Category Archives: Trump administration

‘Extortion’: Columbia University’s deal with White House met with mixed reactions

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Some slammed the agreement with the Trump administration to reinstate $400m in federal funds while others praised it as an ‘excellent outcome’

Columbia University’s long anticipated deal with the Trump administration after months of negotiations has drawn both condemnation and praise from faculty, students, and alumni – a sign that the end of negotiations will hardly restore harmony on a campus profoundly divided since the beginning of Israel’s war in Gaza.

The deal will reinstate $400m in federal funds the administration cut from the university after it accused it of allowing antisemitism to fester on campus. But it will cost Columbia some $220m in legal settlements, as well as a host of new measures that critics warn significantly restrict the university’s independence and will further repress pro-Palestinian speech.

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Columbia announces deal to pay Trump administration more than $220m

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Deal falls short of starkest measures, including consent decree and overhaul of university’s governance structure

Columbia University announced a much-anticipated deal with the Trump administration to pay more than $220m, an agreement meant to bring a resolution to the threat of massive funding cuts to the school, but certain to rankle critics given the extraordinary concessions made by the Ivy League university.

Under the agreement, the school will pay a $200m settlement over three years to the federal government, the university said. It will also pay $21m to settle investigations brought by the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

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Trump signs three executive orders targeting ‘woke’ AI models

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Crackdown on what the White House claims is bias echoes longstanding conservative grievances against tech

Donald Trump on Wednesday signed a trio of executive orders that he vowed would turn the United States into an “AI export powerhouse”, including a directive targeting what the White House described as “woke” artificial intelligence models.

The anti-woke order is part of the administration’s broader anti-diversity campaign that has also targeted federal agencies, academic institutions and the military. “The American people do not want woke Marxist lunacy in the AI models, and neither do other countries,” Trump said during remarks at an AI summit in Washington on Wednesday.

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Scott Morrison tells US Australia risks going to sleep on China threat after diplomatic ‘charm and flattery’

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Former prime minister warns US House of Representatives committee Australia must do more to resist the security threat posed by China

The Chinese Communist party hopes Western democracies “go to sleep on the threat” it poses to the international order, former prime minister Scott Morrison has told a congressional committee in the US.

In a forthright appearance before the hawkish US House of Representatives select committee on the strategic competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist party, Morrison said China had changed diplomatic tack after he lost the 2022 election to Anthony Albanese.

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US Olympics officials quietly bar trans women from competing in women’s sports

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Olympic and Paralympic committee tells federations it has ‘obligation to comply’ with executive order issued by Trump

The US Olympic and Paralympic committee has in effect barred transgender women from competing in women’s sports, telling the federations overseeing swimming, athletics and other sports it has an “obligation to comply” with an executive order issued by Donald Trump.

The new policy, announced on Monday with a quiet change on the USOPC’s website and confirmed in a letter sent to national sport governing bodies, follows a similar step taken by the NCAA earlier this year.

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Judges end Trump pick Alina Habba’s tenure as New Jersey’s top prosecutor

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Justice department retaliates by removing career prosecutor named as Habba’s replacement

Alina Habba, Donald Trump’s defence lawyer during a defamation case brought by the writer E Jean Carroll, has lost her bid to become New Jersey’s top federal prosecutor, with the clock running out on her interim status on Tuesday.

According to an order from New Jersey’s district court, a panel of judges declined to permanently appoint Habba to be the state’s US attorney, signaling a rebuke against the Trump administration.

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Tucker Carlson channels Maga rage over Epstein files – and opens rift with Trump

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As Maga supporters revolt over the Epstein scandal, figures like Tucker Carlson are now a gadfly of the White House’s handling of the controversy

As Donald Trump tries to contain an ugly rift with his own supporters about the Jeffrey Epstein sex-trafficking scandal, influential media personalities in the Maga movement face a tricky dilemma.

Should they close ranks with the US president – who has denounced demands for more information on Epstein as a “waste [of] Time and Energy” about “somebody that nobody cares about” – or pick at a political wound that the Trump administration desperately wants to scab over?

