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    Trump administration reportedly suspends $200m in grants to UCLA

    The Trump administration is suspending some research grants to the University of California, Los Angeles, claiming “antisemitism and bias”, the school announced in a statement on Thursday.“UCLA received a notice that the federal government, through its control of the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other agencies, is suspending certain research funding to UCLA,” Julio Frenk, the university chancellor, said in a letter to the campus. The move means “life-saving research” will be defunded, he said.“It is a loss for Americans across the nation whose work, health, and future depend on the groundbreaking work we do.”Frenk did not say the value of the grants, but the Los Angeles Times reported that roughly 300 grants amounting to nearly $200m were suspended.The federal government has moved to pull billions of dollars from prominent universities across the US after accusing the institutions of failing to adequately respond to antisemitism during pro-Palestinian protests, and referred some to the Department of Justice. In recent weeks, the Trump administration has reached agreements with Brown University and Columbia University to restore funding and close investigations into the schools.The agreement with Brown requires the institution to commit to nondiscrimination in admissions and programs, and allow the administration access to admissions data. Meanwhile, Columbia’s controversial deal requires it pay more than $220m, expand its Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies, review Middle East curriculum and cut programs promoting “unlawful efforts” related to diversity. Harvard remains in a legal fight with the federal government over its move to freeze billions in federal funds.The news out of UCLA comes days after the school reached a nearly $6.5m settlement in a lawsuit by Jewish students and a professor who said the university allowed antisemitic discrimination to take place on campus during protests last year.Earlier this week, the Department of Justice notified the University of California that its investigation found that UCLA’s response to a protest encampment in spring 2024 was “deliberately indifferent to a hostile environment for Jewish and Israeli students” and that students experienced “severe [and] pervasive” harassment.In his statement about the grant cancellations, Frenk said the university had taken steps to combat antisemitism, and ensure the school is safe and welcoming for all, including the creation of a new Office of Campus and Community Safety and an Initiative to Combat Antisemitism.He also highlighted the university’s history of research, including planetary scientists who search for asteroids that could pose a threat to Earth, a Valley Fever Center and the role researchers played in helping create the internet.“This far-reaching penalty of defunding life-saving research does nothing to address any alleged discrimination,” Frenk wrote. More

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    Seth Meyers on the Epstein conspiracy: ‘This is a crisis of Trump’s making’

    Late-night hosts discussed the ongoing Jeffrey Epstein scandal and the “spite” behind Donald Trump’s impending tariffs.Seth MeyersOn Late Night, Seth Meyers spoke about the theories circulating over the death of Epstein, spurred on by the alleged missing minute from his jail cell video on the night of his death.He said that Trump is not in the right place to be handling it, as he’s “old” and “tired” and just came back from a golfing vacation in Scotland.While there, he opened a private new golf course, which was on the official White House live stream. “They’re not even pretending any more, there’s no separation,” Meyers said.Trump is “tired from all his golfing and self-enrichment” and was recently seen trying not to fall asleep during a press briefing with Mehmet Oz. “Imagine if Joe Biden did this,” he said.Meyers added that “he can’t hear or understand reporters’ questions any more” before playing footage of him getting confused over a recent question about Russia.Trump has been asked why he cut ties with Epstein and recently said he didn’t want to waste people’s time by going through the details. “Please, my man, waste our time!” Meyers said.He then “dug the hole even deeper” and “made it so much worse” by rambling on about Epstein stealing workers from his spa, which he said was one of the best spas in the world. “Stop talking about the spa – is it your safe word?” Meyers asked.But it’s “not just Trump who keeps digging a hole for himself”, there’s also Dan Bongino, an Epstein-obsessed podcaster who is now the deputy director of the FBI.Despite him claiming that the full, unedited tape would be released, experts have said that while it might be “unclear how much time is missing”, this isn’t the full tape after all.“This whole thing is a crisis of Trump’s making,” he said.Stephen ColbertOn The Late Show, Stephen Colbert reminded viewers that it was the last day of July, which means that the “basket of deplorable tariffs are gonna kick in” the day after.Trump had originally claimed he had made 200 deals ready for 1 August but “on the other hand, no he didn’t”, with just eight in place before the deadline.Colbert said that “his demands are insane” and many of the countries are included “just for spite”.This week also saw him revive the presidential fitness test for American schoolchildren so they could be “as fit as President Trump”. It had originally been retired in 2012 for a switch to a focus on individual health rather than athletic feats.Trump signed the executive order flanked by athletes, including former NFL star Lawrence Taylor, who is a registered sex offender. Colbert called it “a brilliant way to distance yourself from the whole Epstein scandal”.This week also saw lawyer Alan Dershowitz, known for clients such as OJ Simpson, Harvey Weinstein and Trump, make further complaints about how he is shunned while in Martha’s Vineyard.He had previously complained that his politics had made him a social pariah, but now he is suing a vendor who refused to serve him pierogi. He was later seen speaking to a police officer about the incident.“They have bigger crimes to investigate, like someone’s houseguest bringing a domestic chardonnay,” Colbert quipped. More

