US news

Subterms

    More stories

    • 150 Shares106 Views

      in US Politics

      Hundreds of ‘Workers Over Billionaires’ Labor Day rallies take place across US

      by

      As Labor Day rallies took place across the US, the Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson sharply denounced the Trump administration’s threat to deploy federal troops to the city as part of an immigration crackdown.“No federal troops in the city of Chicago,” said Johnson on Monday to a gathered crowd at the “Workers over Billionaires” demonstration in Chicago’s West Loop neighborhood.Johnson added: “We’re going to defend our democracy … we’re going to protect the humanity of every single person in the city of Chicago.”Monday’s rally in Chicago is one of hundreds of protests organized across the country as part of the national “Workers Over Billionaires” effort, a mass action demanding freedom, fairness and security for workers, and the right to unionize.Demonstrations are taking place in cities large and small, including New York, Houston, Washington DC, and Los Angeles. Smaller cities such as Cleveland, Ohio and Greensboro, North Carolina, held rallies of their own as a part of the nationwide action.The May Day Strong group, a coalition to labor unions, organized Monday’s efforts, along with AFL-CIO, the US’s largest federation of unions; the One Fair Wage, a non-profit advocating for fair wages for restaurant workers; and other labor groups.“This is about organic, grassroots organizing, and we intentionally wanted it to be outside of Washington DC, because that’s where the impacts are being felt,” said Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, about Monday’s efforts.In New York, hundreds gathered across the street from Trump Tower in the city’s Midtown district, USA Today reported. Separate protests were held throughout New York state, including in Albany, the state’s capital.US senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who represents New York, made an appearance at an Albany demonstration. “It’s Labor Day [and] we want to celebrate working men and people in this community,” said Gilibrand. New York state, the middle class was built on the labor movement and it’s time to recognize how important working people are to this community, to our country, to our great state,” she added.Thousands also marched in the Los Angeles area early Monday, local affiliate KTLA reported. The rally was followed by a free picnic for community members, along with live entertainment.Several protests were organized in California’s Bay Area. Residents in Redwood City, about an hour from San Francisco, even formed a 17-mile human chain to Santa Clara as apart of the day’s protest, NBC Bay Area reported. More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      Former CDC leaders slam RFK Jr for endangering Americans’ health

      by

      Nine former officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have said that Robert F Kennedy Jr’s leadership of the US health and human services department is “unlike anything our country has ever experienced” and “unacceptable”. They also warned that Kennedy’s leadership “should alarm every American, regardless of political leanings”.In a guest essay for the New York Times, the former CDC leaders said Kennedy’s actions were “unlike anything we have ever seen at the agency”.The letter comes days after Kennedy sought to dismiss Susan Monarez, the CDC director he appointed just months earlier. Monarez refused to leave her post, and was later fired by Donald Trump. Monarez said through lawyers the clash came after she refused to sign off on Kennedy’s directives.In the essay, titled We Ran the C.D.C.: Kennedy Is Endangering Every American’s Health, the former leaders, including Rochelle P Walensky, Mandy Cohen and Tom Frieden, said they were concerned Kennedy is “focusing “on unproven ‘treatments’ while downplaying vaccines” and cancelling medical research “that will leave us ill prepared for future health emergencies”.The former officials accused Kennedy of replacing “experts on federal health advisory committees with unqualified individuals who share his dangerous and unscientific views”.The letter comes as the Trump administration is pushing back on criticism of Kennedy’s leadership.The White House said last week that Trump and Kennedy aim to make the agency “more public-facing” and “more accountable,” and that they would be “strengthening our public health system and restoring it to its core mission of protecting Americans from communicable diseases, investing in innovation to prevent, detect and respond to future threats”.The arguments over the direction of the CDC center in part on disagreements over vaccination policies.Monarez was reportedly fired after clashing with Kennedy over vaccine policy.In a sign that it is a debate even Trump can’t escape, the president on Monday in a Truth Social post called on pharmaceutical companies to “justify” the success of the Covid vaccines that were initiated during his first term.“Many people think they are a miracle that saved Millions of lives. Others disagree! With CDC being ripped apart over this question, I want the answer, and I want it NOW.”Trump added that while the drug companies “go off to the next ‘hunt’ and let everyone rip themselves apart, including Bobby Kennedy Jr. and CDC”, they should “figure out the success or failure” of Covid drugs.The White Househas named deputy health secretary Jim O’Neill to serve as acting CDC director. O’Neill is a biotech investor and former speechwriter for the health department during the George W Bush administration. He can only serve as an interim leader of the agency until a permanent director is confirmed by the Senate.Following Monarez’s firing, hundreds of CDC staffers rallied outside the agency’s headquarters in Atlanta in protest. Three senior CDC leaders, Debra Houry, Demetre Daskalakis and Daniel Jernigan, resigned from their posts.In Monday’s Times editorial, the nine former CDC officials stepped in to Covid vaccine dispute, saying Operation Warp Speed “produced highly effective and safe vaccines that saved millions of lives” during the pandemic.“During our respective CDC tenures, we did not always agree with our leaders, but they never gave us reason to doubt that they would rely on data-driven insights for our protection, or that they would support public health workers,” they added. More

