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      Senator Chuck Grassley grilled at Iowa town hall over ‘shameful’ Trump policies

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      The Republican senator Chuck Grassley struggled to control a town hall meeting on Tuesday as constituents erupted in anger over border security policies and the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation practices.The 91-year-old Republican lawmaker from Iowa is the latest elected official to get grilled by a packed room of constituents. Attendees in the Republican state were concerned about the treatment of asylum seekers stemming from the president’s approach to immigration enforcement.“I believe very strongly in my Christian faith. I preach on Sundays,” said one attendee, “Turning away people who have come here for asylum is one of the most shameful things we are doing right here.”The attendee pressed Grassley on whether he would take action to ensure the United States better follows international law and upholds “the ideals of our country to be a place of hope for others”.Grassley responded that he would “welcome refugees, I would welcome people seeking asylum”. On Tuesday morning, Trump had posted on Truth Social that border crossings hit an all-time low in March.Tensions escalated further when another constituent accused Trump of ignoring the supreme court order regarding Kilmar Armando Ábrego García. Ábrego’s deportation to El Salvador despite supreme court intervention has become a rallying point for immigration advocates, who cite it as evidence of the administration’s willingness to flout judicial authority.In the White House press conference on Tuesday, the press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, called Ábrego a “human trafficker and gang member”.“The president doesn’t care,” one attendee at Grassley’s town hall shouted. “He’s got an order from the supreme court and he’s just said: ‘No, screw it.’”Multiple attendees reminded Grassley, who has held his Senate seat since 1981, of his constitutional oath of office, with one asking whether the senator was acting upon that oath. The crowd grew increasingly frustrated as Grassley attempted to explain his position.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I’m trying to recapture the constitutional authority of article 1, section 8,” Grassley responded, referencing a bipartisan bill he introduced aimed at addressing what he called “mistakes that Democratic Congress has made in 1963”.Grassley’s confrontational town hall comes as many Republican lawmakers have largely abandoned the practice of holding in-person constituent meetings during their congressional recess. The retreat from public forums follows other heated exchanges where Republican lawmakers faced sometimes abrasive criticism over issues like proposed budget cuts to Medicare and Medicaid and what they see as the erosion of constitutional checks and balances.While Grassley continues his 45th annual 99-county tour of Iowa, only a handful of Republicans, including the representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and Byron Donalds, have publicly announced plans for similar events. More

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      ‘Shock to the system’: farmers hit by Trump’s tariffs and cuts say they need another bailout

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      Farmers across the United States say they could face financial ruin – unless there is a huge taxpayer-funded bailout to compensate for losses generated by Donald Trump’s sweeping cuts and chaotic tariffs.Small- and medium-sized farms were already struggling amid worsening climate shocks and volatile commodities markets, on top of being squeezed by large corporations that dominate the supply chain.In recent weeks, farmers in Texas and across the midwest have suffered millions of dollars of crop losses due to unprecedented heavy rainfall and flooding.The climate crisis-fueled extreme weather is compounded by the US president’s looming trade war and the administration targeting popular federal programs and staff, leaving farmers reeling and resigned to needing another bailout.“There’s a lot of uncertainty around and I hate to be used as a bargaining chip. I am definitely worried,” said Travis Johnson, who lost more than 1,000 acres of cotton, sorghum and corn after a year’s rain fell within 48 hours in the Rio Grande Valley (RGV) in southern Texas last month, turning parched fields into lakes.RGV farmers sell sorghum, wheat, corn and vegetables to Mexico among other crops, while buying fertilizer and equipment – and relying on Mexican farmhands for cheap labor. Mexico is the US’s largest trading partner, while China is the main buyer of American sorghum and cotton. All US products destined for China face a 125% tax thanks to Trump’s tariff war, and could cut farmers off from core markets.View image in fullscreen“I can see how some tariffs might help us compete with Mexico but are we really getting targeted by every other country or are we on the wrong side of this? We’ve already had two years of absolute disaster with falling prices and weather patterns … no farmer wants this but without a bailout this could be devastating and a lot more people could go under,” Johnson said.Rural counties rallied behind Trump in 2024, giving him a majority in all but 11 of the 444 farming-dependent counties last year, averaging 78% support, according to analysis by Investigate Midwest.Trump’s vote share rose among farming communities, despite his last trade war which required a $23bn taxpayer bailout