Miller calls RFK Jr a ‘crown jewel’ of Trump administration
When talking in regards to the ongoing turmoil on the Facilities for Illness Management (CDC), Miller says, with out proof, that the company lacked “credibility” and was staffed by “partisan” bureaucrats who weren’t “in any respect involved about public well being, and weren’t really very knowledgable about public well being”.
He goes on to defend well being secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, who’s going through staunch criticism within the wake of firing CDC director Susan Monarez, and the resignation of a number of senior public well being specialists on the company.
“Secretary Kennedy has been a crown jewel of this administration who’s working tirelessly to enhance public well being for all People, and once more, to take care of the drivers of the power well being disaster on this nation,” Miller stated.
Stephen Miller speaks with reporters on the White Home on Friday. {Photograph}: Shawn Thew/EPAShare
Up to date at 15.57 EDT
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White Home adviser says immigration enforcement is a precedence in ‘sanctuary cities’
Stephen Miller, the White Home deputy chief of employees, simply spoke with reporters on the White Home. He stated that the administration can be “prioritizing enforcement in these sanctuary jurisdictions as a matter of public security and nationwide safety”, when requested about upcoming immigration raids in so-called “sanctuary cities”, that are predominantly run by Democratic officers.
Miller alleged that these cities don’t cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), even when an immigrant commits a criminal offense, saying they don’t adjust to detainers issued by Ice. Nonetheless, the American Immigration Council notes that sanctuary cities don’t “defend immigrants from deportation or prosecution for legal actions”.
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Up to date at 15.47 EDT
Amid CDC turmoil, RFK Jr peddles doubtful well being claims
Maya Yang
In per week of chaos on the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention (CDC), Donald Trump’s well being secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, has continued to make questionable medical and well being claims – and has been slammed for them by specialists and lawmakers alike.
After the lethal mass faculty capturing in Minneapolis this week the place two youngsters have been killed and 17 others injured, Kennedy instructed that psychiatric medicine could also be contributing to the rise in gun violence throughout the nation.
Throughout an look on Fox & Pals, the host Brian Kilmeade requested Kennedy if the well being division was investigating whether or not drugs used to deal with gender dysphoria could be linked to high school shootings.
Based on court docket paperwork reviewed by the Guardian, the 23-year-old shooter, Robin Westman, had modified their beginning title from Robert to Robin as a result of they recognized as a girl.
The HHS secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, speaks to the press about Texas’s healthcare initiatives in a press convention on the Texas capitol on Thursday. {Photograph}: Bob Daemmrich/ZumaA Press Wire/Shutterstock
In response to Kilmeade’s query, Kennedy, with out acknowledging the prevalence and straightforward accessibility of firearms throughout the US – stated that his division was “launching research on the potential contribution of among the SSRI [selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors] medicine and among the different psychiatric medicine that could be contributing to violence”.
This week, Kennedy additionally instructed that he might determine “mitochondrial challenges” in youngsters at airports simply by them.
Talking at an occasion in Texas alongside the state’s governor, Greg Abbott, Kennedy claimed: “I’m children as I stroll by the airports as we speak, as I stroll down the road, and I see these children which might be simply overburdened with mitochondrial challenges, with irritation. You may inform from their faces, from their physique actions, and from their lack of social connection. And I do know that that’s not how our kids are presupposed to look.”
In response, Ashish Jha, former White Home Covid-19 response coordinator beneath the Biden administration, stated: “I’m sorry however what?”
“That is wacky, flat-earth, voodoo stuff, individuals. This isn’t regular,” Jha added on X.
Learn extra right here:
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Up to date at 15.24 EDT
Trump administration plans immigration surge in Boston – report
The administration is planning to ramp up immigration enforcement in Boston, Politico is reporting, citing a present and former administration official.
Based on the official, the most recent plans are topic to vary, however would contain a rise in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) personnel within the metropolis.
Boston mayor Michelle Wu, a Democrat, has pushed again in opposition to the Trump administration, and stated the town would “not again down” from participating in “sanctuary metropolis insurance policies” outlined by the justice division, together with limiting metropolis police from serving to Ice brokers make arrests.
Final week, performing Ice director Todd Lyons additionally stated the rise in immigration enforcement was coming. “Sanctuary doesn’t imply safer streets. It means extra legal aliens out and in regards to the neighborhood. However 100%, you will notice a bigger Ice presence,” Lyons stated in a radio interview.
