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      US reportedly suspends visa approvals for nearly all Palestinian passport holders

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

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      Has Trump succeeded in normalising American autocracy?

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      When it comes to the rise of autocracy in America, Justice Potter Stewart’s famous pronouncement on pornography might be particularly appropriate at the moment: “I know it when I see it.”The cult of personality was apparent as Donald Trump’s cabinet convened on Wednesday in a marathon session that could have embarrassed even a seasoned strongman, providing for three hours and 17 minutes of fawning television coverage.There was Steve Witkoff, the president’s top envoy and negotiator, standing up in the increasingly gilded Cabinet Room, offering praise that could have made even Vladimir Putin blush. “There’s only one thing I wish for – that the Nobel committee finally gets its act together and realizes that you are the single finest candidate since this Nobel award was ever talked about,” he said to applause from secretaries of state, defense and other top cabinet officials.Or was it Stephen Miller on Fox News in effect criminalising the opposition to Trump and calling Chicago a “killing field” despite controverting facts. “The Democrat party is not a political party, it is a domestic extremist organisation,” he said in a strident tone, claiming that the party was devoted “exclusively to the defence of hardened criminals, gangbangers and illegal alien killers and terrorists”.Was it the president calling, on social media, for the arrest of a wealthy financier and his son for their support for civil society? “George Soros, and his wonderful Radical Left son, should be charged with RICO because of their support of Violent Protests, and much more, all throughout the United States of America,” he wrote on Truth Social.Or perhaps it was the revocation of Secret Service protection for his electoral rival Kamala Harris, or the FBI raid on the home of John Bolton, his former national security adviser, who has become an outspoken critic of the president’s national security agenda. Or was it in the commonplace nature of a raid outside an elementary school in Mt Pleasant in Washington DC, where police staked out a school with a large Spanish-speaking population in what became just another immigration raid in America.Some activists and observers have sounded the alarm: authoritarianism of the kind that Americans are used to condemning abroad has become increasingly normal in the United States.Don Moynihan, a political scientist and professor at the University of Michigan, wrote this week that “today, America is a competitive authoritarian system, with a rapidly increasing emphasis on the authoritarian part.”The checklist to consolidate power, he wrote, includes efforts to control the government bureaucracy, the military, internal security, the legal system, civil society, higher education, the media and elections. The pursuit of those aims had been “systematic”, he wrote.Abdelrahman ElGendy has watched this process with a feeling of grim recognition. ElGendy spent six years in prison in his native Egypt on political charges, but fled to the US in order to work on a memoir he is set to release next year.In April, however, he packed his things and left the US following the detention of the Columbia graduate Mahmoud Khalil. ElGendy’s lawyers warned him that he could face a similar fate after his personal details were posted on a website used to target opponents of Israel’s war in Gaza.Since then, he has watched from abroad as the situation has worsened.“I haven’t second-guessed leaving the US. In fact I feel very grateful that I made the choice that I did before things got even worse,” he said. “I left Egypt to escape political persecution … The reason I left the US is because I started to recognize those same patterns forming around me. And since leaving it’s only gone downhill.”View image in fullscreenWhen Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) began carrying out large-scale raids and he was identified online as a potential target, he said he found himself once again waiting to be taken away at any moment.“I don’t think political incarceration is the most important characteristic of authoritarianism, it’s more the constant threat of it that matters most,” he said. “What really sustains authoritarianism is that quiet knowledge that the prison door is always within reach … that shadow is what shapes behavior.”From Russia to Turkey, and Hungary to El Salvador, activists, observers and political scientists have watched the quick consolidation of power by the Trump administration as it has followed a familiar pattern of autocratic rollout.Washington has found common cause with some of the world’s harshest authoritarian regimes such Russia and El Salvador. This week, the US deported nearly 50 Russians, according to activists, including some who probably requested political asylum in the United States. Hundreds of migrants and even citizens have been deported to prisons in El Salvador.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Sometimes I almost feel it’s like ‘I told you so,’” said Noah Bullock, the chief executive of Cristosal, a leading human rights group in El Salvador which was forced to leave the country last month after 25 years of documenting abuses of power.“With the Ice crackdown and the creation of this massive law enforcement agency that only obeys the president – there are no good historical references where that works out well.”“One of the things that I see happening that hits me really close is when these security or police forces begin to look at the whole population as enemies,” he added, comparing it to El Salvador where they had been “trained to see the population as a threat”.The winner-take-all dynamics of the Trump administration, which has claimed a historic mandate despite winning among the thinnest majorities in a generation, have made this a particularly fraught moment. Along with the federal takeover of police forces, the other commonly cited danger is the Republican gerrymandering effort in Texas and resulting fightback in California, as well as other efforts to diminish voter turnout ahead of the 2026 midterm and 2028 presidential elections.Some activists insist it is not too late to turn back. Stacey Abrams, the former Georgia gubernatorial candidate, and Kim Lane Scheppele, a professor of sociology and international affairs at Princeton University, wrote this week that “We Can Stop the Rise of American Autocracy”.Citing Hungary and Venezuela as examples, they wrote that “we cannot be lulled into believing that this is like anything we’ve seen before and can therefore be solved by simply waiting for the midterm elections. The antidote to Trump’s American breed of autocracy is understanding the severity of the threat at hand.”But others see the trend toward authoritarianism as merely an acceleration of the direction of US politics even before Trump.“That assumes that the United States was a functioning healthy democracy that slipped … and that’s just not the case in my opinion,” said ElGendy.“When a democracy is designed with this capacity for authoritarianism you’re never more than one election away from its reappearance. That’s not an accident, that’s a design flaw.” More

