Trump move to cancel $4.9bn in Congress-approved foreign funding prompts condemnation – US politics live

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

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.

In response to Abbott’s signing of the gerrymandered map pushed by Trump into law, Texas Democratic party chairman Kendall Scudder issued this statement:

With a stroke of the pen, Greg Abbott and the Republicans have effectively surrendered Texas to Washington, DC. They love to boast about how “Texas Tough” they are, but when Donald Trump made one call, they bent over backwards to prioritize his politics over Texans. Honestly, it’s pathetic.

I am proud of the Texas Democrats in the House and Senate who chose to fight, whether by a constitutionally protected quorum break, questioning these mapmakers, trying to pass amendments, or even attempting to filibuster.

This isn’t over – we’ll see these clowns in court. We aren’t done fighting against these racially discriminatory maps, and fully expect the letter of the law to prevail over these sycophantic Republican politicians who think the rules don’t apply to them.

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.

In a video on X, Abbott can be seen signing the bill and says it “creates the one big, beautiful map that ensures fairer representation in the United States Congress for Texas”.

Abbott’s signing comes after the Texas house of representatives approved the new map – which is set to create as many as five additional Republican congressional districts – on an 88-52 party-line vote. The state senate then approved the bill early on Saturday.

After the house’s approval, Donald Trump took to Truth Social and wrote: “Big WIN for the Great State of Texas!!! Everything Passed, on our way to FIVE more Congressional seats and saving your Rights, your Freedoms, and your Country, itself.”

“Texas never lets us down. Florida, Indiana, and others are looking to do the same thing,” he added.

The bill’s passage follows Trump’s request for the state to draw new congressional maps. Currently, 25 of Texas’s 38 districts have Republican majorities. The new redistricting will bring the Republican-favored districts to 30.

The new districting plans will remove Democratic-majority districts in several major cities including Houston, Austin and the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex.

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 restrictions mean that Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas would likely not be able to travel to New York to deliver an address to the annual gathering, as he typically does, Reuters reports.

It follows the imposition of US sanctions on Palestinian Authority officials and members of the Palestine Liberation Organization in July, even as other western powers have moved toward recognition of Palestinian statehood.

In a statement, the state department said that “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”.

Officials with the Palestinian Authority, which has limited self-rule in parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, reject that they have undermined peace prospects, Reuters reports.

Under the 1947 UN “headquarters agreement” the US is generally required to allow access for foreign diplomats to the UN in New York. But Washington has said it can deny visas for security, terrorism and foreign policy reasons.

The state department said that the Palestinian Authority’s mission to the UN would not be included in the restrictions. It did not elaborate.

CBS News is reporting that Republican senator Joni Ernst of Iowa plans to reveal next week that she won’t seek reelection in 2026.

Ernst, 55, who has served in the Senate since 2015, plans to make the announcement on Thursday, CBS reported citing multiple sources familiar with the matter.

Per CBS’s report:

Some Iowa Democrats have already jumped into the race, including state Sen. Zach Wahls, state Rep. Josh Turek, and Des Moines School Board chairwoman Jackie Norris.

Ernst has been evasive about whether she would run for a third term in 2026, but in public remarks earlier this month, predicted continued GOP control of Iowa.

“Every day we get a new Democratic member of the House or Senate that decides to run for this Senate seat — bring it on,” she said at a meeting of the Westside Conservative Club. “Bring it on, folks. Because I tell you, at the end of the day, Iowa is going to be red.”

White House officials had hoped Ernst would run again, instead of joining other Republicans who are leaving the Senate, including North Carolina’s Thom Tillis, Alabama’s Tommy Tuberville and Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell.

In a rebuttal, Abbe Lowell, Cook’s lawyer, offers a stern indictment of Trump’s basis for “cause”.

“Any reason is now cause,” Lowell says. “That could possibly mean the president decides it was cause because Governor Cook decides to attend to a meeting in a pant suit instead of a dress, and he didn’t think that has enough respect for the institution. That’s cause.”

Trump’s lawyer is citing case precedent now when it comes the question of Cook’s firing doing “irreparable harm”.

“The harm of having a somebody in office who was wrongfully there outweighs the harm of somebody being wrongfully removed from office,” he says.

The lawyer for the administration is going back-and-forth with Judge Cobb now, arguing that Cook has, in fact, had the opportunity to respond to Bill Pulte’s allegations.

“No response, no intent, no letter saying: ‘hey, I disagree with this’,” Trump’s lawyers say.

We’re now hearing from Trump’s lawyers. The justice department says that it doesn’t “see the argument that for a very senior financial regulatory official making contradictory representations on financial documents with no explanation” isn’t grounds for removal.

Cook’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, is arguing that her firing does “irreparable harm”. He says that Cook ultimately took an oath before Congress, and what she’s being “deprived of” is more than a paycheck, but the ability “to satisfy the oath” she took and “not to be removed from anything but cause”.

He added that while this lawsuit works its way through the court, the “status quo” should stay in place:

She [Cook] should not be taken out of her office. She shouldn’t be disconnected to her electronics. She should be able to participate in the meeting. She should do all the things that she did a week ago before all this started, because that is the status quo.

Doctors at the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) would be barred from performing abortions, even in cases of rape and incest, under new rules proposed by the Trump administration.

The draft regulations, which also forbid providers from counseling female veterans about terminating a pregnancy, have generated nearly 20,000 comments in the federal register from conservative activists, abortion rights supporters and female veterans, many of them survivors of sexual assault.

“I am a veteran, a mother, and my abortion saved my life,” wrote Mary Dodson-Otten, a 41-year-old nurse and air force veteran who lives outside Atlanta, Georgia.

Dodson-Otten told the Guardian she ended a pregnancy in her 20s after she got pregnant by an abusive boyfriend who was a fellow service member. Without the abortion, she said, “I don’t think I would have survived, whether it would have been him hurting me or me hurting me.”

The rule proposed by the Trump administration has an exception that allows abortions to take place “when a physician certifies that the life of the mother would be endangered if the fetus were carried to term”. But abortion rights advocates said the exception was too limited.

“Women are going to die,” predicted Caitlin Russell, a former US army captain who served two tours in Afghanistan and studies female veterans’ health at the University of Pennsylvania.