and bringing unintended environmental damage.The fight for spaceCommercial space operations have grown in scale and ambition since the US stepped back from government backed flights and increasingly turned to private companies like SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin. In recent years, government efforts to regulate the industry have struggled to keep pace with the ambition of these companies operations: in the last four years, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has issued more commercial space licenses than it did in the entire 32 years before 2021.At various points, the companies themselves have expressed frustration with the government’s regulatory regime – Elon Musk himself threatened to sue the FAA last year for “overreach”.Trump’s August executive order would seeks to eliminate some environmental reviews and launch safety measures contained in previous regulations produced by the president’s first administration, while also preempting some state laws that could hinder the development of private space ports.The FAA itself predicts that the number of commercial launches could almost quadruple over the next decade. With up to 28 satellites launched from a single rocket, the accelerated launch timetable enabled by Trump’s slashing of red tape will be essential if companies like SpaceX are to expand their satellite constellations.The cataclysmic danger of ‘space junk’“What are the skies going to look like?” In a career spent contemplating big questions, it’s perhaps this which is the most existential for Lawler.Her research looks at small icy objects at the edge of our solar system known as Kuiper belt objects. Understanding them could help us form a picture of how the solar system formed and the planets aligned. It’s work that could fundamentally shift our understanding of the very universe we inhabit.“I would love to know what else is out there … what’s beyond the edge of what we know,” says Lawler. “There might be another planet in our solar system. But for the first time it’s getting harder to do the work because of the actions of for-profit companies.”She says that when she points her telescope at the sky her field of view is often obscured by bright streaks of satellites.“The way the satellite streaks appear on the sky, in different seasons and different times of night, it’s actually made it harder to look in one particular direction than in other directions,” says Lawler.View image in fullscreenIt’s a common complaint from astronomers, who also say that the burning up in the Earth’s atmosphere of satellites that have reached the end of their lives could create untold damage.“All that metal, plastic, computer parts, solar panels, that just gets deposited in the atmosphere,” she says, with studies suggesting this could cause ozone depletion and change the opacity of the atmosphere.“We’re just running this experiment and that is really terrifying.”The proliferation of “space junk” in orbit is also of concern to experts. There are about 43,000 objects being monitored in space, most of which are debris from old rockets and disused satellites. The European Space Agency estimates that there are an addition 1.2 million tiny objects between 1cm and 10cm wide.The risk of a runaway collision of debris – a phenomenon known as Kessler Syndrome – is thought to be increasing as the number of satellites multiplies. In such a scenario, one collision sets off a chain reaction which would see more debris produced, until a critical mass of cascading collisions renders orbit inaccessible.Global communications company Viasat paints a cataclysmic picture of the world after such an event: “All of humanity would watch helplessly as space junk multiplies uncontrollably. Without timely intervention, we risk bringing the Space Age to an inglorious end, and trapping humanity on Earth under a layer of its own trash for centuries, or even millennia.”“That’s one of the most ironic things, there’s all this talk that we need to go to Mars, we need to colonise another planet, but all these satellites in orbit actually make it much more likely that there’s going to be a catastrophic collision,” says Lawler.Companies like Starlink are acting to mitigate such an event by building in avoidance systems that manoeuvre their satellites around potential collisions, while scrapping older models that are more at risk.“So far it’s been perfect,” Lawler says.The real risk, she says, will come when the thousands of Starlinks competitor satellites are in orbit in a few years time, with question over how they will coordinate and share data so that other operators know they’re there.View image in fullscreen“Right now one American private company effectively controls orbit,” says Lawler. “If you want to go to a higher altitude orbit, you have to talk to Starlink and make sure that they’re not going to hit your satellite as you go through.”The Guardian has approached SpaceX and the White House for comment.Despite some astronomers calling for a moratorium on rocket launches, Starlink and its celestial competitors show no sign of pausing their ambitions.Starlink appears to be aware of the effects it satellites have of the work of astronomers and has made efforts to make them fainter in the sky. But Lawler says at the same time, the objects have become bigger, “so it just cancels out.”“It’s an engineering challenge that satellite operators need to think more about: How do you deliver your services with fewer satellites? How do you make your satellites last longer?”Despite the cost to her work, she concedes that the service offered by Starlink and its soon-to-be competitors is an engineering miracle. But she believes that the potential downsides outweigh the convenience that they provide.Lawler says it may take a serious collision in orbit to focus the minds of politicians and policymakers to the danger of deregulated commercial space operations, likening such a scenario to a cataclysmic news event like the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill.“I really am afraid that something very bad has to happen before things will change.” More

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      White House tells agencies to prepare for firings if government shuts down