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      Publications aimed at LGBTQ+ audiences face discrimination from advertisers, editors warn

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      Publications aimed at LGBTQ+ and other diverse audiences are facing “good old-fashioned discrimination” as advertisers avoid them after political attacks on diversity and inclusion campaigns, editors have said.Senior figures at publications aimed at the gay community and other minority groups said a previous “gold rush” to work with such titles was over.There has been a backlash in the US over corporate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts in the past 18 months, which has led to some big names rolling back their plans.Tag Warner, the chief executive of Gay Times, said his publication, which had been growing digitally in the US, had lost 80% of its advertisers in the past year. It has also lost in excess of £5m in expected advertiser revenue.Warner, who has led the outlet since 2019, said his title’s growth had been accompanied by an enthusiasm from brands to embrace LGBTQ+ audiences. He blames an anti-DEI drive in the US for the dramatic shift.“I know that media and marketing is also going through a challenging year anyway, but when we’re thinking about other organisations that don’t talk to diverse themes, they’re not nearly as impacted as we are,” he said. “This is just good old-fashioned discrimination. Because discrimination doesn’t have to make business sense. Discrimination doesn’t have to be logical. Discrimination is discrimination.“We’re really experiencing the impact of what happens when voices that are pressuring organisations to give in to less inclusive perspectives start winning. Then it creates this massive behavioural shift in brands and organisations.”Nafisa Bakkar, the co-founder of Amaliah, a publication aimed at “amplifying the voices of Muslim women”, said there had been a “change in mood” among brands and advertisers. “There was this DNI [diversity and inclusion] gold rush,” she said. “It is, I would say, well and truly over.“We work with a lot of UK advertisers, but I would say that the US has a lot more emphasis on what they would call ‘brand safety’, which I think is a code word for ‘we don’t want to rock the boat’. I would say there is a lot more focus on this element.”Ibrahim Kamara, the founder of the youth platform GUAP, which has a large black and ethnically diverse audience, said he had detected a “relative difference” from 2020 in approaches from brands.He and others cited the economic pressures on advertisers generally in recent years. However, he said the “hype and the PR around wanting to support and connect with diverse audiences” had also subsided.“The thing that most people within these kind of spaces can probably agree on is that the energy and the PR is very different now,” he said. “It was almost a badge of honour to be able to say that you’re supporting certain communities. Now, I’ve seen that lots of the diversity and inclusion people that were hired around that period have probably lost their jobs. It doesn’t have the same PR effect any more.”Warner said the anti-DEI impact pre-dated the return of Donald Trump to the White House. Figures such as the conservative pundit Robby Starbuck have been engaged in a long-running anti-DEI campaign, pressuring firms to drop their diversity efforts. However, Warner said Trump’s arrival “gave everyone, I think, permission to be honest about it”.Not all publications in the sector have been hit in the same way as Gay Times. Companies with business models less reliant on US advertising, as well as some big players with long-established relationships, said they had managed to negotiate the changing political environment.“Brands are nervous, that’s for sure, or careful – or a combination of both,” said Darren Styles, the managing director of Stream Publishing, which publishes Attitude magazine. “They’re aware it can be a lightning rod for a vocal minority. But our experience is that most people are holding their ground, if not doubling down.”Styles also said he was not complacent, however, given the rise of Nigel Farage’s Reform party in the UK and its lack of historical support for the LGBTQ+ community.“I’m not incautious about the future,” he said. “Who knows what next year will bring, because that narrative is not going away. Obviously, there’s the rise of Reform in the polls.“[Farage] is quite clearly not an ally to our community and he’s expressed disdain in the past at the awards we’ve given out to people in the trans community. So it is a worry as political momentum gains around there. But I think broadly, consumers in the UK are a bit more capable of thinking for themselves.”Mark Berryhill, the chief executive of equalpride, which publishes prominent US titles like Out and The Advocate, said some brands and agencies “may have been a little bit more cautious than they have been in the past”. However, he said it had so far meant deals had taken longer to be completed, in a tough economic climate.He said the political headwinds made it more important to highlight that working with such titles was simply a sound business decision. “We’ve tried to do a better job in this political climate of just selling the importance of our buying power,” he said. “Everybody’s cautious and I don’t think it’s just LGBTQ. I think they’re cautious in general right now with their work with minority owned companies.“The one thing that maybe this whole controversy has helped us with a little bit is to really make brands realise it’s a business decision. It’s not just a charity or something you should do because you feel guilty.“You should do it because it’s the right thing to support LGBTQ journalism. We’re small. We need to get the word out. We have important stories to tell. But it’s also a good business decision. The more we show that side, certain brands will come along.” More