    • 150 Shares106 Views

      in US Politics

      Doctors find bullet fragment in neck of 10-year-old Minnesota school shooting survivor

      by

      Doctors have found a bullet fragment lodged perilously close to the carotid artery in the neck of a 10-year-old boy who narrowly survived the mass shooting in Minneapolis last week after a friend shielded him from the gunfire.Fifth-grader Weston Halsne recounted running under a pew and covering his head while shots fired by the alleged shooter, Robin Westman, came through the stained-glass windows during the shooting at Annunciation Catholic school last Wednesday. He described how his friend Victor Greenawalt had jumped on top of him to shield him.After the shooting, the boy told reporters: “I think I got, like, gunpowder on my neck.”His father, Grant Halsne, has now told NBC News that it was in fact not gunpowder, but a piece of bullet, adding that a doctor described the boy’s survival as a “miracle”.“If it [the bullet fragment] went any further, he would’ve died,” Halsne told the outlet.His son is expected to have the fragment removed later this week and is expected to make a full recovery.An aunt, Allison Hawes, confirmed that her nephew “will need surgery to remove a bullet fragment that is lodged in his neck, dangerously close to his carotid artery”.Hawes wrote on a fundraising page: “You’ve been amazed by his quick wit, awed by his persistence, and charmed by his earnestness.“If you’ve been watching the news, you’ve seen his grief-stricken face and heard, despite his shock, Weston’s account of the horrific details during the mass at Annunciation Church. And in spite of everything, this 10-year-old boy was able to express appreciation for his friends and pray for their recovery.”Weston last week described how he first heard the gunfire. “I was like two seats away from the stained glass windows,” Weston said. “So, they were like, the shots were like right next to me.”The suspect, who was found dead at the rear of the church with an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, fired around 120 shots from three different guns, according to Minneapolis police.Police on Sunday revised the number of people injured in the shooting from 18 to 21 on Sunday. Fletcher Merkel, eight, and Harper Moyski, 10, were killed. Most of the injured were children.Greenawalt’s uncle, Mike Kelly, said his nephew’s “selfless acts” helped spare the lives of his friends. “But he and his sister were injured in the process,” Kelly wrote on a fundraising site.Others injured include Genevieve Bisek, 11, who was shot in the neck. She is listed as “satisfactory”. Her family, who have also launched a fundraising page, said her “medical journey is uncertain”.Sophia Forchas, 12, was listed as in critical condition; Lydia Kaiser in “very serious condition”; David Haeg, six, is being treated in a hospital pediatric intensive care unit; and Astoria Safe, 10, was grazed on the forehead. She told the Minneapolis Star Tribune that she had helped pull two kids next to her down when the bullets started flying.“I had two buddies side by side, and I just pushed their heads down to make sure they were safe,” she said. “I thought it was fireworks, it was just crazy. And the smell was terrible.”Officials have said they are trying “to determine some type of motive” for this shooting. Minneapolis police chief Brian O’Hara told ABC News the suspect “clearly had a deranged obsession with previous mass shooters”.“Ultimately this person committed this act with the intention of causing as much terror, as much trauma, as much carnage as possible for their own personal notoriety,” O’Hara said.The survivor accounts come as a political debate rages over the motives for shooting, with figures on the right pointing to the shooter’s transgender identity, and the left to identify gun control.On Sunday, Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar accused White House official Sebastian Gorka on Sunday of wanting “to deflect from the reality” after Gorka said Westman had a clear “ideological” motive for targeting the Catholic school.“That’s what terrorism is,” Gorka said, prompting Omar to respond: “These people are all over the place because they want to deflect from the reality … which is that, there was, someone who came into that school, through the window, and assassinated two beautiful angels, as they prayed.”Omar called for call for a ban on assault weapons and increased mental health services. “This is not the moment to point fingers,” she said. More

