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      Proposed UK cuts to global aid fund could lead to 300,000 preventable deaths, say charities

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      The UK is expected to slash its contribution to a leading aid fund combating preventable diseases, with charities warning this could lead to more than 300,000 otherwise preventable deaths.If confirmed, the anticipated 20% cut in the UK contribution to the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, would be announced on the sidelines of next month’s G20 summit in South Africa, which Keir Starmer is due to attend.Aid groups said such a reduction, on top of a 30% cut to the UK contribution at the previous funding round for the group three years ago, would further risk years of progress in combating the disease after Donald Trump slashed US aid.No decision has been publicly announced before the Global Fund’s “replenishment” summit, covering 2027-29, and one government official said this did not recognise the extent of the cut predicted.However, aid groups say a proposed reduction in UK funding from £1bn to £800m is being widely discussed by senior government officials.If confirmed, it would follow a 25% reduction in UK money towards another aid organisation seen as being highly efficient in saving lives, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (Gavi). The eventual £1.25bn commitment over five years to Gavi was nonetheless higher than many aid agencies had feared.The Switzerland-based Global Fund is credited with helping to save tens of million of lives in combating the three diseases. One aid agency estimated a £200m cut could lead to up to 340,000 avoidable deaths and nearly 5.9 million avoidable infections over the three-year funding period.Gareth Jenkins, an executive director at Malaria No More UK, said: “The world stands on the brink of a malaria resurgence, which will be so much more likely triggered if the UK makes a cut to its contribution to the Global Fund.“In this scenario many more children will lose their lives, health systems will be overwhelmed and economies dragged down – with huge knock-on effects for UK trade and health security.”Mike Podmore, the chief executive of StopAids, said the cut “would send a terrible message”, particularly as the UK is officially co-hosting next month’s funding event.Podmore said: “Not only did the UK already make a 30% cut three years ago, but to date no host has ever reduced their commitment from their previous pledge. This would represent a serious lack of leadership and undermine the UK’s reputation and soft power.”Adrian Lovett, the UK head of the development campaign One, said the cut would “put at risk decades of progress in the fight against Aids, TB and malaria – and as diseases do not stop at borders, it would jeopardise our own health security here at home too”.Monica Harding, the Liberal Democrats’ international development spokesperson, said cutting funding as co-host would be “an indictment of our global leadership in diplomacy and development”.She said: “Stepping back now and reducing our contribution to the fund at a time when the United States is abandoning vaccination programmes wholesale would be devastating to some of the world’s most vulnerable people. It would risk undoing much of the progress we have made in the global fight against disease.”A Foreign Office spokesperson said: “The UK has not yet decided what its pledge to the Global Fund will be. We will announce this in due course.” More

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      Trump news at a glance: Court halts mass firings threatened by White House as shutdown enters third week