for farmers in 2018-19.Yet anxiety is mounting among the agricultural base.First came widespread cuts to oversubscribed and chronically underfunded federal climate and conservation schemes designed to reduce costs and greenhouse gases, and improve yields and environmental health.Trump is also shuttering local food programs which provide farmers with stable domestic markets like public school districts and food banks, helping make farms more resilient to global economic shocks. The USAID, which purchased about $2bn every year in agricultural products particularly wheat, sorghum and lentils for humanitarian aid programs, has been dismantled.The loss in federal programs alone would have been tough to cope with, but then came the trade chaos. Trump’s tariff announcements began when most farmers already had spring crops in the ground – or at the very least had prepared the land and purchased inputs such as seeds and pesticides, making it impossible to switch to crops that could potentially find a market domestically.View image in fullscreenConsensus is growing among experts that the turmoil represents an opportunity for rival agriculture economies – and disaster for US farmers.“It’s all happening so fast and in the middle of the growing season, it’s a shock to the system that’s going to be tough for farmers, especially those growing commodities for export,” said Ben Lilliston, director of rural strategies and climate change at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP). “Tariffs are not magical, they need to be used strategically as part of wider reforms to the domestic economic agenda.”“The volatility of the tariff policy decisions, with new tariffs frequently being announced, paused and placed will take a toll on the American agricultural industry,” writes economist Betty Resnick in an article for Farm Bureau, a right-leaning lobby group. “Without direct support from USDA or a farm bill with an updated safety net, farmers will almost certainly bear the brunt of these tariffs.”Ben Murray, senior researcher with the consumer advocacy group Food and Water Watch, said: “Without a bailout, we can only imagine how bad this will be for farmers and what an opportunity for Brazil – and this is all being done for a tax cut for the wealthy.”For decades now, US farmers have been heavily incentivized through the Farm Bill to grow commodity crops destined for export such as wheat, corn, soy, sorghum, rice and cotton, rather than produce for domestic consumption. The price of commodities is tied to the global market, even if sold domestically. Meanwhile US imports of fruits and vegetables mostly from Latin America have risen, now accounting for more than 50% of consumption, according to USDA data.This globalized agricultural system favors large and corporate-owned operations, as smaller farms struggle more with boom and bust prices, and access to government subsidies and other credit. The number of farms continues to decline, while the average size continues to rise. Market consolidation and corporate profits tend to surge in the agriculture industry after every economic shock including the Covid pandemic, Trump’s last trade war and the banking crisis.Biden implemented a range of modest, imperfect policies to try to ease the pain for smaller-scale farmers including a greater focus on anti-trust, local and regional food systems, and climate resilience – all of which are under attack by the Trump administration.The vast majority of a $19.5bn funding package by the Biden administration for evidence-based conservation practices that improve soil health, air quality and reduce the use of costly fertilizers, pesticides and water will not be honored. The 10-year fund allocated through the Inflation Reduction Act was an addendum to money ring-fenced in the Farm Bill for four oversubscribed programs, after years of pressure from farmers to expand access to the initiatives.Two Biden-era healthy eating schemes worth a combined $1bn to local farmers have been canceled: the Local Food Purchase Assistance (LFPA) program matching producers to food banks, and the Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement Program which helped public schools add healthy, locally grown produce on to lunch menus. (The USDA recently agreed to unfreeze funding for existing contracts.)View image in fullscreen“My farm will survive because we’ve been working with school districts for 20 years, but for others in our coalition the funding cliff is very real,” said Anna Knight, who owns an 80-acre citrus farm in southern California.Piling on further misery are mass layoffs within the USDA that were seemingly orchestrated by the billionaire Trump donor Elon Musk.More than 10% of USDA staff have already reportedly agreed to voluntary buyouts, with more expected in coming weeks. This is in addition to several thousand probationary employees who were laid off last month – a move which disproportionately hit local offices beefed up under the Biden administration, and is being challenged in the courts.USDA field offices play a crucial role in rural communities, the place where farmers go for tailor-made technical help from agencies including the National Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) and the Farm Service Agency (FSA) on the latest pest control and planting practices, conservation programs, loans and disaster assistance programs.