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      Here’s what to know about the court ruling striking down Trump’s tariffs

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      Donald Trump suffered the biggest defeat yet to his tariff policies on Friday, as a federal appeals court ruled he had overstepped his presidential powers when he enacted punitive financial measures against almost every country in the world.In a 7-4 ruling, the Washington DC court said that while US law “bestows significant authority on the president to undertake a number of actions in response to a declared national emergency”, none of those actions allow for the imposition of tariffs or taxes.It means the ultimate ruling on the legality of Trump’s tariffs, which were famously based on spurious economic science and rocked the global economy when he announced them in April, will probably be made by the US supreme court.Here’s what to know.Which tariffs did the court knock down?The decision centers on the tariffs Trump introduced on 2 April, on what he called “liberation day”. The tariffs set a 10% baseline on virtually all of the US’s trading partners and so-called “reciprocal” tariffs on countries he argued have unfairly treated the US. Lesotho, a country of 2.3 million people in southern Africa, was hit with a 50% tariff, while Trump also announced a tariff of 10% on a group of uninhabited islands populated by penguins.The ruling voided all those tariffs, with the judges finding the president’s measures “unbounded in scope, amount and duration”. They said the tariffs “assert an expansive authority that is beyond the express limitations” of the law his administration used to pass them.Tariffs typically need to be approved by Congress, but Trump claimed he has the right to impose tariffs on trading partners under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which in some circumstances grants the president authority to regulate or prohibit international transactions during a national emergency.The court ruled: “It seems unlikely that Congress intended, in enacting IEEPA, to depart from its past practice and grant the president unlimited authority to impose tariffs.”Trump invoked the same law in February to impose tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China, claiming that the flow of undocumented immigrants and drugs across the US border amounted to a national emergency, and that the three countries needed to do more to stop it.Are the tariffs gone now?No. The court largely upheld a May decision by a federal trade court in New York that ruled Trump’s tariffs were illegal. But Friday’s ruling tossed out a part of that ruling that would have struck down the tariffs immediately.The court said the ruling would not take effect until 14 October. That allows the Trump administration time to appeal to the majority-conservative US supreme court, which will have the ultimate say on whether Trump has the legal right, as president, to upend US trade policy.What does this mean for Trump’s trade agenda?The government has argued that if Trump’s tariffs are struck down, it might have to refund some of the import taxes that it has collected, which would deliver a financial blow to the US treasury.Revenue from tariffs totaled $159bn by July, more than double what it was at the same point last year. The justice department warned in a legal filing this month that revoking the tariffs could mean “financial ruin” for the United States.The ruling could also put Trump on shaky ground in trying to impose tariffs going forward. The president does have alternative laws for imposing import tariffs, but they would limit the speed and severity with which he could act.In its decision in May, the trade court said that Trump has more limited power to impose tariffs to address trade deficits under another statute, the Trade Act of 1974. But that law restricts tariffs to 15% and to just 150 days on countries with which the United States runs big trade deficits.How has Trump respondedHe’s not happy. Trump spent Friday evening reposting dozens of social media posts that were critical of the court’s decision. In a post on his own social media site, Trump claimed, as he tends to do when judges rule against him, that the decision was made by a “highly partisan appeals court”.“If these Tariffs ever went away, it would be a total disaster for the Country,” Trump wrote. He added: “If allowed to stand, this Decision would literally destroy the United States of America.”Trump claimed “tariffs are the best tool to help our workers”, despite their costs being typically borne by everyday Americans. The tariffs have triggered economic and political uncertainty across the world and stoked fears of rising inflation. More

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      Duke Cunningham, Vietnam flying ace and congressman convicted of bribery, dies at 83