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      The White House is telling federal agencies to prepare large-scale firings of workers if the government shuts down next week in a partisan fight over spending plans – prompting the Democrats to accuse Donald Trump of intimidation tactics.In a memo released on Wednesday night, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) said agencies should consider a reduction in force for federal programs whose funding would lapse next week, is not otherwise funded and is “not consistent with the president’s priorities”.That would be a much more aggressive step than in previous shutdowns, when federal workers not deemed essential were furloughed but returned to their jobs once the US Congress approved a new financial plan.A mass firing would eliminate employees positions, which would trigger yet another massive upheaval in a federal workforce that has already faced major rounds of cuts this year, leading with the dramatic intervention by Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) early in the second Trump administration.When asked by reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday afternoon about the possibility of a government shutdown, Trump said: “Could be, yeah, because the Democrats are crazed. They don’t know what they’re doing.”Asked whether he would agree to a request from Democrats for an extension of subsidies for the costs of healthcare plans under the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, on which millions of Americans depend for health insurance – which has become the sticking point in negotiations over the government funding bill – Trump simply repeated his false claim that Democrats are insisting on funding “to give the money to illegal aliens”.Once any potential government shutdown ends, agencies are asked to revise their reduction in force plans “as needed to retain the minimal number of employees necessary to carry out statutory functions”, according to the memo, which was first reported by Politico.This move from the OMB significantly increases the consequences of a potential government shutdown next week and escalates pressure on the US Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, and the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, both New York Democrats.The two leaders have kept nearly all of their Democratic lawmakers united against a clean funding bill pushed by the US president and congressional Republicans that would keep the federal government operating for seven more weeks, demanding immediate improvements to health care in exchange for their votes to approve the short term plan, known as a continuing resolution (CR).“We will not be intimidated by your threat to engage in mass firings,” Jeffries wrote in a post on X shortly after the OMB memo was released. “Get lost.”Jeffries called Russ Vought, the head of the OMB, a “malignant political hack”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSchumer said in a statement that the OMB memo is an “attempt at intimidation” and predicted the “unnecessary firings will either be overturned in court or the administration will end up hiring the workers back.”“It has never been more important for the administration to be prepared for a shutdown if the Democrats choose to pursue one,” the memo reads, which also notes that the GOP’s signature law, a major tax and anti-immigration spending package, gives “ample resources to ensure that many core Trump Administration priorities will continue uninterrupted.” OMB noted that it had asked all agencies to submit their plans in case of a government shutdown by 1 August.Meanwhile, hundreds of federal employees who were fired in Musk’s cost-cutting blitz are being asked to return to work.The General Services Administration ( GSA) has given the employees – who managed government workspaces – until the end of the week to decide, according to an internal memo obtained by the Associated Press. Those who accept must report to work on 6 October after what amounts to a seven-month paid vacation.“Ultimately, the outcome was the agency was left broken and understaffed,” said Chad Becker, a former GSA real estate official. “They didn’t have the people they needed to carry out basic functions.” More

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      Lisa Cook urges supreme court to reject Trump’s bid to fire her from Fed board

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      Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook urged the US supreme court on Thursday to reject Donald Trump’s attempt to fire her, telling the justices the Republican president’s unprecedented move would destroy the central bank’s independence and disrupt financial markets.Lawyers for Cook filed a written response opposing the justice department’s 18 September emergency request to lift a federal judge’s order that blocked Trump from immediately removing Cook, an appointee of Democratic former president Joe Biden, while her legal challenge continues.Granting Trump’s request, her lawyers told the supreme court, “would dramatically alter the status quo, ignore centuries of history and transform the Federal Reserve into a body subservient to the president’s will”.Washington-based US district judge Jia Cobb ruled on 9 September that Trump’s claims that Cook committed mortgage fraud before taking office – allegations that Cook denies – likely were not sufficient grounds for removal under the 1913 law that created the Fed.The US court of appeals for the District of Columbia circuit in a 2-1 ruling on 15 September denied the administration’s request to put Cobb’s order on hold, ruling that Cook likely was denied due process in violation of the US constitution’s fifth amendment.In Thursday’s filing, Cook’s lawyers said the Fed’s “unique history of independence” has helped make the US economy the strongest in the world. Siding with Trump, they wrote, “would signal to the financial markets that the Federal Reserve no longer enjoys its traditional independence, risking chaos and disruption”.Cook, the first Black woman to serve as a Fed governor, sued Trump in August after the president announced he would remove her. Cook has said the claims made by Trump against her did not give him the legal authority to remove her and were a pretext to fire her for her monetary policy stance.Earlier on Thursday, a group of 18 former US Federal Reserve officials, Treasury secretaries and other top economic officials who served under presidents from both parties urged the supreme court in a brief to reject Trump’s petition to allow his attempt to fire Cook.The group included the past three Fed chairs – Janet Yellen, Ben Bernanke and Alan Greenspan – as well as former Treasury secretaries Henry Paulson, Lawrence Summers, Jacob Lew, Timothy Geithner and Robert Rubin. They argued that letting the president remove Cook while her legal challenge to Trump’s action is ongoing would threaten the central bank’s independence and erode public confidence in it.In its filing to the court last week, the justice department wrote: “This application involves yet another case of improper judicial interference with the President’s removal authority – here, interference with the President’s authority to remove members of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors for cause.”Congress included provisions in the law that created the Fed to shield the central bank from political interference. Under that law, Fed governors may be removed by a president only “for cause”, though the law does not define the term nor establish procedures for removal. No president has ever removed a Fed governor, and the law has never been tested in court.Trump has pursued a broad vision of presidential power since returning to office in January.The Cook legal battle has ramifications for the Fed’s ability to set interest rates without regard to the wishes of politicians, widely seen as critical to any central bank’s ability to function independently to carry out tasks such as keeping inflation under control.Trump this year has demanded that the Fed cut rates aggressively, berating Fed chair Jerome Powell for his stewardship over monetary policy as the central bank focused on fighting inflation. Trump has called Powell a “numbskull”, “incompetent” and a “stubborn moron.“Trump on 25 August said he was removing Cook from the Fed’s board of governors, citing the allegations that, before joining the central bank in 2022, she falsified records to obtain favorable terms on a mortgage. In blocking Cook’s removal, the judge found that the 1913 law only allows a Fed governor to be removed for misconduct while in office. The mortgage fraud claims against Cook relate to actions prior to her Senate confirmation in 2022. More

