Education department says $2.3bn in funds to be frozen after university rejects slew of demands as political ploy
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.
Continue reading...Notices show Trump administration setting stage for levies on both sectors on national security grounds
The Trump administration is kicking off investigations into imports of pharmaceuticals and semiconductors as part of a bid 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.
Continue reading...Administration advances new misrepresentations of US supreme court order in case of Kilmar Abrego García
The 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.
Continue reading...The US says it can’t aid in his return as he’s in El Salvador; El Salvador says to help would be like ‘smuggling’ him back
It is difficult to find a term more fitting for the fate of the Maryland father Kilmar Abrego García than Kafkaesque.
Abrego García is one of hundreds of foreign-born men deported under the Trump administration to the Cecot mega-prison in El Salvador as part of a macabre partnership with the self-declared “world’s coolest dictator”, Nayib Bukele.
Continue reading...Trump officials claim they’re not legally bound to bring Kilmar Abrego García back despite supreme court ruling
The president of El Salvador said in a meeting with Donald Trump in the White House on Monday that he would not order the return of a Maryland man who was deported in error to a Salvadorian mega-prison.
“The question is preposterous,” Nayib Bukele said in the Oval Office on Monday, where he was welcomed by Trump and spoke with the president and members of his cabinet. “How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? I’m not going to do it.”
Continue reading...Letter says Trump administration’s detention of Khan Suri ‘represents a fundamental violation of academic freedom’
More than 370 alumni of Georgetown University joined 65 current students there in signing on to a letter opposing immigration authorities’ detention of Dr Badar Khan Suri, a senior postdoctoral fellow at the institution’s Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU).
The letter, dated Sunday and shared with the Guardian, follows the Trump administration’s detention of Khan Suri – a citizen of India – on 17 March. He is being held at an immigration prison in Alvarado, Texas, where his next hearing is scheduled for 6 May.
Continue reading...Chinese customs official says trade has diversified away from US in recent years and plays up its ‘vast domestic market’
China has played down the risk of damage to its exports from Donald Trump’s tariffs, with an official saying the “the sky won’t fall”, as stock markets rose on Monday amid signs of a retreat on electronics restrictions.
The world’s second-largest economy has diversified its trade away from the US in recent years, according to Lyu Daliang, a customs administration spokesperson, in comments reported by state-owned agency Xinhua.
Continue reading...Under Pete Marocco’s lead, nearly all USAID staff was fired, with funding slashed and contractors dismissed
Pete Marocco, the Trump administration official who played a major role in dismantling the US Agency for International Development (USAID), has left the state department, a US official said on Sunday.
Donald Trump’s administration has moved to fire nearly all USAID staff, as billionaire Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” has slashed funding and dismissed contractors across the federal bureaucracy in what it calls an attack on wasteful spending.
Continue reading...Ray Dalio’s comments come after rocky week across stock markets after policies including 145% tariff raise on China
Billionaire investor Ray Dalio said that he is worried the US will experience “something worse than a recession” as a result of Donald Trump’s trade policies.
Speaking to NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, the 75-year-old hedge fund manager said: “I think that right now we are at a decision-making point and very close to a recession. And I’m worried about something worse than a recession if this isn’t handled well.”
Continue reading...Secretary of state says ‘criminals’ were taken to country thanks to alliance between Trump and Nayib Bukele
The US has deported another 10 people that it alleges are gang members to El Salvador, secretary of state Marco Rubio said on Sunday, a day before that country’s president is due to visit the White House.
“Last night, another 10 criminals from the MS-13 and Tren de Aragua Foreign Terrorist Organizations arrived in El Salvador,” Rubio said in an Twitter/X post.
Continue reading...Exemption, seen as a climbdown, includes laptops and chips, and is likely to help firms such as Apple and Nvidia
US stock markets were expected to stage a recovery on Monday after Donald Trump excluded imports of smartphones and laptops from his tariff regime late on Friday night.
Shares in Apple and chip maker Nvidia were on course to soar after tariffs on their products imported into the US were lifted for 90 days.
Continue reading...Talks between US and Russia continue unabated as attacks on Ukraine’s cities appear to have stepped up
Even by the warped standards of wartime, Russia’s Sunday morning attack on Sumy was astonishingly brazen. Two high-speed ballistic missiles, armed, Ukraine says, with cluster munitions, slammed into the heart of the border city in mid-morning as families went to church, waited for a theatre performance or were simply strolling about on a mild spring day.