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      As the US government shutdown grinds into its third week, a federal court has approved a temporary injunction blocking the Trump administration from sacking thousands of federal employees.The judge ruled the president may have exceeded his authority to try to take advantage of the shutdown.The decision came after Russ Vought, the director of the office of management and budget (OMB) at the White House, said that more cuts were coming, claiming the firings could be “north of 10,000” workers.The lawsuit alleged that the OMB, through Vought, violated the law by making firing threats and instructing federal employees to carry out work related to the firings during the shutdown.Here are the key US politics stories from Wednesday:Judge temporarily blocks Trump from firing federal workersA federal court has granted a temporary injunction blocking the Trump administration’s firings of federal employees during the government shutdown. The ruling by Judge Susan Illston of the US district court’s northern district of California came in response to a lawsuit filed by labor unions representing federal workers.Read the full storyUS supreme court looks inclined to weaken pillar of Voting Rights ActThe conservative majority on the US supreme court appeared poised to weaken a key pillar of the Voting Rights Act after a lengthy oral argument, paving the way for a significant upheaval in American civil rights law.Read the full storyChinese company gives Eric Trump crypto firm preferential accessA private Chinese company is giving preferential access to its technology and providing unusually beneficial payment terms on hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of specialized equipment to a firm partially owned by Donald Trump’s son Eric Trump, according to industry sources and Securities and Exchange Commission records.Read the full storyTrump confirms he authorized covert CIA operations in VenezuelaDonald Trump confirmed reports on Wednesday that he authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations in Venezuela, marking a sharp escalation in US efforts to pressure President Nicolás Maduro’s regime.The US president said he authorized the action for two main reasons, claiming that first, Venezuela had been releasing large numbers of prisoners into the US, and second, a large amount of drugs was entering the US from Venezuela, much of it by sea.Read the full storyMan wrongfully imprisoned detained by IceA Pennsylvania man who was recently exonerated after spending more than four decades behind bars has now been taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) and faces possible deportation to India.Earlier this month, Centre county’s district attorney dismissed murder charges against 64-year-old Subramanyam “Subu” Vedam. However, shortly after his exoneration, Vedam was detained by Ice based on a 1988 deportation order tied to his now-vacated convictions.Read the full storyYoung Republicans face backlash after racist chats leakedSome leaders of Young Republican groups throughout the country are facing a major backlash after Politico revealed 2,900 pages of leaked chats of some of their racist and highly offensive messages.The Young Republican National Federation called on those involved in the chat to “immediately resign from all positions” within the organization.Read the full storyOutcry after US strips visas from six foreigners over Kirk remarksCivil liberties advocates are warning that the Trump administration’s decision to strip visas from at least six foreign nationals over social media posts about Charlie Kirk’s killing represents yet another example of dangerous government crackdowns on protected speech.Read the full storyHegseth’s plane forced to land due to crack in windshieldA plane carrying Pete Hegseth, the US defense secretary, on Wednesday made an unscheduled landing in the United Kingdom due to a crack in the aircraft’s windshield, the Pentagon said, adding that Hegseth was safe.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      For the first time in two decades, the US has dropped out of the world’s top 10 most powerful passports, marking a significant dethroning for the global superpower.

      The mayor of Boston implied the city was ready for a face-off with Donald Trump over his claim he could order Fifa to remove World Cup games from its suburb.

      Brown University became the second higher education institution to turn down an invitation from Trump to sign on to his administration’s 10-page college compact that would overhaul university policies in return for preferential access to federal funding.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 14 October 2025. More

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      Trump confirms that he authorized covert CIA operations in Venezuela

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      Donald Trump confirmed reports on Wednesday that he authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations in Venezuela, marking a sharp escalation in US efforts to pressure President Nicolás Maduro’s regime.The New York Times first reported the classified directive, citing US officials familiar with the decision.The US president said he authorized the action for two main reasons.First, he claimed Venezuela had been releasing large numbers of prisoners, including individuals from mental health facilities, into the United States, often crossing the border due to what he described as an open border policy. Trump did not specify which border they were crossing.The second reason, he said, was the large amount of drugs entering the US from Venezuela, much of it trafficked by sea.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I think Venezuela is feeling heat,” Trump added, but declined to answer when asked if the CIA had the authority to execute Maduro. More

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      Trump says US looking at land attacks in Venezuela after lethal strikes on boats – live

