Trump has put Christian nationalists in key roles – say a prayer for free speech

Experts warn that a specific brand of Christianity will be prioritized and lead to a ‘further dismantling’ of institutions

The Trump administration’s promotion of white Christian nationalists and prosperity gospel preachers to key government roles will lead to the “further dismantling of government institutions” and the chilling of free speech, experts have warned.

Donald Trump announced the creation of an “anti-Christian bias” taskforce and a White House Faith Office (WHFO) in February, saying it would make recommendations to him “regarding changes to policies, programs, and practices” and consult with outside experts in “combatting anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, and additional forms of anti-religious bias”.

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Doge unemployment ‘fraud’ discoveries are old finds from Biden era, experts say

Exclusive: Some aren’t even fraud but rather known attempts by states to protect victims of identity theft, former top official says

In a series of late-night posts on X last week, Elon Musk and his so-called “department of government efficiency” revealed the seemingly startling findings of their “initial survey” into unemployment benefits.

They cited examples of claimants who were deceased, between one and five years old, or not born yet. They even cited one case of someone with a listed birthday in 2154 allegedly claiming $41,000.

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Trump and Musk taking ‘hatchet’ to social security, says Biden | First Thing

Former president accuses Trump in first speech since leaving office. Plus, deadly Israeli strike hits second Gaza hospital this week

Good morning.

In his first speech since leaving the White House, Joe Biden accused Donald Trump and Elon Musk yesterday of “taking a hatchet” to social security, which he called a “sacred promise” that 73 million Americans rely on each month.

What else did Biden say? “In the 90 years since Franklin Roosevelt created the social security system, people have always gotten their social security checks. They’ve gotten them during wartime, during recessions, during a pandemic. No matter what, they got them. But now for the first time ever, that might change. It’d be a calamity for millions of families.”

What is the humanitarian toll of Sudan’s civil war? The consequences for Sudan’s 51 million people have been devastating. Tens of thousands are reportedly dead. Hundreds of thousands face famine. Almost 13 million people have been displaced, 4 million of whom went to neighbouring countries. Almost half the population – 24.6 million people – do not have enough food.

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Democratic senator heads to El Salvador to try to visit Kilmar Ábrego García

Chris Van Hollen warns of ‘constitutional crisis’ and says he hopes to report back to family on Maryland man’s condition

Democratic senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland will travel to El Salvador on Wednesday and attempt to visit Kilmar Ábrego García, a constituent whose deportation and incarceration in the Central American country, he warns, has tipped the United States into a constitutional crisis.

In an interview with the Guardian on Tuesday, Van Hollen said he hopes to learn of Ábrego García’s condition and convey it to his family, who also live in the state he represents.

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US removes sanctions from Antal Rogán, aide to Hungary’s Viktor Orbán

US secretary of state Marco Rubio also spoke with foreign minister about strengthening countries’ ties

The United States has removed sanctions on a close aide of the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, the state department said, adding that the punitive measures had been “inconsistent with US foreign policy interests”.

Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, spoke on Tuesday with his Hungarian counterpart, the foreign minister Péter Szijjártó, and informed him of the move, state department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said in a statement.

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Canadian universities report jump in US applicants amid Trump crackdown

UBC and others report spike in interest from US citizens as Trump withholds funds and revokes foreign student visas

More students living in the United States are applying to Canadian universities or expressing interest in studying north of the border as Donald Trump cuts federal funding to universities and revokes foreign student visas.

Officials at the University of British Columbia’s (UBC) Vancouver campus said the school reported a 27% jump in graduate applications as of 1 March from US citizens for programs starting in the 2025 academic year, compared with all of 2024.

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Obama backs Harvard as Yale faculty members support standing up to Trump

Harvard faces funding freeze as Yale faculty asks leadership ‘to resist and legally challenge any unlawful demands’

Barack Obama has come out in support of Harvard after the Trump administration elected to cut $2bn of its federal grants after the Ivy League school in Massachusetts rejected what it said was an attempt at “government regulation” of the university.

Meanwhile, faculty at Yale University – another prominent Ivy League institution – has asked its leadership “to resist and legally challenge any unlawful demands that threaten academic freedom and … self-governance”.

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Attorney general dodges question on Trump proposal to jail US citizens in El Salvador

Trump proposed that ‘homegrown criminals’ should be deported, an idea that experts say is clearly illegal

The US attorney general declined on Tuesday to say whether Donald Trump’s suggestion of removing US citizens to El Salvador was legal, in alarming remarks about what experts think is an obviously illegal idea.