“It makes no sense taking billions of dollars off the table for programs that improve long-term farm viability and resilience – and which farmers have been lining up for years for – and then spend billions bringing back farmers from financial collapse,” said Jesse Womack, policy expert at the National Sustainable Agricultural Coalition. “It’s looking really bleak with a lot of pain ahead for farmers.”A coalition of environmental and agricultural groups is suing the USDA after it purged an array of climate-related online resources including information on the NRCS website helping farmers access federal grants for conservation practices, and technical guidance on cutting emissions and strengthening resilience to extreme weather like floods and drought.Even if there is a bailout, getting the money to farmers in time to avoid bankruptcy will be much more complicated this time, according to Lilliston from IATP.“Another bailout seems inevitable but there are serious questions about how quickly it could be implemented with such a dysfunctional Congress, local USDA offices shuttered and fewer staff. It’s a very messy situation and farmers are already experiencing harm.”And in the medium and long term: “The US reputation has taken a huge hit. We can no longer be considered a reliable trading partner which is terrible for farmers,” added Lilliston.Even before the current mayhem, almost two-thirds of US rural bankers surveyed in March expected farmer income to decline in 2025, with farm equipment sales dropping for the 19th straight month, according to the latest Rural Mainstreet Economy survey by Creighton University. Grain and cotton prices have plummeted since 2022.View image in fullscreen“We were already in a precarious situation but now, unless there’s a bailout or this trade war is resolved by harvest time, it will be disastrous and a critical mass of farmers could go out of business,” said Adam Chappell, 46, a commodities farmer growing corn, cotton, soybean and rice in Arkansas, where dozens of local USDA staff have reportedly been furloughed or fired in recent weeks.Chappell’s town Cotton Plant was hit with 13in of rain in early April, causing crop losses for many farmers. Chappell’s fields survived the rain but he spent a nervous few weeks after the USDA froze all conservation funds, unsure whether the government would reimburse him, as agreed, for an upfront investment in cover crops and a compost operation. Eventually, after a backlash, the administration backtracked and agreed to honor existing contracts.“The weather is getting stranger and more challenging to deal with every year, while big monopoly corporations are allowed to manipulate the system and squeeze us at every part of the supply chain. Farmers like me lean heavily on the NRCS conservation programs to improve soil health and reduce input costs,” said Chappell. “The tariffs are like adding salt on the wound.”Despite last week’s partial U-turn, Trump’s ongoing and increasingly chaotic trade war risks causing irreparable harm to international markets for farmers, especially but not exclusively China, as well as pushing up the cost of agricultural imports such as pesticides, fertilizer and machinery.China is the US’s third biggest agricultural export market, worth $24.7bn in 2024, down 15% from 2023, as soybean, corn and sorghum sales fell amid rising competition from South America, according to USDA data. China’s top imports from the US are oilseeds and grains. US exports to China supported almost a million US jobs in 2022, according to the US-China Business Council, mostly around agriculture and livestock production.As of Friday, at least 15 agricultural department programs worth billions of dollars to American farmers and rural communities remain frozen, according to Politico, more than two months after they were halted for review to ensure compliance with Trump’s priorities opposing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts as well as his crackdown on climate change initiatives.This includes the Biden-era partnerships for climate-smart commodities (PCSC) program – a five-year $3.2bn real-life study into the effectiveness of conservation practices such as cover cropping and reduced tillage for commodity farms.“PSCS was about increasing our evidence base on climate benefits that also help commodity farmers improve soil health, air and water quality – and their bottom line,” said Omanjana Goswami, a scientist with the food and environment program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “Abandoning this will come at a cost to American farms and the taxpayer.”On Monday, the agriculture secretary, Brooke Rollins, defended dismantling PSCS, claiming it amounted to a Biden-era “climate slush fund” of which less than half the money went to farmers.A spokesperson added: “The USDA has a variety of programs available to producers who have been impacted by recent disasters … [and] is currently building a framework to deliver over $20bn in congressionally appropriated funds to producers who suffered losses during the 2023/2024 crop year. With 16 robust nutrition programs in place, USDA remains focused on its core mission: strengthening food security, supporting agricultural markets, and ensuring access to nutritious food.”And some Trump supporters are keeping the faith.“There are some concerns out there but our farmers are willing to make sacrifices for long-term gains,” said Sid Miller, the Texas agriculture commissioner. “Tariffs are a temporary tool, they won’t be permanent, China needs our grains, they are prideful but will come around like last time.” More

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      US’s $2.36tn tourism business fears ‘Trump slump’ over tariff turmoil