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      Asked in the Oval Office if the US is considering strikes on suspected drug cartels inside Venezuela, after lethal strikes on suspected drug smugglers at sea, Donald Trump just said that the administration is “looking at land”.The president also claimed, without citing evidence, that every strike on a suspected drug smuggling speedboat saves thousands of lives in the US. “Every boat that we knock out, we save 25,000 lives,” Trump said.Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor of California, on Wednesday urged the Republican-led House oversight committee to launch an investigation into the “vile and offensive” text messages exchanged between leaders of Young Republican groups.The request follows a report in Politico that revealed more than 28,000 Telegram messages sent between Young Republican leaders over the course of seven months, in which they refer to Black people as monkeys, praise Hitler, and repeatedly make glib remarks about gas chambers, slavery and rape.“Calling for gas chambers. Expressing love for Hitler. Endorsing rape. Using racist slurs. This is not a ‘joke’, and it is not fringe,” Newsom said in a statement. “If Congress can investigate universities for failing to stop antisemitism, it must also investigate politicians’ own allies who are openly celebrating it.”With Republicans in control of the House, the oversight committee is unlikely to act.In the letter addressed to James Comer, the Republican committee chair and an ally of the president, Newsom notes that while House Republicans have made combating antisemitism a priority, few party leaders have publicly condemned the messages revealed in the report.Democrats such as the New York governor, Kathy Hochul, expressed outrage over the messages, and some GOP groups, like the Young Republican National Federation, have called for resignations.But the vice-president, JD Vance, said that he refused to “join the pearl clutching” over what he inaccurately described as “a college group chat”.Vance recently expressed support for the effort to track down, intimidate and harass people who voiced criticism of Charlie Kirk after his assassination.Donald Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday that he might go to the supreme court next month when it hears his administration’s appeal of two prior court rulings against his imposition of sweeping tariffs under an economic emergency that appears to exist only in his mind.A trade court and an appeals court have both found that Trump exceeded his authority by imposing global tariffs citing provisions of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.On Wednesday, Trump also claimed that he had used the threat of tariffs to stop the escalation of fighting this year between India and Pakistan, two nuclear-armed nations.Indian officials have said that Trump’s intervention had nothing to do with the end of hostilities.Donald Trump has finished speaking in the Oval Office. After he recited a long series of previously aired grievances, he confirmed, for the first time, that he authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations in Venezuela, marking a sharp escalation in the administration’s apparent effort to drive the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, from power.Donald Trump just claimed that the number of Hamas fighters killed by Israel, with US support, exceeds the entire estimated death toll in the Gaza Strip in the past two years.“We, meaning Israel, but I knew everything they were doing, pretty much, I knew most of the things they were doing,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, “they’ve killed probably 70,000 of these people, Hamas.”As the United Nations reported last week, there have been 67,183 fatalities and 169,841 injuries reported to the Gaza ministry of health since 7 October 2023.The dead included 20,179 children, 10,427 women, 4,813 elderly people and 31,754 adult men.In May of this year, a joint investigation by the Guardian, the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call found that Israel’s military intelligence database of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters had 47,653 names. Of them, 8,900 were marked as killed or probably killed.Trump went on to claim that Hamas had agreed to surrender its weapons, but, while Hamas leaders said earlier this year that they would consider giving up the group’s heavy weapons, such as rockets and missiles, on Saturday a senior Hamas official told Agence France-Presse that disarmament was “out of the question”, adding: “The demand that we hand over our weapons is not up for negotiation.”Nevertheless, Trump said on Wednesday: “We want the weapons to be given up, sacrificed, and they’ve agreed to do it. Now they have to do it, and if they don’t do it, we’ll do it.”Asked by a reporter if that meant the US military might be directly involved in disarming the Palestinian militants, Trump replied, again apparently referring to US support for Israel’s military: “We won’t need the US military … because we’re very much involved.”To defend lethal US military strikes on suspected drug smugglers, Donald Trump just repeated his familiar but baseless claim that Venezuela “emptied” its prisons and “insane asylums” by sending incarcerated people into the United States as undocumented immigrants during the Biden administration.“Many countries have done it,” Trump claimed.As the Marshall Project reported a year ago, before the 2024 election, Trump had already made this claim more than 500 times without a shred of evidence.Asked in the Oval Office if the US is considering strikes on suspected drug cartels inside Venezuela, after lethal strikes on suspected drug smugglers at sea, Donald Trump just said that the administration is “looking at land”.The president also claimed, without citing evidence, that every strike on a suspected drug smuggling speedboat saves thousands of lives in the US. “Every boat that we knock out, we save 25,000 lives,” Trump said.Kash Patel, the FBI director, is speaking to members of the press now.“In just a three-month span, you had 8,700 arrests of violent criminals. You had 2,200 firearms seized off the streets permanently, to safeguard our communities. You had 421kg of fentanyl seized. Just to put that in perspective, that’s enough to kill 55 million Americans alone,” Patel said.He then compared the number of arrests since Trump returned to the White House with the yearly arrests of violent criminals during the Biden administration.“You have 28,600 arrests of violent criminals in just seven months alone, because of your leadership,” Patel said, praising the president in the process.“It’s a mess, and we have great support in San Francisco,” Trump said of the city and California governor Gavin Newsom’s home town.“Every American deserves to live in a community where they’re not afraid of being mugged, murdered, robbed, raped, assaulted or shot, and that’s exactly what our administration is working to deliver.”Trump touted the success of federal law enforcement in Washington DC.“It’s been so nice because so many people, they’re going out to dinner, and they’re having dinners they wouldn’t, they didn’t go out for four years, and now they’re going out three times a week,” he said.He went on to complain that the only thing in his way in other major cities is “radical left governors”.The president begins his press conference saying that he’s here to talk about “Operation Summer Heat”. He’s flanked by the FBI director, Kash Patel.“Over the past few months, FBI offices in all 50 states made crushing violent crime a top enforcement priority. That’s what they did, rounding up and arresting thousands of the most violent and dangerous criminals,” Trump said.Brown University is the latest institution to reject the White House’s offer to join a “Compact of Academic Excellence” – the controversial agreement which would provide preferential treatment to colleges that carry out several of the administration’s education policies, including ending diversity initiatives and capping international student enrollment.In a letter to the education secretary, Linda McMahon, Brown’s president. Christina H Paxson, said she’s concerned the compact would “restrict academic freedom and undermine the autonomy of Brown’s governance”.She added:
      A fundamental part of academic excellence is awarding research funding on the merits of the research being proposed. The cover letter describing the compact contemplates funding research on criteria other than the soundness and likely impact of research, which would ultimately damage the health and prosperity of Americans.
      The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) became the first university to reject the invitation to join the compact, before the White House extended the option to all higher education institutes across the country.The Senate has rejected a House-passed funding bill to reopen the federal government, as the shutdown enters its 15th day.With a vote of 51-44, this is the ninth time that the funding extension has failed to meet the 60-member threshold needed to advance in the upper chamber.According to Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell, the plane carrying the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, back from a meeting of Nato ministers in the UK had to make an unscheduled landing “due to a crack in the aircraft windshield”.Parnell added: “The plane landed based on standard procedures and everyone onboard, including Secretary Hegseth, is safe.”