In the meantime, border czar Tom Homan stated this week that immigration raids throughout a number of Democratic-led cities would happen after Labor Day.
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Up to date at 15.03 EDT
My colleague, Lauren Aratani, has been masking the final days of “de minimis” – a longstanding tariff exemption that permit individuals skip import charges for small-value packages.
This ended as we speak, and leaves small companies and postal providers all over the world scrambling to use Donald Trump’s tariffs to hundreds of thousands of shipments.
Specialists say the change might imply as much as $13bn in additional prices and delayed transport for shoppers as companies modify to the change.
Right here’s what it is advisable to know.
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Up to date at 15.03 EDT
Trump cancels $4.9bn in congressionally accepted international funding
Donald Trump stated he wouldn’t be spending $4.9bn in congressionally accepted international assist, in a letter to Republican home speaker Mike Johnson.
The uncommon transfer, referred to as a “pocket rescission”, is a request to Congress for the president to not spend appropriated funds in direction of the top of the fiscal yr –which ends on 30 September. Usually, the regulation stipulates that funding will be paused for 45 days whereas congress considers such a request. However a pocket rescission implies that lawmakers don’t have sufficient time to behave earlier than the funds expire. This may be the primary time a president has used the supply in 50 years.
It’s already attracted ire from a number of legislators. Susan Collins, the Republican senator from Maine who chairs the appropriations committee referred to as the president’s actions a “clear violation of the regulation”.
In the meantime, Democrats decried Trump’s actions. Senator Elizabeth Warren, the rating member of the finance committee, stated the president is a “wannabe king is defunding assist that forestalls starvation and illness worldwide”, whereas congressman Joaquin Castro of Texas stated the choice to scrap billions in international funding was “mistaken and unlawful”, and urged his Republican colleagues to “say hell no”.
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Up to date at 15.23 EDT
This is a recap of the day thus far
At a listening to in Lisa Prepare dinner’s lawsuit, which challenges Donald Trump’s makes an attempt to take away the governor from the Federal Reserve board, her legal professionals stated that her firing does “irreparable hurt” as she’s a Senate-confirmed official who took an oath to hold out her position independently. They requested choose Jia Cobb to permit Prepare dinner to stay in her position because the litigation performs out. Cobb didn’t subject a ruling on the listening to. She should weigh whether or not the president had “trigger” to terminate Prepare dinner, given the broad discretion he has beneath the Federal Reserve Act.
Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, has signed a brand new redistricting invoice that may redraw the state’s congressional map to closely favor Republicans. Abbott signed as we speak the extremely controversial invoice which prompted state Democrats to stage a weeks-long walkout earlier this month. The brand new districting plans will take away Democratic-majority districts in a number of main cities together with Houston, Austin and the Dallas-Fort Price metroplex.
Donald Trump has revoked Secret Service safety for the previous vice-president and 2024 Democratic presidential nominee, Kamala Harris, a senior White Home official confirmed to the Guardian. Below federal regulation, former vice-presidents are entitled to obtain Secret Service safety for six months after leaving workplace. Nonetheless, Trump’s new directive cancels an undisclosed extension signed by then president Joe Biden earlier than leaving workplace, in keeping with CNN.
Lawyer common Pam Bondi stated that federal regulation enforcement had made 86 arrests in Washington DC on Thursday. It brings the overall tally of arrests made by federal officers to 1,369, in keeping with the White Home.
The US is denying and revoking visas from members of the Palestine Liberation Group and the Palestinian Authority forward of the United Nations common meeting assembly in September, the US state division has stated in a press release.
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Up to date at 13.54 EDT
US air power gives navy funeral honors to slain January 6 rioter
The US air power has stated it’s providing navy funeral honors to Ashli Babbitt, a supporter of Donald Trump who was shot and killed by a police officer through the 6 January 2021, assault on the US Capitol.
Babbitt, 35, a US air power veteran who lived in California, was fatally shot within the shoulder whereas she tried to enter a room close to the Home of Representatives through the riot.
“After reviewing the circumstances of [senior airman] Babbitt’s loss of life, the Air Power has provided Navy Funeral Honors to [senior airman] Babbitt’s household,” the air power stated in a press release seen by Reuters.
The funeral honors would mark the most recent gesture of assist from Trump’s administration towards those that stormed the Capitol in a failed bid to dam Congress from certifying his 2020 election loss. Trump has repeatedly made false claims that his 2020 loss to Joe Biden was on account of voter fraud.