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      Batman said business was so-so, and King Kong beat his chest in agreement. But neither could predict that it would improve. Gotham’s caped crusader and his muscular ape neighbour could only hope. As with Times Square’s superhero-themed visitor-photography business last week, so it is with the US tourism business at large.The effect of economic and political turbulence on the number of foreign visitors coming to the US is for now hard to define. But both – whether through tariffs, currency exchange chaos, or fears over political ill-winds – are sending chills through the $2.36tn business, the world’s most powerful travel and tourism market.Warnings that international tourism to the US could be hit by Donald Trump’s effort to re-engineer economic and political relations with the rest of the world are slowly emerging.The federal government’s National Travel and Tourism Office released preliminary figures last week showing visits to the US from overseas fell 11.6% in March compared with the same month last year. According to the data released on Tuesday, international arrivals from China were down nearly 1%. Wolfgang Georg Arlt, the CEO of the China Outbound Tourism Research Institute, called it the “Trump Slump”.The Delta Air Lines CEO, Ed Bastian, also said the company would not expand flying in the second half of the year because of disappointing bookings amid Trump’s unpredictable trade policies after cutting its first-quarter earnings outlook, citing weaker-than-expected corporate and leisure travel demand.“In the last six weeks, we’ve seen a corresponding reduction in broad consumer confidence and corporate confidence,” Bastian told CNBC, adding things “really started to slow” in mid-February.The Las Vegas Visitors and Convention Authority said last week it was projecting a 5% decline in room tax revenue for its upcoming budget – a decline that may reflect Trump’s trade disputes with Canada and Mexico. Those countries account for 2.6 million visitors to sin city, or half of international travel trade.LVCVA’s president, Steve Hill, warned at a budget meeting that short-term projected declines do not make a trend, “although we do expect that this is the start of a decline in international visitation. At some level, the conversation around the tariffs has also alienated some of our potential visitors.”The travel forecasting company Tourism Economics, which late last year projected the US would have nearly 9% more international arrivals this year, along with a 16% increase in spending, revised its annual outlook last week to predict a 9.4% decline in arrivals.The company’s Geena Bevenour said in an email statement that the revised forecast represented “a substantial setback” and eclipsed “the US downside scenario we released in late-February, reflecting a more contentious context for inbound travel and more severe tariff announcements than previously expected.”On the upside, a weakening dollar against sterling, the euro, Japanese yen and Swiss franc could make travel to the US more attractive. Despite the variables, New York this week was full of international visitors, many on Easter break, and others from further afield.A couple from Scotland, who offered their names as James and Zoe, were waiting to board the Staten Island ferry with their two children on Thursday afternoon, and said they weren’t fazed about tariffs or anti-European rhetoric from the White House. Nor had they encountered elevated difficulties at immigration at JFK – aside from the long queues.Notwithstanding their advance booking, the couple said they would not hesitate to return – and had booked a holiday in Florida for next year. “I can see both sides, from a right and left perspective on tariffs and and the US wanting to put its house in order first.”A couple from Belgium, Dave and Gwen Desmet, returning from a boat trip to the Statue of Liberty, said they had been apprehensive at immigration but encountered no problems. But they said that if the trip had not already been booked, they would have waited to better understand the reality of the impact of Trump’s upheavals.“There’s more anxiety,” said Gwen, who said she had advised her son to delete an essay about Donald Trump on his laptop, adding that she was alarmed by changes to US government policy around diversity and gender.Her daughter had worried that it was “not a good time to go to New York”. But her husband, Dave, reasoned that media was “playing a big role” in stirring anxiety and “creating negativity”.Last week, China issued warnings for citizens considering travelling or studying in the US. China’s ministry of culture and tourism cited the “deterioration of China-US economic and trade relations and the domestic security situation in the United States”.American Ring Travel, a tour operator based in California, offers carbon-neutral bus tours of the US that often attract eco-conscious travelers from Europe, said bookings from Germany flattened starting in January after Elon Musk threw his support behind a far-right political party in that country’s federal election.Many travel agents say it may be too early to tell if, beyond visitors from Canada, the US will see its post-Covid gains in foreign tourism wiped out or even reversed.Later this month, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) will release new figures on international travel. Global hotel chains like Hilton Worldwide are seeing share price declines.One high-end travel agent, accustomed to arranging international White Lotus-style luxury holidays for wealthy clients, said he had not seen any changes – yet. But it was still early days. “I think we’re going to feel it soon. People aren’t exhausted yet. But they’re clearly stressed – and will be, especially if their disposable income gets hit,” they said. More