    • 150 Shares112 Views

      in US Politics

      Utah emerges as a pivotal battleground amid race to redraw congressional maps

      by

      In the fast-escalating national arms race over redistricting, Utah has emerged as an unexpected and potentially pivotal battleground.The campaign began in Texas, where Donald Trump openly declared he was “entitled to” five additional Republican House seats. It quickly expanded to California, where Democratic lawmakers are asking voters to retaliate with new congressional maps drawn to “neutralize” Texas.At least half a dozen other states have been recruited into what has is now an unprecedented push to redraw their congressional boundaries in ways that could lock in political advantage ahead of next year’s midterms.The president has been candid about his aims: to safeguard Republicans’ fragile hold on the House. A loss of the speaker’s gavel would derail Trump’s legislative ambitions in the second half of his term – and open the door to a wave of investigations, from his administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files to its mass detention and deportation policies.Deeply conservative Utah, by contrast, has been pulled into the redistricting fray not by the president but by a judge.This week, Judge Dianna Gibson tossed out Utah’s current congressional map and gave the Republican-led state legislature until 24 September to submit a new one.The existing boundaries fracture Salt Lake City – a splash of blue in a sea of red – across all four congressional districts, effectively diluting Democrats’ political influence. A redrawn map could consolidate more of Utah’s capital city into one district, giving Democrats a rare opening in one of the nation’s most reliably Republican states.“There’s no doubt that any map that complies with this ruling would be more competitive than the current map,” said David Wasserman, senior editor and elections analyst at the non-partisan Cook Political Report. But he cautioned that lawmakers could still carve up Salt Lake City in ways that would maintain a Republican edge.On Friday, lawyers for the Utah legislature asked Gibson to pause her gerrymandering order to allow time for lawmakers to appeal the decision to the state supreme court, according to local news reports. The request comes a day after the state’s Republican legislative leaders said they would comply with the ruling, which they denounced as “misguided” and “unreasonable” given the 30-day deadline.“While we will continue to pursue every legal option available – including requesting a stay from the Utah Supreme Court if necessary – we will attempt to redistrict under these unprecedented constraints, consistent with our oath to represent the best interests of Utah,” the state house speaker, Mike Schultz, and senate president J Stuart Adams, said in a statement.The ruling in the Utah case stems from a yearslong legal battle over Proposition 4, a ballot initiative narrowly passed by voters in 2018 that aimed to ban partisan gerrymandering through the creation of an independent redistricting commission. Although the Republican-controlled legislature weakened the commission and enacted its own map, the state supreme court – made up of five justices all appointed by Republican governors – ruled last year that lawmakers had probably overstepped, paving the way for this week’s decision.Mark Gaber, an attorney representing the groups challenging Utah’s congressional maps, called the ruling a “vindication of a fair and neutral process”.