Trump press secretary attacks Maryland senator for traveling to El Salvador – as it happened

Thanks for reading along with us. Democratic senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland traveled to El Salvador in an effort to get answers about the Trump administration’s illegal deportation of Kilmar Ábrego García. He said he hoped to meet Ábrego García in person and see his condition. He previously told the Guardian the case had tipped the US into a constitutional crisis. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt fired back during a White House press briefing, saying that Democrats refuse to “accept the will of the American people,” and repeating administration claims that García was a member of the MS-13 gang. “Nothing will change the fact that Ábrego García will never be a Maryland father. He will never live in the United States of America again,” she said. Here are other things we covered today: The “special guest” at today’s briefing is Patty Morin, the mother of a woman who was raped and murdered in 2023, who shared devastating details about her daughter’s murder – which has nothing to do with Kilmar Ábrego García. The IRS is making plans to rescind Harvard’s tax-exempt status after the agency has made a determination that an organization has violated the rules that govern tax exemptions for not-for-profit entities. Donald Trump has proposed giving money to immigrants in the country illegally who choose to leave voluntarily, and that his “self-deportation program” would include the prospect of those who are “good” re-entering the country later legally. The Department of Health and Human Services may be facing a severe $40bn budget cut – slashing roughly a third in discretionary spending according to an internal budget document. Senator Chris Van Hollen was told that the Trump administration was paying the El Salvadorian government to hold Ábrego García, citing that as the reason he has not been released. A new proposal from the US Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries has offered a new interpretation of Endangered Species Act, which would strike habitat destruction from regulations. The Trump Administration is hoping to narrow protections in the Endangered Species Act (ESA) by redefining the word “harm”. A new proposal from the US Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries has offered a new interpretation of the 1973 law, which would strike habitat destruction from regulations. “The existing regulatory definition of ‘harm,’ which includes habitat modification, runs contrary to the best meaning of the statutory term ‘take,” the proposal says. “Take,” is a term used to denote any actions that include hunting, capturing, wounding, or killing a protected species. With this proposal, the administration is arguing habitat considerations shouldn’t be included. But habitat loss is considered the strongest driver of species loss, pushing many species closer to extinction. First reported on by Courthouse News Service, the proposal is scheduled to published in the Federal Register tomorrow. Senator Chris Van Hollen was told that the Trump administration was paying the El Salvadorian government to hold Ábrego García, citing that as the reason he has not been released, the New York Times reported. The White House maintains that it cannot force the El Salvadorian government and the country’s president, who met with Trump this week, said he would not return the man. From the NYT: The White House has said that it is paying the Salvadoran government $6 million to hold detainees sent by the US in its prison system for at least a year. President Bukele has not publicly cited the financial agreement as his reason for not returning Mr. Abrego Garcia.” Meanwhile, the administration is now planning to appeal the order to return Ábrego García. Initially saying that the Maryland man, who had lived in the US legally for 25 years, was deported due to an administrative error, officials have recently doubled down and are now claiming his arrest and removal from the US was justified. Kilmar Ábrego García’s wife, Jennifer Stefania Vasquez Sura issued a statement responding to court filings posted by the Department of Homeland Security today, which showed she filed for a restraining order. The department shared the documents on X, claiming that García had a history of domestic abuse, statements press secretary Leavitt referenced during today’s press briefing. “After surviving domestic violence in a previous relationship, I acted out of caution after a disagreement with Kilmar by seeking a civil protective order in case things escalated,”Vasquez Sura said in the statement, sent to Newsweek. “Things did not escalate, and I decided not to follow through with the civil court process.” Here’s more of her statement: “We were able to work through this situation privately as a family, including by going to counseling. Our marriage only grew stronger in the years that followed. No one is perfect, and no marriage is perfect. That is not a justification for ICE‘s action of abducting him and deporting him to a country where he was supposed to be protected from deportation. Kilmar has always been a loving partner and father, and I will continue to stand by him and demand justice for him.” The Department of Health and Human Services may be facing a severe $40bn budget cut – slashing roughly a third in discretionary spending according to an internal budget document reported on by the Washington Post. The “passback” document, which is part of the official budgeting process but is ultimately a draft outlining the president’s priorities, shows how Trump hopes to restructure the agencies responsible for heading the country’s response to diseases, food and drug safety, and research. While Congress will have the final word on budgeting, the administration has already reduced the HHS workforce by a quarter as part of its broader goal to rapidly shrink the size and scope of the federal government. Donald Trump has proposed giving money to immigrants in the country illegally who choose to leave voluntarily, and that his “self-deportation program” would include the prospect of those who are “good” re-entering the country later legally. “We’re going to give them a stipend,” Trump said in an interview with Fox Noticias that aired on Tuesday. “We’re going to give them some money and a plane ticket, and then we’re going to work with them. If they’re good, if we want them back in, we’re going to work with them to get them back in as quickly as we can.” Fox Noticias interviewer Rachel Campos-Duffy, who is married to transportation secretary Sean Duffy, played a clip of a Mexican man who she said had arrived illegally in the US more than 20 years ago. In the clip, the man said he would have backed Trump if he had been allowed to vote. “This is a guy that we want to keep,” Trump said. The IRS is making plans to rescind Harvard’s tax-exempt status, according to a CNN reports published Wednesday, which sourced the info from two unnamed sources. Trump said in posts online that he believed