Category Archives: US Politics

Trump administration to exempt smartphones and computers from tariffs

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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.

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‘I’m super worried’: fewer UK tourists visiting US amid Trump’s policies and rhetoric

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Number of Brits crossing Atlantic down 14.3% from 2024 – and the travel industry fears decline could continue

After backpacker Rebecca Burke was arrested and locked up for nearly three weeks by US immigration ­officials in February, she started urging people not to travel to America.

Britons seem to have listened: UK residents visiting the US were down 14.3% in March compared with the same month in 2024, official figures show.

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‘A new golden age’: how rightwing media stuck by Trump as global markets collapsed

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Trump’s tariffs were sometimes played down, sometimes cheered but rarely seriously questioned by the right

While Donald Trump recently instituted and paused hefty tariffs, sparking a trade war and chaos in financial markets, most of the country’s conservative media either applauded the US president or critiqued the policy but not the person behind it, according to journalists and observers of conservative media.

Meanwhile, economists, business leaders, Democrats and even some Republicans warned that the tariffs, which prompted the largest American stock market drop since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, could cause a recession.

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‘Completely out of touch’: golf and dinners for ‘king’ Trump as economy melts down

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Casual attitude as markets fall suggests man detached from anxieties of ordinary voters – and surrounded by yes men

After lighting a fuse under global financial markets, Donald Trump stepped back – all the way to a Florida golf course. A week later, having just caved to pressure to ease his trade tariffs, the US president defended the retreat while hosting racing car champions at the White House.

Trump had spent the time in between golfing, dining with donors and making insouciant declarations such as “this is a great time to get rich”, even as the US economy melted down.

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Tuberculosis could end if there’s more US public health funding, experts say

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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.

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Panama opposition party accuses US of ‘camouflaged invasion’

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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.”

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Documents reveal Trump’s plan to gut funding for Nasa and climate science

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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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Immigration agents turned away after trying to enter LA elementary schools

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School district says DHS agents, seeking five students in first through sixth grades, were barred from entering

Immigration officials attempted to enter two Los Angeles elementary schools this week, but were turned away by school administrators. The incident appears to be the Trump administration’s first attempt to enter the city’s public schools since amending regulations to allow immigration agents to enter “sensitive areas” such as schools.

At a Thursday press conference, the Los Angeles unified school district superintendent, Alberto Carvalho, confirmed that agents from the Department of Homeland Security were seeking five students in first through sixth grades.

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US House panel drops inquiry into Northwestern’s law school clinics

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Move comes after professors sued and alleged investigation violated their constitutional free speech rights

The US House education and workforce committee withdrew an investigation into Northwestern University’s law school clinics after professors there sued and alleged that the inquiry violated their constitutional free speech rights.

The professors secured what amounted to a legal victory for them on Thursday, when the House committee withdrew its investigative requests with respect to the university and its law school’s Bluhm Legal Clinic program on Thursday.

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Homeland security apparently used British man’s tattoo to identify alleged gang members

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‘Average man from Derbyshire’ shocked to find photo of tattoo celebrating child’s birth was used to deport migrants

A British man was shocked to discover that a photo of his tattoo was included in a US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) document used to identify alleged members of a notorious Venezuelan criminal gang, Tren de Aragua (TdA).

Earlier this week, 44-year-old Pete Belton, who lives in the English county of Derbyshire, told the BBC that he was stunned to find a photo of his forearm tattoo featured in a DHS document among nine images of tattoos intended to assist in “detecting and identifying” TdA members.

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Head of US military base in Greenland fired after JD Vance visit

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Col Susannah Meyers removed amid reports she distanced base from Vance’s criticism of Denmark’s oversight of territory

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The head of the US military base in Greenland has been fired for criticising Washington’s agenda for the Arctic island after JD Vance visited two weeks ago.

Col Susannah Meyers, who had served as commander of the Pituffik space base since July, was removed amid reports she had distanced herself and the base from the US vice-president’s criticism of Denmark and its oversight of the territory.

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‘A huge cudgel’: alarm as Trump’s war on universities could target accreditors

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Advocates braced for revamp of certification system as experts warn of political pressure being brought to bear

Advocates for academic freedom are bracing for what they expect to be the next phase of the government’s effort to reshape higher education: an overhaul of the system accrediting institutions of higher learning.

