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

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

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

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

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      Trump news at a glance: president shrugs off ill health rumours as ‘fake news’

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      Donald Trump has dismissed speculation that he is in ill health, saying he was busy on the Labor Day weekend giving media interviews and visiting his Virginia golf course.“I was very active over the weekend,” Trump, 79, told reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday. Asked about rumours on social media that he may have died, he called them “fake news”.The president complained that he had done several news conferences last week “then I didn’t do any for two days and they said ‘there must be something wrong with him’.”“It’s so fake. ‘Is he OK, how’s he feeling, what’s wrong?’”Speculation about his health swirled on X over the weekend, with posts citing his lack of a public schedule late last week and a JD Vance interview in which the vice-president told USA Today he was confident the president was “in good shape” but suggested he was prepared to step in if anything happened to Trump.Here’s the day’s Trump administration news at a glance.Trump illegally deployed national guard to LA, court rulesA judge has found the Trump administration’s use of national guard troops during southern California immigration enforcement protests was illegal.Judge Charles Breyer ruled on Tuesday that the administration violated federal law by sending troops to accompany federal agents on immigration raids. The judge did not require the remaining troops withdrawn, however.Read the full storyIce obtains access to Israeli-made spywareUS immigration agents will have access to one of the world’s most sophisticated hacking tools after a decision by the Trump administration to move ahead with a contract with Paragon Solutions, a company founded in Israel which makes spyware that can be used to hack into any mobile phone, including encrypted applications.Read the full storyUS House committee releases more than 33,000 pages of Jeffrey Epstein filesThe US House of Representatives oversight committee released thousands of pages of records related to the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein from the justice department.The 33,000 pages included years-old court filings related to Epstein and his former associate Ghislaine Maxwell as well as what appears to be body-cam footage from police searches and police interviews.The release on Tuesday comes as the Trump administration has been embroiled in months of controversy over its decision not to release additional files in the case.Read the full storyTrump announces Space Command HQ will switch to Alabama from ColoradoDonald Trump made his first public appearance in a week on Tuesday to announce that the US Space Command (Spacecom) headquarters, which is tasked with leading national security operations in space, would be in the Republican stronghold of Alabama.Flanked by Republican senators and members of Congress at a White House news conference, Trump said Huntsville, Alabama, would be the new location of the space command.The move reverses a Biden administration decision to put the facility at its current temporary headquarters in Democratic-leaning Colorado.Read the full storyAmy Coney Barrett defends US abortion ruling in memoirThe conservative supreme court justice Amy Coney Barrett, whose controversial fast-track confirmation at the end of Trump’s first presidency led directly to the panel’s vote to strike down abortion rights nationally, has expressed in a new memoir her belief that the ruling “respected the choice” of the American people.Barrett was paid a $2m advance for her book, Listening to the Law, according to CNN, which obtained a copy and published brief extracts on Tuesday, a week before its 9 September publication.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      A US appeals court has allowed US federal trade commissioner Rebecca Slaughter, a Democrat, to resume her role at the agency, as Donald Trump tries to remove her from office.

      Jerry Nadler, a Democratic representative from New York, will retire next year after 34 years in Congress.

      One of the world’s most prominent hedge fund billionaires, Ray Dalio, has warned that rising inequality is turning the US into an autocratic state and condemned business leaders for failing to speak out against Trump’s policies.

      Woody Allen has said he was impressed by the acting abilities of Donald Trump when he directed the now-president in the 1998 film Celebrity.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 1 September 2025. More

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      California bill requires families to be alerted of immigration agents on school campuses