the university should lose its tax exemptions, and has repeatedly called for the school to apologize after it rejected the administration’s demands. From CNN: Gary Shapley, whom Trump this week picked as acting IRS commissioner, has the authority to rescind the tax exemption under federal law. Doing so typically comes after the agency has made a determination that an organization has violated the rules that govern tax exemptions for not-for-profit entities. Not-for-profit organizations that benefit from the tax exemption can lose it if they violate a number of rules, including for political activity. But a rescission would be a rare move by the IRS.” Trump was expected to attend the press briefing today but did not appear. The briefing was also supposed to offer information on a range of topics, including tariffs and the Russia-Ukraine war. But the entirety of the short briefing was instead devoted to chastising Democrats, especially Maryland Senator Van Hollen, over immigration policies. Patty Morin shared devastating details about her daughter’s murder – which has nothing to do with Kilmar Ábrego García, the former Maryland resident and refugee the administration has been ordered to bring back to the United States. This isn’t the first time Trump has used victims or victims’ families to make a case for broad claims about the dangers posed by undocumented immigrants. But researchers have found that they commit crimes at much lower rates than native-born citizens. The “special guest” at today’s briefing is Patty Morin, the mother of a woman who was raped and murdered in 2023. A Salvadorian man, Victor Martinez-Hernandez, was convicted of the crime this week. Morin has been outspoken about the loss of her daughter, blaming Democrats and on former president Biden’s border policies. The press briefing has just begun and press secretary Karoline Leavitt opened with attacks on Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen, who traveled to El Salvador in an attempt to visit Kilmar Ábrego García, his constituent who was wrongly deported to the Central American country last month. Saying that Democrats refuse to “accept the will of the American people,” Leavitt repeated administration claims that García was a member of the MS-13 gang, and she also called him a terrorist. “There is no Maryland father,” she said, referring to how García has been described in the media. She repeated the administration’s position that if he is brought back to the US, “he would be immediately deported again”. “Nothing will change the fact that Ábrego García will never be a Maryland father. He will never live in the United States of America again.” We have an update on the delayed $380m in energy aid owed to the states – money appropriated by Congress to help low income households pay energy bills but which is currently in limbo after the Trump administration eliminated the office that oversees the bipartisan program and fired the entire staff. The Guardian has seen an email sent earlier today to all the states from defendthespend@hhs.gov – which we’re assuming is the work of Trump’s billionaire mega-donor Elon Musk and his so-called “department of government efficiency”, or Doge. It reads: “We are requesting additional clarification regarding this payment. An ideal payment justification includes a description of the award and what you plan to do with the funds.” The email then includes a link to an online form before continuing: “If you have any inquiries, you can reply to this email directly. God Bless America.” It’s unclear what additional information HHS – or Doge – needs. The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program( Liheap) has helped families with the rising cost of home energy bills for more than four decades, and enjoys widespread bipartisan support. Congress appropriated $4.1bn for 2024/25 fiscal year, of which 90% has already been distributed. But the remaining 10% has been in limbo since the Trump Administration eliminated the Division of Energy Assistance (DEA) – the office overseeing Liheap. An estimated one in six households are behind on their energy bills, according to the National Energy Assistance Directors Association (Neada), which means millions of families are at risk of utilities cutting the power cut off in what’s expected to be another record-breaking hot summer. Read more here: The White House is holding a press briefing at 4.30pm ET with press secretary Karoline Leavitt and a surprise “special guest”. I’ll bring you any key lines from that here. My colleague Léonie Chao-Fong has written this very helpful explainer on Kilmar Ábrego García, a man wrongly deported by the Trump administration to a notorious prison in El Salvador. His case has become a flashpoint as Donald Trump tests the limits of his executive power and continues with his plans for mass deportations. Maryland’s Democratic senator Chris Van Hollen says the government of El Salvador has denied his request to visit Kilmar Ábrego García, his constituent who was wrongly deported to the Central American country last month. Van Hollen traveled to El Salvador on Wednesday with the intention of meeting Ábrego García at the Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot), where US authorities have said that the Maryland resident is being held along with others deported at Donald Trump’s orders. The senator’s visit came days after Trump and El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele refused to take steps to return Ábrego García to the United States, even though the US supreme court last week said the administration must “facilitate” his return. At a press conference in El Salvador, Van Hollen said that he had met with the country’s vice-president Félix Ulloa, who told him it would not be possible for him to speak with Ábrego García in person or on the phone. Van Hollen said: I asked the vice-president if I could meet with Mr Ábrego García. And he said, well, you need to make earlier provisions to go visit Cecot. I said, I’m not interested at this moment in taking a tour of Cecot, I just want to meet with Mr Abrego Garcia. He said he was not able to make that happen. Van Hollen said he offered to come back next week to meet with Ábrego García, but Ulloa “said he couldn’t promise that either”. The vice-president also said he could not arrange for Ábrego García’s family to speak to him by phone. When the senator asked if he could do so, Ulloa told him that the US embassy must make that request, Van Hollen said. “We have an unjust situation here. The Trump administration is lying about Ábrego García,” said Van Hollen, who said his constituent had been wrongly named as a member of the MS-13 criminal gang. The Trump administration has admitted that an “administrative error” led to the deportation of Ábrego García to his home country, despite an immigration judge granting him protected status in 2019. Van Hollen said that he had asked Ulloa if he would consider releasing Ábrego García, to which the vice-president replied by reiterating Bukele’s comments from earlier this week that he would