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      Secret Service request to raise river level made ‘without knowledge’ of JD Vance, his office says

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      A spokesperson for JD Vance said he and his staff were unaware that the Secret Service decided earlier this month to ask military engineers to raise the water level of the Little Miami River ahead of a family boating trip, which took place on his birthday.“The Secret Service often employs protective measures without the knowledge of the vice-president or his staff, as was the case last weekend,” the spokesperson said.The statement followed the publication of a Guardian report on Wednesday that revealed the US Army Corp of Engineers (USACE) in Louisville, Kentucky, had been asked by the Secret Service to raise the outflow of a lake to accommodate Vance’s boating excursion. The USACE had said on Wednesday the decision was made to “support safe navigation” of Vance’s security detail.The Secret Service provided additional information on Thursday, emphasizing in a “revised” statement to the Guardian the vice-president’s office was “not involved in the decision” and that it had been “operationally necessary” to adjust the water levels to accommodate motorized watercraft, local law enforcement and emergency responders.“These decisions were made solely by agents during our standard advance planning process and did not involve the Office of the Vice President,” the Secret Service said in a statement. A public safety boat is also alleged to have run aground during a joint scouting mission with the Secret Service ahead of the trip, prompting the Secret Service’s decision to seek an elevation in the water level.Vance’s office had not initially responded to the Guardian’s request when asked about the water level change in connection to his boating excursion. But the publication of the Guardian’s story generated some controversy.Marcy Kaptur, a Democratic congresswoman from Ohio, posted a tweet demanding more information about the USACE move, saying: “Outrageous! Must be why he wasn’t available to meet about his Big Bonanza for Billionaires Bill which will devastate Ohio manufacturing jobs and our rural hospitals. The Army Corp of Engineers should share records with relevant committee of jurisdiction in Congress.”The news also elicited comparisons to an embarrassing episode for another vice-president, Al Gore, who faced scrutiny in 1999 after a local utility poured millions of gallons of water into the Connecticut River to keep him from running aground during a canoe trip.It is not unprecedented for the USACE to modify outflows to accommodate public use – for example, for use in community river events and training for emergency responders.USACE regulations regarding requests for so-called “deviations” – or any changes to normal practices – require approval and documentation that demonstrates why the deviation is justified. This process also ensures that risks associated with any deviation – including a flood risk or other environmental impact – is detailed.The USACE said in a statement on Wednesday that the Secret Service request “met the operational criteria outlined in the Water Control Manual for Caesar Creek Lake and did not require a deviation from normal procedures”.

      Do you have a tip related to this story? You can contact the Guardian via Signal on +1 646 886 8761 More

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      Trump administration doubles reward for arrest of Venezuela’s president to $50m

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      The Trump administration is doubling to $50m a reward for the arrest of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, accusing him of being one of the world’s largest narcotraffickers and working with cartels to flood the US with fentanyl-laced cocaine.“Under President Trump’s leadership, Maduro will not escape justice and he will be held accountable for his despicable crimes,” Pam Bondi, the attorney general, said on Thursday in a video statement announcing the reward.Maduro was indicted in Manhattan federal court in 2020, during the first Trump presidency, along with several close allies on federal charges of narcoterrorism and conspiracy to import cocaine. At the time, the US offered a $15m reward for his arrest. That was later raised by the Biden administration to $25m – the same amount the US offered for the capture of Osama bin Laden in 2001, after the September 11attacks.Despite the big bounty, Maduro remains entrenched after defying the US, the European Union and several Latin American governments who condemned his 2024 reelection as a sham and recognized his opponent as Venezuela’s duly elected president.Last month, the Trump administration struck a deal to secure the release of 10 Americans jailed in Caracas in exchange for Venezuela getting home scores of migrants deported by the United States to El Salvador under the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Shortly after, the White House reversed course and allowed US oil producer Chevron to resume drilling in Venezuela after it was previously blocked by US sanctions.The prisoner swap sparked controversy, as one of the Americans freed in the exchange is an ex-US soldier who was convicted of killing three people in Spain in 2016. Dahud Hanid Ortiz, found guilty in Venezuela last year, was flown to Texas alongside the other nine freed Americans, whom rights groups had deemed “political prisoners”.Bondi said the justice department has seized more than $700m in assets linked to Maduro, including two private jets, and said 7m tons of seized cocaine had been traced directly to the leftist leader.Maduro’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.In her announcement, Bondi repeated claims linking Maduro to Tren de Aragua (TdA), the Venezuelan gang, saying: “Maduro uses foreign terrorist organizations like TdA … to bring deadly violence to our country … He is one of the largest narcotraffickers in the world and a threat to our national security.”Some experts have cast doubts on the Trump administration’s claims that TdA is “invading America”. The narrative that TdA is a state-sponsored terrorist group wreaking havoc on the US has been used to fuel the president’s aggressive and broad attacks on Venezuelan immigrants, with policies that advocates say have trampled on people’s due-process rights. In one high-profile case, Andry José Hernández Romero, a gay asylum seeker, was expelled to El Salvador after the US claimed his tattoos were proof he was a TdA member and “security threat”.Experts have noted that the Venezuelan government had previously protected TdA, but it was unlikely the gang was acting “at the direction” of the Maduro regime, as the White House has claimed.The Washington Post reported in April that a National Intelligence Council assessment concluded there were some low-level contacts between the Maduro government and TdA, but said the gang was not commanded by Venezuela’s leader.The Associated Press contributed reporting. More