      A federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from carrying out layoffs during the ongoing government shutdown. In a lawsuit brought by the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) challenging the reductions in force that the Trump administration enacted last week, Judge Susan Illston said that the mass firings across agencies, which amounted to more than 4,000 layoffs, are an example of the administration taking “advantage of the lapse in government spending, in government functioning, to assume that that all bets are off, that the laws don’t apply to them any more”. Illston blocked the administration from laying off any federal employees because of, or during, the shutdown, and has stopped them from taking action on the already issued reductions in force for at least two weeks.

      While that hearing was under way, the White House budget director maintained that the firings are far from over. Russell Vought, the director of the office of management and budget – has said that the current reductions in force are just a “snapshot”. He added that the total amount could end up being about 10,000.

      The supreme court heard two and a half hours of oral arguments today in a case that could thwart a key provision of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). The conservative majority on the bench seemed sympathetic to the case, made by lawyers for Louisiana, a group of “non-African American voters” and the Trump administration. They all argue that a 2024 congressional map, which created a second majority-Black district in Louisiana, violates the constitution. If the court rules in their favor, it could ultimately diminish section 2 of the VRA, which prohibits electoral practices that dilute the voting power of minority groups. It would also limit the ability of legislatures from drawing maps with racial demographics in mind, and could cost Democrats several House seats in Republican-led states.

      Also in Washington, the government shutdown enters day 15, with no end in sight. Republicans and Democrats in Congress held press conferences at the US Capitol, and continued to exchange barbs – blaming the other party for the lapse in funding. The House speaker, Mike Johnson, said that he spoke with Donald Trump on Tuesday, adding that Republicans are “forlorn” and not taking “any pleasure” in the length of the shutdown and the mass layoffs implemented by the White House budget office. Meanwhile, Hakeem Jeffries slammed the administration for offering a $20bn cash bailout to Argentina, but not “spending a dime on affordable healthcare for Americans”. CSPAN also reported that Johnson and Jeffries have both accepted an invitation to debate on the network. The date has yet to be announced.

      Today, Johnson also accused a group of Democrats of “storming” his office, showing “disdain for law enforcement” and playing “political games”. On Tuesday evening, a group of Democrats including Adelita Grijalva, the Democratic representative-elect for Arizona, marched to Johnson’s office, chanting “swear her in” and demanding that she be seated after she won a special election in her state over three weeks ago. Arizona’s attorney general, Kris Mayes, has threatened legal action against Johnson for failing to seat Grijalva, and Grijalva said she has also been exploring her legal options for officially claiming her seat.
      In her order, Judge Illston has temporarily blocked the administration from laying off any federal employees because of or during the shutdown, and has stopped them from taking action on the already issued reductions in force for at least two weeks.She’ll lay out further details in her written ruling later today, but said that the administration will need to provide a plan outlining how they have complied with her order within two business days. Illston said that she will schedule a preliminary injunction hearing in roughly two weeks’ time. “It would be wonderful to know what the government’s position is on the merits of this case,” Illston added. “My breath is bated until we find that.”Judge Susan Illston has issued a temporary restraining order, blocking the firing of federal workers during the ongoing government shutdown. More