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      George Soros foundation hits back at Trump after report that DoJ plans to target group

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      The Open Society Foundations (OSF), the major philanthropic group funded by George Soros, has criticized the Trump administration for “politically motivated attacks on civil society” after a report that the justice department had instructed federal prosecutors to come up with plans to investigate the charity.The New York Times reported on Thursday that a lawyer in the office of Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, sent a memo to several federal prosecutors in attorney’s offices in California, New York, Washington DC, Chicago and Detroit, offering a range of charges to consider against the group. Those charges included racketeering, arson, wire fraud and material support for terrorism, the newspaper reported.The push comes as Trump has ramped up efforts to deploy the justice department to target his enemies. He has pledged to crack down on leftwing groups in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s killing and has repeatedly singled out Soros, a major funder of liberal groups, as a target. “We’re going to look into Soros, because I think it’s a Rico case against him and other people,” Trump said on 12 September, using an acronym to refer to racketeering charges. “Because this is more than like protests. This is real agitation.”In a statement, the OSF described the effort as “meant to silence speech the administration disagrees with and undermine the first amendment right to free speech”.“The Open Society Foundations unequivocally condemn terrorism and do not fund terrorism. Our activities are peaceful and lawful, and our grantees are expected to abide by human rights principles and comply with the law,” it said in a statement.“When power is abused to take away the rights of some people, it puts the rights of all people at risk. Our work in the United States is solely dedicated to strengthening democracy and upholding constitutional freedoms. We stand by the work we do to improve lives in the United States and across the world.”Trump has pledged to prosecute Soros and has increased pressure on the justice department to prosecute his political rivals. Last week, Trump forced out a top federal prosecutor in Virginia after it was determined there was insufficient evidence to bring criminal charges against former FBI director James Comey and New York attorney general Letitia James.Trump installed a White House aide, Lindsey Halligan, in the role, and prosecutors are said to be nearing filing charges against Comey. More

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      US is violating human rights laws by backing fossil fuels, say young activists in new petition