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      Democrats respond to FBI agreement to locate Texas lawmakers: ‘We will not be intimidated’ – live updates

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      Democrats have responded to the news earlier that the FBI has agreed to assist local law enforcement to track down Democratic lawmakers who left the state to break quorum in protest of the state’s GOP-drawn congressional map.It comes after Republican Senator John Cornyn’s statement earlier, praising FBI director Kash Patel for his support.Hakeem Jeffries lambasted the move in a post on X.“The Trump administration continues to weaponize law enforcement to target political adversaries,” the House minority leader wrote. “We will not be intimidated.”Meanwhile, Illinois governor JB Pritzker underscored on a podcast on Wednesday that Texas lawmakers hadn’t broken any laws. He also said that any arrests by FBI agents would be “unwelcome” in his state.“They’re grandstanding, there’s literally no federal law applicable to this situation,” he added.The US Air Force said it would deny all transgender service members who have served between 15 and 18 years the option to retire early and would instead separate them without retirement benefits, the AP reports.One Air Force sergeant said he was “betrayed and devastated” by the move.The move means that transgender service members will now be faced with the choice of either taking a lump-sum separation payment offered to junior troops or be removed from the service.An Air Force spokesperson told the AP that “although service members with 15 to 18 years of honorable service were permitted to apply for an exception to policy, none of the exceptions to policy were approved.”About a dozen service members had been “prematurely notified” that they would be able to retire before that decision was reversed, according to the spokesperson who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal Air Force policy.A memo issued Monday announcing the new policy said that the choice to deny retirement benefits was made “after careful consideration of the individual applications.”Earlier, we reported that two senior FBI officials involved in a number of FBI investigations related to the president were fired. Now, senior politics reporter Chris Stein brings us more details:The Trump administration is forcing out a senior FBI official who resisted demands made earlier this year for the names of agents who investigated the January 6 insurrection, two people familiar with the matter said on Thursday.Brian Driscoll briefly served as acting FBI director in the first weeks of Donald Trump’s new term, and his final day at the bureau is Friday, the people told the Associated Press on condition of anonymity, as they were not authorized to discuss the move. Further ousters were possible.The FBI declined to comment to the Guardian.The New York Times further reported that the FBI was forcing out Walter Giardina, a special agent who worked on cases involving Trump as well as Peter Navarro, a top trade adviser to the president who was convicted of contempt of Congress.The ousters were the latest under the FBI director, Kash Patel, and his deputy, Dan Bongino, who had repeatedly alleged that the bureau had become politicized under Joe Biden. Numerous senior officials, including top agents in charge of big-city field offices, have been pushed out of their jobs, and some agents have been subjected to polygraph exams, moves that former officials say have roiled the workforce and contributed to angst.Here’s the full story:Donald Trump’s administration turned to the US supreme court in an effort to defend its aggressive immigration raids after a federal judge in Los Angeles blocked agents from profiling individuals based on race or language in pursuit of deportation targets.The justice department asked the supreme court in an emergency filing to lift the judge’s order temporarily barring agents from stopping or detaining people without “reasonable suspicion” that they are in the country illegally, by relying solely on their race or ethnicity, or if they speak Spanish or English with an accent.The move comes after a federal judge last month ordered the Trump administration to halt indiscriminate immigration stops and arrests in seven California counties, including Los Angeles.Donald Trump said Thursday that he would meet with Vladimir Putin even if the Russian president won’t meet with Volodymyr Zelenskyy.Trump, when asked by a reporter whether Putin would need to meet with the Ukrainian president to secure a meeting with the US, said: “No, he doesn’t. No.”His comments followed Putin’s remarks earlier in the day that he hoped to meet with Trump next week, possibly in the United Arab Emirates. But the White House was still working through the details of any potential meetings, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said.Donald Trump announced he will nominate the Council of Economic Advisers chair Stephen Miran to serve as a Federal Reserve governor.Miran would fill the position opened by Fed governor Adriana Kugler’s surprise resignation last week, as she returns to her tenured professorship at Georgetown University.The term expires on 31 January 2026 and is subject to approval by the Senate.Trump said the White House continues to search for someone to serve in the 14-year Fed Board seat that opens 1 February.Miran has advocated for a far-reaching overhaul of Fed governance that would include shortening board member terms, putting them under the clear control of the president and ending the “revolving door” between the executive branch and the Fed.Trump has unsuccessfully pushed the Fed to cut rates. Miran, if confirmed by the Senate, would have one of 12 votes on monetary policy at the Fed, which voted 9-2 last month to keep rates steady.Donald Trump and Stephen Moore, a fellow at the rightwing thinktank the Heritage Foundation, held an event at the White House on Thursday to show reporters “new numbers” that allege the Bureau of Labor Statistics overstated job creation during the first two years of the Biden administration.“I don’t think it’s an error,” Trump said during today’s event. “I think they did it purposely.”Moore said the data comes from “unpublished Census Bureau data”, and will supposedly be released sometime in the next six months.Moore is Trump’s former economic advisor and co-wrote the book Trumponomics: Inside the America First Plan to Revive Our Economy”, which praised the president’s economic plans. In 2019, Trump nominated Moore for a seat on the Federal Reserve board, but he withdrew amid scrutiny for his history of sexist comments and other scandals.Colleges and universities will be forced to disclose more student admissions data to prove that they are not implementing affirmative action policies, according to a directive sent by the White House on Thursday.The move comes as the Trump administration seeks to crack down on the use of race in the higher education application process. Ivy League universities, like Brown University, have reached settlements that require them to release information about applicants’ race.Colleges have been barred from considering race in admissions since 2023, when the supreme court overturned decades of precedent that allowed limited use of race as a factor. Trump’s directive would increase oversight of schools’ admissions processes.“Although the Supreme Court of the United States has definitively held that consideration of race in higher education admissions violates students’ civil rights,” the directive reads, “the persistent lack of available data – paired with the rampant use of ‘diversity statements’ and other overt and hidden racial proxies – continues to raise concerns about whether race is actually used in practice.”The directive was confirmed earlier today by White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.

