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      Home Alone 2 director says he fears he will be deported if he cuts Trump cameo

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      Film-maker Chris Columbus says he has come to regard Donald Trump’s cameo in his movie Home Alone 2: Lost in New York as “an albatross” that he wishes to remove.But, Columbus added, he fears the president’s administration would deport him if he followed through with nixing the scene from more than 30 years ago.“It’s become this curse,” Columbus told the San Francisco Chronicle in an interview published Monday. “It’s become an albatross for me. I just wish it was gone.”Though born and raised in the US, the San Francisco resident of Italian ancestry said he worried he would “have to go back to Italy or something” if he erased the cameo.Columbus’s comments – made in advance of a tribute he is scheduled to receive at the 68th San Francisco international film festival on 26 April – revisited a controversy that began in 2020, toward the conclusion of Trump’s first presidency. The director of both Home Alone films told Business Insider that Trump’s cameo in the 1992 sequel was a condition of being able to film inside New York’s Plaza hotel, which Trump owned at the time.Trump, best known at that time as a real-estate development tycoon, “did bully his way into the movie”, Columbus told Business Insider, describing how the cameo was on top of a fee. He claimed Trump told him: “The only way you can use the Plaza is if I’m in the movie.”In late 2023, less than a year before he became president for the second time, Trump went on his Truth Social platform and accused Columbus of lying. He said Columbus’s team was “begging” him to make a cameo and that it ended up being “great for the movie”.Columbus opted against immediately responding to those claims from Trump. Yet in Monday’s interview, the director made it a point to say: “I’m not lying. … There’s no world I would ever beg a non-actor to be in a movie. But we were desperate to get the Plaza hotel.”According to Columbus, his instinct was to cut the cameo and regrets that he changed his mind after viewers at a screening in Chicago “cheered … and cheered and … thought it was hilarious”.“I never thought that was going to be considered hilarious,” Columbus said, referring to the seven-second scene in which Trump gives star Macaulay Culkin’s character directions on the Plaza Hotel. “It’s become this thing that I wish … was not there.”The idea of removing Trump from Home Alone – which made $359m (£280m) to become 1992’s third-highest grossing film – has been tested before.Trump supporters complained in 2019 when a cut of Home Alone 2 screened on Canadian television removed his cameo. Then, in early 2021, Culkin himself said he was “sold” on the concept of digitally removing Trump from the film.Columbus’s remark to the Chronicle that he fretted being ousted from the US if he did trash Trump’s cameo alluded to prominent deportation cases being pursued by the White House.In one instance since he retook the Oval Office, Trump’s administration erroneously deported a man living in Maryland to a mega-prison in El Salvador. And immigration officials under his command have detained academic scholars around the US for deportation proceedings after their support of pro-Palestine protests.The Trump administration has also sought to punish media figures which it considers to have crossed the president. Trump has demanded $20bn from CBS News in a lawsuit over the editing of a 60 Minutes interview with his opponent in the 2024 election, former vice-president Kamala Harris. He also sued the Des Moines Register over an Iowa election poll that turned out to be inaccurate.ABC News recently settled a lawsuit with Trump for $15m over incorrectly saying the president had been found civilly liable for raping E Jean Carroll. A jury had actually found Trump “sexually abused” Carroll but had not raped her.“I can’t cut it,” Columbus – whose other blockbusters include Mrs Doubtfire and the first two Harry Potter films – reportedly said of Trump’s cameo.“If I cut it, I’ll probably be sent out of this country. I’ll be considered sort of not fit to live in the United States.” More

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      US begins inquiry into pharmaceutical and chip imports in bid to impose tariffs