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      Randy “Duke” Cunningham, whose feats as a US navy flying ace during the Vietnam war catapulted him to a House of Representatives career that ended in disgrace when he was convicted of accepting $2.4m in bribes, has died. He was 83.Cunningham died Wednesday at a hospital in a Little Rock, Arkansas, according to former representative Duncan L Hunter, who spent time with him a week before his death.He “represented the very best of American heroes who go out to meet our enemies at the gates”, said Hunter, whose served alongside Cunningham in Congress.Cunningham was one of the most highly decorated pilots in the Vietnam war, becoming the first navy fighter ace in the war for shooting down five enemy aircraft. He received a Navy Cross, two Silver Stars, 15 Air Medals and a Purple Heart for his actions during the war.“With complete disregard for his own personal safety he continued his attack through a hail of cannon fire to rescue his wingman,” read the citation for his second Silver Star.He went on to serve eight terms in Congress before pleading guilty in 2005 to receiving illegal gifts from defense contractors in exchange for government contracts and other favors, in what was considered at the time to be the largest bribery scandal in congressional history.The Republican congressman from San Diego admitted to accepting a luxury house, a yacht, a Rolls-Royce, lavish meals and $40,000 in Persian rugs and antique furniture from companies in exchange for steering lucrative contracts their way. He was sentenced to eight years and four months in prison in March 2006.His corruption case was one of several that led to the creation of the Office of Congressional Ethics in 2008.“In my life, I have known great joy and great sorrow. And now I know great shame,” Cunningham said in his resignation statement. “I cannot undo what I have done. But I can atone.”He took a less contrite tone as time went on, telling news organizations and others that he regretted his guilty plea and complaining that the Internal Revenue Service was draining his savings.“A lot of these things that they say are bribes I can absolutely black-and-white prove 100% that they were reimbursement for things that I had already paid,” Cunningham said in a phone interview with KGTV while he was in prison.In December 2012, Cunningham was released from a federal prison in Arizona to serve the remainder of his sentence in a federal halfway house in New Orleans. It was the longest prison sentence for a member of Congress for taking bribes until Louisiana Democrat William Jefferson got 13 years in 2009.His sentence also required he pay $1.8m for back taxes and forfeit an additional $1.85m for bribes he received, plus proceeds from the sale of a home in the highly exclusive San Diego suburb of Rancho Santa Fe. He was ordered to pay $1,500 a month in prison and $1,000 monthly after his release.Cunningham was born in Los Angeles on 8 December 1941, but grew up in Shelbina, Missouri, where his parents owned a five-and-dime store, according to court documents. He graduated from the University of Missouri and a few years later enlisted in the navy in 1967.He retired as a navy commander in 1987 and gained national recognition as a media commentator on military topics. When he ran for office in 1990, he replaced Democratic congressman Jim Bate in a left-leaning district who had been driven from office by charges of sexual harassment.Cunningham took an interest in military affairs while in Congress and supported socially conservative positions. He drew attention for his outbursts – during a floor debate in 1995, he attacked his adversaries as “the same ones that would put homos in the military”.“He brought military operational expertise to the debates in Congress,” said Hunter, recalling a debate he watched Cunningham have with a colleague over the fate of a fighter jet. “He was a strong conservative, strongly opinionated, and brought a real spark of light to the US Congress.”The disgraced former congressman received one of the pardons issued by Donald Trump in 2021 at the end of his first term.He has largely stayed out of the public eye since his release from prison, enjoying retirement in the countryside and serving as the president of the American Fighter Aces Association, according to Hunter.He is survived by his wife, Sharon Cunningham, his adult son and two daughters, and other family members. His family could not be immediately reached for comment. More

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      Most of Trump’s tariffs are illegal, federal court rules