“The voters passed this in 2018 to effectively ban partisan gerrymandering and now we’re seeing a push across the country to gerrymander,” he said. “It’s nice to see this standing out as a shining example of a process that can work.”Mid-decade redistricting on this scale is extraordinary. Typically states draw new congressional maps at the start of each decade following the census to account for population shifts.At stake is the balance of power in Congress, where the president’s party typically loses ground in midterm elections. House Democrats need to flip only a handful of seats to retake the majority, and early signs point in their favor: Trump’s approval ratings are low and falling, and since his return to the White House, Democrats have outperformed expectations in a series of low-turnout contests from Florida to Iowa.In a tit-for-tat redistricting fight, political analysts and experts say Republicans still hold the advantage: they control more state legislatures and have fewer constraints on gerrymandering.Yet the Texas plan, which was signed into law on Friday by the state’s governor, Greg Abbott, faces multiple lawsuits, including one alleging that the new districts are racially discriminatory. In California, Republicans have asked the state supreme court to block the proposed countermeasure from reaching the ballot. And even seats drawn to favor one party can become competitive depending on candidate quality, voter turnout and the national mood.In a closely fought election, even a single seat could tip the balance of power, making the prospect of a Democratic pickup in Utah all the more worrying for the president.On Wednesday night, Trump called the Utah decision “absolutely unconstitutional”.“How did such a wonderful Republican State like Utah, which I won in every Election, end up with so many Radical Left Judges?” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “All Citizens of Utah should be outraged at their activist Judiciary, which wants to take away our Congressional advantage, and will do everything possible to do so.”Gibson, the judge, was appointed to the district court in 2018 by the then governor Gary Herbert, a Republican.Trump continued, urging Republicans in Utah to “stay united” and ensure the state’s “four terrific Republican Congressmen stay right where they are!” (One of Utah’s four House members, Celeste Maloy, is a woman.)Trump’s outrage over the Utah ruling is a reminder, experts say, that courts – and voters – also have a say in shaping the political map.Kareem Crayton, the vice-president of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Washington DC office and a leading expert on redistricting, said the Utah ruling “achieves something closer to redistricting with guardrails” – in stark contrast to what is unfolding elsewhere.The lurch toward maximalist gerrymandering underlines the need for national standards, long sought by advocates of less partisan maps, Crayton said, but for now the message from the White House is: “Do more of it.”“This system is broken,” he said. “It’s a broken one when the outcome of the people’s house – the one that’s actually supposed to be the most representative of the public – turns out to be the least representative because people are going back to the maps multiple times and, with no abandon, with respect to partisanship, drawing districts that choose their voters and not the other way around.” More

    • 150 Shares72 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘He’s brazenly anti-worker’: US marks the first Labor Day under Trump 2.0