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      California lawmakers have passed a bill requiring schools to alert families and teachers when immigration enforcement authorities are on campuses as the Trump administration continues its aggressive mass deportation campaign.Under the bill, K-12 schools, state universities and community colleges must notify students, faculty and staff, “similar to early warning systems in place for other campus emergencies”, according to a statement from state senator Sasha Renée Pérez, who authored the legislation.It now heads to Gavin Newsom, who has until 12 October to sign it into law. The legislation would take effect immediately if signed and remain in effect until 2031.“With students returning to school, this legislation is more important than ever,” Pérez, the chair of the senate education committee, said in a statement.“In the face of mass deportations, raids and immigration enforcement authorities showing up at schools, the Safe Act can help inform and empower school communities to make the best decisions about their safety and their family’s safety,” she said.The bill comes as the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown has thrown communities into turmoil, and immigration agents have arrested people outside schools and in shopping centers. State lawmakers passed a slate of proposals in response to the crackdown on Tuesday, and advanced bills banning immigration authorities from entering nonpublic areas of school or hospital grounds without a warrant.“Students cannot learn unless they feel safe,” Democratic assemblymember Al Muratsuchi said. “For decades we had a bipartisan agreement to keep educational institutions, schools, campuses, free from immigration enforcement activities.”The legislation was backed by Tony Thurmond, the state superintendent of public instruction, who oversees California’s public school system.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Our immigrant families are living in fear and our time to act is limited. The school year has begun, and now is the time to make decisive efforts to protect our communities and maintain schools as a safe place for learning,” Thurmond said.Other Democratic-led states introduced legislation this year aimed at protecting immigrants in their homes, at work and during police encounters amid Trump’s mass deportation plans.As the school year began at Los Angeles unified last month, officials urged immigration authorities not to conduct enforcement activity near campuses during the school day. The school district, which is the country’s second-largest, includes approximately 30,000 immigrant students, an estimated quarter of whom are without legal status, according to the teachers’ union.In August, federal immigration agents detained a 15-year-old boy at gunpoint outside a Los Angeles high school, a case that has drawn widespread outrage in the city. More

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      US appeals court reinstates FTC commissioner fired by Trump

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      A divided US appeals court on Tuesday allowed US Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter, a Democrat, to resume her role at the agency, as Donald Trump tries to remove her from office.In a 2-1 decision, the District of Columbia circuit court of appeals allowed a lower court decision in favor of Slaughter to take effect, rejecting the Trump administration’s request to delay the ruling during its appeal.The court said that FTC commissioners may not be fired by a president without cause, saying that the law on this point has been clear for nearly a century.“The government is not likely to succeed on appeal because any ruling in its favor from this court would have to defy binding, on-point, and repeatedly preserved supreme court precedent,” two judges wrote in the majority opinion.A third judge, Trump appointee Neomi Rao, dissented, saying that federal courts likely have no authority “to order the reinstatement of an officer removed by the president”.Slaughter said on Tuesday that she was heartened by the ruling and that Trump is “not above the law”.“I’m very eager to get back first thing tomorrow to the work I was entrusted to do on behalf of the American people,” Slaughter said in an emailed statement.The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.The FTC enforces consumer protection and antitrust laws.Trump had appointed Slaughter to her first term on the FTC in 2018. Joe Biden designated her as the FTC’s acting chair in January 2021, and Biden appointed her to a second term in 2023, which is to end in September 2029.A federal judge ruled in July that the Trump administration’s attempt to remove Slaughter did not comply with removal protections in federal law.Under the FTC’s bipartisan structure, no more than three of the five commissioners can come from the same party. Congress placed restrictions on the hiring and firing of commissioners in an effort to insulate the agency from partisan politics.Trump fired the two Democratic commissioners on the FTC in March, in a major test for the independence of regulatory agencies.The dispute over Trump’s firing of Slaughter and fellow commissioner Alvaro Bedoya will likely end up before the supreme court, which ruled 90 years ago that FTC commissioners may be dismissed only for good cause, such as neglecting their duties. Bedoya formally resigned in June to take another job and is not part of the case. More

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      Trump makes false claims about US tariffs revenue and says White House trash video is ‘AI-generated’ – live

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      Following Donald Trump’s announcement that he is moving US Space Command headquarters from Colorado to Alabama, in part, he suggested, to punish Colorado for using vote-by-mail, the president took questions from reporters in the White House pool for the first time in a week. Several of his answers were false or misleading.