Donald Trump has made no secret of such plans. During the campaign, he boasted that accreditation would be his “secret weapon” against colleges and universities the right has long viewed as too progressive.

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Mississippi orders deletion of race and gender databases in state libraries

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Library commission says state ‘in dire shape’ and has ‘had a reconsideration of everything with regard to’ Doge

The Mississippi library commission, which offers services such as specialized research assistance to libraries in the state, has ordered the deletion of two research collections: the race relations database and the gender studies database. The collections were stored in what’s called the Magnolia database, which is used by publicly funded schools, libraries, universities and state agencies in Mississippi.

The commission’s executive director, Hulen Bivins, confirmed the deletion to the Guardian, and said: “We may lose a lot of materials.”

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China raises US tariffs to 125% as Xi invites EU to team up against Trump ‘bullying’

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Chinese leader canvasses Spain and other trading partners on how to tackle economic fallout as market turmoil continues

China has raised its tariffs on US products to 125% in the latest salvo of the trade dispute with Washington, just hours after Xi Jinping said there were “no winners in a tariff war”.

Xi made the comments during a meeting with the Spanish prime minister in which he invited the EU to work with China to resist “bullying”, part of an apparent campaign to shore up other trading partners.

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Will global climate action be a casualty of Trump’s tariffs?

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Clean energy investors likely to pull back from US, but other countries may seize opportunity to speed transition

Donald Trump’s upending of the global economy has raised fears that climate action could emerge as a casualty of the trade war.

In the week that has followed “liberation day”, economic experts have warned that the swathe of tariffs could trigger a global economic recession, with far-reaching consequences for investors – including those behind the green energy projects needed to meet climate goals.

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US judge allows White House to require noncitizens to register with government

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Trump administration says it’s enforcing existing mandate applying to people age 14 and older without legal status

A federal judge is allowing the Trump administration to move forward with a requirement that noncitizens in the US must register with the federal government, in a move that could have far-reaching repercussions for immigrants across the country.

In a ruling on Thursday, judge Trevor Neil McFadden sided with the administration, which had argued that they were simply enforcing an already existing requirement for everyone in the country who wasn’t a US citizen to register with the government.

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Mahmoud Khalil can be expelled for his beliefs alone, US government argues

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Marco Rubio provides two-page memo to judge who asked government for evidence against Columbia student activist

Facing a deadline from an immigration judge to turn over evidence for its attempted deportation of Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil, the federal government has instead submitted a brief memo, signed by the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, citing the Trump administration’s authority to expel noncitizens whose presence in the country damages US foreign policy interests.

The two-page memo, which was obtained by the Associated Press, does not allege any criminal conduct by Khalil, a legal permanent US resident and graduate student who served as spokesperson for campus activists last year during large demonstrations against Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and the war in Gaza.

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US government has revoked more than 600 student visas, data shows

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Some cases were related to activism and participation in protests against Gaza war, others were for 'minor crimes’

More than 600 international students and recent graduates in the US have had their visas revoked or their legal status changed by the state department, according to data aggregated from around the country.

The data, collected by Inside Higher Ed, shows that as of Thursday more than 100 colleges and universities have identified more than 600 cases of students whose immigration status was changed by the Trump administration. These institutions say that their students have lost their F-1 or J-1 student visas.

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Trump’s about-face on tariffs reveals chaos at the core of his presidency

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Time will tell how much damage has been inflicted on the credibility of Trump’s economic policy and administration

Donald Trump’s climbdown on Wednesday from the most draconian aspects of his tariff regime has uncovered a damning picture of chaos at the heart of his presidency without necessarily alleviating their most painful effects.

The president’s landmark “liberation day” unveiling of tariffs in the White House Rose Garden on 2 April was supposed to be symbolic gateway to his promised “golden age of American greatness”; instead, it triggered a cascade of global market crashes that prompted warnings of a recession, or even a 1930s-style depression, while Trump brushed it all off as temporary “disruption”.

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Trump administration cuts $4m to Princeton’s climate research funding

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White House claims university’s work exposed students to ‘climate anxiety’ and ‘exaggerated climate threats’

Almost $4m in federal funding has been stripped from an Ivy League university’s prestigious climate research department because the Trump administration has determined it exposed students and other young people to “climate anxiety”.

The government research grants to Princeton University have been cut off because the White House considers its work on topics including sea level rise, coastal flooding and global warming to be promoting “exaggerated and implausible climate threats”, according to the New York Times.

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