      by

      For this Labor Day, the Donald Trump administration has draped an enormous banner outside the US labor department with his portrait and the words “American Workers First.”Trump was elected on promises, since repeatedly pledged, that he would fight for workers and forgotten Americans. But many labor advocates say that Trump has consistently put corporate interests first in his second term as he has taken dozens of actions that hurt workers, often by cutting their pay or making their jobs more dangerous.Despite his vow to help coal miners, Trump halted enforcement of a regulation that protects miners from a debilitating, often deadly lung disease. He fired the chair of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), leaving the US’s top labor watchdog without a quorum to protect workers from corporations’ illegal anti-union tactics. Angering labor leaders, Trump stripped one million federal workers of their right to bargain collectively and tore up their union contracts.“It’s a big betrayal,” Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, the main US labor federation, said. “We knew it would be bad, but we had no idea how rapidly he would be doing these things. He is stripping away regulations that protect workers. His attacks on unions are coming fast and furious. He talks a good game of being for working people, but he’s doing the absolute opposite.”“This is a government that is by, and for, the CEOs and billionaires,” Shuler added.Trump has hurt construction workers by shutting down major wind turbine projects and ending Biden-era subsidies that encourage the construction of factories that make renewable-energy products. In moves that will harm some of the nation’s most vulnerable workers, the Trump administration has proposed ending minimum wage and overtime protections for 3.7 million home-care and domestic workers. It has also killed a Biden plan to prevent employers from paying disabled workers less than the $7.25-an-hour federal minimum wage.“There is a huge disconnect between Trump’s pro-worker rhetoric and the policies he’s putting in place. The gulf is enormous,” said Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive thinktank. “In his second term, he’s been absolutely, brazenly anti-worker.”“I keep thinking about his taking away the Biden-era increase in the minimum wage for federal contractors. It’s unbelievably brazen,” Shierholz continued. (Trump ended the requirement that federal contractors pay their workers at least $17.75 an hour.) “The minimum wage is incredibly popular. He just took away the minimum wage from hundreds of thousands of workers. That blew my mind.” As a result, many full-time workers will see their pay drop by more than $9,200 a year.The administration disputes all these criticisms. “The American worker has been left behind by the Democrat party for years, but President Trump has championed an agenda that puts the American worker first,” said Taylor Rogers, White House assistant press secretary.Trump has “unleashed an economic boom”, she said. Inflation is cooling, native-born Americans are benefiting from private-sector job gains and blue-collar wages are rising fast. “Under President Trump’s leadership, Republicans are once again the party of the American worker,” said Rogers.Many labor experts say Trump is even more anti-union than Ronald Reagan, often called the most anti-union president of modern times. Reagan fired 11,345 air traffic controllers who went on strike, but the AFL-CIO’s Shuler said that “pales in comparison” to Trump’s ending collective bargaining for 1 million federal workers. “That’s the largest single act of union-busting in our history,” she said.“He is worse than Reagan when it comes to his approach to unions,” said Julie Su, who was acting labor secretary under Biden. “We saw what Reagan did in the 1980s. That began a long decline in unionization. This president wants to make America non-union again. He’s certainly trying to make the government non-union again.”Shierholz said the “absolute scale of crushing unions” under Trump is “on a whole different scale from what we saw under Reagan. Trump is saying it’s absolutely open season on union folks. He took an absolute chainsaw to the federal workforce. He’s giving the green light to the private sector and local government to do the same.”Justin Chen, president of an American Federation of Government Employees council representing 8,000 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) workers across the US, is angry that Trump halted collective bargaining for EPA employees, voided most of their union contracts and fired probationary workers. “Whatever he said about fighting for workers was a complete lie,” Chen said. “He treats federal employees with a great deal of disdain, not as civil servants valuable to make our government and economy run.”Many labor advocates say Trump’s signature policies, including tariffs and deportations, are hurting US workers. Trump’s tariffs are pushing up prices and slowing economic growth, economists say. Trump’s “big, beautiful” tax