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      Donald Trump overstepped his presidential powers with most of his globe-rattling tariff policies, a federal appeals court in Washington DC ruled on Friday.US law “bestows significant authority on the president to undertake a number of actions in response to a declared national emergency, but none of these actions explicitly include the power to impose tariffs, duties, or the like, or the power to tax”, the court said in the 7-4 ruling.Many of Trump’s steep tariffs are “are unbounded in scope, amount and duration”, the ruling added, and “assert an expansive authority that is beyond the express limitations” of the law his administration has leant on.The court’s decision is the biggest blow yet to Trump’s tariff policies and will likely mean the supreme court will have to rule on whether he has the legal right as president to upend US trade policy. The court said the ruling would not take effect until 14 October.“ALL TARIFFS ARE STILL IN EFFECT!” Trump wrote on social media, moments after the ruling came down, after the stock markets closed ahead of a three-day weekend in the US. In a lengthy post, he accused the appeals court of political bias.“If allowed to stand, this Decision would literally destroy the United States of America,” he continued. “At the start of this Labor Day weekend, we should all remember that TARIFFS are the best tool to help our Workers, and support Companies that produce great MADE IN AMERICA products.”The ruling voided Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs that set a 10% baseline on virtually all of the US’s trading partners and his so-called “reciprocal” tariffs on countries he has argued have unfairly treated the US.Trump has claimed he has the right to impose tariffs on trading partners under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which in some circumstances grants the president authority to regulate or prohibit international transactions during a national emergency.The Trump administration has cited various national emergencies – including US trade deficits with trading partners, fentanyl trafficking, and immigration – as the reasons for the actions.But a group of small businesses has challenged the administration’s arguments, arguing they are “devastating small businesses across the country”.And on Friday, the appellate court ruled: “It seems unlikely that Congress intended, in enacting IEEPA, to depart from its past practice and grant the president unlimited authority to impose tariffs.”The ruling also said the US law “neither mentions tariffs (or any of its synonyms) nor has procedural safeguards that contain clear limits on the president’s power to impose tariffs”.Earlier on Friday, Bloomberg reported that the administration, worried the court might invalidate the tariffs immediately, filed statements by Scott Bessent, the treasury secretary, Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, and Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, warning that such a decision would be a “dangerous diplomatic embarrassment” for the US.In a statement, White House spokesman Kush Desai said that Trump “lawfully exercised the tariff powers granted to him by Congress to defend our national and economic security from foreign threats”.He said: “The president’s tariffs remain in effect, and we look forward to ultimate victory on this matter.”William Reinsch, a former senior commerce department official now with the Center on Strategic and International Studies, told Reuters that the Trump administration had been bracing for this ruling. He said: “It’s common knowledge the administration has been anticipating this outcome and is preparing a Plan B, presumably to keep the tariffs in place via other statutes.”The US trade court heard the case – VOS Selections Inc v Trump – in May, and ruled that the tariffs “exceed any authority granted to the president”. But the court agreed to a temporary pause in the decision pending an appeal hearing.The US court of appeals for the federal circuit in Washington DC heard oral arguments about the case on 31 July. Judges expressed skepticism about the administration’s arguments at the hearing. The IEEPA “doesn’t even say ‘tariffs’”, one of the judges noted. “Doesn’t even mention them.”In its ruling, the appeals court noted there were “numerous statutes” that do delegate the power to impose tariffs, in which “clear and precise terms” are used to this make clear.When Congress wants to delegate such authority, it typically “does so explicitly, either by using unequivocal terms like tariff and duty, or via an overall structure which makes clear that Congress is referring to tariffs”, the court added.It said: “The absence of any such tariff language in IEEPA contrasts with statutes where Congress has affirmatively granted such power and included clear limits on that power.”Trump’s tariffs have triggered economic and political uncertainty across the world and stoked fears of rising inflation. More

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      Trump aide defends Robert F Kennedy Jr over CDC chaos, calling him ‘crown jewel of this administration’ – US politics live