      Asked to comment on the federal appeals court ruling last week that most of his tariffs are illegal, Trump falsely claimed that the US has taken in trillions of dollars” because of the tariffs. Actual tariff revenue in 2025 is about $115bn, as the economist Justin Wolfers has pointed out, which has been paid by American importers, not, as Trump claims, other countries. The president said that the administration will be asking the supreme court to issue an expedited ruling to reverse the appeals court finding that he exceeded his authority under the 1977 International Economic Emergency Act by imposing tariffs without the consent of Congress.

      While dismissing rumors about his health, prompted by his sudden lack of public appearances, and a persistent bruise on his right hand that was again covered by makeup on Tuesday, Trump was shown video of a garbage bag being tossed out of an upper floor of the White House over the weekend and claimed that it must have been “AI-generated”, since, he said, the windows are too heavy to lift and “sealed”. But the White House has already acknowledged that the video was genuine and said that contractors had thrown the material out the window.

      On his deployment of troops in Los Angeles, Trump was asked to respond to the ruling from a federal judge in California on Tuesday that the use of troops to enforce the law was illegal and must stop. He bristled at the question, accusing the reporter who asked him of making “a statement”, and of leaving out what he said was an important detail. “The judge said that you can leave the 300 people that you already have in place. They can stay. They can remain. They can do what they have to do”, the president claimed.In fact, Judge Charles Breyer ruled that the troops Trump ordered to Los Angeles had clearly violated the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, prohibiting the military from being used for law enforcement, and issued an injunction blocking them from carrying out any such activities from now on.Referring to the Trump administration, the judge wrote: “at Defendants’ orders and contrary to Congress’s explicit instruction, federal troops executed the laws. The evidence at trial established that Defendants systematically used armed soldiers (whose identity was often obscured by protective armor) and military vehicles to set up protective perimeters and traffic blockades, engage in crowd control, and otherwise demonstrate a military presence in and around Los Angeles. In short, Defendants violated the Posse Comitatus Act.”The 300 National Guard troops who remain stationed in Los Angeles, the judge wrote: “have already been improperly trained as to what activities they can and cannot engage in under the Posse Comitatus Act. Further, President Trump’s recent executive orders and public statements regarding the National Guard raise serious concerns as to whether he intends to order troops to violate the Posse Comitatus Act elsewhere in California.”As a result, Breyer ordered, the administration is now “enjoined from deploying, ordering, instructing, training, or using the National Guard currently deployed in California, and any military troops heretofore deployed in California, to execute the laws, including but not limited to engaging in arrests, apprehensions, searches, seizures, security patrols, traffic control, crowd control, riot control, evidence collection, interrogation, or acting as informants”.
      The US military has conducted “a lethal strike” against an alleged “drug vessel” from Venezuela, the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has announced amid growing tensions between Washington and Caracas.Donald Trump trailed the announcement during an address at the White House on Tuesday afternoon, telling reporters the US had “just, over the last few minutes, literally shot out … a drug-carrying boat”.“And there’s more where that came from. We have a lot of drugs pouring into our country,” the US president added. “We took it out,” he said of the boat.Shortly after, Rubio offered further details of the incident on social media, tweeting that the military had “conducted a strike in the southern Caribbean against a drug vessel which had departed from Venezuela and was being operated by a designated narco-terrorist organization”.It was not immediately clear what kind of vessel had been targeted, or, crucially, if the incident had taken place inside the South American country’s territorial waters.John Thune, the Republican Senate majority leader, has warned Democrats that he may move to change the chamber’s rules around confirmations if they do not agree to more quickly approve Donald Trump’s nominees.With the exception of secretary of state Marco Rubio, Democrats have forced time-consuming roll call votes on every single executive nominee Trump has made since taking office in January. Under previous administrations, including Joe Biden and Trump’s first term, senators from both parties agreed to confirm some nominees, typically for less controversial positions, by unanimous voice votes.In a floor speech on Tuesday, Thune warned that he may go ahead with plans to change Senate rules to prevent the Democrats from forcing votes on every nominee.“I’m here to tell my Democrat colleagues that their historic obstruction cannot continue”, he said, adding that 302 nominees were awaiting confirmation.“If Democrats continue to obstruct, if they continue to drag out confirmation of every single one of the nominations of a duly elected president, if they continue to slow the Senate’s business to such a drastic degree, then we’re going to have to take steps to get this process back on a reasonable footing”.Democrats have countered by arguing that Trump’s appointees are not qualified, and that they will not support a president who has tried to usurp Congress’s authorities on matters such as spending since taking office.“Historically bad nominees deserve a historic level of scrutiny by Senate Democrats”, minority leader Chuck Schumer said last month.Following Donald Trump’s announcement that he is moving US Space Command headquarters from Colorado to Alabama, in part, he suggested, to punish Colorado for using vote-by-mail, the president took questions from reporters in the White House pool for the first time in a week. Several of his answers were false or misleading.