cut will harm millions of working families by cutting food assistance and causing many to lose health coverage. As for Trump’s deportation campaign, many workers say it’s undermining their employers’ businesses and forcing them to work harder because they have to do the work of their departed co-workers.In her annual State of the Unions address, AFL-CIO president Shuler said on Wednesday: “The state of working people in this country is they’re under attack.” She added: “We want cheaper groceries, and we get tanks on our streets. We want more affordable healthcare, and we get 16 million Americans about to be kicked off their coverage.” Shuler said unions will hold close to 1,000 rallies and other events this Labor Day across the US to kick off a year of mobilization.Jenny Smith, a home-care worker in Champaign, Illinois, said Trump’s plan to end overtime and minimum-wage protections for home-care workers shows contempt for struggling, low-wage workers. “Trump doesn’t know what it means to go to work day after day to earn a living,” she said. “If you take away these wage protections, it will take money out of these workers’ pockets. The majority of these workers are Black, brown and single mothers. You’re taking from their children’s mouths.”Smith voiced dismay that Trump hasn’t made good on his promise to reduce prices. “I’m very disappointed that prices aren’t going down,” she said. “I just bought a dozen eggs for $6.”She added: “I don’t think he cares about us, but he does care about the billionaires.”Trump has taken numerous steps that will weaken safety protections for workers. He is cutting staffing by 12% at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Osha). His administration has proposed eliminating a requirement for adequate lighting on construction sites. It is reducing the fines that small businesses pay for violating safety rules. It has proposed blocking the government’s mine-safety district managers from ordering upgrades in mine ventilation and safety. It has slowed action on Biden’s effort to protect workers from high temperatures.Trump also froze enforcement of a Biden-era regulation that protects miners from silicosis, a serious lung disease.“Silicosis has become a major killer among coal miners, but the Trump administration is trying to make silicosis great again,” said David Michaels, a professor of public health at George Washington University who headed Osha under Barack Obama. “The Trump administration has taken several steps that are devastating to the safety and health of the nation’s workers. Osha, which is under-resourced and underpowered, has become significantly smaller as a result of the Trump and Doge [Trump’s unofficial ‘department of government efficiency’] cuts.”Michaels warned that Trump’s cuts to Osha penalties will reduce incentives for companies to ensure safe conditions.Administration officials point to the Trump-backed “no tax on tips” and “no tax on overtime” as clearly pro-worker. But Yale’s Budget Lab notes that only 4% of workers in the bottom half by income are in tipped jobs, while almost 40% of tipped workers earn so little they don’t pay federal income taxes.Moreover, the no-tax-on-overtime provision will reduce income taxes far less than most workers realize. The deduction applies only to the “half” in “time-and-a-half” overtime pay. If a worker earns $20 an hour and their overtime rate is $30, that worker can deduct only the $10 premium for each overtime hour, not the full $30.Shierholz said that if Trump were serious about helping workers, “he would raise the minimum wage, make overtime pay double pay and do away with the sub-minimum wage for tipped workers. That would truly help workers, but that’s not what he’s doing. He’s doing as little as possible to help workers, while helping employers.”While Trump says his deportations will create job opportunities for US-born workers, Shierholz’s economic institute forecasts that Trump’s effort to deport 1 million immigrants a year will result in 5.9m lost jobs after four years: 3.3 million fewer employed immigrants and 2.6 million fewer employed US-born workers. “If you don’t have immigrant roofers and framers, you’re not building houses, and that means electricians and plumbers lose their jobs,” Shierholz said. “Plus, you lose the consumer spending from those workers.”Corey Mahoney, a 35-year-old cargo handler at John F Kennedy international airport in New York, said Trump’s policies have whipsawed workers at his warehouse. “The tariff situation has slowed down work, and many people lost their jobs,” he said. When Trump ended protected status for many Venezuelans and other immigrants, some of his Venezuelan co-workers left or were deported. “Some of the people I was working with tried to come to work, but they weren’t allowed,” he said. “We were left with less people, and we had to work twice as hard. It’s unfair.”“Trump is in an alternative universe thinking everything is good,” Mahoney said. “He doesn’t realize that normal people who are just trying to make a living aren’t happy with what he’s doing.” More