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      When speaking about the ongoing turmoil at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Miller says, without evidence, that the agency lacked “credibility” and was staffed by “partisan” bureaucrats who weren’t “at all concerned about public health, and weren’t actually very knowledgable about public health”.He goes on to defend health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, who is facing staunch criticism in the wake of firing CDC director Susan Monarez, and the resignation of several senior public health experts at the agency.“Secretary Kennedy has been a crown jewel of this administration who’s working tirelessly to improve public health for all Americans, and again, to deal with the drivers of the chronic health crisis in this country,” Miller said.Miller also claimed that Kennedy is “one of the world’s foremost voices, advocates and experts on public health”.The homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, fired two dozen “deep-state” employees of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s information technology department on Friday, including its top leaders, following what she called an unspecified “breach” of its network by a “threat actor”.“While conducting a routine cybersecurity review, the DHS Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) discovered significant security vulnerabilities that gave a threat actor access to FEMA’s network”, the homeland security department said in a statement. “The investigation uncovered several severe lapses in security that allowed the threat actor to breach FEMA’s network and threaten the entire Department and the nation as a whole.”The statement said that Fema’s chief information officer, Charlie Armstrong, chief information security officer, Greg Edwards, and 22 other IT employees “directly responsible” were fired.“FEMA’s career IT leadership failed on every level. Their incompetence put the American people at risk”, Noem said. “When DHS stepped in to fix the problem, entrenched bureaucrats worked to prevent us from solving the problem and downplayed just how bad this breach was. These deep-state individuals were more interested in covering up their failures than in protecting the Homeland and American citizens’ personal data, so I terminated them immediately.”The firings came minutes after the department released a long statement attacking the federal emergency management agency that Donald Trump is pushing to close. “FEMA has failed Americans for decades”, the department’s official X account posted at the start of a thread deriding the agency, in which is claimed that “the Biden administration hijacked FEMA to resettle illegal aliens”.A federal appeals court in San Francisco has blocked homeland security secretary Kristi Noem from moving ahead with her plan to strip temporary protected status from 600,000 Venezuelans who have permission to live and work in the United States amid turmoil in their homeland.A three-judge panel of the 9th US circuit court of appeals unanimously upheld a lower court ruling that maintained temporary protected status for Venezuelans while TPS holders challenge actions by Trump’s administration in court.The judges found that plaintiffs were likely to succeed on their claim that Noem had no authority to vacate or set aside a prior extension of temporary protected status by the Biden administration because the governing statute written by Congress does not permit it.“In enacting the TPS statute, Congress designed a system of temporary status that was predictable, dependable, and insulated from electoral politics,” judge Kim Wardlaw, who was nominated by Bill Clinton, a Democrat, wrote for the panel.The ruling concluded:“The TPS statute is designed to constrain the Executive, creating predictable periods of safety and legal status for TPS beneficiaries. Sudden reversals of prior decisions contravene the statute’s plain language and purpose. Here, hundreds of thousands of people have been stripped of status and plunged into uncertainty. The stability of TPS has been replaced by fears of family separation, detention, and deportation. Congress did not contemplate this, and the ongoing irreparable harm to Plaintiffs warrants a remedy pending a final adjudication on the merits.”A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security told the Associated Press decision was made by “unelected activist” judges and claimed that, for decades, “the TPS program has been abused, exploited, and politicized as a de facto amnesty program.”Congress authorized temporary protected status, or TPS, as part of the Immigration Act of 1990, which increased the limits on legal immigration to the United States and was signed into law by a Republican president, George H.W. Bush.The law established “a program for granting temporary protected status and work authorization to aliens in the United States who are nationals of countries designated by the Attorney General to be subject to armed conflict, natural disaster, or other extraordinary temporary conditions.” The statute also made clear that it “Prohibits deportation during the period in which such status is in effect.”When speaking about the ongoing turmoil at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Miller says, without evidence, that the agency lacked “credibility” and was staffed by “partisan” bureaucrats who weren’t “at all concerned about public health, and weren’t actually very knowledgable about public health”.He goes on to defend health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, who is facing staunch criticism in the wake of firing CDC director Susan Monarez, and the resignation of several senior public health experts at the agency.“Secretary Kennedy has been a crown jewel of this administration who’s working tirelessly to improve public health for all Americans, and again, to deal with the drivers of the chronic health crisis in this country,” Miller said.Miller also claimed that Kennedy is “one of the world’s foremost voices, advocates and experts on public health”.Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, just spoke with reporters at the White House. He said that the administration will be “prioritizing enforcement in these sanctuary jurisdictions as a matter of public safety and national security”, when asked about upcoming immigration raids in so-called “sanctuary cities”, which are predominantly run by Democratic officials.Miller alleged that these cities do not cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), even when an immigrant commits a crime, saying they don’t comply with detainers issued by Ice. However, the American Immigration Council notes that sanctuary cities do not “shield immigrants from deportation or prosecution for criminal activities”.In a week of chaos at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Donald Trump’s health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, has continued to make questionable medical and health claims – and has been slammed for them by experts and lawmakers alike.After the deadly mass school shooting in Minneapolis this week where two children were killed and 17 others injured, Kennedy suggested that psychiatric drugs may be contributing to the rise in gun violence across the country.During an appearance on Fox & Friends, the host Brian Kilmeade asked Kennedy if the health department was investigating whether medications used to treat gender dysphoria might be linked to school shootings.According to court documents reviewed by the Guardian, the 23-year-old shooter, Robin Westman, had changed their birth name from Robert to Robin because they identified as a woman.In response to Kilmeade’s question, Kennedy, without acknowledging the prevalence and easy accessibility of firearms across the US – said that his department was “launching studies on the potential contribution of some of the SSRI [selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors] drugs and some of the other psychiatric drugs that might be contributing to violence”.This week, Kennedy also suggested that he could identify “mitochondrial challenges” in children at airports just by looking at them.Speaking at an event in Texas alongside the state’s governor, Greg Abbott, Kennedy claimed: “I’m looking at kids as I walk through the airports today, as I walk down the street, and I see these kids that are just overburdened with mitochondrial challenges, with inflammation. You can tell from their faces, from their body movements, and from their lack of social connection. And I know that that’s not how our children are supposed to look.”In response, Ashish Jha, former White House Covid-19 response coordinator under the Biden administration, said: “I’m sorry but what?”“This is wacky, flat-earth, voodoo stuff, people. This is not normal,” Jha added on X.Read more here:The administration is planning to ramp up immigration enforcement in Boston, Politico is reporting, citing a current and former administration official.According to the official, the latest plans are subject to change, but would involve an increase in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) personnel in the city.Boston mayor Michelle Wu, a Democrat, has pushed back against the Trump administration, and said the city would “not back down” from engaging in “sanctuary city policies” outlined by the justice department, including limiting city police from helping Ice agents make arrests.Last week, acting Ice director Todd Lyons also said the increase in immigration enforcement was coming. “Sanctuary does not mean safer streets. It means more criminal aliens out and about the neighborhood. But 100%, you will see a larger Ice presence,” Lyons said in a radio interview.Meanwhile, border czar Tom Homan said this week that immigration raids across several Democratic-led cities would take place after Labor Day.My colleague, Lauren Aratani, has been covering the last days of “de minimis” – a longstanding tariff exemption that let people skip import fees for small-value packages.This ended today, and leaves small businesses and postal services around the world scrambling to apply Donald Trump’s tariffs to millions of shipments.Experts say the change could mean up to $13bn in extra costs and delayed shipping for consumers as businesses adjust to the change.Here’s what you need to know.Donald Trump said he would not be spending $4.9bn in congressionally approved foreign aid, in a letter to Republican house speaker Mike Johnson.The rare move, known as a “pocket rescission”, is a request to Congress for the president to not spend appropriated funds towards the end of the fiscal year –which ends on 30 September. Normally, the law stipulates that funding can be paused for 45 days while congress considers such a request. But a pocket rescission means that lawmakers don’t have enough time to act before the funds expire. This would be the first time a president has used the provision in 50 years.It’s already attracted ire from several legislators. Susan Collins, the Republican senator from Maine who chairs the appropriations committee called the president’s actions a “clear violation of the law”.Meanwhile, Democrats decried Trump’s actions. Senator Elizabeth Warren, the ranking member of the finance committee, said the president is a “wannabe king is defunding support that prevents hunger and sickness worldwide”, while congressman Joaquin Castro of Texas said the decision to scrap billions in foreign funding was “wrong and illegal”, and urged his Republican colleagues to “say hell no”.