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      The Trump administration is kicking off investigations into imports of pharmaceuticals and semiconductors into the US as part of an attempt to impose tariffs on both sectors on national security grounds, notices posted to the Federal Register on Monday showed.The filings scheduled to be published on Wednesday set a 21-day deadline from that date for the submission of public comment on the issue and indicate the administration intends to pursue the levies under authority granted by the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. Such inquiries need to be completed within 270 days after being announced.The Trump administration has started 232 investigations into imports of copper and lumber, and inquiries completed in the US president’s first term formed the basis for tariffs rolled out since his return to the White House in January on steel and aluminum and on the auto industry.The US began collecting 10% tariffs on imports on 5 April. Pharmaceuticals and semiconductors are exempt from those duties, but Trump has said they will face separate tariffs.Trump said on Sunday he would be announcing a tariff rate on imported semiconductors over the next week, adding there would be flexibility with some companies in the sector.The US relies heavily on chips imported from Taiwan, something the then president, Joe Biden, sought to reverse by granting billions in Chips Act awards to lure chipmakers to expand production in the US.Taiwan’s economy minister, Kuo Jyh-huei, said its government would run simulations for various levels of tariffs on semiconductors and seek talks with the US.Taiwan is home to TSMC, the world’s leading producer of the most advanced chips and a main contributor to the island’s GDP. Speaking to reporters outside parliament, Kuo said he would seek to ensure “fair competition” for the Taiwanese industry.The Taiwanese and US chip sectors are complementary, he added.The investigation announced on Monday will include pharmaceuticals and pharmaceutical ingredients as well as other derivative products, the notice showed.Drugmakers have argued that tariffs could increase the chance of shortages and reduce access for patients. Still, Trump has pushed for the fees, arguing that the US needs more drug manufacturing so it does not have to rely on other countries for its supply of medicines.Companies in the industry have lobbied Trump to phase in tariffs on imported pharmaceutical products in hopes of reducing the sting from the charges and to allow time to shift manufacturing.Large drugmakers have global manufacturing footprints, mainly in the US, Europe and Asia, and moving more production to the US involves a major commitment of resources and could take years. More

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      Trump officials cut billions in Harvard funds after university defies demands

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      The US education department is freezing about $2.3bn in federal funds to Harvard University, the agency said on Monday.The announcement comes as the Ivy League school has decided to fight the White House’s demands that it crack down on antisemitism and alleged civil rights violations, including shutting down diversity, equity and inclusion programs.“Harvard’s statement today reinforces the troubling entitlement mindset that is endemic in our nation’s most prestigious universities and colleges – that federal investment does not come with the responsibility to uphold civil rights laws,” said a member of a department taskforce on combating antisemitism in a statement.The education department taskforce on combating antisemitism said in a statement it was freezing $2.2bn in grants and $60m in multi-year contract value to Harvard.In a letter to Harvard on Friday, the administration called for broad government and leadership reforms, a requirement that Harvard institute what it calls “merit-based” admissions and hiring policies as well as conduct an audit of the study body, faculty and leadership on their views about diversity.The demands, which are an update from an earlier letter, also call for a ban on face masks, which appeared to target pro-Palestinian protesters; close its diversity, equity and inclusion programs, which it says teach students and staff “to make snap judgments about each other based on crude race and identity stereotypes”; and pressured the university to stop recognizing or funding “any student group or club that endorses or promotes criminal activity, illegal violence, or illegal harassment”.The administration also demanded that Harvard cooperate with federal immigration authorities.Harvard’s president said in a letter that the university would not comply with the Trump administration’s demands to dismantle its diversity programming and to limit student protests in exchange for its federal funding.“No government – regardless of which party is in power – should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue,” Alan Garber, the university president, wrote, adding that Harvard had taken extensive reforms to address antisemitism.Garber said the government’s demands were a political ploy.“It makes clear that the intention is not to work with us to address antisemitism in a cooperative and constructive manner,” he wrote. “Although some of the demands outlined by the government are aimed at combating antisemitism, the majority represent direct governmental regulation of the ‘intellectual conditions’ at Harvard.”On Monday, Barack Obama posted in support of the university: “Harvard has set an example for other higher-ed institutions – rejecting an unlawful and ham-handed attempt to stifle academic freedom, while taking concrete steps to make sure all students at Harvard can benefit from an environment of intellectual inquiry, rigorous debate and mutual respect. Let’s hope other institutions follow suit.”The demands from the Trump administration prompted a group of alumni to write to university leaders calling for it to “legally contest and refuse to comply with unlawful demands that threaten academic freedom and university self-governance”.“Harvard stood up today for the integrity, values, and freedoms that serve as the foundation of higher education,” said Anurima Bhargava, one of the alumni behind the letter. “Harvard reminded the world that learning, innovation and transformative growth will not yield to bullying and authoritarian whims.”It also sparked a protest over the weekend from members of the Harvard community and from residents of Cambridge and a lawsuit from the American Association of University Professors on Friday challenging the cuts.In their lawsuit, plaintiffs argue that the Trump administration has failed to follow steps required under Title VI before it starts cutting funds, and giving notice of the cuts to both the university and Congress.“These sweeping yet indeterminate demands are not remedies targeting the causes of any determination of noncompliance with federal law. Instead, they overtly seek to impose on Harvard University political views and policy preferences advanced by the Trump administration and commit the university to punishing disfavored speech,” plaintiffs wrote.Edward Helmore contributed to this report More

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      Trump news at a glance: El Salvador’s Bukele vows to keep wrongly deported man