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    Why the US is burning $10m worth of birth control | Moira Donegan

    There are few better metaphors for the receding status of American women than one offered up by the Trump administration at a medical waste disposal facility outside Paris this week: rather than distribute nearly $10m worth of birth control, which had been purchased by USAID and was destined to be given to women in low-income countries, primarily in Africa, the Americans decided to burn it.The incinerated contraceptives included 900,000 birth control implants, 2m doses of injectable long-acting birth control, 2m packs of contraceptive pills and 50,000 IUDs. The medicine is just the latest in the far-reaching fallout from cuts made by the so-called “department of government efficiency,” or Doge, a project in which Elon Musk and a group of his very young, overwhelmingly male acolytes unilaterally slashed congressionally appropriated funding to government programs they did not like. The cuts have been devastating for non-profits that work to improve women’s health and safety worldwide. Sarah Shaw, an associate director at the global family planning group MSI Reproductive Choices, says that the cuts will put women at risk as they strain their health with unplanned pregnancies and seek out illegal abortions; other women who are denied access to birth control will lose out on the opportunities for education, professional development or remunerative work that can help them escape abuse, rise out of poverty, pursue their talents and ambitions and better provide for the children they already have.When MSI attempted to buy the contraceptives, the administration would only accept full price, which the organization couldn’t afford, she said. Several non-profits, including MSI, had offered to pay to ship and repackage the supplies, according to another representative. But the Trump administration refused, partially due to federal rules the prohibit the US from providing such goods to groups that perform, provide referrals for or offer education about abortions. In addition to the cost of purchasing the contraceptives, American taxpayers will now be on the hook for about $167,000 for the cost of burning them.It’s just the latest in a series of signs that the Trump administration is turning against the provision of birth control, particularly the safe, effective and woman-controlled hormonal methods that have been a cornerstone of healthcare policy for decades and which were a precondition of women’s advancement in work and education over the past 60 years.In April, the Trump administration abruptly announced that it was suspending a large swath of the domestic service grants distributed under Title X, the program meant to help low-income Americans access birth control, STD treatment and other sexual and reproductive healthcare. Of the 86 Title X grants awarded for fiscal year 2024, nearly 25% were “temporarily withheld”, mostly based on highly suspect allegations that the grant-receiving institutions – including 13 Planned Parenthood affiliates – had failed to comply with Trump executive orders banning things like DEI programs. Eight states now receive zero Title X dollars: California, Hawaii, Maine, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, Tennessee and Utah. Alaska, Minnesota and Pennsylvania have also lost most of their contraception funding.The domestic cuts – along with the exclusion of Planned Parenthood clinics from Medicaid reimbursements – mean that American women, too, are now facing dramatically greater obstacles to accessing birth control. Clinics that relied on Title X funding are now set to close: 11 Planned Parenthood clinics already have, including in Democratically controlled states like California. Planned Parenthood says that cumulatively, the cuts could lead the organization to close about 200 of its 600 clinics nationwide – a devastating cut to abortion providers in particular that will make a wide range of reproductive services inaccessible to women regardless of where they live.But the Trump administration is not merely forcing these programs for women’s health and dignity go up in flames. They are redirecting them to better suit their preferred cultural outcome: one in which women’s lives, ambitions and talents are all subordinated to the task of childbearing. The New York Times reported last month that the White House is redirecting Title X funds that once went to birth control to instead fund an “infertility training center” and programs in something called “restorative reproductive medicine”. If Title X’s original aim was to help American women control their fertility so as to build healthier families and to enable them to pursue other aims – like learning or work – in the new administration’s version, the program exists mainly to encourage women to have more children. But the switch should not be seen as a genuine investment in infertility, an often devastating condition with which many Americans struggle. Because the new Title X priorities do not, by and large, direct more money to IVF. Trump promised, on the campaign trail, to make IVF free. But the procedure, which has opponents on the Christian right, is not included in the administration’s new priority of “restorative” reproductive medicine, a practice that avoids controversial fertility treatments; instead, doctors seek the “root cause” of a woman’s infertility, which may involve telling them they can conceive with proper diet and exercise.In government, money allocation is a statement of values. With its dramatic cuts to contraceptive funding at home and abroad, the Trump administration is making its values clear. It does not value women’s health; it does not value their dignity, their control over their own lives, their aspirations, their earning potential, their desire to be freed from ignorance, or poverty, or the abuse they suffer under the hands of husbands and fathers. It does not value their ability to control their own bodies, and by extension, it does not value their ability to enter the public sphere. It does not value their dreams, their gifts, their hard work or invention or aspiration to anything other than making babies. American women, like women everywhere, depend on birth control to live lives of freedom and to pursue their dreams. But because of the Trump administration, those dreams are going up in smoke.

    Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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    I spent decades at Columbia. I’m withdrawing my fall course due to its deal with Trump | Rashid Khalidi

    Dear Acting President Shipman,I am writing you an open letter since you have seen fit to communicate the recent decisions of the board of trustees and the administration in a similar fashion.These decisions, taken in close collaboration with the Trump administration, have made it impossible for me to teach modern Middle East history, the field of my scholarship and teaching for more than 50 years, 23 of them at Columbia. Although I have retired, I was scheduled to teach a large lecture course on this topic in the fall as a “special lecturer”, but I cannot do so under the conditions Columbia has accepted by capitulating to the Trump administration in June.Specifically, it is impossible to teach this course (and much else) in light of Columbia’s adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism. The IHRA definition deliberately, mendaciously and disingenuously conflates Jewishness with Israel, so that any criticism of Israel, or indeed description of Israeli policies, becomes a criticism of Jews. Citing its potential chilling effect, a co-author of the IHRA definition, Professor Kenneth Stern, has repudiated its current uses. Yet Columbia has announced that it will serve as a guide in disciplinary proceedings.Under this definition of antisemitism, which absurdly conflates criticism of a nation-state, Israel, and a political ideology, Zionism, with the ancient evil of Jew-hatred, it is impossible with any honesty to teach about topics such as the history of the creation of Israel, and the ongoing Palestinian Nakba, culminating in the genocide being perpetrated by Israel in Gaza with the connivance and support of the US and much of western Europe.The Armenian genocide, the nature of the absolute monarchies and military dictatorships that blight most of the Arab world, the undemocratic theocracy in Iran, the incipient dictatorial regime in Türkiye, the fanaticism of Wahhabism: all of these are subject to detailed analysis in my course lectures and readings. However, a simple description of the discriminatory nature of Israel’s 2018 Nation State Law – which states that only the Jewish people have the right of self-determination in Israel, half of whose subjects are Palestinian – or of the apartheid nature of its control over millions of Palestinians who have been under military occupation for 58 years would be impossible in a Middle East history course under the IHRA definition of antisemitism.It is not only faculty members’ academic freedom and freedom of speech that is infringed upon by Columbia’s capitulation to Trump’s diktat. Teaching assistants would be seriously constrained in leading discussion sections, as would students in their questions and discussions, by the constant fear that informers would snitch on them to the fearsome apparatus that Columbia has erected to punish speech critical of Israel, and to crack down on alleged discrimination – which at this moment in history almost invariably amounts simply to opposition to this genocide. Scores of students and many faculty members have been subjected to these kangaroo courts, students such as Mahmoud Khalil have been snatched from their university housing, and Columbia has now promised to render this repressive system even more draconian and opaque.You have stated that no “red lines” have been crossed by these decisions. However, Columbia has appointed a vice-provost initially tasked with surveilling Middle Eastern studies, and it has ordained that faculty and staff must submit to “trainings” on antisemitism from the likes of the Anti-Defamation League, for whom virtually any critique of Zionism or Israel is antisemitic, and Project Shema, whose trainings link many anti-Zionist critiques to antisemitism. It has accepted an “independent” monitor of “compliance” of faculty and student behavior from a firm that in June 2025 hosted an event in honor of Israel. According to Columbia’s agreement with the Trump administration, this “Monitor will have timely access to interview all Agreement-related individuals, and visit all Agreement-related facilities, trainings, transcripts of Agreement-related meetings and disciplinary hearings, and reviews”. Classrooms are pointedly NOT excluded from possible visits from these external non academics.The idea that the teaching, syllabuses and scholarship of some of the most prominent academics in their fields should be vetted by such a vice-provost, such “trainers” or an outside monitor from such a firm is abhorrent. It constitutes the antithesis of the academic freedom that you have disingenuously claimed will not be infringed by this shameful capitulation to the anti-intellectual forces animating the Trump administration.I regret deeply that Columbia’s decisions have obliged me to deprive the nearly 300 students who have registered for this popular course – as many hundreds of others have done for more than two decades – of the chance to learn about the history of the modern Middle East this fall. Although I cannot do anything to compensate them fully for depriving them of the opportunity to take this course, I am planning to offer a public lecture series in New York focused on parts of this course that will be streamed and available for later viewing. Proceeds, if any, will go to Gaza’s universities, every one of which has been destroyed by Israel with US munitions, a war crime about which neither Columbia nor any other US university has seen fit to say a single word.Columbia’s capitulation has turned a university that was once a site of free inquiry and learning into a shadow of its former self, an anti-university, a gated security zone with electronic entry controls, a place of fear and loathing, where faculty and students are told from on high what they can teach and say, under penalty of severe sanctions. Disgracefully, all of this is being done to cover up one of the greatest crimes of this century, the ongoing genocide in Gaza, a crime in which Columbia’s leadership is now fully complicit. – Rashid Khalidi