      At a hearing in Lisa Cook’s lawsuit, which challenges Donald Trump’s attempts to remove the governor from the Federal Reserve board, her lawyers said that her firing does “irreparable harm” as she’s a Senate-confirmed official who took an oath to carry out her role independently. They asked judge Jia Cobb to allow Cook to remain in her role as the litigation plays out. Cobb didn’t issue a ruling at the hearing. She will have to weigh whether the president had “cause” to terminate Cook, given the broad discretion he has under the Federal Reserve Act.

      Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, has signed a new redistricting bill that will redraw the state’s congressional map to heavily favor Republicans. Abbott signed today the highly controversial bill which prompted state Democrats to stage a weeks-long walkout earlier this month. The new districting plans will remove Democratic-majority districts in several major cities including Houston, Austin and the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex.

      Donald Trump has revoked Secret Service protection for the former vice-president and 2024 Democratic presidential nominee, Kamala Harris, a senior White House official confirmed to the Guardian. Under federal law, former vice-presidents are entitled to receive Secret Service protection for six months after leaving office. However, Trump’s new directive cancels an undisclosed extension signed by then president Joe Biden before leaving office, according to CNN.

      Attorney general Pam Bondi said that federal law enforcement had made 86 arrests in Washington DC on Thursday. It brings the total tally of arrests made by federal officers to 1,369, according to the White House.