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      Judge dismisses suit by young climate activists against Trump’s pro-fossil fuel policies

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      A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by young climate activists that aimed to halt Donald Trump’s pro-fossil fuel executive orders.The dismissal by US district judge Dana Christensen on Wednesday came after 22 plaintiffs, ages seven to 25 and from five states, sought to block three of the president’s executive orders, including those declaring a “national energy emergency” and seeking to “unleash American energy” – as well as one aimed at “reinvigorating” the US’s production of coal.According to the plaintiffs, the executive orders amount to unlawful executive overreach and breach the state-created danger doctrine – a legal principle designed to prevent government officials from causing harm to their citizens.Among the plaintiffs were also several young individuals who had previously been part of the landmark 2023 Held v Montana case – the first constitutional climate trial in the United States. In that case, a judge ruled in favor of the youth plaintiffs who argued that the Montana state government had violated their constitutional right to a healthy environment.In Wednesday’s ruling, Christensen said that the plaintiffs have presented “overwhelming evidence that the climate is changing at a staggering pace, and that this change stems from the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide, caused by the production and burning of fossil fuels”.However, Christensen went on to say: “Yet while this court is certainly troubled by the very real harms presented by climate change and the challenged [executive orders’] effect on carbon dioxide emissions, this concern does not automatically confer upon it the power to act.”He added: “Granting plaintiffs’ injunction would require the defendant agencies, and – ultimately – this court, to scrutinize every climate-related agency action taken since” the start of Trump’s second presidency on 20 January 2025.“In other words, this court would be required to monitor an untold number of federal agency actions to determine whether they contravene its injunction. This is, quite simply, an unworkable request for which plaintiffs provide no precedent,” Christensen continued.According to a new report from Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy and ethics non-profit, Trump has picked more than 40 people who were directly employed by coal, oil and gas companies to be part of his administration.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSince taking office, Trump has launched broad attacks on both sustainable energy alternatives and climate science. In August, his administration released a report that said “climate change is a challenge – not a catastrophe”, a claim that drew sharp criticism from climate experts who called the report a “farce” filled with misinformation. More

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      Jack Smith hits back at claims that Trump prosecutions were politically motivated

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      In a rare interview former justice department special counsel Jack Smith has hit back against accusations that the federal prosecutions of Donald Trump he oversaw were politically motivated, calling the claims “absolutely ludicrous”.Speaking with former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann at the UK’s University College London in an interview last week, Smith defended the integrity of the criminal investigations he led and his work as special counsel in the Biden administration.“The idea that politics played a role in who worked on that case, or who got chosen, is ludicrous,” Smith said in the interview which was posted online on Tuesday.Smith led two federal investigations that resulted in unprecedented indictments against a former president, when Trump was charged in 2023 – one case concerning his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and the other involving his handling of classified materials after leaving office and the obstruction of government efforts to retrieve them. Trump pleaded not guilty in both cases and denied any wrongdoing.Both cases were dismissed following Trump’s re-election in 2024, consistent with a justice department policy barring indictment of a sitting president, which Trump became again in January 2025.Smith, who resigned from the justice department in January, said in the interview that his special counsel team had acted independently and were not interested in politics.“Those people I brought in were all former longtime, former federal prosecutors who had worked in both Republican and Democratic administrations over and over again,” he said. “These are team players who don’t want to do anything but good in the world. They’re not interested in politics.“I get very concerned when I see how easy it is to demonize these people for political ends when these are the very sort of people I think we should be celebrating,” he added. “The idea that politics would play a role in big cases like this, it’s absolutely ludicrous and it’s totally contrary to my experience as a prosecutor.”When describing the actions of the current justice department under Trump, Smith said that “nothing like what we see now has ever gone on.”He pointed to the department’s dismissal of a federal corruption case against Eric Adams, New York City’s mayor.“This case in New York City, where the case against the mayor was dismissed in the hopes that he would support the president’s political agenda,” Smith said. “I mean, just so you know, nothing like it has ever happened that I’ve ever heard of.”He also criticized the recent indictment of former FBI Director James Comey, who has been charged with one count of making a false statement to Congress and one count of obstruction of a congressional proceeding, which he denies.“This latest prosecution of the former director of the FBI,” Smith said, “just reeks of lack of process.”“Process shouldn’t be a political issue,” Smith said. “If there’s rules in the department about how to bring a case, follow those rules, you can’t say, ‘I want this outcome, let me throw the rules out’.”Smith said that the firings and attacks on public servants, “particularly nonpartisan public servants” has a “cost for our country that is incalculable” adding that “it’s hard to communicate to folks how much that is going to cost us.”“If you think getting rid of the people who know most about national security is going to make our country safer, you do not know anything about national security,” he said. “And that’s happening throughout the department – it makes me concerned.”Smith also noted how some career prosecutors have left the justice department.“They’re being asked to do things that they think are wrong and because they are not political people, they’re not going to do them,” Smith said. “And I think that explains why you’ve seen the resignations you’ve seen.”The White House and Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Guardian.In a statement to NBC, the White House said: “The Trump Administration will continue to deliver the truth to the American people while restoring integrity and accountability to our justice system.”Meanwhile, on Tuesday, House Republicans requested that Smith testify about what they described as his “partisan and politically motivated prosecutions” of Trump. More