    • 163 Shares69 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump news at a glance: US president issues threat to mandate voter ID

      by

      Donald Trump has said he will issue an executive order to mandate voter identification at all US elections, with “no exceptions”.“Voter I.D. Must Be Part of Every Single Vote. NO EXCEPTIONS! I Will Be Doing An Executive Order To That End!!!,” the US president said on Truth Social late on Saturday.Any such move is likely to be challenged in court as unconstitutional.The US constitution grants primary authority to regulate elections to the US states, while empowering Congress to enact election laws or regulations. It gives no explicit authority to the president to regulate voting.Voter fraud is incredibly rare and voter ID laws have been shown to disproportionately impact minorities, low-income individuals and disabled voters. “As many as 11% of eligible voters do not have the kind of ID that is required by states with strict ID requirements, and that percentage is even higher among seniors, minorities, people with disabilities, low-income voters, and students,” the Brennan Center for Justice states.Trump wants to ban mail-in votingThe US president also stated he wants to ban all voting by mail except for those who are very ill or in military service.The voting change push by Trump stems from baseless claims that the 2020 election he lost was stolen from him. Earlier this month, Trump falsely claimed only the US uses mail-in voting. Dozens of countries permit at least some form of mail-in voting.Read the full storyVisa approvals reportedly halted for Palestinian passport holders The United States has suspended visa approvals for nearly everyone who holds a Palestinian passport, the New York Times reported on Sunday. The restrictions go beyond those Donald Trump’s administration had previously announced on visitors from Gaza.Read the full storyIllinois governor urges ‘all to stand up’ to Trump immigration crackdownGovernor JB Pritzker has said he will do everything he can to stop Trump taking away people’s rights and urged everyone to take a stand as the US president prepares to launch an immigration crackdown across Chicago.Pritzker, a Democrat, told CBS on Sunday: “Any kind of troops on the streets of an American city don’t belong unless there is an insurrection, unless there is truly an emergency. There is not … I’m going to do everything I can to stop him from taking away people’s rights and from using the military to invade states. I think it’s very important for us all to stand up.”Read the full storyJudge pauses deportation of hundreds of Guatemalan childrenA federal judge has ordered an emergency halt to a plan by the Trump administration to deport a group of nearly 700 unaccompanied Guatemalan children after immigrant advocates lawyers called the plan “illegal”.Judge Sparkle L Sooknanan said those children couldn’t be deported for at least 14 days, and after a hastily scheduled hearing on Sunday, she enforced that they needed to be taken off the planes and back to the Office of Refugee Resettlement facilities while the legal process plays out.Read the full storyFDA vaccine chief demands videos of him criticizing Covid vaccines be removedA top official at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) demanded the removal of YouTube videos of himself that were published by a physician and writer who has been critical of medical misinformation and public health officials in the Trump administration, according to a YouTube notice that was seen by the Guardian.Read the full storyFormer CDC official warns of ‘harm’ to public health under RFK Jr Demetre Daskalakis, the former immunizations director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has warned of the future of American health under the leadership of health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, saying: “I only see harm coming.”He went on to add: “I may be wrong, but based on what I’m seeing, based on what I’ve heard with the new members of the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices, or ACIP, they’re really moving in an ideological direction where they want to see the undoing of vaccination.”Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      Rudy Giuliani was hospitalised after a car crash in New Hampshire. He was treated for a fractured thoracic vertebrae, and multiple cuts and bruises.

      Water quality warnings have been issued at beaches across the US during the Labor Day holiday weekend due to detection of elevated levels of bacteria associated with fecal waste.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 30 August 2025. More

    • 138 Shares90 Views

      in US Politics

      US reportedly suspends visa approvals for nearly all Palestinian passport holders

      by

      The United States has suspended visa approvals for nearly everyone who holds a Palestinian passport, the New York Times reported on Sunday.The restrictions go beyond those Donald Trump’s administration had previously announced on visitors from Gaza. They would prevent Palestinians from traveling to the United States for medical treatment, attending college and business travel, the newspaper reported, citing unidentified officials.The state department said two weeks ago that it was halting all visitor visas for individuals from Gaza while it conducts “a full and thorough” review, a move that has been condemned by pro-Palestinian groups.On Friday, the US began denying and revoking visas from members of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Palestinian Authority (PA) in advance of the UN assembly meeting in September, the state department confirmed.Under an agreement as host of the UN in New York, the US is not supposed to refuse visas for officials heading to the world body for the general assembly, but the state department said it was complying with the agreement by allowing the Palestinian mission to attend.“The Trump administration has been clear: it is in our national security interests to hold the PLO and PA accountable for not complying with their commitments, and for undermining the prospects for peace,” the state department said in a statement.The new measure further aligns the Trump administration with Israel’s rightwing government, which adamantly rejects a Palestinian state.Jason Burke contributed reporting More