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      Having as many babies as possible is not the only way to show you love humanity | Zoe Williams

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      ‘Perpetuating humanity should be a cross-politics consensus,” read an article in the Atlantic last week, “but the left was mostly absent at a recent pronatalism conference.” It’s such a simple proposition – everyone loves babies and wants the species to perpetuate, right? – but pronatalism has provoked a ferocious battle on the American left. Should they be trying to engage meaningfully at a preposterous far-right conference? Or should the left stop self-flagellating and start organising?But what is pronatalism – and is it really borderline fascist? I don’t want to think about slippery, bad-faith, rightwing claptrap any more than you do, but in an era in which US politics can sneeze and the world catches encephalitis, we do, regrettably, have to think about bad-faith everything, all the time.The motivation of the pronatalists is that birthrates are in decline, in some places (such as South Korea) so precipitously that the nation will soon cease to meaningfully exist. It has been a bugbear of the right, particularly the alt-tech right, for almost a decade. In 2017, Elon Musk wrote on Twitter: “The world’s population is accelerating towards collapse, but few seem to notice or care.” That was before he owned the platform, so few people noticed or cared. It has also been a thematic staple of Viktor Orbán’s rhetoric in Hungary, reinforced in 2019 by a large-family tax-break policy that in February became an income tax exemption for mothers of two or three children.The ideas factories pushing birthrates have always been much more opaque about their politics; often, they frame their ideas to suit whomever they are talking to. When I interviewed Simone and Malcolm Collins, venture capitalists turned pronatal advocates, a couple of years ago, their line was that progressive politics needed higher birthrates. Political persuasion was “40% to 70% heritable”, Malcolm told me. “If you systematically delete everyone who cares about the environment from the gene pool, that means, within a couple of generations, you’re going to see a dramatic drop in the number of people who care about the climate, even as the collapse becomes more intense.”At the last count, the Collinses had four children, plus a number of frozen embryos, which Simone intends to incubate at 18-month intervals. “We’re going to keep going until physically I can no longer have kids – and that will be when they forcibly remove my uterus,” she said. It was a dystopian image with a number of obvious follow-ups, the first of which was: who are “they”? But I didn’t ask any of them, because her perception of force, authority, uteruses, children and the world seemed dark and personal, like a subconscious gaping open.Nor did I pursue whether Malcolm could possibly believe that you could sell to people who care about the environment the idea that only their biological children would be genetically capable of caring about the environment. It could be the child of someone who arrives on a small boat that solves our political malaise. What about the heritability of staunch determination? Did they ever think about that?But, all too often, ethnonationalism is implicit in the pronatalist narrative: a low birthrate can’t be offset by migration, because they are not talking about people in general. They are talking about the right kind of people.In the intervening years, Musk has had a bunch more children, often boasting of the example he is setting. Trump started saying: “You have good genes, you know that, right?” to his followers. Last week, the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, floated the idea that “if you are healthy, it’s almost impossible for you to be killed by an infectious disease in modern times”, which medics rebutted because it’s not true. But we should all fear its drumbeat: good stock is different; anyone who succumbs to an infectious disease wasn’t “healthy” to begin with.These connections are often intellectually baggy – Musk’s desire to populate Mars with his own seed doesn’t map neatly on to RFK’s anti-vax agenda, while Orbán’s pronatalism sounds like socially conservative gender oppression, yet pronatalist forums tie themselves in knots trying to sound “woke”. But if this isn’t about ethnonationalism, then why aren’t the pronatalists crying out for countries with low birthrates to receive refugees with open arms? Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnistDo you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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      Obama condemns Trump’s $2.3bn Harvard funding freeze as ‘unlawful and ham-handed’ – US politics live

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      Good morning and welcome to our US politics blog.Former US president Barack Obama has condemned the education department for freezing $2.3bn in federal funds to Harvard University after the elite college rejected a list of demands from the White House.In some of his most vocal criticism of this Trump administration, Obama praised Harvard, the country’s oldest university, for setting an example for other higher education institutions to reject federal overreach into its governance practices.He wrote in a post on X:
      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.