not “smuggle” the deportee back into the United States. In a major escalation in the showdown over Donald Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members without normal due process, federal judge James Boasberg ruled there was probable cause to find Trump administration officials in criminal contempt for violating his order to halt sending deportees to El Salvador under the wartime law. In a scathing 46-page opinion, Boasberg said the government had shown “willful disregard” for the court, and that senior Trump officials could either return the people who were supposed to have been protected by his injunction, or face contempt proceedings. The judge also warned that if the administration tried to stonewall his contempt proceedings or instructed the justice department to decline to file contempt charges against the most responsible officials, he would appoint an independent prosecutor himself. Boasberg said the administration’s “willful disobedience of judicial orders” without consequences would make “a solemn mockery” of “the constitution itself”. My colleague Hugo Lowell has the story: Meanwhile, Democratic senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland traveled to El Salvador in an effort to get answers about the Trump administration’s illegal deportation of Kilmar Ábrego García. He said he hoped to meet Ábrego García in person and see his condition. He previously told the Guardian the case had tipped the US into a constitutional crisis. Earlier today, US attorney general Pam Bondi insisted the 29-year-old is “not coming back to our country”. Bondi repeated the government line that Abrego Garcia was an MS-13 gang member, an allegation the Trump administration has not made in court documents. Elsewhere: The Associated Press accused aides to Donald Trump of defying a court order restoring its access to press events in the White House after a judge found the news agency had faced unlawful retaliation. In a court filing on Wednesday, lawyers for the AP accused the White House of continuing to exclude its journalists from the small pool of reporters that travels with the president and attends events in the Oval Office in violation of US district judge Trevor McFadden’s order lifting those restrictions while a lawsuit moves forward. Republican representative Elise Stefanik is considering a run for New York governor. NBC News reports that Stefanik is seriously considering a run after receiving encouragement from Republicans in New York, members of the Trump world and GOP donors. A federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from carrying out steep cuts to federal research funding provided to universities by the US Department of Energy. US district judge Allison Burroughs in Boston issued a temporary restraining order blocking the department from implementing the new policy at the behest of a group of universities including Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton University and California Institute of Technology. US attorney general Pam Bondi on Wednesday unveiled legal action against Maine, in an escalation of Trump’s conflict with the state for refusing to ban transgender athletes from participating in women’s and girls’ sports. The lawsuit comes five days after the administration tried to cut off all of Maine’s federal funding for public schools and its school lunch program over the issue, following a 21 February meeting of Trump and a group of US governors where he clashed with Maine’s Democratic governor, Janet Mills. As Trump attacked Harvard again, other universities rallied behind its stand against the administration. Stanford put out a statement in support of Harvard, saying the strength of American universities is “built on government investment but not government control”. Columbia, which caved to demands by the Trump administration as a pre-condition for restoring $400m in grants, vowed to reject any deal that erodes its independence. Yesterday, Barack Obama and Yale threw their support behind Harvard’s rejection of an attempt at “government regulation”. Health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr says US autism cases are climbing at an ‘alarming rate’ Health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr warned that children in the US are being diagnosed with autism at an “alarming rate,” promising on Wednesday to conduct exhaustive studies to identify any environmental factors that may cause the developmental disorder. The Associated Press reports that his call comes the day after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report that found an estimated 1 in 31 children in the US is diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder by their 8th birthday, a marked increase from 1 in 36 in 2020. “Autism destroys families,” Kennedy said. “More importantly, it destroys our greatest resource, which is our children. These are children who should not be suffering like this.” Kennedy described autism as a “preventable disease”, although researchers and scientists have identified genetic factors that are associated with it. Autism is not considered a disease, but a complex disorder that affects the brain. Cases range widely in severity, with symptoms that can include delays in language, learning, and social or emotional skills. Some autistic traits can go unnoticed well into adulthood. Those who have spent decades researching autism have found no single cause. Besides genetics, scientists have identified various possible factors, including the age of a child’s father, the mother’s weight, and whether she had diabetes or was exposed to certain chemicals. Kennedy said his wide-ranging plan to determine the cause of autism will look at all of those environmental factors, and others. He had previously set a September deadline for determining what causes autism, but said on Wednesday that by then, his department will determine at least “some” of the answers. Related: RFK Jr giving families ‘false hope’ on autism, says outgoing US vaccine official The effort will involve issuing grants to universities and researchers, Kennedy said. He said the researchers will be encouraged to “follow the science, no matter what it says”. The Trump administration has recently canceled billions of dollars in grants for health and science research sent to universities. On Wednesday, Kennedy criticized theories that the rise in autism cases can be attributed to more awareness about the disorder. Autism researchers have cited heightened awareness, as well as medical advancements and increased diagnoses of mild cases. “The reasons for increases in autism diagnosis come down to scientific and health care progress,” said Annette Estes, director of the autism center at the University of Washington. “It’s hard for many people to understand this because the causes of autism are complex.” Republican representative Elise Stefanik is considering a run for New York governor, two sources familiar with the matter have told NBC News. NBC reports that the sources said Stefanik was seriously considering a run after receiving encouragement