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      The president of El Salvador said in a meeting with Donald Trump in the White House on Monday that he would not order the return of a Maryland man who was deported in error to a Salvadorian mega-prison.“The question is preposterous,” Nayib Bukele said in the Oval Office on Monday. “How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? I’m not going to do it.”He added: “I don’t have the power to return him to the United States,” and said he would not release the man, Kilmar Abrego García, into El Salvador either. “I’m not very fond of releasing terrorists into the country.”The comments came a day after the Trump administration claimed it was not legally obligated to secure the return of Abrego García, despite the US supreme court ruling that the administration should “facilitate” bringing him back.Earlier this month, the Trump administration acknowledged that Abrego García, an immigrant from El Salvador who was living in Maryland with protected status, was deported to a prison in El Salvador on 15 March as a result of an “administrative error”. In 2019 an immigration judge had prohibited the federal government from deporting him.Trump officials defiant over wrongly deported manThe Trump administration escalated its stubborn defiance against securing the release of a man wrongly deported to El Salvador on Monday, advancing new misrepresentations of a US supreme court order.“The ruling solely stated that if this individual at El Salvador’s sole discretion was sent back to our country, we could deport him a second time,” said Trump’s policy chief Stephen Miller. His remarks went beyond the tortured reading offered by the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, who also characterized the supreme court order as only requiring the administration to provide transportation to Abrego García if released by El Salvador.Read the full storyPalestinian Columbia student activist detained by IceA Palestinian green card holder and student at Columbia University was apprehended by US immigration authorities on Monday, according to his lawyers and a video of the incident. Mohsen Mahdawi, who was a leader of the pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia last spring, was arrested by Ice on Monday morning in Colchester, Vermont, while he was attending a naturalization interview, his lawyer said in a statement to the Guardian.Read the full storyTrump administration sued over tariffs in trade courtA legal advocacy group on Monday asked the US court of international trade to block Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs on foreign trading partners, arguing that the president overstepped his authority. The lawsuit was filed by the Liberty Justice Center, a legal advocacy group, on behalf of five US businesses that import goods from countries targeted by the tariffs.Read the full storyUS begins inquiry into pharmaceutical and chip imports, paving way for tariffsThe Trump administration is kicking off investigations into imports of pharmaceuticals and semiconductors as part of a bid to impose tariffs on both sectors on national security grounds, notices posted to the Federal Register on Monday showed.Read the full storyHarvard will not ‘yield’ to Trump demands over $9bn in cutsHarvard University said on Monday that it will not comply with a new list of demands from the Trump administration issued last week that the government says are designed to crack down on antisemitism and alleged civil rights violations at elite academic institutions.Read the full storyMemo outlines plan to slash US state department budget in halfThe Trump administration is reportedly proposing to slash the state department budget by nearly half in a move that could drastically reduce US international spending and end its funding for Nato and the United Nations, according to an internal memorandum.Read the full storyRepublican supporters of Ukraine put pressure on TrumpRepublican supporters of Ukraine are using the Kremlin’s deadly missile strikes as their latest evidence to convince Donald Trump that he must increase pressure on Vladimir Putin if he wants to reach a ceasefire deal.Read the full storyUS soldier revealed as neo-Nazi TikTok followerAn active-duty serviceman in the US army is openly following a proscribed neo-Nazi terrorist group on social media, one that has vowed to recruit soldiers in preparation for a so-called race war. Experts say examples like this shows how under Pete Hegseth, the Pentagon is allowing extremism to go unchecked.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      A man who broke into Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro’s mansion – where he set a fire – had planned to beat him with a hammer because he hates the politician, according to court documents released on Monday.

      A jury was selected on Monday to hear a retrial of Sarah Palin’s claims that the New York Times libeled her in an editorial eight years ago.

      More than 370 alumni of Georgetown University joined 65 current students in signing on to a letter opposing immigration authorities’ detention of Dr Badar Khan Suri, a senior postdoctoral fellow.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 13 April 2025. More

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      Trump officials step up defiance over man wrongly deported to El Salvador