    • 138 Shares69 Views

      in US Politics

      Judge orders US to halt deportation of hundreds of Guatemalan children

      by

      A US judge on Sunday ordered an emergency halt to a plan by the Trump administration to deport a group of nearly 700 unaccompanied Guatemalan children back to their home country after immigrant advocates lawyers called the plan “illegal”.Attorneys for 10 Guatemalan minors, ages 10 to 17, said in court papers filed late on Saturday that there were reports that planes were set to take off within hours for the Central American country. But a federal judge in Washington said those children couldn’t be deported for at least 14 days, and after a hastily scheduled hearing on Sunday, she enforced that they needed to be taken off the planes and back to the Office of Refugee Resettlement facilities while the legal process plays out.Judge Sparkle L Sooknanan, a Biden appointee, began the Sunday afternoon hearing by ensuring that the justice department had received her expanded order and that government officials were aware of it. “I do not want there to be any ambiguity,” she said, adding that her ruling applies broadly to Guatemalan minors who arrived in the US without their parents or guardians.Government lawyers, meanwhile, maintained that the children weren’t being deported but rather reunited at the request of their parents or guardians – a claim that the children’s lawyers dispute, at least in some cases.“I have conflicting narratives from both sides here,” Sooknanan said. She said that what she was hearing from the government lawyers “doesn’t quite line up” with what the children’s advocates had told her.Similar emergency requests were filed in other parts of the country as well. Attorneys in Arizona and Illinois asked federal judges there to block deportations of unaccompanied minors, underscoring how the fight over the government’s efforts has quickly spread.At the border-area airport in Harlingen, Texas, the scene on Sunday morning was unmistakably active. Buses carrying migrants pulled on to the tarmac as clusters of federal agents moved quickly between the vehicles and waiting aircraft. Police cars circled the perimeter, and officers and security guards pushed reporters back from the chain-link fences that line the field. On the runway, planes sat with engines idling, ground crews making final preparations as if departures could come at any moment – all as the courtroom battle played out hundreds of miles away in Washington.The Trump administration is planning to remove nearly 700 Guatemalan children who came to the US unaccompanied, according to a letter sent on Friday by Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon. The Guatemalan government has said it is ready to take them in.Melissa Johnston, the director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s program for unaccompanied children, sent an email to staff on Thursday calling for a halt to the release of all Guatemalan children except for those sponsored by parents or legal guardians in the US, according to a copy reviewed by Reuters and one of the former officials.Lawyers for the Guatemalan children said the US government doesn’t have the authority to remove the children and is depriving them of due process by preventing them from pursuing asylum claims or immigration relief. Many have active cases in immigration courts, according to the attorneys’ court filing in Washington.Although the children are supposed to be in the care and custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the government is “illegally transferring them to Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody to put them on flights to Guatemala, where they may face abuse, neglect, persecution, or torture”, argues the filing by attorneys with the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights and the National Immigration Law Center.Migrant children traveling without their parents or guardians are handed over to the Office of Refugee Resettlement when they are encountered by officials along the US-Mexico border. Once in the US, the children often live in government-supervised shelters or with foster care families until they can be released to a sponsor – usually a family member – living in the country.In a legal complaint filed on Sunday, the National Immigration Law Center and Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights said the deportations would be a “clear violation of the unambiguous protections that Congress has provided them as vulnerable children”.“Defendants are imminently planning to illegally transfer Plaintiffs to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) custody to put them on flights to Guatemala, where they may face abuse, neglect, persecution, or even torture, against their best interests,” the complaint read.The US Department of Homeland Security, Ice’s parent agency, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Guatemala’s foreign ministry declined to comment. More