He and his supporters have sought to painting Babbitt as a martyr who was unjustly killed as she tried to climb by a damaged window of a barricaded door resulting in the speaker’s foyer, a number of toes from the place members of Congress have been ready to be evacuated to security through the assault.
An inner investigation by the US Capitol Police cleared the officer who shot Babbitt of wrongdoing in 2021 and stated he wouldn’t face inner self-discipline. Greater than 1,500 individuals have been criminally charged for collaborating within the riot. Trump pardoned practically all of them, and launched those that had been imprisoned.
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Up to date at 13.16 EDT
Pentagon to revive Accomplice common portrait at West Level library
Marina Dunbar
A controversial portrait of Normal Robert E Lee, which exhibits an enslaved man holding the Accomplice chief’s horse, is being returned to the library at West Level, in keeping with Pentagon officers who spoke with the New York Instances.
The practically 20ft canvas, which had hung within the US navy academy since 1952, was eliminated following a 2020 regulation that ordered Accomplice names and tributes to be stripped from navy installations.
That very same regulation established a fee to rename bases and evaluation monuments. By 2022, the fee directed West Level to clear away all gadgets that “commemorate or memorialize the Confederacy”. Shortly after, the Lee portrait was taken down and positioned in storage.
Precisely how the portray is being reinstalled with out countering the laws stays unsure. The measure was handed within the wake of nationwide demonstrations after George Floyd’s loss of life by the hands of Minneapolis police.
Each Donald Trump and the protection secretary, Pete Hegseth, have pushed for the restoration of Accomplice symbols that have been eliminated in recent times. Hegseth, particularly, has pressed for reinstating a Accomplice memorial at Arlington nationwide cemetery that Congress really useful eradicating. In an August social media submit, he wrote that the statue “by no means ought to have been taken down by woke lemmings”.
Hegseth moved to reinstate Accomplice common names at military bases akin to Fort Bragg and Fort Lee earlier this summer time, however did so in a means that tried to remain inside the boundaries of the 2020 regulation. The brand new names honored totally different troopers, none of whom had fought for the Confederacy, but the names have been the identical as these of the unique Accomplice honorees.
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In response to Abbott’s signing of the gerrymandered map pushed by Trump into regulation, Texas Democratic get together chairman Kendall Scudder issued this assertion:
With a stroke of the pen, Greg Abbott and the Republicans have successfully surrendered Texas to Washington, DC. They like to boast about how “Texas Robust” they’re, however when Donald Trump made one name, they bent over backwards to prioritize his politics over Texans. Truthfully, it’s pathetic.
I’m happy with the Texas Democrats within the Home and Senate who selected to struggle, whether or not by a constitutionally protected quorum break, questioning these mapmakers, making an attempt to go amendments, and even making an attempt to filibuster.
This isn’t over – we’ll see these clowns in court docket. We aren’t performed preventing in opposition to these racially discriminatory maps, and absolutely anticipate the letter of the regulation to prevail over these sycophantic Republican politicians who assume the foundations don’t apply to them.
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Up to date at 13.16 EDT
Texas governor indicators new redistricting invoice, organising lack of Democratic seats in US Home
Maya Yang
Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, has signed a brand new redistricting invoice that may redraw the state’s congressional map to closely favor Republicans.
Abbott signed as we speak the extremely controversial invoice which prompted state Democrats to stage a weeks-long walkout earlier this month.
In a video on X, Abbott will be seen signing the invoice and says it “creates the one huge, stunning map that ensures fairer illustration in the US Congress for Texas”.
Immediately, I signed the One Large Lovely Map into regulation.
This map ensures fairer illustration in Congress.
Texas can be extra RED in Congress. pic.twitter.com/aOT7QCoSF8
— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) August 29, 2025
Abbott’s signing comes after the Texas home of representatives accepted the brand new map – which is set to create as many as 5 further Republican congressional districts – on an 88-52 party-line vote. The state senate then accepted the invoice early on Saturday.
After the home’s approval, Donald Trump took to Fact Social and wrote: “Large WIN for the Nice State of Texas!!! Every part Handed, on our method to FIVE extra Congressional seats and saving your Rights, your Freedoms, and your Nation, itself.”
“Texas by no means lets us down. Florida, Indiana, and others want to do the identical factor,” he added.
The invoice’s passage follows Trump’s request for the state to attract new congressional maps. Presently, 25 of Texas’s 38 districts have Republican majorities. The brand new redistricting will convey the Republican-favored districts to 30.