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Trump’s border czar to target sanctuary cities in US: ‘We’re gonna flood the zone’

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Homan vows to escalate Ice operations after off-duty officer allegedly shot by undocumented person in New York City

The Trump administration is targeting sanctuary cities in the next phase of its deportation drive after labelling them “sanctuaries for criminals” following the shooting of an off-duty law enforcement officer in New York City, allegedly by an undocumented person with a criminal record.

Tom Homan, Donald Trump’s hardline border czar, vowed to “flood the zone” with Immigration, Customs and Enforcement (Ice) agents in an all-out bid to overcome the lack of cooperation he said the government faced from Democrat-run municipalities in its quest to arrest and detain undocumented people.

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Revealed: Harvard publisher cancels entire journal issue on Palestine shortly before publication

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As Harvard’s feud with Trump escalated, so did tensions over an ‘education and Palestine’ issue of a prestigious journal. Scholars blame the ‘Palestine exception’ to academic freedom

In March 2024, six months into Israel’s war in Gaza, education in the territory was decimated. Schools were closed – most had been turned into shelters – and all 12 of the strip’s universities were partially or fully destroyed.

Against that backdrop, a prestigious American education journal decided to dedicate a special issue to “education and Palestine”. The Harvard Educational Review (HER) put out a call for submissions, asking academics around the world for ideas for articles grappling with the education of Palestinians, education about Palestine and Palestinians, and related debates in schools and colleges in the US.

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Brazil court freezes Bolsonaro son’s assets as Trump’s tariffs appear to backfire

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Eduardo Bolsonaro is suspected of using money to lobby US president on behalf of his father, Jair, who faces arrest for apparent flouting of social media ban

A Brazilian supreme court judge has ordered that the bank accounts and assets of Jair Bolsonaro’s congressman son be frozen, as a political crisis – pitting Brazil’s far-right former president and Donald Trump against the current administration – intensified.

Justice Alexandre de Moraes – who has spearheaded a series of supreme court investigations into Bolsonaro – targeted the finances of Eduardo Bolsonaro, the ex-president’s third son, as a result of police suspicions that money being sent to him by his father was bankrolling his efforts to lobby the Trump administration to help Bolsonaro avoid punishment for an alleged coup attempt after the 2022 election.

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Trump officials release FBI records on MLK Jr despite his family’s opposition

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About 200,000 pages of surveillance records released despite objection from slain civil rights leader’s family

The Trump administration has released records of the FBI’s surveillance of Martin Luther King Jr, despite opposition from the slain Nobel laureate’s family and the civil rights group that he led until his 1968 assassination.

The release involves an estimated 200,000 pages of records that had been under a court-imposed seal since 1977, when the FBI first gathered the records and turned them over to the National Archives and Records Administration.

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Harvard heads to court to argue Trump administration’s $2.6bn in cuts were illegal

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Ruling in the university’s favor would reverse funding freezes that became cuts as Trump administration escalated fight

Harvard University will appear in federal court Monday to make the case that the Trump administration illegally cut $2.6bn from the storied college – a pivotal moment in its battle against the federal government.

If US district Judge Allison Burroughs decides in the university’s favor, the ruling would reverse a series of funding freezes that later became outright cuts as the Trump administration escalated its fight with the nation’s oldest and wealthiest university. Such a ruling, if it stands, would revive Harvard’s sprawling scientific and medical research operation and hundreds of projects that lost federal money.

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‘It’s a madhouse’: US state department workers reeling after Trump’s firings

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About 3,000 workers have left the agency through firings and buyouts in a move Democrats and staff call ‘unlawful’

Workers at the US state department say firings, resignation buyouts, a proposed budget cut of 48%, and reorganization under the Trump administration has left staff with low morale and will likely have long-term impacts.

Foreign programs and services aimed towards LGBTQ+ communities, maternal and reproductive health, and minority groups have been removed or cut in place of far-right ideological policies being pursued by a 26-year-old senior adviser and Trump appointee at the agency.

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Ice chief says he will continue to allow agents to wear masks during arrest raids

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Legal advocates and attorneys general argue practice poses accountability issues and contributes to a climate of fear

The head of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) said on Sunday that he will continue allowing the controversial practice of his officers wearing masks over their faces during their arrest raids.