from Republicans in New York, members of the Trump world and GOP donors. The potential move comes after Donald Trump abruptly withdrew Stefanik’s nomination to be US ambassador to the UN and asked her to stay in Congress instead, where she has been given a new leadership arrangement. Politico reports the sources believe she is formidable enough to stand a chance in the traditionally blue state. She has enjoyed longtime support from Trump, who this morning posted about her on Truth Social: “Congresswoman Elise Stefanik is GREAT!!!” Ukraine and the United States have made “substantial progress” in their talks on a minerals deal and will sign a memorandum in the near future, first vice-prime minister Yulia Svyrydenko said on Wednesday. “Our technical teams have worked very thoroughly together on the agreement, and there is significant progress. Our legal staff has adjusted several items within the draft agreement,” Svyrydenko said in a social media post on X. She said the work on the deal would continue and that both sides agreed to sign a memorandum in the near term as the first stage to record the progress. Deputy Ukrainian economy minister Taras Kachka told national television that talks were advancing and that it was likely a provisional document, or memorandum, could be signed very soon. A final document won’t be signed this week. There is a lot of work to be done because the ideas included in the agreement by the US side need to be developed further. The US has reduced its cost estimate for the assistance provided to Ukraine since Russia’s invasion in 2022 to about $100bn from $300bn, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter. Last month, the Trump administration proposed a new, more expansive minerals deal, which gives Ukraine no future security guarantees but requires it to place in a joint investment fund all income from the exploitation of natural resources by state and private enterprises across Ukrainian territory. The future agreement would require ratification in Ukraine’s parliament and was expected to help economic growth in both countries, Svyrydenko said, but provided no more details. “It will create opportunities for investment and development in Ukraine and establish conditions for tangible economic growth for both Ukraine and the United States,” she said. As NPR notes, the supreme court weighed in on the case last week, saying the ACLU and Democracy Forward should have brought their suits in a different court, and under a different statute. But it didn’t rule on the underlying constitutionality of Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, and also said any alleged gang members deported under the act need to be given notice of deportation and the opportunity to contest it. “That Court’s later determination that the TRO suffered from a legal defect, however, does not excuse the Government’s violation,” Boasberg said about the supreme court’s order. “If a party chooses to disobey the order – rather than wait for it to be reversed through the judicial process – such disobedience is punishable as contempt, notwithstanding any later-revealed deficiencies in the order.” ABC News has more extracts from Judge James Boasberg’s ruling, including that the administration’s “willful disobedience of judicial orders” without consequences would make “a solemn mockery” of “the Constitution itself”. Boasberg has given the federal government until 23 April to respond to try to “purge their contempt” and prove they did not violate his temporary restraining order. Should they fail to answer his questions by then, he said, he will refer the matter for potential prosecution. He said the “most obvious” way for the administration to avoid contempt would be to allow migrants deported under the law in violation of his order to challenge their removal in court. The judge said that would not require bringing the migrants back to the United States, adding that the administration could “propose other methods of coming into compliance”. He wrote: The most obvious way for Defendants to do so here is by asserting custody of the individuals who were removed in violation of the Court’s classwide TRO so that they might avail themselves of their right to challenge their removability through a habeas proceeding. Per the terms of the TRO, the Government would not need to release any of those individuals, nor would it need to transport them back to the homeland. The Court will also give Defendants an opportunity to propose other methods of coming into compliance, which the Court will evaluate. Alternatively, if the Trump administration does not wish to purge Boasberg’s contempt finding, the government must provide the name of the person or people who chose not to stop the deportations out of the US despite his order – and Boasberg said he would refer them for prosecution. The judge said he will “proceed to identify the individual(s) responsible for the contumacious conduct by determining whose ‘specific act or omission’ caused the noncompliance”. The judge said he will begin by requiring declarations from the government, and if those prove to be unsatisfactory, he will “proceed either to hearings with live witness testimony under oath or to depositions conducted by Plaintiffs”. As a final potential step, Boasberg raised the prospect that he could appoint an independent attorney to prosecute the government for its contempt. The next step would be for the Court, pursuant to the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, to request that the contempt be prosecuted by an attorney for the government. If the government “declines” or “the interest of justice requires”, the court will “appoint another attorney to prosecute the contempt”, he wrote. US federal judge James Boasberg on Wednesday found “probable cause” to hold Donald Trump’s administration in contempt of court for violating his order last month halting deportations of Venezuelan migrants under the wartime Alien Enemies Act. Boasberg gave the Department of Justice a one-week deadline to file “a declaration explaining the steps they have taken and will take to do so”. Last month he instructed the Trump administration to explain why its failure to turn around flights carrying more than 200 deportees to El Salvador did not violate his court order. Boasberg wrote in his ruling on Wednesday: As this Opinion will detail, the Court ultimately determines that the Government’s actions on that day demonstrate a willful disregard for its Order, sufficient for the Court to conclude that probable cause exists to find the Government in criminal contempt. The Court does not reach such conclusion lightly or hastily; indeed, it has given Defendants ample opportunity to rectify or explain their actions. None of their responses has been satisfactory. I’ll bring you more on this as we get it. Democratic senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland is in El Salvador to get answers about the Trump administration’s illegal deportation of Kilmar Ábrego García. He said he hopes to meet Ábrego García in person and see his