    Rashid Khalidi is the Edward Said professor emeritus of modern Arab studies at Columbia University and author of The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine More

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    Judge rules against Trump and extends deportation protections for 60,000 immigrants

    A federal judge has ruled against the Trump administration’s plans and extended temporary protected status (TPS) for 60,000 people from Central America and Asia, including people from Nepal, Honduras and Nicaragua.TPS is a protection that can be granted by the homeland security secretary to people of various nationalities who are in the United States, preventing them from being deported and allowing them to work.The Trump administration has aggressively been seeking to remove the protection, thus making more people eligible for removal. It’s part of a wider effort by the administration to carry out mass deportations of immigrants.Homeland security secretary Kristi Noem can extend TPS to immigrants in the US if conditions in their homelands are deemed unsafe to return due to a natural disaster, political instability or other dangerous conditions. Noem had ruled to end protections for tens of thousands of Hondurans and Nicaraguans after determining that conditions in their homelands no longer warranted them.The secretary said the two countries had made “significant progress” in recovering from 1998’s Hurricane Mitch, one of the deadliest Atlantic storms in history.The designation for an estimated 7,000 from Nepal was scheduled to end on 5 August while protections allowing 51,000 Hondurans and nearly 3,000 Nicaraguans who have been in the US for more than 25 years were set to expire on 8 September.US district judge Trina L. Thompson in San Francisco did not set an expiration date but rather ruled to keep the protections in place while the case proceeds. The next hearing is on 18 November.In a sharply written order, Thompson said the administration had ended the migrant status protections without an “objective review of the country conditions” such as political violence in Honduras and the impact of recent hurricanes and storms in Nicaragua.If the protections were not extended, immigrants could suffer from loss of employment, health insurance, be separated from their families, and risk being deported to other countries where they have no ties, she wrote, adding that the termination of TPS for people from Nepal, Honduras, and Nicaragua would result in a $1.4bn loss to the economy.“The freedom to live fearlessly, the opportunity of liberty, and the American dream. That is all Plaintiffs seek. Instead, they are told to atone for their race, leave because of their names, and purify their blood,” Thompson said.Lawyers for the National TPS Alliance argued that Noem’s decisions were predetermined by President Donald Trump’s campaign promises and motivated by racial animus.Thompson agreed, saying that statements Noem and Trump have perpetuated the “discriminatory belief that certain immigrant populations will replace the white population.”“Color is neither a poison nor a crime,” she wrote.The advocacy group that filed the lawsuit said designees usually have a year to leave the country, but in this case, they got far less.“They gave them two months to leave the country. It’s awful,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, an attorney for plaintiffs at a hearing Tuesday.Honduras foreign minister Javier Bu Soto said via the social platform X that the ruling was “good news.”“The decision recognizes that the petitioners are looking to exercise their right to live in freedom and without fear while the litigation plays out,” the country’s top diplomat wrote. He said the government would continue supporting Hondurans in the United States through its consular network.Meanwhile in Nicaragua, hundreds of thousands have fled into exile as the government shuttered thousands of nongovernmental organizations and imprisoned political opponents. Nicaragua President Daniel Ortega and his wife and co-President Rosario Murillo have consolidated complete control in Nicaragua since Ortega returned to power two decades ago.The broad effort by the Republican administration’s crackdown on immigration has been going after people who are in the country illegally but also by removing protections that have allowed people to live and work in the US on a temporary basis.The Trump administration has already terminated protections for about 350,000 Venezuelans, 500,000 Haitians, more than 160,000 Ukrainians and thousands of people from Afghanistan and Cameroon. Some have pending lawsuits at federal courts.The government argued that Noem has clear authority over the program and that her decisions reflect the administration’s objectives in the areas of immigration and foreign policy.“It is not meant to be permanent,” justice department attorney William Weiland said. More