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      The Trump administration escalated its stubborn defiance against securing the release of a man wrongly deported to El Salvador on Monday, advancing new misrepresentations of a US supreme court order.The supreme court last week unanimously ordered the administration to “facilitate” the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was supposed to have been protected from deportation to El Salvador regardless of whether he was a member of the MS-13 gang.But at an Oval Office meeting between Trump and El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele, Trump deferred to officials who gave extraordinary readings of the supreme court order and claimed the US was powerless to return Abrego Garcia to US soil.“The ruling solely stated that if this individual at El Salvador’s sole discretion was sent back to our country, we could deport him a second time,” said Trump’s policy chief Stephen Miller, about an order that, in fact, upheld a lower court’s directive to return Abrego Garcia.Miller’s remarks went beyond the tortured reading offered by the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, who also characterized the supreme court order as only requiring the administration to provide transportation to Abrego Garcia if released by El Salvador.“That’s up to El Salvador if they want to return him. That’s up to them,” Bondi said. “The supreme court ruled that if El Salvador wants to return him, we would ‘facilitate’ it, meaning provide a plane.”The remarks at the Oval Office meeting marked an escalation by Trump officials to resist complying with a supreme court order by manufacturing uncertainty in the ruling that reiterated deportations were subject to judicial review.And the fact that the US is paying El Salvador to detain deportees it sends to the notorious Cecot prison undercut the notion that the administration lacked the power to return Abrego Garcia into US custody.The case started when Abrego Garcia was detained by police in 2019 in Maryland, outside a Home Depot, with several other men, and asked about a murder. He denied knowledge of a crime and repeatedly denied that he was part of a gang.Abrego Garcia was subsequently put in immigration proceedings, where officials argued they believed he was part of the MS-13 gang in New York based on his Chicago Bulls gear and on the word of a confidential informant.The case went before a US immigration judge, who suggested that Abrego Garcia could be a member of MS-13 and agreed to a deportation order but shielded him from being sent to El Salvador because he was likely to face persecution there by a local gang.The Trump administration did not appeal against that decision, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement has since said in a court filing that Abrego Garcia’s deportation to El Salvador was an “administrative error”. The supreme court also called his removal illegal.In earlier remarks to reporters on Monday morning, Miller expressly demonstrated he knew the administration had made a mistake because the immigration judge had issued a so-called withholding order, which meant he could not be deported to El Salvador.“When you have a withholding order, to be clear, that is not ‘pause your deportation’. In other words, in the worst-case scenario, it means you get deported to another country,” Miller said.That concession evaporated hours later when he joined Trump, Bukele and a dozen senior officials in the Oval Office and suggested that bringing back Abrego Garcia to the US would be tantamount to kidnapping a citizen of El Salvador.Miller appeared to be suggesting that the US could not force the actions of El Salvador, a sovereign nation. But he then said the supreme court said neither the president nor the secretary of state could forcibly retrieve a citizen of El Salvador from El Salvador – which the order did not say. More

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      Trump administration sued over tariffs in US international trade court

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      A legal advocacy group on Monday asked the US court of international trade to block Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs on foreign trading partners, arguing that the president overstepped his authority.The lawsuit was filed by the Liberty Justice Center, a legal advocacy group, on behalf of five US businesses that import goods from countries targeted by the tariffs.“No one person should have the power to impose taxes that have such vast global economic consequences,” Jeffrey Schwab, Liberty Justice Center’s senior counsel, said in a statement. “The Constitution gives the power to set tax rates – including tariffs – to Congress, not the President.”The Liberty Justice Center is the litigation arm of the Illinois Policy Institute, a free market thinktank. It was instrumental in the supreme court case Janus v AFSCME in which it successfully fought to weaken public labor unions collective bargaining power.According to the group’s statement, the tariffs case was filed on behalf of five owner-operated businesses who have been severely harmed by the tariffs. The businesses include a New York-based company specializing in the importation and distribution of wines and spirits, an e-commerce business specializing in the production and sale of sportfishing tackle, a company that manufactures ABS pipe in the United States using imported ABS resin from South Korea and Taiwan, a small business based in Virginia that makes educational electronic kits and musical instruments, and a Vermont-based brand of women’s cycling apparel.Representatives of the White House did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.The Trump administration faces a similar lawsuit in Florida federal court, where a small business owner has asked a judge to block tariffs imposed on China. More

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      The Trump administration trapped a wrongly deported man in a catch-22