      The president’s higher tariffs hit major US trading partners today. Trump and members of his cabinet declared it an economic victory, with commerce secretary Howard Lutnick estimating that the tariffs will lead to “$50bn a month” in revenue for the USand treasury secretary Scott Bessent saying a “manufacturing renaissance” was on the horizon in an interview with MSNBC. Countries feeling the hit, however, are now scrambling to respond.

      Republican senator John Cornyn of Texas said today that the FBI had approved his request for the agency to help locate and arrest Democratic state lawmakers, who left the state last week to break quorum in protest over a GOP-drawn congressional map. “We cannot allow these rogue legislators to avoid their constitutional responsibilities,” Cornyn said in a statement.

      In response, undeterred Democrats have fired back. “The Trump administration continues to weaponize law enforcement to target political adversaries,” House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries wrote on X. “We will not be intimidated.”

      Meanwhile, on Truth Social, Donald Trump announced today that he’s ordered the commerce department to conduct a new census that would exclude undocumented immigrants from the official count. “People who are in our country illegally will not be counted,” the president said. It’s important to note that the US census has historically counted all residents regardless of citizenship or immigration status, as required by the 14th amendment’s “whole number of persons” provision.

      And in Florida, the administration’s immigration agenda hit a snag as a federal judge in Miami ordered a temporary halt to the construction of the detention centre being built in the Everglades, known as “Alligator Alcatraz”. While the injunction says the facility can continue to operate and hold detainees, any further construction must stop while environmental threats to the wetlands are assessed.
      More than 60 countries around the world are scrambling to respond to the latest wave of US tariffs announced by Donald Trump, which came into force on Thursday.The Brazilian government said it was planning a state aid plan for companies affected. The president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, said the duties were “unacceptable blackmail”.Switzerland said it was seeking new talks with the US after a last-gasp mission to Washington by its president, Karin Keller-Sutter, failed to stop a 39% tariff blow that industry group Swissmem described as a “horror scenario”.In a statement after an emergency meeting with Keller-Sutter, the Swiss cabinet said the tariffs would “place a substantial strain on Switzerland’s export-oriented economy”.“For the affected sectors, companies and their employees, this is an extraordinarily difficult situation,” Keller-Sutter told reporters.Despite a last-minute reprieve from Trump for Lesotho with tariffs dropping from 50% to 15%, the impoverished African nation said it was already hurting.Textile industry players in the country – which produces jeans and other garments for US companies including Levi and Walmart – said the uncertainty around tariffs over the past few months had already devastated the sector, with orders cancelled and jobs cut.Read more here:A federal judge in Miami has ordered a temporary halt to the construction of the detention centre being built in the Florida everglades known as ‘Alligator Alcatraz’.The temporary injunction, which lasts for 14 days, states that the facility can continue to operate and hold detainees, but any further construction must stop while any environmental threats to the wetlands are assessed.The plaintiffs – which comprise environmental groups and Florida’s Miccosukee Tribe – argue that the detention center’s construction ultimately violates the National Environmental Policy Act.The federal judiciary said on Thursday that it would be taking “additional steps” to strengthen protections for sensitive case documents after “recent escalated cyber-attacks” on its case management system.Politico first reported the news of a hack that hit the federal courts’ filing system.