      His comments came after Harvard decided to fight the White House’s demands that it crack down on alleged antisemitism and civil rights violations. It is the first major US university to defy pressure from the White House to change its policies.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.The department of education announced in March that it had opened an investigation into 60 colleges and universities for alleged “anti-Semitic harassment and discrimination”. It came after protests against Israel’s war on Gaza were put on across campuses last year, demonstrations that many Republicans framed as antisemitic.Harvard’s response to the White House’s demands was in sharp contrast to the approach taken by Columbia University, the epicentre of last year’s protests against Israel’s assault on Gaza.The Trump administration cut $400m in grants to the private New York school, accusing it of failing to protect Jewish students from harassment. The school caved in to demands and responded by agreeing to reform student disciplinary procedures and hiring 36 officers to expand its security team.Stay with us throughout the day as we have more reaction to this story and many others.Hugo Lowell is a reporter in the Washington bureau of the Guardian covering Donald Trump and the Justice DepartmentThe Trump administration on Monday misrepresented a US supreme court decision that compelled it to return a man wrongly deported to El Salvador, using tortured readings of the order to justify taking no actions to secure his release.The supreme court last week unanimously ordered the administration to “facilitate” the release of Kilmar Abrego García, 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 García 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 García…The remarks at the Oval Office meeting marked an escalation in the Trump administration’s attempts to claim uncertainty with court orders to avoid having to take actions it dislikes. In Abrego García’s case, officials appeared to manufacture uncertainty in particularly blatant fashion.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 García into US custody.The case started when Abrego García 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 García 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 García 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 García’s deportation to El Salvador was an “administrative error”. The supreme court also called his removal illegal.You can read the full story here:One of China’s lead officials overseeing Hong Kong has condemned punitive US tariffs on China as “shameless” and attacked American “hillbillies” amid a continuing trade war between Beijing and Washington that has caused turmoil in global markets.Xia Baolong, director of the Hong Kong and Macao Work Office, said Hong Kong has never levied taxes on imports and that the US enjoyed a $272 bn trade surplus in the city over the past decade.US President Donald Trump has increased the levies imposed on China to 145%, while Beijing has set a retaliatory 125 percent toll on American imports – a move not followed by Hong Kong.Imposing tariffs on the city is “hegemonic and shameless in the extreme”, and shows that the US does not want Hong Kong to thrive, Baolong said in a pre-recorded speech at an event to mark the 10th iteration of China’s annual national security education day.He said the US “is the greatest culprit in undermining Hong Kong’s human rights, freedom, rule of law, prosperity and stability.”“It is not after our tariffs – it wants to take our lives,” Baolong was quoted as saying.He added that the sweeping US tariffs would not shake the determination of Beijing and Hong Kong governments and that “victory must belong to the great Chinese people”.“Let those American ’hillbillies’ wail before the 5,000-year-old civilisation of the Chinese nation” he said, adding that anyone seeking to bring China into poverty was an “enemy”.Hong Kong is a former British colony that became a special administrative region of China in 1997. In theory, it is governed under a system known as “one country, two systems”, a constitutional arrangement that promised Hong Kong a high degree of autonomy and rights protections.But it is widely seen to have reneged on the deal, crushing pro-democracy protests and imposing a national security law in 2020 – targeting secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces – which has in effect silenced opposition voices among Hong Kong’s once-vibrant civil society.Hong Kong is subject to the high US tariffs imposed on China as it is no longer considered a separate trading entity by Washington so means is not entitled to favourable trading terms anymore. Trump ended Hong Kong’s preferential trade status following China’s security crackdown on Hong Kong in 2020.As my colleague Martin Belam reports in our UK politics live blog, JD Vance has said the US is optimistic it can negotiate a “great” trade deal with the UK.In an interview with online outlet Unherd, the US vice president told Sohrab Ahmari:
      We’re certainly working very hard with Keir Starmer’s government. The president really loves the UK. He loved the queen. He admires and loves the king. It is a very important relationship. And he’s a businessman and has a number of important business relationships in [the UK].