condition. He said in a video posted on social media: I just landed in San Salvador a little while ago, and I look forward to meeting with the team at the U.S. embassy to discuss the release of Mr. Abrego Garcia. I also hope to meet with Salvadoran officials and with Kilmar himself. He was illegally abducted and needs to come home. The state department has confirmed that Ábrego García is being held in El Salvador’s notorious Cecot mega-prison. Despite the US supreme court last week saying the Trump administration must “facilitate” his return to the US, the president refuses to do so. Speaking to the Guardian on Tuesday, Van Hollen warned that the case has tipped the US into a constitutional crisis. He told my colleague Chris Stein: We were in the gray zone before this. But if the Trump administration continues to thumb its nose at the federal courts in this case we’re in, we’re clearly in constitutional crisis territory. This is a Maryland man. His family’s in Maryland, and he’s been caught up in this absolutely outrageous situation where the Trump administration admitted in court that he was erroneously abducted from the United States and placed in this notorious prison in El Salvador in violation of all his due process rights. Van Hollen said that the case of Ábrego García marks a turning point for the Trump administration because the president is refusing to follow an order from the nation’s highest court – something Democrats have long warned he will do. What they have not overtly done previously is outright defy a court order. They’ve slow-walked court orders, they’ve tried to parse their words based on technicalities, they’ve not outright defied a court order. In my view, this now clearly crosses that line. The US attorney general, Pam Bondi, said 29-year old Kilmar Ábrego García, who the Trump administration wrongfully detained and sent to El Salvador, is “not coming back to our country”. Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Bondi said: He is not coming back to our country. President [Nayib] Bukele said he was not sending him back. That’s the end of the story. She went on to add: If he wanted to send him back, we would give him a plane ride back. There was no situation ever where he was going to stay in this country. None, none. Last week, the supreme court unanimously ruled and ordered the administration to “facilitate” the return of García, who was supposed to have been protected from deportation to El Salvador, regardless of whether he was part of the MS-13 gang – a claim that Bondi repeated today and which García’s family and attorneys staunchly refutes. García has no criminal record in the US, according to court documents. It’s also noteworthy that while members of the Trump administration continue to make the claim on television, the Department of Justice has not made the MS-13 accusation in court papers and has admitted the deportation was an error. Nevertheless, Trump’s administration has wrangled over the semantics of the supreme court’s ruling, arguing that the order to “facilitate” García’s return only means that the US would need to provide a plane if El Salvador decides to return him. Earlier this week, Bukele said he has no plans to return García, saying: “The question is preposterous…. How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? I’m not going to do it.” An independent expert will review security measures at Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro’s official residence after authorities said a man scaled an iron security fence and broke into Shapiro’s home on early Sunday. According to state police, the review will be a risk and vulnerability assessment after the security breach as well as arson attack which left much of the governor’s residence damaged, Reuters reports. On Monday, the suspect, Cody Balmer, denied having any mental illness and described himself as an unemployed welder with no income or savings. According to Balmer, he planned to beat Shapiro with a sledgehammer. When FBI and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents descended recently on two homes owned by Xiaofeng Wang, a Chinese national and cybersecurity professor at Indiana University, many in the idyllic college town of Bloomington were shocked. In December, Wang had been questioned by his employers about allegedly receiving undisclosed funding from China on a project that also received US federal research grants. On the same day of the home raids, Wang was fired from his longstanding post at Indiana University over email – a move that goes against the university’s own policy. But Wang hasn’t been charged with any offence, and his lawyer says no criminal charges are pending. The incident has driven fear into the hearts of Bloomington’s Asian community of faculty and students who fear a political motivation. “I study at the computer science department, and I’ve overheard Chinese professors talking about how worried they are that something similar could happen them, too,” says a Chinese PhD student who came to Bloomington from Suzhou, Jiangsu province, last September and who asked not to be named given the sensitivity of the issue. For the full story, click here: A federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from carrying out steep cuts to federal research funding provided to universities by the US Department of Energy. US district judge Allison Burroughs in Boston issued a temporary restraining order blocking the department from implementing the new policy at the behest of a group of universities including Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton University and California Institute of Technology. The judge said she would consider whether to issue a longer-term preliminary injunction during a 28 April hearing. The energy department did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. They along with several other universities and academic trade associations had sued on Monday to block the administration from moving forward with a policy change meant to reduce government spending in support of “indirect” research costs, which are not readily attributable to specific projects. Indirect costs are often used to fund facilities, equipment and research staff that provide value across multiple research projects, rather than being tied to a single project. The energy department announced on Friday that it would cut more than $400m in annual spending by setting an across-the-board 15% reimbursement rate for indirect costs of research. The department said the policy would bring “greater transparency and efficiency” to federal government spending. The universities argued in their lawsuit that arbitrary cuts to indirect research costs would force them to lay off staff, shutter expensive facilities and devastate the careers of young scientists. The plaintiffs include three trade associations including the Association of American Universities as well as Brown University, Cornell University, the University of Illinois, the University of Michigan, Michigan State University and the University of Rochester. The Associated