“Enhancing the security of its systems is a top priority for the Judiciary,” the Federal Courts system wrote in a statement. They didn’t offer any immediate information about who was behind the cyber-attacks.My colleagues are reporting on the latest developments following Benjamin Netanyahu’s remarks that he intends to take military control of all of Gaza, before eventually handing it over to Arab forces that will govern it properly.The Israeli prime minister’s statement comes after special envoy Steve Witkoff visited the region last week to assess the ongoing humanitarian crisis, increase the flow of US aid to Gaza.You can follow along here:Democrats have responded to the news earlier that the FBI has agreed to assist local law enforcement to track down Democratic lawmakers who left the state to break quorum in protest of the state’s GOP-drawn congressional map.It comes after Republican Senator John Cornyn’s statement earlier, praising FBI director Kash Patel for his support.Hakeem Jeffries lambasted the move in a post on X.“The Trump administration continues to weaponize law enforcement to target political adversaries,” the House minority leader wrote. “We will not be intimidated.”Meanwhile, Illinois governor JB Pritzker underscored on a podcast on Wednesday that Texas lawmakers hadn’t broken any laws. He also said that any arrests by FBI agents would be “unwelcome” in his state.“They’re grandstanding, there’s literally no federal law applicable to this situation,” he added. More

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      Trump signs action forcing universities and colleges to submit admissions data

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      Donald Trump signed an executive action on Thursday forcing colleges and universities to submit data to prove they do not consider race in admissions, as the White House intensifies its scrutiny of higher education institutions that receive federal funding.The Trump administration is accusing colleges of using personal statements and other proxies in order to consider race, despite a 2023 supreme court ruling reversing affirmative action, as part of its wider attack on diversity-, inclusion- and equality-related initiatives at American institutions.“Although the Supreme Court of the United States has definitively held that consideration of race in higher education admissions violates students’ civil rights,” the presidential memorandum reads, “the persistent lack of available data – paired with the rampant use of ‘diversity statements’ and other overt and hidden racial proxies – continues to raise concerns about whether race is actually used in practice.”In the memorandum, Trump directs the education secretary, Linda McMahon, to require that higher education institutions submit “the data necessary to verify that their admissions do not involve unlawful discrimination”. McMahon is to overhaul the US higher education database, expand the scope of required admissions reporting and increase accuracy checks to help provide additional “transparency”.In 2023, the conservative-majority US supreme court ruled against the use of affirmative action in admissions, drastically changing the way universities can ensure the diversity of the student body. It allowed only limited use, in that colleges may still consider how race has shaped students’ lives if applicants share that information in their admissions essays.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionConservative activists welcomed the ruling, arguing that affirmative action policies discriminate against white students. But it was heavily criticized by those who argue that race-conscious policies create more equal opportunities for students from marginalized groups, including students of color and those from low-income backgrounds, disadvantaged by historical discrimination in the higher education system, given the country’s history.The action appears to codify for all universities the recent settlement agreements the administration negotiated with Ivy League universities Brown and Columbia, restoring their federal research funding in return for the institutions adopting measures including the release of admissions data, with the institutions required to demonstrate that hiring and admissions are “merit-based” and not based on considerations of diversity and race.The universities agreed to give the government data on the race, grade point average and standardized test scores of applicants, admitted students and enrolled students. The schools also agreed to an audit by the government and to release admissions statistics to the public. More