      Asked to comment on the federal appeals court ruling last week that most of his tariffs are illegal, Trump falsely claimed that the US has taken in trillions of dollars” because of the tariffs. Actual tariff revenue in 2025 is about $115bn, as the economist Justin Wolfers has pointed out, which has been paid by American importers, not, as Trump claims, other countries. The president said that the administration will be asking the supreme court to issue an expedited ruling to reverse the appeals court finding that he exceeded his authority under the 1977 International Economic Emergency Act by imposing tariffs without the consent of Congress.

      While dismissing rumors about his health, prompted by his sudden lack of public appearances, and a persistent bruise on his right hand that was again covered by makeup on Tuesday, Trump was shown video of a garbage bag being tossed out of an upper floor of the White House over the weekend and claimed that it must have been “AI-generated”, since, he said, the windows are too heavy to lift and “sealed”. But the White House has already acknowledged that the video was genuine and said that contractors had thrown the material out the window.

      On his deployment of troops in Los Angeles, Trump was asked to respond to the ruling from a federal judge in California on Tuesday that the use of troops to enforce the law was illegal and must stop. He bristled at the question, accusing the reporter who asked him of making “a statement”, and of leaving out what he said was an important detail. “The judge said that you can leave the 300 people that you already have in place. They can stay. They can remain. They can do what they have to do”, the president claimed.In fact, Judge Charles Breyer ruled that the troops Trump ordered to Los Angeles had clearly violated the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, prohibiting the military from being used for law enforcement, and issued an injunction blocking them from carrying out any such activities from now on.Referring to the Trump administration, the judge wrote: “at Defendants’ orders and contrary to Congress’s explicit instruction, federal troops executed the laws. The evidence at trial established that Defendants systematically used armed soldiers (whose identity was often obscured by protective armor) and military vehicles to set up protective perimeters and traffic blockades, engage in crowd control, and otherwise demonstrate a military presence in and around Los Angeles. In short, Defendants violated the Posse Comitatus Act.”The 300 National Guard troops who remain stationed in Los Angeles, the judge wrote: “have already been improperly trained as to what activities they can and cannot engage in under the Posse Comitatus Act. Further, President Trump’s recent executive orders and public statements regarding the National Guard raise serious concerns as to whether he intends to order troops to violate the Posse Comitatus Act elsewhere in California.”As a result, Breyer ordered, the administration is now “enjoined from deploying, ordering, instructing, training, or using the National Guard currently deployed in California, and any military troops heretofore deployed in California, to execute the laws, including but not limited to engaging in arrests, apprehensions, searches, seizures, security patrols, traffic control, crowd control, riot control, evidence collection, interrogation, or acting as informants”.
      The coalition behind the “No Kings” rally have announced another mass protest set for 18 October.The nationwide protest that turned out hundreds of thousands of people is rooted in Trump’s threats to send militarized forces into different American cities and his detention and encampment of immigrants, the organizers say.“I would love to receive calls from governors and mayors saying they need help” Trump said about deploying national guard across the country while in the Oval Office. “We’ll help them, we have a lot of people, we have a great military force.”Trump said “he would be honored” to take a call from Illinois governor JB Pritzker to send national guard to his state.“I would love to have governor Pritzker call me”, Trump said. I’d gain respect for him and say we do have a problem, and we’d love to send in the troops, because you know what the people they have to be protected.”Trump said because of the national guard roaming around DC, new restaurants will open up in the city.“Washington DC is a safe zone right now, it’s a safe city” he said. “This took place in 12 days, now it’s 15 days, but three days ago it became what’s known as a safe zone”.“We took 1,600 people out,” Trump said.Pool reporters asked Trump about the latest on Russia-Ukraine talks, and the president shared that both countries had 7,313 soldiers killed over the last week. “For no reason whatsover” Trump said.The president didn’t comment on a potential meeting between Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian president Vladimir Putin.Speaking about the newly relocated Space Command in Huntsville, Alabama, Trump shared the latest on an ambitious missile defense system he dubbed the “golden dome”.The “golden dome” is Trump’s gold-plated take on Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system, though his version would apparently be so impressive that “everybody wants to be a participant in it.”Canada, according to Trump, has already come calling.