Press accused aides to Donald Trump of defying a court order restoring its access to press events in the White House after a judge found the news agency had faced unlawful retaliation. In a court filing on Wednesday, lawyers for the AP accused the White House of continuing to exclude its journalists from the small pool of reporters that travels with the president and attends events in the Oval Office in violation of US district judge Trevor McFadden’s order lifting those restrictions while a lawsuit moves forward. McFadden found the White House had discriminated against the AP for continuing to refer to the Gulf of Mexico in its coverage rather than the Gulf of America as ordered by Trump. The court said the White House had probably violated free speech protections under the US constitution and ordered the White House to restore full access to the Associated Press to presidential events. The White House has appealed McFadden’s ruling to a federal appeals court, which is set to hear arguments on Thursday. The White House said on Tuesday all wire services, including Reuters and Bloomberg, would no longer hold a permanent spot in the press pool. The AP argued the new policy was in clear violation of the prior order and was a pretext for further retaliation against the AP. Reuters and the AP both issued statements denouncing the new policy, which puts wire services in a larger rotation with about 30 other newspaper and print outlets. Other media customers, including local news organizations that have no presence in Washington, rely on the wire services’ real-time reports of presidential statements as do global financial markets. The AP says in its stylebook that the Gulf of Mexico has carried that name for more than 400 years and, as a global news agency, the AP will refer to it by its original name while acknowledging the new name Trump has chosen. White House envoy Steve Witkoff and secretary of state Marco Rubio will visit France soon, French government spokesperson Sophie Primas told reporters. Primas said they would broadly discuss issues in the Middle East with French officials, saying: “All subjects regarding the Middle East will be on the table.” A French diplomatic source told Reuters Rubio would meet with his French counterpart, Jean-Noël Barrot, on Thursday during his visit to Paris, where they would discuss the war in Ukraine, the situation in the Middle East and the Iran nuclear talks. Vice-President JD Vance will visit Italy and India from 18 to 24 April, the White House said on Wednesday, adding that he will discuss “shared economic and geopolitical priorities with leaders in each country”. Vance is expected to meet with Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni in Rome and with Vatican secretary of state Cardinal Pietro Parolin. In India, he is set to meet prime minister Narendra Modi and visit New Delhi, Jaipur and Agra. Harvard’s stand against the Trump administration appears to have rallied other universities, after the likes of Barack Obama and Yale yesterday threw their support behind the Ivy League school’s rejection of an attempt at “government regulation”. KTVU reports that Stanford said it supports Harvard after the university announced that it will not eliminate its DEI initiatives, though officials stopped short of saying how they plan to respond to demands to eliminate DEI by the Trump administration. Stanford’s president Jonathan Levin and provost Jenny Martinez said in a joint statement: America’s universities are a source of great national strength, creating knowledge and driving innovation and economic growth. This strength has been built on government investment but not government control. The Supreme Court recognized this years ago when it articulated the essential freedoms of universities under the First Amendment as the ability to determine who gets to teach, what is taught, how it is taught, and who is admitted to study. Universities need to address legitimate criticisms with humility and openness. But the way to bring about constructive change is not by destroying the nation’s capacity for scientific research, or through the government taking command of a private institution. Harvard’s objections to the letter it received are rooted in the American tradition of liberty, a tradition essential to our country’s universities, and worth defending. Columbia, which caved to demands by the Trump administration as a pre-condition for restoring $400m in grants, has vowed to reject any deal that erodes its independence, the New York Times (paywall) reports. The university’s acting president said talks were continuing as the White House is seeking to place the university under judicial oversight. Yesterday we reported that faculty at Yale University asked its leadership “to resist and legally challenge any unlawful demands that threaten academic freedom and … self-governance”, while a statement from former president Obama read: Harvard has set an example for other higher-ed institutions – rejecting an unlawful and ham-handed attempt to stifle academic freedom, while taking concrete steps to make sure all students at Harvard can benefit from an environment of intellectual inquiry, rigorous debate and mutual respect. Let’s hope other institutions follow suit. Announcing the Trump administration’s civil lawsuit against the Maine department of education, US attorney general Pam Bondi said women were being discriminated against in sports. “This is about sports, but this is also about women’s safety,” she said. The state of Maine is discriminating against women by failing to protect women in women’s sports. Pretty basic stuff. Bondi said the administration is also looking at “Minnesota, California, we’re looking at many, many states, but they’re the top two that should be on notice, because we have been communicating with them”. US attorney general Pam Bondi on Wednesday unveiled legal action against Maine, in an escalation of Donald Trump’s conflict with the state for refusing to ban transgender athletes from participating in women’s and girls’ sports. Reuters reports that the lawsuit comes five days after the administration tried to cut off all of Maine’s federal funding for public schools and its school lunch program over the issue, following a 21 February meeting of Trump and a group of US governors where he clashed with Maine’s Democratic governor, Janet Mills. At the meeting, Trump threatened to withhold funding from Maine if the state refused to comply with an executive order he had signed barring transgender athletes from participating in girls’ and women’s sports. His threat prompted Mills to reply: “We’re going to follow the law, sir. We’ll see you in court.” Out of 510,000 athletes competing at the collegiate level, fewer than 10 publicly identify as transgender, NCAA president Charlie Baker said in January. The US Department of Agriculture notified Maine on 2 April that it was freezing school lunch funding, citing violations of Title IX, which affords legal protections against sex discrimination. A US district court judge temporarily blocked the