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      Trump administration ousts FBI official who refused to name agents who investigated January 6

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      The Trump administration is forcing out a senior FBI official who resisted demands made earlier this year for the names of agents who investigated the January 6 insurrection, two people familiar with the matter said on Thursday.Brian Driscoll briefly served as acting FBI director in the first weeks of Donald Trump’s new term, and his final day at the bureau is Friday, the people told the Associated Press on condition of anonymity, as they were not authorized to discuss the move. Further ousters were possible.The FBI declined to comment to the Guardian.The New York Times further reported that the FBI was forcing out Walter Giardina, a special agent who worked on cases involving Trump as well as Peter Navarro, a top trade adviser to the president who was convicted of contempt of Congress.The ousters were the latest under the FBI director, Kash Patel, and his deputy, Dan Bongino, who had repeatedly alleged that the bureau had become politicized under Joe Biden. Numerous senior officials, including top agents in charge of big-city field offices, have been pushed out of their jobs, and some agents have been subjected to polygraph exams, moves that former officials say have roiled the workforce and contributed to angst.The FBI Agents Association, which represents current and former bureau staff, issued a statement saying they were “deeply concerned” by reports that senior agents and leaders were going to be fired. “Agents are not given the option to pick and choose their cases, and these agents carried out their assignments with professionalism and integrity. Most importantly, they followed the law,” the organization said.“If these agents are fired without due process, it makes the American people less safe,” they added, noting that they were “actively reviewing all legal options to defend our members”.Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, said: “The continued purging of experienced, non-partisan FBI agents by the Trump administration is nothing short of alarming. These are individuals who have dedicated their careers to protecting the American people, and their firings are part of a disturbing pattern of retaliation and politicization at an institution charged with safeguarding national security and the rule of law.“President Trump may believe he can manipulate the levers of power to serve his own ends, but history will not judge this recklessness kindly, and neither should Congress,” he added.Driscoll, a veteran agent who worked on international counter-terrorism investigations in New York and also had commanded the bureau’s Hostage Rescue Team, had most recently served as acting director in charge of the Critical Incident Response Group, which deploys people and resources to crisis situations.He was named acting director in January to replace Christopher Wray and served in the position as Patel’s nomination was pending.He made headlines after he and Rob Kissane, the then deputy director, resisted Trump administration demands for information about agents who had participated in investigations into the January 6 riot at the US Capitol by a mob of Donald Trump’s supporters.Emil Bove, the then senior justice department official who made the request and was last week confirmed for a seat on a federal appeals court, wrote a memo accusing the FBI’s top leaders of “insubordination”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionResponding to Bove’s request, the FBI ultimately provided personnel details about several thousand employees, identifying them by unique employee numbers rather than by names.The FBI has moved under Patel’s watch to aggressively demote, reassign or push out agents. In April, for instance, the bureau reassigned several agents who were photographed kneeling during a racial justice protest in Washington that followed the 2020 death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers, two people familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.Numerous special agents in charge of field offices have been told to retire, resign or accept reassignment.Another agent, Michael Feinberg, has said publicly that he was told to resign or accept a demotion amid scrutiny from leadership of his friendship with Peter Strzok, a lead agent on the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation who was fired by the justice department in 2018 following revelations that he had exchanged negative text messages about Trump with an FBI lawyer, Lisa Page. More