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    Trump news at a glance: president unleashes slew of new tariff rates for trading partners

    Donald Trump has signed an executive order placing tariffs on dozens of US trading partners just hours before the 1 August deadline he set for deals to be done.The new tariffs, the next step in his trade agenda that will test the global economy, are set to go into effect in seven days. The extension reflects the government’s need for more time to harmonize the tariff rates, AP reports, according to a senior official who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity.The order applies to 68 countries and the 27-member European Union. Rates were set at 25% for India’s US-bound exports, 20% for Taiwan, 19% for Thailand and 15% for South Korea.Trump also increased duties on Canadian goods to 35% from 25% for all products not covered by the US-Mexico-Canada trade agreement, but gave Mexico a 90-day reprieve from higher tariffs to negotiate a broader trade deal. Trump had threatened on Wednesday that Ottawa’s move to recognise a Palestinian state would make agreeing a trade deal “very hard”.Asian shares fell on Friday after the tariffs announcement.Read on for more on tariffs and other key US politics news of the day:Trump imposes tariffs of 10% to 41% on dozens of countries, hours before deadlineUS president Donald Trump has signed an executive order imposing reciprocal tariffs ranging from 10% to 41% on imports from dozens of countries and foreign locations, as he extended the deadline for a tariff deal with Mexico by another 90 days.Rates were set at 25% for India’s US-bound exports, 20% for Taiwan and 30% for South Africa ahead of Trump’s self-imposed deadline to strike trade deals with countries around the world by 1 August. Brazil’s tariff rate was set at 10%, but a previous order signed by Trump placed a 40% tariff on some Brazilian goods, to punish the country for prosecuting its former president, Jair Bolsonaro, for trying to overturn an election he lost and inspiring his supporters to storm the seat of government.Separately, the White House announced that Canadian imports will face tariffs of 35%, not the current 25%. Trump had threatened on Wednesday that Ottawa’s move to recognise a Palestinian state would make agreeing a trade deal “very hard”.Read the full storyTrump signs order increasing tariffs on Canadian goods from 25% to 35%Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday increasing tariffs on Canadian goods imported to the United States from 25% to 35%.The new import tax rates goes into effect on Friday, according to a White House factsheet. The tariff would cover all products not covered by the US-Mexico-Canada trade agreement. Goods transshipped to another country to evade the new tariffs would be subject to a transshipment levy of 40%.The decision comes after months of tariff threats from the Trump administration, and escalating trade tensions that have sowed anger in Canada.Read the full storyTrump threatens drug giants with crackdown over pricesDonald Trump has threatened to use “every tool in our arsenal” to crack down on pharmaceutical companies if they fail to cut drug prices for Americans within 60 days.The president wrote to executives at 17 companies on Thursday, demanding they match their US prices for prescription drugs with the lowest price offered in other developed nations.Read the full storyExecutive order brings back presidential fitness test in schoolsDonald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday to bring back the presidential fitness test, a series of physical tests for schoolchildren in the US that was in place for decades but suspended 12 years ago to focus less on competition and more on healthy lifestyles.Read the full storyHegseth aides used polygraphs against colleaguesSenior aides to the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, conducted polygraphs on their own colleagues this spring, in some cases as part of an effort to flush out anyone who leaked to the media and apparently to undercut rivals in others, according to four people familiar with the matter.Read the full storyFema denies grants to Kentucky counties ravaged by stormsThe Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) denied requests for three Kentucky counties affected by severe storms last spring, and deemed the state ineligible for hazard mitigation grants that would help prepare for future disasters.Read the full storyTrump to build ‘beautiful’ $200m ballroom at White HouseThe White House will soon begin construction of a new $200m ballroom to be ready before Donald Trump’s term ends in early 2029.Press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the building will be 90,000 sq ft and will hold up to 650 seats.It will be the latest change introduced to what’s known as “the People’s House” since the Republican president returned to office in January. It also will be the first structural change to the executive mansion itself since the addition of the Truman Balcony in 1948.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