“Canada called they want to be a part of it, and that’ll be great”, he said. “Canada wants very much to be included in that. Then we’re going to work something out with them.”Trump also took a parting swipe at Colorado, which was hosting Space Command as a temporary headquarters.“I want to thank Colorado. The problem I have with Colorado, one of the big problems, they do mail in voting. They went to all mail in voting. So they have automatically, crooked elections.”Trump says the Space Command relocation promises 30,000 jobs and economic investment that Trump inflated in real-time from “hundreds of millions” to “billions and billions of dollars” because, as he explained, “it can’t be millions”.Trump justified the move by saying it would help America “defend and dominate the high frontier as they call it”.Donald Trump announced that US Space Command headquarters will officially move from Colorado to Huntsville, Alabama.The president declared Huntsville would “forever be known from this point forward as Rocket City” – apparently unaware the Alabama city has held that title since the 1950s thanks to NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.Trump couldn’t resist linking the decision to his electoral performance. “I only won it by about 47 points,” he said about Tennessee, before adding: “I don’t think that influenced my decision, though, right?”Two-term Iowa Republican senator Joni Ernst has decided to officially bow out of a re-election bid.“After a tremendous amount of prayer and reflection, I will not be seeking re-election in 2026”, Ernst said in a video announcement.Ernst is the first woman combat veteran to serve in the Senate, where Republicans hold a narrow 53-47 majority.A group of the US’s leading climate scientists have compiled a withering review of a controversial Trump administration report that downplays the risks of the climate crisis, finding that the document is biased, riddled with errors and fails basic scientific credibility.More than 85 climate experts have contributed to a comprehensive 434-page report that excoriates a US Department of Energy (DOE) document written by five hand-picked fringe researchers that argues that global heating and its resulting consequences have been overstated.The Trump administration report, released in July, contains “pervasive problems with misrepresentation and selective citation of the scientific literature, cherry-picking of data, and faulty or absent statistics”, states the new analysis, which is written in the style of the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports.“This report makes a mockery of science,” said Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University.“It relies on ideas that were rejected long ago, supported by misrepresentations of the body of scientific knowledge, omissions of important facts, arm waving, anecdotes and confirmation bias. This report makes it clear DOE has no interest in engaging with the scientific community.”Amy Coney Barrett, the conservative supreme court justice whose controversial fast-track confirmation at the end of Donald Trump’s first presidency led directly to the panel’s vote to strike down abortion rights nationally, has expressed in a new memoir her belief that the ruling “respected the choice” of the American people.Barrett was paid a $2m advance for her book Listening to the Law, according to CNN, which obtained a copy and published brief extracts on Tuesday, a week before its 9 September publication.“[T]he court’s role is to respect the choices that the people have agreed upon, not to tell them what they should agree to,” Barrett writes, according to CNN. The outlet framed Barrett’s comment as reflecting her belief that her predecessors’ 7-2 vote in Roe v Wade had “usurped the will of the American people”.Rudy Giuliani’s hospital discharge comes a day after Donald Trump said he will award him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Associated Press reported.The decision places the award on a man once lauded for leading New York after the September 11, 2001, attacks and later sanctioned by courts and disbarred for amplifying false claims about the 2020 US presidential election. Giuliani, the former New York mayor, was also criminally charged in two states; he has denied wrongdoing.Trump on his Truth Social platform called Giuliani the “greatest Mayor in the history of New York City, and an equally great American Patriot”.Rudy Giuliani has been discharged from the hospital and is “progressing well” following a car collision in New Hampshire on Saturday, his spokesperson Ted Goodman said.“The mayor would like to thank the New Hampshire State Police, paramedics, Elliot Hospital, and all the physicians and nurses who provided incredible care” Goodman added. More