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      Democrats slam Texas senator over alleged FBI role in locating lawmakers

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      Democrats harshly criticized Donald Trump and fellow Republicans on Thursday after a US senator said the FBI had agreed to assist in returning Texas Democratic lawmakers who left the state to stop a Republican effort to redistrict.Senator John Cornyn’s claim that the FBI would assist Republicans’ effort could not be independently confirmed. The FBI declined to comment. An administration official told NBC News this week the government did not plan on using federal agents to arrest Texas lawmakers and a federal law enforcement official told the outlet that as of Thursday morning, the agency had not assisted with trying to locate the lawmakers.The Texas lawmakers who fled the state earlier this week to block Republicans’ effort to add five more seats to the state maps are currently staying at a hotel in suburban Chicago. Speaking to reporters at the Illinois state fair on Thursday, the Democratic governor, JB Pritzker, said he welcomed the FBI to the state.“I hope they take in the state fair, I hope they go see the beauty of Lake Michigan. But they won’t be arresting anyone because there is no US federal law that prohibits those Texas house Democrats from being here in the state,” he told reporters.Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader in the US House, called it an effort to intimidate Democrats.“Shouldn’t the FBI be tracking down terrorists, drug traffickers and child predators? The Trump administration continues to weaponize law enforcement to target political adversaries. These extremists don’t give a damn about public safety. We will not be intimidated,” he said in a post on X.Ken Martin, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, also accused Cornyn, who is locked in a primary battle against Texas’s attorney general, Ken Paxton, of grandstanding. “John Cornyn is desperately swinging for the fences, asking Kash Patel to take a break from covering up for Donald Trump to instead pull this political stunt. They both know damn well that legally, there’s nothing they can do,” he said.Legal experts have questioned how the federal law enforcement agency could play a role in returning the lawmakers.“Federal government intrusion into a state’s process of self-government should only occur when there is a clear constitutional warrant. In this situation, the federal government has no authority to intervene and no legitimate role to play,” said David Froomkin, a law professor at the University of Houston.In his request for assistance to the FBI earlier this week, Cornyn said he was “concerned that legislators who solicited or accepted funds to aid in their efforts to avoid their legislative duties may be guilty of bribery or other public corruption offenses”. Trump also suggested earlier this week that the FBI might have to get involved in the matter.Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, has also launched a long-shot legal effort to get the top Democrat who left, Gene Wu, removed from office.Paxton, the Texas attorney general, also announced on Wednesday he had launched an investigation into a group run by former congressman Beto O’Rourke that has been covering the costs of Texas lawmakers as they remain in Illinois. Each lawmaker that breaks quorum is fined $500 per day.Also on Thursday, JD Vance met with Republican lawmakers in Indiana to encourage them to redraw the state’s congressional map to be more favorable to the GOP, the latest in a brazen nationwide push to reconfigure district lines ahead of next year’s midterm elections.Republicans already control seven of Indiana’s nine congressional seats, but the party has complete control of state government, which could allow them to redraw the map to pick up more seats. Donald Trump is also pushing Missouri to redraw its congressional map to add more GOP seats and Republicans in Ohio, where Republicans already control 10 of 15 districts, are also likely to reconfigure their map later this year to add more Republican seats.Vance met with Indiana’s Republican governor, Mike Braun, and state legislative leaders on Thursday. To redraw the maps in Indiana, Braun would need to call a special session.Republicans have an extremely slim margin in the US House and Democrats need to net just three seats to flip control of Congress next year. The president’s party typically loses US House seats in a midterm election, which is why Republicans are pushing to redraw districts in their favor.During a conference call on Thursday, two of four Texas lawmakers who had been scheduled to speak were delayed by taking a security briefing in light of the report of FBI involvement in the quorum break. Legislators deflected questions about the risk of a conflict between state and federal law enforcement, redirecting questions toward flooding relief and Abbott’s legislative and executive priorities.“We wouldn’t need to have a quorum break and wouldn’t need to be scared of the constitutional breakdown of states’ rights, and Illinois law enforcement versus the FBI, if we were focusing on the things that matter,” said the Texas representative Mary Gonzalez. “To me, the thing that matters most is that over 100 people died and that the homes are still destroyed and that people are still living in unsafe communities because there is debris.”The governors of California and New York, where Democrats have complete control of state government, have pledged to retaliate against Republicans’ redistricting efforts by adding Democratic seats, though both states face legal requirements that make aggressive gerrymandering more difficult.Additional reporting by George Chidi More