Trump proposed the idea on Monday in the Oval Office during a visit with El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, who has been accepting people deported from the US and imprisoning them in a gigantic facility notorious for human rights abuses.

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How Harvard’s pushback against Trump may embolden more US resistance

It may be a turning point in the White House’s attempt to gut allegedly liberal universities and punish law firms

It might come to be seen as the moment the “woke liberal empire” of Donald Trump’s most fevered imaginings struck back.

Harvard University, the world-renowned institution emblematic of the elitism that Trump and his coterie hold in contempt, received an extortive demand from the administration that it surrender the core of its academic freedoms – and promptly told it to get lost.

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US labor groups sue over ‘ignorant’ cuts of programs fighting child labor abroad

Musk’s Doge team announced in March it had canceled about $577m in grants for programs it labeled ‘America last’

Labor groups have filed a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s abrupt termination of international labor rights programs aimed at ending child labor and other abuses.

The Solidarity Center, Global March Against Child Labour, and the American Institutes for Research (AIR), filed the lawsuit on Tuesday seeking to stop the cuts, enacted by Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), and arguing the programs were authorized by Congress and that the secretary of labor has no authority to cancel the funds.

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Trump envoy demands Iran eliminate nuclear programme in apparent U-turn

Steve Witkoff’s switch from saying low-level production could continue seen as example of chaotic US foreign policy

Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, has announced Iran must totally eliminate its nuclear programme, seeming to reverse the policy he had articulated on Fox News only 12 hours earlier that would have allowed Iran to enrich uranium at a low level for civilian use.

The switch to a more hardline policy is likely to make it much harder for the US to reach a negotiated agreement with Tehran, bringing back the threat of an attack on Iran’s nuclear sites.

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Ice deports Venezuelan teen despite reportedly knowing he was not a target

Merwil Gutiérrez sent from New York to El Salvador prison although family says he has no criminal history or gang ties

A 19-year-old Venezuelan in New York City reportedly was apprehended by Trump administration immigration authorities and deported to El Salvador despite agents’ realizing he was not whom they meant to arrest in a targeted operation.

Merwil Gutiérrez, whose family opened an asylum case after arriving in the US, was deported from the Bronx to the notorious Cecot prison in El Salvador despite his relatives’ insistence that he has no gang ties or criminal history, according to Documented, a newsroom dedicated to telling the stories of immigrants in New York City. The Gutiérrez family says it has been left without information or answers.

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Trump officials cut billions in Harvard funds after university defies demands

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.

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US begins inquiry into pharmaceutical and chip imports in bid to impose tariffs

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.

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JD Vance fumbles Ohio State’s national title trophy during White House visit

  • Vice-president unable to hang on to trophy
  • Buckeyes were celebrating last season’s title win

JD Vance, the man entrusted as America’s back-up in times of emergency, may not be the safest pair of hands if Monday’s events are anything to go by. The vice-president ended the Ohio State football team’s visit to the White House by fumbling the team’s national championship trophy.

After laudatory speeches by Donald Trump, Buckeyes coach Ryan Day and Vance on the South Lawn, the Vance – an Ohio State graduate – tried to lift the trophy. He didn’t appear to realize that the top of the trophy is detachable from its base. After a moment of struggle, the vice-president lost his grip on the two pieces. OSU running back TreVeyon Henderson, standing behind Vance, grabbed the football-shaped top of the trophy, but the base fell to the ground, forcing Vance to grasp around as it rolled away from him.

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Trump officials step up defiance over man wrongly deported to El Salvador

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.

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The Trump administration trapped a wrongly deported man in a catch-22

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.

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El Salvador president refuses to order return of wrongly deported US man

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.”

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Pennsylvania arson suspect planned to beat governor with hammer, documents say

Authorities say suspect told them he would have beaten Josh Shapiro with sledgehammer if he had found him

A man who authorities said scaled an iron security fence in the middle of the night, eluded police and broke into the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion – where he set a fire – had planned to beat the governor, Josh Shapiro, with a hammer if he found him because he hates the politician, according to court documents released on Monday.

The fire left significant damage and forced Shapiro, his family and guests to evacuate the building early on Sunday. The man, arrested later in the day, faces charges including attempted homicide, terrorism, aggravated arson and aggravated assault, authorities said.

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Georgetown alumni and students call for release of scholar detained by immigration authorities

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.

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