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      By continuing to fund and support a fossil fuel-based energy system, the US is violating international law, a group of young people have argued to an international human rights body.The petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), filed late on Tuesday and shared exclusively with the Guardian, says the government’s actions have violated the petitioners’ human rights.“The US’s actions over the past 50 years constitute an internationally wrongful act that implicate its international responsibility,” the petition to the Washington DC-based commission says.The IACHR, part of the Organization of American States, is a quasi-judicial body that reviews and investigates complaints about human rights violations, then issues reports with findings and recommendations to the accused states. Its recommendations are not legally binding.The plea comes after the publication of two strongly worded advisory opinions on the climate crisis from two top international courts. It was filed by 15 of the 21 youth climate activists who previously brought the groundbreaking federal climate lawsuit Juliana v US, which was effectively dismissed last year.“This petition is about truth and accountability,” said Levi, an 18-year-old petitioner who was eight years old when the Juliana case was filed. “For over 50 years, the US government has knowingly protected fossil fuel interests while putting people, especially young people, in harm’s way.”View image in fullscreenLike Juliana, the new filing details the myriad ways the climate crisis has caused the young petitioners to suffer. Levi, for instance, grew up in Florida on the Indialantic barrier island. He and his family were frequently forced to evacuate amid dangerous hurricanes; eventually, they became so severe and frequent that his parents decided relocating was the only option.“Part of why we left was so that my baby sister could grow up in a home with a smaller risk of flooding,” he said. “One of the most difficult moments was losing my school after it was permanently closed due to storm damage.”Levi and the other young activists accuse the US of breaching international human rights law, customary international law and the American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man – an international human rights instrument that guarantees economic, social and cultural rights, as well as equality under the law.The bid comes just after the release of an early July advisory opinion from the inter-American court of human rights (I/A court HR), a separate human rights body which can issue binding recommendations but which the US does not recognize. The opinion said that the climate crisis carries “extraordinary risks” felt most by already-vulnerable populations, and that the American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man requires countries to set ambitious greenhouse gas-cutting targets.“Before that happened, we had already been planning to file this,” said Kelly Matheson, deputy director of global strategy at the non-profit law firm Our Children’s Trust, which is representing the petitioners. “The timing is pure serendipity.”The I/A court HR opinion is non-binding, and the US does not recognize the jurisdiction of the top court from which it came. However, international courts and commissions can draw on the opinions to interpret the law.By denying the plaintiffs “access to justice” – and by expanding fossil fuel production – the US is violating an array of rights guaranteed to the young activists, including the right to life, liberty and security; the right to health; the right to benefits of culture; and special protections for children.“We are bringing our case to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights because domestic courts would not hear the full story,” said Levi. “This petition is a statement that what has happened to us is not just unfortunate or political but that it is a violation of our human rights.”The petitioners also accuse the US of violating their right to a healthy climate, referencing another recent nonbinding advisory opinion on greenhouse gas emissions from the international court of justice – a United Nations top court. The young activists have been trapped in that violation since birth, Matheson said.“These young people were born into a climate emergency, they were born into a rights violation, and they have lived every single day with their right to a healthy climate system being infringed upon,” she said. “We could get to a healthy climate system by 2100 if we make changes, but even then, these young plaintiffs will live their entire lives without ever being able to fully enjoy and exercise their right to a healthy climate system … Their hope is that their children or their grandchildren might.”Filed in 2015, Juliana v US argued that the government violated the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights with pro-fossil fuel policies. Our Children’s Trust, which brought the case, made its final attempt to revive the case last year by asking the supreme court to allow the suit to proceed to trial in a lower court; its bid was denied in March.By denying the young challengers access to effective remedies to the climate crisis and thereby continually causing them harm, the courts failed to fulfill its international legal obligations, the new filing says.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe US is also breaching its obligations by continuing to perpetuate a fossil fuel-based energy system, argues the petition to the IACHR.“The US government, the leading cumulative contributor to climate change, has caused real harm to our health, our homes, our cultures and our futures,” said Levi.With the new petition, the young activists are demanding “precautionary measures” aimed at protecting their rights and obligations, as well as a hearing. In their best-case scenario, the IACHR would visit the US to hear the stories of the petitioners, then hold a public hearing to allow them to present their evidence to the world, and finally declare that the US has committed “wrongful acts” and make recommendations to push the country to improve its behavior.“We want the commission to declare that these systemic actions have violated our rights under the American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man,” said Levi. “This would carry legal weight across the Americas and help set a precedent that governments can’t continue to violate our rights without consequences.”Michael Gerrard, an environmental law expert at Columbia University, said the commission the activists are petitioning tends to act slowly. The body took five years to review one pollution-focused complaint from a Louisiana community filed in 2005.If the commission issues strong recommendations for the US, he said, US officials will be under no obligation to follow it.“The Trump administration wouldn’t care what this commission says, but the next administration might,” he added.The petition follows news that planet-warming pollution from the US rose in the first half of 2025. It also comes amid widespread attacks on climate protections by the Trump administration, which has launched more than 150 anti-environmental and anti-renewable energy actions since retaking the White House in January.“We are bringing this petition forward now because the science is urgent, the harm is accelerating and our rights are still being violated,” said Levi.Our Children’s Trust has represented young people in an array of state and federal lawsuits. During a two-day hearing in Montana this month, young plaintiffs in one federal case argued that three of Trump’s pro-fossil fuel executive orders should be blocked. The law firm in 2023 notched a landmark win in the lawsuit Held v Montana, when a judge ruled that the state’s pro-fossil fuel policies violated a group of youth plaintiffs’ rights under the state’s constitution.Just hours before Our Children’s Trust filed the petition, Trump addressed the United Nations claiming that the climate crisis was the “greatest con job perpetrated on the world” and “a hoax made up by people with evil intentions”.“This courageous action aims to tell the truth and do something about it,” said James R May, of counsel to Our Children’s Trust. More