USDA from choking off funds after Maine sued the federal government. Earlier on 2 April, the Department of Education announced it was cutting off the state’s $250m in K-12 public education funds as part of an administrative proceeding. The Department of Education also said it was referring the matter to the justice department for a possible enforcement action under Title IX. Maine’s assistant attorney general, Sarah Forster, told the Department of Education in an 11 April letter that the state would not sign a proposed draft resolution or any revisions. She wrote: Nothing in Title IX or its implementing regulations prohibits schools from allowing transgender girls and women to participate on girls’ and women’s sports teams. Your letters to date do not cite a single case that so holds. Secretary of state Marco Rubio and White House envoy Steve Witkoff will travel to Paris on Wednesday and Thursday to meet with their European counterparts about ending Russia’s war in Ukraine, the state department said in a statement. Witkoff, who has taken a leading role in the ceasefire talks, met with Vladimir Putin last Friday, their third meeting in recent months. He told Fox News on Monday that the meeting was “compelling” and said he saw a deal “emerging”. It was a compelling meeting. And toward the end, we actually came up with – I’m going to say ‘finally,’ but I don’t mean it in the way that we were waiting, I mean it in the way that it took a while for us to get to this place – what Putin’s request is to get, to have a permanent peace here. Without detailing Putin’s demands for a permanent truce Witkoff said the peace deal “is about these so-called five territories”, adding that “there’s so much more to it”. The impact of the Trump administration’s freezing of $2.3bn in federal research grants for Harvard will be felt most immediately by researchers at the Ivy League school and its partner institutions, the Associated Press reports. What research will be affected? Harvard has not released a list of affected grants, and it’s possible the university doesn’t yet have a clear idea of what might be frozen. At other campuses hit with funding freezes, the details of the cuts only became clear over time as work orders were halted. At Harvard, an Education Department official said hospitals affiliated with the university – who research is funded largely by federal grants – will not be affected. But the work that could be vulnerable to cuts includes research at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, which says 46% of its budget last year was funded through federal grants. Among other things, this paid for research on cancer, Alzheimer’s, stroke and HIV. Why doesn’t Harvard use its sizable endowment to pay for research? Harvard has a $53bn endowment, the largest in the country. But Harvard leaders say the endowment is not an all-purpose account that can be used for anything the university pleases. Many donors earmarked their contributions for a specific goal or project. And Harvard has said it relies on some of the endowment to help subsidize tuition costs for middle class and low-income students. Last week, Harvard started working to borrow $750m from Wall Street to help cover general expenses. The university has described the effort as part of contingency planning for a range of possible scenarios. What will this mean for undergraduate students? Losing federal research grants could mean fewer research opportunities for Harvard undergraduate students. If the funding cuts drive away faculty, it could also mean less exposure to top-tier researchers. Just last month Harvard expanded financial aid so middle class families wouldn’t have to pay as much for tuition, room and board. It’s not clear whether losing federal grants might affect those plans. Outsiders have suggested Harvard and other universities should cut back on top-tier amenities to students to free up money for research. Here’s a quick recap via the Associated Press on the high-stakes standoff between the Trump administration and Harvard, the nation’s oldest and wealthiest university. Both sides are digging in for a clash that could test the limits of the government’s power and the independence that has made US universities a destination for scholars around the world. On Monday, Harvard became the first university to openly defy the Trump administration as it demands sweeping changes to limit activism on campus. The university frames the government’s demands as a threat not only to the Ivy League school but also to the autonomy that the supreme court has long granted American universities. No university is better positioned to put up a fight than Harvard, whose $53bn endowment is the largest in the nation. But like other major universities, Harvard also depends on the federal funding that fuels its scientific and medical research. For the Trump administration, Harvard presents the first major hurdle in its attempt to force change at universities that Republicans claim have become hotbeds of liberalism and antisemitism. Some conservatives have suggested that if Harvard wants independence, it should follow the example of colleges that forgo federal funding to be free of government influence. Donald Trump has gone on yet another rant about Harvard University on his social media platform Truth Social this morning. It comes as the US education department said it was freezing about $2.3bn in federal funds to the Ivy League school. The announcement followed Harvard deciding 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. In the president’s typically rambling style, he posted: Everyone knows that Harvard has “lost its way.” They hired, from New York (Bill D) and Chicago (Lori L), at ridiculously high salaries/fees, two of the WORST and MOST INCOMPETENT mayors in the history of our Country, to “teach” municipal management and government. These two Radical Left fools left behind two cities that will take years to recover from their incompetence and evil. Harvard has been hiring almost all woke, Radical Left, idiots and “birdbrains” who are only capable of teaching FAILURE to students and so-called “future leaders.” Look just to the recent past at their plagiarizing President, who so greatly embarrassed Harvard before the United States States Congress. When it got so bad that they just couldn’t take it anymore, they moved this grossly inept woman into another position, teaching, rather than firing her ON THE SPOT. Since then much else has been found out about her, but she remains in place. Many others, like these Leftist dopes, are teaching at Harvard, and because of that, Harvard can no longer be considered even a decent place of learning, and should not be considered on any list of the World’s Great Universities or Colleges. Harvard is a JOKE, teaches Hate and Stupidity, and should no longer receive Federal Funds. Thank you for your attention to this matter! 