The death toll currently stands at 34, including two children. Images from the scene show bodies or body bags on the ground, a trolley bus and cars burnt out, rubble and glass scattered around. It was reckless, cruel and vicious and its consequences entirely predictable to those who gave the order and pressed “launch”.
Continue reading...Michigan governor criticized for appearance, including for blocking her face with binders while her photo was taken
The Michigan governor, Gretchen Whitmer – considered to be a 2028 White House Democratic contender – was trying to distance herself from a recent Oval Office appearance alongside Donald Trump, which saw her get photographed while blocking her face with binders.
Whitmer visited the Republican president on Wednesday alongside a bipartisan delegation to discuss a northern Michigan ice storm, the state’s defense assets and tariffs, among other issues. Following the meeting, Whitmer was brought into the Oval Office where she – as the New York Times described – “stood glumly” during a press conference that saw Trump sign several executive orders that targeted his political opponents.
Continue reading...‘When academics fear travelling or partnering with US institutions, the impacts ripple through the entire global knowledge ecosystem,’ one says
When Gemma Lucy Smart received an invitation to attend an academic conference in the US, she was excited. But that was before Donald Trump was returned to office.
Now Smart, who has a disability and is queer, has decided it’s too risky to travel to Seattle for the social sciences conference in September.
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Continue reading...Announcement says tariffs – including those imposed on China – will also not apply to other electronic devices
Donald Trump’s presidential administration has exempted smartphones and computers from the 125% levies imposed on imports from China as well as other “reciprocal” tariffs, which experts had cautioned might cause electronic consumer prices to spike dramatically in the US.
The announcement was made late on Friday in a US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) notice that said the devices would be excluded from the 10% global tariff that Trump recently imposed on most countries, along with the much heftier import tax on China.
Continue reading...Iranian foreign minister hails ‘calm and respectful environment’ to mediated talks in Oman
Iran and the US completed a successful opening round of indirect talks in Oman designed to prevent the weaponisation of Iran’s nuclear programme. In a sign the talks over a joint agenda had gone well, they agreed to meet again on 19 April.
A breakdown would have come if Donald Trump had demanded the complete dismantling of Iran’s civil nuclear programme, something that Iran is not prepared to contemplate. Iran insists it is pursuing only a civil nuclear programme, but Donald Trump took the US out of the previous nuclear deal claiming Tehran’s regime was seeking a nuclear weapon.
Continue reading...Resurgence could be on horizon as outbreaks pick up speed in US and abroad amid public health program cuts
As tuberculosis outbreaks pick up speed in the US and abroad amid deep cuts in funding for local, state and international public health programs, a resurgence of the deadliest infectious disease – including drug-resistant tuberculosis – could be on the horizon.
Increasing funding for public health responses could end tuberculosis (TB) altogether, says James Brookes, an IT specialist from Idaho, who told this to his representatives in Congress on Wednesday.
Continue reading...Discontent with government handling of diplomatic crisis rises as Pete Hegseth says US troops moved to country
Panamanian opposition politicians have accused the US of launching a “camouflaged invasion” of the country, amid simmering discontent over the government’s handling of the diplomatic crisis.
After a three-day visit by the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump appeared to confirm that US military personnel had been deployed to the Central American country on Thursday, telling reporters: “We’ve moved a lot of troops to Panama.”
Continue reading...Lasting damage has been done not only to Trump’s political credibility but to globalisation as a system
At the beginning of this helter-skelter week, Downing Street was declaring globalisation not only dead but a failure. Now, only five trading days later, the autopsy is still under way but the victim may instead be economic populism, strangled by Wall Street, the citadel of globalisation. Donald Trump’s so-called liberation day may in fact have been the anti-globalist’s entombment day.
In an effort to deny even a tactical retreat, Trump’s aides insist the White House goal all along was not to weaken globalism, or even to protect the US economy with tariffs, but instead to get into a negotiation to lower tariffs around the world and to punish China. As cover stories go, it is hardly credible, partly because the tariffs were repeatedly lauded by Trump as a macroeconomic revenue-raising measure, or a means to bolster US manufacturing.
Continue reading...Critics say Nasa faces ‘extinction-level event’ with budget plan, with climate research funding also to be slashed
Donald Trump shows no signs of easing his assault on climate science as plans of more sweeping cuts to key US research centers surfaced on Friday.
The administration is planning to slash budgets at both the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (Noaa) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa), according to internal budget documents, taking aim specifically at programs used to study impacts from the climate crisis.
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