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      Ice obtains access to Israeli-made spyware that can hack phones and encrypted apps

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      US immigration agents will have access to one of the world’s most sophisticated hacking tools after a decision by the Trump administration to move ahead with a contract with Paragon Solutions, a company founded in Israel which makes spyware that can be used to hack into any mobile phone – including encrypted applications.The Department of Homeland Security first entered into a contract with Paragon, now owned by a US firm, in late 2024, under the Biden administration. But the $2m contract was put on hold pending a compliance review to make sure it adhered to an executive order that restricts the US government’s use of spyware, Wired reported at the time.That pause has now been lifted, according to public procurement documents, which list US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) as the contracting agency.It means that one of the most powerful stealth cyberweapons ever created – which was produced outside the US – is now in the hands of an agency that has repeatedly been accused by civil and human rights groups of violating people’s due process rights.The story was first reported by the journalist Jack Poulson on his All-Source Intelligence Substack newsletter.Neither Paragon nor Ice immediately responded to a request for comment.When it is successfully deployed against a target, the hacking software – called Graphite – can hack into any phone. By essentially taking control of the mobile phone, the user – in this case, Ice – can not only track an individual’s whereabouts, read their messages, look at their photographs, but it can also open and read information held on encrypted applications, like WhatsApp or Signal. Spyware like Graphite can also be used as a listening device, through the manipulation of the phone’s recorder.An executive order signed by the Biden administration sought to establish some guardrails around the US government’s use of spyware. It said that the US “shall not make operational use of commercial spyware that poses significant counterintelligence or security risks to the United States government or significant risks of improper use by a foreign government or foreign person”. The Biden administration also took the extraordinary step of placing one of Paragon’s rival spyware makers, NSO Group, on a commerce department blacklist, saying the company had knowingly supplied foreign governments to “maliciously target” the phones of dissidents, human rights activists and journalists.Paragon has sought to differentiate itself from NSO Group. It has said that, unlike NSO – which previously sold its spyware to Saudi Arabia and other regimes – that it only does business with democracies. It has also said it has a no tolerance policy and will cut off government clients who use the spyware to target members of civil society, such as journalists. Paragon refuses to disclose who its clients are and has said it does not have insight into how its clients use the technology against targets.Spyware makers like Paragon and NSO have said their products are intended to be used to prevent crime and terrorist attacks. But both companies’ software has been used in the past to target innocent people, including individuals who have been perceived to be government enemies.John Scott-Railton, a senior research at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, who is one of the world’s leading experts on cases in which spyware like Graphite has been abused by governments, said in a statement that such tools “were designed for dictatorships, not democracies built on liberty and protection of individual rights”.“Invasive, secret hacking power is corrupting. That’s why there’s a growing pile of spyware scandals in democracies, including with Paragon’s Graphite,” he said, referring to a controversy in Italy that erupted late last year.Paragon broke off its ties to Italy after it was revealed that 90 people, including journalists and members of civil society, in two dozen countries, had been targeted with the spyware. The individuals who were targeted by the Italian government included human rights activists who have been critical of Italy’s dealings with Libya. Several journalists were also targeted, though it is still unclear who ordered those hacking attacks.The US government has in the past resisted using spyware technology made outside the US because of concerns that any company that sells technology to multiple government agencies around the world represents a potential security risk.“As long as the same mercenary spyware tech is going to multiple governments, there is a baked-in counterintelligence risk. Since all of them now know what secret surveillance tech the US is using, and would have special insights on how to detect it and track what the US is doing with it,” Scott-Railton said. “Short of Paragon cancelling all foreign contracts, I’m not sure how this goes away.”Nadine Farid Johnson, policy director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, which is dedicated to free speech advocacy, said news of the Ice contract compounded civil liberty concerns surrounding the “rapid and dramatic expansion of Ice’s budget and authority”. She also called on Congress to step in and limit the circumstances in which spyware could be deployed.“Spyware like Paragon’s Graphite poses a profound threat to free speech and privacy,” Farid Johnson said. “It has already been used against journalists, human rights advocates, and political dissidents around the world. The quiet lifting of the stop work order also raises the troubling prospect that parts of the executive branch are acting without adherence to the government’s own vetting requirements.” More