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. News of the claims swept across rightwing media, including Fox News and Breitbart, and were attributed to Doge. They were repeated by the secretary of labor, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, who declared during a cabinet meeting with Donald Trump that the revelations were the latest to be “exposed by our partners at Doge”. “Your tax dollars were going to pay fraudulent unemployment claims for fake people born in the future!” Musk wrote on X, his social network. “There was no sanity check for impossibly young or impossibly old people for unemployment insurance.” But there was, in reality, a “sanity check” of unemployment claims years before Doge launched its blitz of the federal government – including under Joe Biden. People previously involved with the process say Doge’s claims are lifted from it. “They’re coming up like they uncovered something brand-new,” Andrew Stettner, who served as the director of unemployment insurance modernization at the US Department of Labor in the Biden administration, told the Guardian. “Going back in 2020 to say there was a lot of fraud – that’s the definition of old news.” President Donald Trump said Japanese government representatives will be arriving in the US on Wednesday for a meeting to negotiate over tariffs and the cost of military support. Trump said he would attend the meeting with his trade and commerce secretaries, in a post on his social media platform Truth Social. Joe Biden on Tuesday accused Donald Trump and his billionaire lieutenant, Elon Musk, of “taking a hatchet” to the social security administration as they moved at warp-speed to dismantle large swaths of the federal government. In his first public remarks since leaving office, the former president avoided any explicit mention of Trump – his predecessor and successor – but he was sharply critical of the new administration for threatening social security, which Biden called a “sacred promise” that more than 70 million Americans rely on each month. “In fewer than 100 days, this new administration has done so much damage and so much destruction,” Biden said, addressing the national conference of Advocates, Counselors and Representatives for the Disabled in Chicago. “It’s kind of breathtaking that it could happen that soon.” He said Trump administration had applied the Silicon Valley concept of “move fast and break things” to the federal government: “They’re certainly breaking things. They’re shooting first and aiming later.” President Donald Trump on Tuesday ordered a probe into potential new tariffs on all US critical minerals imports, a major escalation in his dispute with global trade partners and an attempt to push back on industry leader China. The order lays bare what manufacturers, industry consultants, academics and others have long warned Washington about: that the US is overly reliant on Beijing and others for processed versions of the minerals that power its entire economy, Reuters reported. China is a top global producer of 30 of the 50 minerals considered critical by the US Geological Survey, for example, and has been curtailing exports in recent months. Trump signed an order directing Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to begin a national security review under section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. That is the same law Trump used in his first term to impose 25% global tariffs on steel and aluminium and one he used in February to launch a probe into potential copper tariffs. US dependency on minerals imports “raises the potential for risks to national security, defense readiness, price stability, and economic prosperity and resilience,” Trump said in the order. Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you the latest news lines over the next few hours. We begin with Donald Trump having claimed that the cost of all products including gasoline and groceries have been coming down as the US takes in “record numbers” in tariffs. The president also claimed inflation in the US is down, without disclosing any specific data, according to a post on social media platform Truth Social. US government data released on 10 April showed consumer prices unexpectedly fell in March, before Trump’s so-called Liberation Day. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal has reported that the US wants to use trade negotiations with countries to limit their trade with China. This strategy includes asking over 70 nations to block Chinese goods from passing through their territories, discourage Chinese companies from setting up operations there and resist importing low-cost Chinese industrial products. The broader goal is to weaken China’s economic position and reduce its leverage ahead of possible high-level negotiations between Trump and Xi Jinping. It comes as Chinese state media said the US needs to “stop whining” about being a victim after “taking a free ride on the globalisation train”, as the trade war between the two countries continued to spiral. In figures earlier today, China revealed better than expected growth of 5.4% for the first quarter, before the effect of Trump’s tariffs. In other news: Trump signed a series of new executive orders and memorandums, taking action on a range of issues including social security fraud, federal contracts and the import of critical minerals. The Trump administration is “looking into” the legality of deporting American citizens to El Salvador if they commit violent crimes, a view the president reiterated in an interview on Fox News today. The White House also said Harvard “should apologize for antisemitism on its campus” as Trump threatened to remove the university’s tax-exempt status. Trump said the school “should be taxed as a political entity” after it refused to cave in to pressure from his administration to adhere to a list of demands including banning face masks, closing its diversity, equity and inclusion programs, and cooperating with federal immigration authorities. Trump responded by cutting $2.3bn in federal grants to the university. A federal judge ruled that Trump could not bar the federal government from working with Susman Godfrey, the law firm that won a $787m settlement from Fox News for a voting machine maker over lies aired about the 2020 election. The Associated Press has still not been allowed in the White House press pool even after a judge overturned a ban from Trump blocking the news agency. The justice department will have to prove it tried to comply with a federal judge’s order to facilitate the release of Kilmar Ábrego García from a Salvadorian prison, after the Trump administration claimed it was powerless to force the return of the accidentally deported refugee who had legally lived in the US for nearly 25 years. In a memorandum, Trump increased pressure on fraud prosecutor programs to ensure undocumented immigrants aren’t receiving Social Security funds. Former president Joe Biden dedicated his first major speech since leaving the White House to the importance of social security. Following Biden’s speech on the importance of Social Security, a person running the Social Security Administration social media accounts posted a thread accusing the former president of lying.