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      Fort Bliss army base on US southern border to take 1,000 Ice detainees

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      Fort Bliss is preparing to accept 1,000 immigrant detainees as the Trump administration moves to use military bases for its unprecedented mass deportation operation and immigration crackdown.The facility, named Camp East Montana, is set to begin operations on 17 August at the US army post near El Paso, Texas. Ice (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) said in a statement that the facility will initially house up to 1,000 detainees, with plans to expand to a capacity of 5,000 beds.If the center reaches full capacity, the El Paso Times reports that it would become the largest immigration detention facility in the US.An Ice spokesperson said the agency is using the facility to help “decompress Ice detention facilities in other regions” and will serve as a short-term processing center. The statement adds that deportations carried out via “Ice air operations” will also take place at the facility.According to Ice, the facility will house undocumented immigrants who “are in removal proceedings or who have final orders of removal”.The site is being constructed under a Department of Defense contract, Ice said, and is funded “as part of the essential whole-of-government approach to protecting public safety and preserving national security”.In July, administration officials announced that Acquisition Logistics LLC, a Virginia-based contractor, was awarded a $231.8m firm-fixed-price contract to “establish and operate” the “5,000 capacity, single adult, short-term detention facility”.Bloomberg reported that Acquisition Logistics has no prior experience operating detention facilities.View image in fullscreenIn the statement from Ice, the agency said that Ice personnel “will be responsible for the management and operational authority” at the facility, and that the establishment of the center is being “carried out with contracted support and according to Ice detention standards”.The agency described the facility as “soft-sided” and said that it will offer “everything a traditional Ice detention facility offers”, which Ice said includes access to legal representation, a law library and space for visitation, recreation and medical treatment, as well as “necessary accommodations for disabilities, diet and religious belief”.In a statement to the Guardian, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin also confirmed the use of Fort Bliss to house immigration detainees.“Ice is indeed pursuing all available options to expand bedspace capacity” McLaughlin said. “This process does include housing detainees at certain military bases, including Fort Bliss.”In March, the Guardian reported that Fort Bliss has been used under multiple administrations for immigration-related operations.Under this Trump administration, the base has reportedly already been used to fly deportees on military aircraft to Guantánamo Bay and Central and South America.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionUnder Joe Biden, it was used as an emergency shelter to for thousands of unaccompanied migrant children. In 2021, Fort Bliss also reportedly played a key role in resettling Afghan refugees brought to the US after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. And in 2016, under the Obama administration, Fort Bliss housed several hundred unaccompanied migrant children.The new facility being established at Fort Bliss comes as the Trump administration has sought to use several US military bases around the country as immigration detention facilities.The expansion has faced some criticism from Democrats. Texas representative Veronica Escobar, whose district includes Fort Bliss, warned that using military facilities as immigration detention centers could hurt the effectiveness of US military forces.“It’s not good for our readiness, and it degrades our military,” she said.Last month, the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, announced that both the Camp Atterbury base in Indiana and the Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey could now house detained immigrants.Democrats from both states condemned the move, with New Jersey’s Democratic delegation warning that “using our country’s military to detain and hold undocumented immigrants jeopardizes military preparedness and paves the way for Ice immigration raids in every New Jersey community”.The planned opening of the new immigration detention facility near El Paso also comes as a new report released this week by the office of the US senator Jon Ossoff, a Democrat representing Georgia, found and documented hundreds of alleged human rights abuses at immigration detention centers in the US since 20 January 2025.The report cites deaths in custody, physical and sexual abuse of detainees, mistreatment of pregnant women and children, overcrowding and unsanitary living conditions, exposure to extreme temperatures, denial of access to attorneys, child separation, and more.In a statement about the report’s allegations, a spokesperson for the DHS told NBC News that “any claim that there are subprime conditions at Ice detention centers are false”. 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      ‘Impossible to rebuild’: NIH scientists say Trump cuts will imperil life-saving research