    British singer Jess Glynne says she feels “sick” that the Trump administration was using her music to promote immigration deportations.

    The Pentagon will remove 1,350 national guard troops from Los Angelesoriginally sent to the state by the Trump administration to deal with protests over its immigration policies.

    Donald Trump evaded the question when asked if he agrees with Marjorie Taylor Greene that “what is occurring [in Gaza] is a genocide”. Trump replied: “Oh it’s terrible what’s occurring there, yeah”, before repeating his complaint that “nobody said thank you” when the US donated money to feed the people of Gaza, and his false claim that the recent donation of $30m was $60m.

    Reuters reports the Trump administration has sent a letter to Harvard informing the university it has referred been referred to the Department of Justice, to address allegations of antisemitic discrimination.
    Catching up? Here’s what happened 30 July 2025. More

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    Trump threatens drug giants with crackdown over prices

    Donald Trump has threatened to use “every tool in our arsenal” to crack down on pharmaceutical giants if they fail to cut drug prices for Americans within 60 days.The president wrote to executives at 17 companies on Thursday, demanding they match their US prices for prescription drugs with the lowest price offered in other developed nations.Current prices were an “unacceptable burden” on US families, Trump said, claiming they could be up to three times higher than in other countries.After returning to the White House earlier this year and pledging to bring down drug prices, the president claimed that “most proposals” from the pharmaceutical industry amounted to “more of the same”, accusing firms of seeking to shift blame and requesting policies that would pave the way for handouts worths billions of dollars for the sector.“Make no mistake: a collaborative effort towards achieving global pricing parity would be the most effective path for companies, the government, and American patients,” Trump wrote. “But if you refuse to step up we will deploy every tool in our arsenal to protect American families from continued abusive drug pricing practices.“Americans are demanding lower drug prices, and they need them today.”The bosses of Pfizer, AstraZeneca and GSK were among those who received the letters. GSK did not respond to requests for comment. AstraZeneca declined to comment.Pfizer said: “Pfizer is working closely with the Trump administration and Congress on solutions that will increase access and affordability for American patients and enhance the power of the biopharmaceutical innovation ecosystem in the United States. Our discussions have been productive.”Shares in Pfizer slipped 2%, AstraZeneca fell 3.8% and GSK dropped 3.9% during afternoon trading in New York.At the heart of of Trump’s proposal is a status known as “Most Favored Nation”, through which he wants to bind the cost of medications sold in the US to the lowest prices paid elsewhere.The White House is demanding that pharmaceutical companies extend this to drugs used by older people through the government-backed Medicaid health program, as well as new drugs. More