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      It is difficult to find a term more fitting for the fate of the Maryland father Kilmar Abrego García than Kafkaesque.Abrego García is one of hundreds of foreign-born men deported under the Trump administration to the Cecot mega-prison in El Salvador as part of a macabre partnership with the self-declared “world’s coolest dictator”, Nayib Bukele.The US government has admitted it deported Abrego García by mistake. But instead of “facilitating” his return as ordered by the supreme court, the administration has trapped Abrego García in a catch-22 by offshoring his fate to a jurisdiction beyond the reach of legality – or, it would seem, basic logic or common decency.The paradox is this: the Trump administration says it cannot facilitate the return of Abrego García because he is in a prison in El Salvador. El Salvador says it cannot return him because that would be tantamount to “smuggling” him into the US.The absurdity of the position played out on Monday during an Oval Office meeting between Donald Trump and Bukele where the two men appeared to enjoy mocking the powerlessness of the US courts to intervene in the fate of anyone caught in the maws of the Trump administration’s deportation machine.“How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? I’m not going to do it,” Bukele said when asked about whether he would help to return Abrego García.There is no evidence that Abrego García is a terrorist or a member of the gang MS-13 as the Trump administration has claimed. But that is not really important here.“I don’t have the power to return him to the United States,” Bukele said during a meeting with the US president on Monday. “They’d love to have a criminal released into our country,” Trump added.Trump’s lieutenants also jumped in on Monday, arguing that they could not intervene in the case because Bukele is a foreign citizen and outside of their control.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“He is a citizen of El Salvador,” said Stephen Miller, a top Trump aide who regularly advises the president on immigration issues. “It’s very arrogant even for American media to suggest that we would even tell El Salvador how to handle their own citizens.”A district court injunction to halt the deportation was in effect, he added, an order to “kidnap a citizen of El Salvador and fly him back here”.Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, repeated one of the Trump administration’s mantras: that US courts cannot determine Trump’s foreign policy. Increasingly, the administration is including questions of immigration in that foreign policy in order to defy the courts.Monday’s presentation was in effect a pantomime. Both sides could quickly intervene if they wanted to. But this was a means to an end. Miller said this case would not end with Abrego García living in the US.More broadly, it indicates the Trump administration’s modus operandi: to move quickly before the courts can react to its transgressions and, when they do, to deflect and defy until the damage done cannot be reversed. More

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      Harvard says it will not ‘yield’ to Trump demands over $9bn in funding cuts

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      Harvard University said on Monday that it will not comply with a new list of demands from the Trump administration issued last week that the government says are designed to crack down on antisemitism and alleged civil rights violations at elite academic institutions.In a message to the Harvard community, the university president, Alan Garber, vowed that the school would not yield to the government’s pressure campaign. “The university will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights,” Garber said.The Trump administration said it would review $9bn of federal grants and contracts, including Harvard’s research hospitals, as part of its effort to “root out antisemitism”.In a letter last week from the government’s antisemitism taskforce, the university was accused of having “failed to live up to both the intellectual and civil rights conditions that justify federal investment”.The Trump administration has also demanded that Harvard ban face masks and close its diversity, equity and inclusion programs, which it says teach students and staff “to make snap judgments about each other based on crude race and identity stereotypes”. The administration also demanded that Harvard cooperate with federal immigration authorities.The administration further asked Harvard to reform its admissions process for international students to screen for students “supportive of terrorism and anti-Semitism” – and to report international students to federal authorities if they break university conduct policies.University faculties are also under the government’s microscope as it has called for “reducing the power held by faculty (whether tenured or untenured) and administrators more committed to activism than scholarship”.Harvard’s announced resistance to the administration’s demands comes as Trump’s federal government pits itself against several Ivy League universities over intellectual and political freedoms. The dispute has been playing out in the courts over efforts by the administration to deport several postgraduate students holding provisional citizenship or student visas over pro-Palestinian demonstrations that the government alleges were shows of support for terrorism.On Friday, a federal judge in Louisiana ruled that the Columbia University graduate student and Palestinian organizer Mahmoud Khalil, 30, can be deported despite having been granted legal permanent residence in the US. The government contended that Khalil’s presence in the US posed “potentially serious foreign policy consequences”, satisfying requirements for deportation, according to the judge.After that ruling, Khalil’s immigration attorney Marc Van Der Hout told the court that his client would appeal.The letter from Harvard’s president said the university would not comply with the Trump administration’s demands to dismantle its diversity programming and to limit student protests in exchange for its federal funding.“No government – regardless of which party is in power – should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue,” Garber wrote in the message.Garber said the government’s demands were a political ploy.“It makes clear that the intention is not to work with us to address antisemitism in a cooperative and constructive manner,” he wrote. “Although some of the demands outlined by the government are aimed at combating antisemitism, the majority represent direct governmental regulation of the ‘intellectual conditions’ at Harvard.”The new approach by the university, which sits on an endowment valued at over $52bn, comes in contrast to Columbia University. Columbia, which holds an endowment of $14bn, largely acceded to the administration demands after it was threatened with $400m in federal funding cuts.But Jewish advocacy groups are divided on the administration’s efforts. Some say they are an innovative and muscular way to combat what they see as campus antisemitism. Others maintain that the government is weaponizing antisemitism to pursue wider intellectual crackdowns.“The gun to the head and shutting down all science seems like a counterproductive way to handle the particular problems of antisemitism,” Steven Pinker, a Harvard psychology professor, told the Boston Globe earlier in April. More