      The US is denying and revoking visas from members of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority ahead of the United Nations general assembly meeting in September, the US state department has said in a statement.
      The US air force has said it is offering military funeral honors to Ashli Babbitt, a supporter of Donald Trump who was shot and killed by a police officer during the 6 January 2021, attack on the US Capitol.Babbitt, 35, a US air force veteran who lived in California, was fatally shot in the shoulder while she tried to enter a room near the House of Representatives during the riot.“After reviewing the circumstances of [senior airman] Babbitt’s death, the Air Force has offered Military Funeral Honors to [senior airman] Babbitt’s family,” the air force said in a statement seen by Reuters.The funeral honors would mark the latest gesture of support from Trump’s administration toward those who stormed the Capitol in a failed bid to block Congress from certifying his 2020 election loss. Trump has repeatedly made false claims that his 2020 loss to Joe Biden was due to voter fraud.He and his supporters have sought to portray Babbitt as a martyr who was unjustly killed as she attempted to climb through a broken window of a barricaded door leading to the speaker’s lobby, a few feet from where members of Congress were waiting to be evacuated to safety during the attack.An internal investigation by the US Capitol Police cleared the officer who shot Babbitt of wrongdoing in 2021 and said he would not face internal discipline. More than 1,500 people were criminally charged for participating in the riot. Trump pardoned nearly all of them, and released those who had been imprisoned.A controversial portrait of General Robert E Lee, which shows an enslaved man holding the Confederate leader’s horse, is being returned to the library at West Point, according to Pentagon officials who spoke with the New York Times.The nearly 20ft canvas, which had hung in the US military academy since 1952, was removed following a 2020 law that ordered Confederate names and tributes to be stripped from military installations.That same law established a commission to rename bases and review monuments. By 2022, the commission directed West Point to clear away all items that “commemorate or memorialize the Confederacy”. Shortly after, the Lee portrait was taken down and placed in storage.Exactly how the painting is being reinstalled without countering the legislation remains uncertain. The measure was passed in the wake of nationwide demonstrations after George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police.Both Donald Trump and the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, have pushed for the restoration of Confederate symbols that were removed in recent years. Hegseth, in particular, has pressed for reinstating a Confederate memorial at Arlington national cemetery that Congress recommended removing. In an August social media post, he wrote that the statue “never should have been taken down by woke lemmings”.Hegseth moved to reinstate Confederate general names at army bases such as Fort Bragg and Fort Lee earlier this summer, but did so in a way that attempted to stay within the boundaries of the 2020 law. The new names honored different soldiers, none of whom had fought for the Confederacy, yet the names were the same as those of the original Confederate honorees. More

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      Court blocks Trump bid to end protections for 600,000 Venezuelans

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      A federal appeals court on Friday blocked Donald Trump’s plans to end protections for 600,000 people from Venezuela who have had permission to live and work in the US, saying that plaintiffs are likely to win their claim that the president’s administration’s actions were unlawful.A three-judge panel of the ninth US circuit court of appeals unanimously upheld a lower court ruling that maintained temporary protected status for Venezuelans while TPS holders challenge actions by the Republican president’s administration in court.The ninth circuit judges found that plaintiffs were likely to succeed on their claim that homeland security secretary Kristi Noem had no authority to vacate or set aside a prior extension of TPS because the governing statute written by Congress does not permit it. The administration of Trump’s Democratic presidential predecessor Joe Biden had extended TPS for people from Venezuela.“In enacting the TPS statute, Congress designed a system of temporary status that was predictable, dependable, and insulated from electoral politics,” judge Kim Wardlaw, who was nominated by president Bill Clinton, a Democrat, wrote for the panel. The other two judges on the panel were also nominated by Democratic presidents.In an email, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) condemned the decision as more obstruction from “unelected activist” judges.“For decades the TPS program has been abused, exploited, and politicized as a de facto amnesty program,” the email read. “While this injunction delays justice and undermines the integrity of our immigration system, secretary Noem will use every legal option at the department’s disposal to end this chaos and prioritize the safety of Americans.”Congress authorized TPS as part of the Immigration Act of 1990. It allows the DHS secretary to grant legal immigration status to people fleeing countries experiencing civil strife, environmental disaster or other “extraordinary and temporary conditions” that prevent a safe return to that home country. The terms are for six, 12 and 18 months.The appellate judges said the guaranteed time limitations were critical so people could gain employment, find long-term housing and build stability without fear of shifting political winds.But in ending the protections soon after Trump took office, Noem said conditions in Venezuela had improved and it was not in the US national interest to allow migrants from there to stay on for what is a temporary program. It’s part of a broader move by Trump’s administration to reduce the number of immigrants who are in the country either without legal documentation or through legal temporary programs.US district judge Edward Chen of San Francisco found in March that plaintiffs were likely to prevail on their claim that the administration had overstepped its authority in terminating the protections. Chen postponed the terminations, but the US supreme court reversed him without explanation, which is common in emergency appeals.It is unclear what effect Friday’s ruling will have on the estimated 350,000 Venezuelans in the group of 600,000 whose protections expired in April. Their lawyers say some have already been fired from jobs, detained in immigration jails, separated from their US citizen children and even deported.Protections for the remaining 250,000 Venezuelans are set to expire 10 Sept.“What is really significant now is that the second court unanimously recognized that the trial court got it right,” said Emi MacLean, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU Foundation of Northern California representing plaintiffs.She added that while the decision might not benefit immediately those people who have already lost their status or are about to lose their status, Friday’s ruling “should provide a path for the administration’s illegal actions related to Venezuela and TPS to finally be undone”. More