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      US conducts ‘lethal strike’ against drug boat from Venezuela, Rubio says

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      The US military has conducted “a lethal strike” against an alleged “drug vessel” from Venezuela, the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has announced amid growing tensions between Washington and Caracas.Donald Trump trailed the announcement during an address at the White House on Tuesday afternoon, telling reporters the US had “just, over the last few minutes, literally shot out … a drug-carrying boat”.“And there’s more where that came from. We have a lot of drugs pouring into our country,” the US president added. “We took it out,” he said of the boat.Shortly after, Rubio offered further details of the incident on social media, tweeting that the military had “conducted a strike in the southern Caribbean against a drug vessel which had departed from Venezuela and was being operated by a designated narco-terrorist organization”.It was not immediately clear what kind of vessel had been targeted, or, crucially, if the incident had taken place inside the South American country’s territorial waters.“Everything is hinging on where this strike took place,” said Geoff Ramsey, a senior fellow on Venezuela and Colombia from the Atlantic Council’s Latin America Centre.“If this strike took place in Venezuelan waters, I think that will trigger a massive escalation from the Venezuelan side. However, from what I’ve heard … this took place in international waters, and that suggests that ultimately this is about drug interdiction.”Ramsey added: “This is a target-rich environment, after all. There are plenty of go-fast boats transporting cocaine through the southern Caribbean, and I think ultimately Washington is more interested in signalling than in actually engaging in any kind of military action inside Venezuela territory.”Even so, the development will add to fears over a possible military clash between Venezuelan and US troops after the US sent war ships and marines into the Caribbean last month as part of what Trump allies touted as an attempt to force Venezuela’s authoritarian leader, Nicolás Maduro, from power.Officially, Trump’s naval buildup is part of US efforts to combat Latin American drug traffickers, including a Venezuelan group called the Cartel de los Soles (Cartel of the Suns) which Trump officials accuse Maduro of leading.Last month the US announced a $50m reward for Maduro’s capture – twice the bounty once offered for Osama bin Laden. In July, Trump signed a secret directive greenlighting military force against Latin American cartels considered terrorist organizations, including the Venezuelan group.Republican party hawks and Trump allies have celebrated those moves as proof the White House is determined to end Maduro’s 12-year rule. “Your days are seriously numbered,” Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn, declared recently, encouraging Maduro to flee to Moscow.Maduro’s allies have also claimed that a regime-change operation is afoot, with Maduro himself this week warning that White House hardliners were seeking to lead Trump into “a terrible war” that would harm the entire region.“Mr President Donald Trump, you need to take care because Marco Rubio wants to stain your hands with blood – with South American, Caribbean blood [and] Venezuelan blood. They want to lead you into a bloodbath … with a massacre against the people of Venezuela,” Maduro said.But many experts are skeptical the US is planning a military intervention. “The idea of there being an invasion, I don’t believe to be true,” James Story, the US’s top diplomat for Venezuela from 2018 to 2023, said last week. He said Trump generally opposed “meddling militarily in the affairs of other countries”.Ramsey agreed. ”This is not a deployment focused on regime change. This may be an attempt to signal to disaffected elements of the military in Venezuela that now is the time to rise up against Maduro. But we’ve seen that approach be tried and ​fail repeatedly over ​the last 25 years.”Ramsey said the tough talk belied the fact that Trump had actually relaxed its stance towards Venezuela. Sanctions had been softened in recent weeks. The Trump administration was “actively coordinating with ​the Maduro regime on deportation flights”, about two of which are landing at Venezuela’s main international airport each week.​Ramsey believed that the military mobilization was partly an attempt “to throw some red meat to a part of Trump’s base that has been dissatisfied with the reality of sanctions relief” and what it perceived as his soft policy towards Maduro. More