As Donald Trump has ramped up his unprecedented effort to deport immigrants around the country, Ice officers have become notorious for wearing masks to approach and detain people, often with force. Legal advocates and attorneys general have argued that it poses accountability issues and contributes to a climate of fear.

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Rubio moves to strip US visas from eight Brazilian judges in Bolsonaro battle

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Move by Marco Rubio is latest attempt by Trump administration to help former president avoid justice over alleged coup

The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has reportedly stripped eight of Brazil’s 11 supreme court judges of their US visas as the White House escalates its campaign to help the country’s former president Jair Bolsonaro avoid justice over his alleged attempt to seize power with a military coup.

Bolsonaro, a far-right populist with ties to Donald Trump’s Maga movement, is on trial for allegedly masterminding a murderous plot to cling to power after losing the 2022 election to his leftwing rival, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Bolsonaro is expected to be convicted by the supreme court in the coming weeks and faces a jail sentence of up to 43 years.

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Trump’s EPA eliminates research and development office and begins layoffs

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Administration’s move to cut thousands of agency jobs will be devastating for US public health, union warns

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said on Friday it is eliminating its research and development arm and reducing agency staff by thousands of employees. One union leader said the moves “will devastate public health in our country”.

The agency’s office of research and development (ORD) has long provided the scientific underpinnings for the EPA’s mission to protect the environment and human health. The EPA said in May it would shift its scientific expertise and research efforts to program offices that focus on major issues such as air and water.

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Health experts raise alarm over RFK Jr’s ‘war on science’ amid mass firings and budget cuts

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Experts warn that the dangerous ideologically driven cuts at HHS will have long-term consequences for healthcare

The Trump administration’s “war on science” appears to have entered a new phase in the aftermath of a recent supreme court decision that empowered health and human services secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, a prominent vaccine sceptic, and other agency leaders, to implement mass firings – effectively greenlighting the politicization of science.

The decision comes as Kennedy abruptly canceled a scheduled meeting of a key health care advisory panel, the US Preventive Services Task Force, earlier this month. That, combined with his recent removal of a panel of more than a dozen vaccine advisers, signals that his dismantling of the science-based policymaking at HHS is likely far from over.

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US justice department asks to unseal grand jury transcripts in Epstein case

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Move seeks to contain controversy that has engulfed Trump administration since it announced it would not release more files from sex trafficking case

The US Department of Justice asked a federal court on Friday to unseal grand jury transcripts in Jeffrey Epstein’s case at the direction of Donald Trump amid a firestorm over the administration’s handling of records related to the wealthy financier.

The move – coming a day after a Wall Street Journal story put a spotlight on Trump’s relationship with Epstein – seeks to contain a growing controversy that has engulfed the administration since it announced that it would not be releasing more government files from Epstein’s sex trafficking case.

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Trump administration to destroy nearly $10m of contraceptives for women overseas

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As part of president’s end to foreign aid, destruction of the long-acting contraceptives will cost US taxpayers $167,000

The Trump administration has decided to destroy $9.7m worth of contraceptives rather than send them abroad to women in need.

A state department spokesperson confirmed that the decision had been made – a move that will cost US taxpayers $167,000. The contraceptives are primarily long-acting, such as IUDs and birth control implants, and were almost certainly intended for women in Africa, according to two senior congressional aides, one of whom visited a warehouse in Belgium that housed the contraceptives. It is not clear to the aides whether the destruction has already been carried out, but said they had been told that it was set to occur by the end of July.

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Tens of thousands in US set to join ‘Good Trouble’ protests honoring John Lewis

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Rallies at more than 1,500 sites nationwide planned for Thursday to protest against Trump administration

Tens of thousands of people are expected to march and rally at more than 1,500 sites across all 50 US states on Thursday to protest against the Trump administration and honor the legacy of the late congressman John Lewis, an advocate for voting rights and civil disobedience.

The “Good Trouble Lives On” day of action coincides with the fifth anniversary of Lewis’s death. Lewis was a longtime congressman from Georgia who participated in iconic civil rights actions, including the march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965 when police attacked Lewis and other protesters on the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

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