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      How rightwing groups help Trump’s education department target school districts

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      In late March, the education secretary, Linda McMahon, recorded a video to announce an investigation into Maine school districts that allow students to change their gender identity without their parents’ permission – a key target of the Trump administration.But she didn’t face the camera alone.She was joined by Nicole Neily, a longtime conservative advocate and president of Defending Education. It was Neily’s organization that scoured district websites for evidence of gender plans – what they call “parental exclusion policies”. In a letter to Maine’s education commissioner, Pender Makin, McMahon gave Defending Education credit for gathering the documents through public records requests and referenced two conservative websites, The Federalist and Maine Wire, that published the group’s findings.“We’re proud to stand with you and President Trump as you ensure that the law is being followed and that the school districts do not infringe on parents’ rights,” Neily said.Neily offered similar quotes when the Department of Education’s office for civil rights (OCR) opened investigations into school district equity policies in Chicago and Fairfax, Virginia. In February, Defending Education filed a complaint about Chicago’s Black Student Success Plan, which aims to increase the number of Black teachers, improve student behavior and make instruction more culturally relevant. Neily argues the initiative denies other students “educational opportunity because of the color of their skin”.Julie Hartman, a department spokesperson, defended the inclusion of advocates in press statements. She said the agency “welcomes support from – and has often worked with – outside groups who want to advocate for students and families and help those who believe that their civil rights have been violated”. Neily did not respond to questions about the department’s communications strategy.But she is just one of several activists working with the department to advance the Trump administration’s education agenda. Since February, at least 10 department press releases announcing investigations have featured quotes from advocates representing eight organizations. They all echo the administration’s position and, like the secretary, stake out conclusions before the OCR team has begun investigating.In July, McMahon announced an investigation into transgender students playing on girls’ sports teams in Oregon. The investigation, the press release said, was prompted by a complaint from the America First Policy Institute (AFPI) – the conservative thinktank she chaired for four years before she became secretary.In the release, Jessica Hart Steinmann, the thinktank’s executive general counsel, said: “Thanks to Secretary McMahon’s leadership, this investigation is moving forward as a vital step toward restoring equal opportunity in women’s athletics.”The organization helped set the agenda for Trump’s return to the White House and the president appointed several of its leaders to cabinet-level positions. At least six former AFPI staffers work at the education department. Former staffer Craig Trainor served as acting assistant secretary for civil rights until last week, when he was confirmed to a top position at the Department of Housing and Urban Development.The press releases create “a significant pressure point on educational institutions because they’re presumed to have violated the law from the get-go,” said Jackie Wernz, an attorney who worked in the civil rights office during the Obama and first Trump administrations. The department, she said, “has changed from a neutral arbiter of civil rights disputes to an advocacy organization”.Those who have worked at the department during both Democratic and Republican administrations, including in Trump’s first term, say such tactics could hinder investigators’ ability to gather evidence fairly.When OCR opens investigations, it assures subjects that a complaint is just the beginning of the process and doesn’t mean the department has reached a decision. In one case from 2020, for example, Kimberly Richey, acting assistant secretary for civil rights during Trump’s first term, committed in a letter to a school district that OCR would act as a “neutral fact-finder”.“Historically … on both sides of the aisle, the department has been extremely cautious about making public statements about open investigations,” said Jill Siegelbaum, who spent 20 years in the department’s general counsel’s office before she was let go as part of McMahon’s mass layoffs.Richey, who was confirmed last week to once again lead OCR, did not respond to requests for comment.Administration allies downplayed the significance of the relationships with advocacy groups, comparing them to former first lady Jill Biden’s decision to host Randi Weingarten, the America Federation of Teachers president, and Becky Pringle, the National Education Association president, as the first official White House guests when President Joe Biden took office in 2021. A former community college professor, Jill Biden is an NEA member.“It’s far better for the secretary to engage with Defending Education, which champions parents and students, than with Randi Weingarten’s AFT, a mouthpiece for the Democratic party’s progressive elite,” said Ginny Gentles, an education and parental rights advocate at the conservative Defense of Freedom Institute. “Nicki Neily and Defending Education have aggressively challenged the corrupt status quo, amplifying parents’ voices and demanding accountability.”The actions by the department are among several designed to radically repurpose and drastically downsize a civil rights office that McMahon said had been focused on “transgender ideology and other progressive causes” and that “muddled the enforcement of laws designed to protect students”. In March, she laid off roughly 250 employees and shuttered seven of 12 regional offices, moves that are still being challenged in court. Over the weekend, after another round of layoffs, one attorney who received notice that she had lost her job said three more offices had been closed, affecting roughly 45 additional staff members.Catherine Lhamon, who ran OCR during the Obama and Biden administrations, dismissed the comparisons. She likened the warm welcome for the teachers union presidents to a political event. OCR, by contrast, is supposed to be neutral. By opening investigations with accusatory quotations from department officials and their allies, she said, the Trump administration is putting its thumb on the scale. Under Biden, she recalled, investigations frequently led to outcomes that disappointed the advocates who brought the initial complaints.“There were lots of cases during my time where the complaints were appalling. Then we’d investigate and find that they weren’t,” she said. “You might think at the beginning of a case you’re going in one direction and then when you investigate, you find you’re going in another. That’s the job of an investigator.”