      But I think it’s much deeper than that. There’s a real cultural affinity. And of course, fundamentally America is an Anglo country. I think there’s a good chance that, yes, we’ll come to a great agreement that’s in the best interest of both countries.
      Unlike China, Britain was spared the most punitive treatment in Trump’s initial tariff announcement on 2 April, but British imports in the US still incur a 10% charge while its steel and car sectors incur a rate of 25%.The UK government has been hopeful of a deal to exempt the UK from Trump’s tariffs.The UK’s chancellor, Rachel Reeves, will aim to continue negotiations for an economic deal with the US later this month when she travels to Washington to attend the International Monetary Fund’s spring meetings with other finance ministers. You can read more about Vance’s comments today in this article by my colleague Rachel Hall.South Korea has announced plans to invest an additional $4.9bn in the country’s semiconductor industry, citing “growing uncertainty” over US tariffs.“An aggressive fiscal investment plan has been devised to help local firms navigate mounting challenges in the global semiconductor race,” the finance ministry said.“To foster a dynamic, private sector-led ecosystem for semiconductor innovation and growth, the government will increase its investment in the sector from 26 trillion won ($18.2bn) to 33 trillion won,” the ministry added.Semiconductors are tiny chips that power just about everything, including computers, mobile phones and cars. They are central to the global economy. The UK, the US, Europe and China rely heavily on Taiwan for semiconductors.But South Korea – Asia’s fourth largest economy – is also a major exporter to the US and concerns about the semiconductor sector have hit the Seoul-listed shares of the world’s largest memory chip maker Samsung, and largest memory chip supplier SK Hynix.The statement of extra investment from South Korea’s finance ministry comes after the Trump administration launched investigations into imports of pharmaceuticals and semiconductors on national security grounds.These industries – so far exempt from the 10% US import charges that began on 5 April – may face tariffs after the probes are complete.US President Donald Trump has directed the US commerce department to conduct a three-week investigation into the imports, during which time public comments on the issue will be heard before a decision is made.Trump said on Sunday he would be announcing a tariff rate on imported semiconductors over the next week, adding that there would be flexibility with some companies in the sector.On 2 April, Trump announced sweeping tariffs on global trading partners, including the 25 percent on South Korean goods, before backtracking and suspending their implementation for 90 days.Even so, “duties targeting specific sectors such as semiconductors and pharmaceuticals, remain on the horizon”, finance minister Choi Sang-mok said during a meeting.“This grace period offers a crucial window to strengthen the competitiveness of South Korean companies amid intensifying global trade tensions,” he added.Good morning and welcome to our US politics blog.Former US president Barack Obama has condemned the education department for freezing $2.3bn in federal funds to Harvard University after the elite college rejected a list of demands from the White House.In some of his most vocal criticism of this Trump administration, Obama praised Harvard, the country’s oldest university, for setting an example for other higher education institutions to reject federal overreach into its governance practices.He wrote in a post on X:
      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.
      His comments came after Harvard decided to fight the White House’s demands that it crack down on alleged antisemitism and civil rights violations. It is the first major US university to defy pressure from the White House to change its policies.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.The department of education announced in March that it had opened an investigation into 60 colleges and universities for alleged “anti-Semitic harassment and discrimination”. It came after protests against Israel’s war on Gaza were put on across campuses last year, demonstrations that many Republicans framed as antisemitic.Harvard’s response to the White House’s demands was in sharp contrast to the approach taken by Columbia University, the epicentre of last year’s protests against Israel’s assault on Gaza.The Trump administration cut $400m in grants to the private New York school, accusing it of failing to protect Jewish students from harassment. The school caved in to demands and responded by agreeing to reform student disciplinary procedures and hiring 36 officers to expand its security team.Stay with us throughout the day as we have more reaction to this story and many others. More

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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