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      Last week, the office of management and budget (OMB) revealed plans to freeze all outside funding for National Institutes of Health research this fiscal year, but reversed course later that day, leaving the scientific community in a state of whiplash. A senior official at the NIH who spoke on condition of anonymity said this was just the latest in a “multi-prong” approach by the Trump administration to destroy American scientific research.In July, the National Cancer Institute, which is part of the NIH, updated its website to reflect Trump administration plans to significantly cut cancer research spending as well. Since January, the administration has been cancelling NIH grants, in some cases targeting other specific research areas, such as HIV treatment and prevention.“It’s really, really bad at NIH right now,” said the official, who added that researchers working outside the NIH have been unaware of the severity of the situation until recently, even though they have also faced funding upheaval since the winter.“The Trump administration is, for the first time in history, substantially intervening inside NIH to bring it under political control,” the official said. “That’s what we saw this week with the OMB freeze on funding.”“I think the core of it is that they want to destroy universities, or at least turn them into rightwing ideological factories,” the official said, since the majority of the NIH’s grants are distributed to researchers in universities, medical schools and similar institutions.In 2021, JD Vance gave a speech entitled The Universities Are the Enemy. The official said they were alarmed at how little universities are fighting back – many have settled with the administration, which has “gotten Columbia to completely knuckle under. One of America’s most significant universities and a place that is a worldwide magnet for talents. Same thing at Penn. Now they’re going after UCLA.”Institutions such as the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine have also stayed on the sidelines, refusing to sufficiently resist Trump, the official said.If the administration does manage to freeze NIH funding, it will push to rescind the funds permanently using a rescission motion, the official said. This type of motion only requires a simple majority of 50 votes to pass the Senate, instead of the supermajority necessary to beat a filibuster. Republicans would have enough votes to “ram through these motions to effectively cut the budget without Democrats in Congress weighing in. It’s an ongoing disaster.”Researchers at the many universities where the administration has frozen funding, such as Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, are starting to feel the gravity of the situation, said the official. Carole LaBonne, a biologist at Northwestern, said “university labs are hanging by a thread”, explaining that even though the OMB reversed its decision to freeze outside NIH funding, “the baseline reality is not much better”.Other recent changes at the NIH include allocating research grants all at once rather than over multiple years, so that fewer projects are funded. Reductions in cancer research funding also mean that only 4% of relevant grant applications will move forward. “This will effectively shut down cancer research in this country and destroy the careers of many scientists. This is devastating,” LaBonne said.The extreme uncertainty surrounding scientific research is also negatively affecting scientists’ mental health. “I do not know any faculty who are not incredibly stressed right now, wondering how long they will be able to keep their labs going and if/when they will have to let laboratory staff go,” LaBonne said. “It also very hard to motivate oneself to write grants, a painstaking and time-intensive processes, when there is a 96% chance it will not be funded.”Ryan Gutenkunst, who heads the department of molecular and cellular biology at the University of Arizona, said: “The chaos at NIH is definitely freaking [faculty and students] out and wasting huge amounts of emotional energy and time. We were emailing about the latest pause, only to find it unpaused hours later.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe senior NIH official found last week’s events unsurprising, they said: “They’re throwing everything at the wall to stop NIH from spending. What struck me was that many of my colleagues at universities were like, ‘Oh, my God, they’re stopping grants.’ And it really seemed to activate people in a way that I hadn’t seen before, whereas a lot of us at NIH thought, ‘Oh, they just did another thing.’”Science is an engine for American economic dominance, and scientific clusters such as Silicon Valley could not exist without federal funding, the official said. “Once you break them, it will be impossible to rebuild them. We’re on the path to breaking them.”LaBonne said she worried about the impact on progress in cancer specifically. “My own research touches on pediatric cancers. Forty years ago more than 60% of children diagnosed with cancer would have died within five years of diagnosis. Today there is a 90% survival rate. We should not put progress like that in danger,” she said.Although many major scientific institutions have complied with the administration, grassroots organizations and individual scientists, including those within the NIH, are finding ways to resist.The senior NIH official said they were most hopeful about grassroots organizers who are resisting the Trump administration openly, rather than relying on older strategies such as litigation and negotiations with Congress. For example, Science Homecoming, a website to promote science communication, is encouraging scientists to get the word out about the importance of federal funding to their home towns.The Bethesda Declaration, signed by 484 NIH staff, directly accused NIH director Jay Bhattacharya of “a failure of your legal duty to use congressionally appropriated funds for critical NIH research. Each day that the NIH continues to disrupt research, your ability to deliver on this duty narrows.” More