      This story was produced by the 74, a non-profit, independent news organization focused on education in the US More

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      US revokes six foreigners’ visas over social media comments criticizing Charlie Kirk

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      Donald Trump’s US state department said on Tuesday it had revoked the visas of six foreigners over social media comments made about the assassination of rightwing activist Charlie Kirk.“The United States has no obligation to host foreigners who wish death on Americans,” the state department said in a statement posted on X. “The State Department continues to identify visa holders who celebrated the heinous assassination of Charlie Kirk.”The state department then listed six “examples of aliens who are no longer welcome in the US” in a thread on the social media platform owned by Elon Musk, the Trump donor who called himself “a free speech absolutist” before buying the site formerly known as Twitter.The thread included screenshots and quotes from people identified as foreign nationals of Argentina, Brazil, Germany, Mexico, Paraguay and South Africa.None of the individuals was identified by name, but the screenshots made it possible to trace the identities of two people, including one who had been singled out for abuse by conservatives on X.“Charlie Kirk won’t be remembered as a hero,” one of the comments posted on X read. “He was used to astroturf a movement of white nationalist trailer trash!”The thread ended with a statement from the state department that Trump and the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, “will defend our borders, our culture, and our citizens by enforcing our immigration laws. Aliens who take advantage of America’s hospitality while celebrating the assassination of our citizens will be removed.”Last month, a deputy secretary of state, Christopher Landau, urged social media users to send him posts critical of Kirk, saying he was “disgusted to see some on social media praising, rationalizing, or making light of the event, and have directed our consular officials to undertake appropriate action”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe administration has previously ramped up efforts to identify and potentially expel thousands of foreign students it accuses of participating in unrest in the form of protests against Israel’s mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. The administration has also required foreign visitors to make their social media accounts public so that they can be checked before they are allowed to enter the land of the free.In recent months, the administration has expelled South Africa’s ambassador to the US for comments critical of Trump, revoked a visa for Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas to attend the United Nations General Assembly in New York and cancelled visas of the visas for British punk-rap duo Bob Vylan.The government has also said it is reviewing the status of the more than 55 million holders of visas to enter the US for potential violations of its standards.Those actions have been criticized by civil rights groups as blatant violations of constitutional protections for freedom of speech, which apply to anyone in the US, not just citizens. More