The brand new districting plans will take away Democratic-majority districts in a number of main cities together with Houston, Austin and the Dallas-Fort Price metroplex.
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Up to date at 12.36 EDT
US denies and revokes visas to Palestinian officers forward of UN common meeting
The US is denying and revoking visas from members of the Palestine Liberation Group and the Palestinian Authority forward of the United Nations common meeting assembly in September, the US state division has stated in a press release.
The restrictions imply that Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas would seemingly not have the ability to journey to New York to ship an handle to the annual gathering, as he sometimes does, Reuters stories.
It follows the imposition of US sanctions on Palestinian Authority officers and members of the Palestine Liberation Group in July, at the same time as different western powers have moved towards recognition of Palestinian statehood.
In a press release, the state division stated that “it’s in our nationwide safety pursuits to carry the PLO and PA accountable for not complying with their commitments, and for undermining the prospects for peace”.
Officers with the Palestinian Authority, which has restricted self-rule in components of the Israeli-occupied West Financial institution, reject that they’ve undermined peace prospects, Reuters stories.
Below the 1947 UN “headquarters settlement” the US is mostly required to permit entry for international diplomats to the UN in New York. However Washington has stated it might probably deny visas for safety, terrorism and international coverage causes.
The state division stated that the Palestinian Authority’s mission to the UN wouldn’t be included within the restrictions. It didn’t elaborate.
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Up to date at 12.39 EDT
US Republican senator Joni Ernst of Iowa will not search re-election in 2026 – report
CBS Information is reporting that Republican senator Joni Ernst of Iowa plans to disclose subsequent week that she received’t search reelection in 2026.
Ernst, 55, who has served within the Senate since 2015, plans to make the announcement on Thursday, CBS reported citing a number of sources acquainted with the matter.
Per CBS’s report:
Some Iowa Democrats have already jumped into the race, together with state Sen. Zach Wahls, state Rep. Josh Turek, and Des Moines College Board chairwoman Jackie Norris.
Ernst has been evasive about whether or not she would run for a 3rd time period in 2026, however in public remarks earlier this month, predicted continued GOP management of Iowa.
“Every single day we get a brand new Democratic member of the Home or Senate that decides to run for this Senate seat — convey it on,” she stated at a gathering of the Westside Conservative Membership. “Deliver it on, of us. As a result of I inform you, on the finish of the day, Iowa goes to be purple.”
White Home officers had hoped Ernst would run once more, as a substitute of becoming a member of different Republicans who’re leaving the Senate, together with North Carolina’s Thom Tillis, Alabama’s Tommy Tuberville and Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell.
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Up to date at 12.39 EDT
In a rebuttal, Abbe Lowell, Prepare dinner’s lawyer, gives a stern indictment of Trump’s foundation for “trigger”.
“Any purpose is now trigger,” Lowell says. “That might presumably imply the president decides it was trigger as a result of Governor Prepare dinner decides to take care of a gathering in a pant go well with as a substitute of a costume, and he didn’t assume that has sufficient respect for the establishment. That’s trigger.”
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Up to date at 12.40 EDT
Trump’s lawyer is citing case precedent now when it comes the query of Prepare dinner’s firing doing “irreparable hurt”.
“The hurt of getting a anyone in workplace who was wrongfully there outweighs the hurt of anyone being wrongfully faraway from workplace,” he says.
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The lawyer for the administration goes back-and-forth with Decide Cobb now, arguing that Prepare dinner has, in actual fact, had the chance to answer Invoice Pulte’s allegations.
“No response, no intent, no letter saying: ‘hey, I disagree with this’,” Trump’s legal professionals say.
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Up to date at 11.52 EDT
We’re now listening to from Trump’s legal professionals. The justice division says that it doesn’t “see the argument that for a really senior monetary regulatory official making contradictory representations on monetary paperwork with no rationalization” isn’t grounds for removing.
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Fired fed governor’s lawyer argues that her removing does ‘irreparable hurt’
Prepare dinner’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, is arguing that her firing does “irreparable hurt”. He says that Prepare dinner in the end took an oath earlier than Congress, and what she’s being “disadvantaged of” is greater than a paycheck, however the power “to fulfill the oath” she took and “to not be faraway from something however trigger”.
He added that whereas this lawsuit works its means by the court docket, the “establishment” ought to keep in place:
She [Cook] shouldn’t be taken out of her workplace. She shouldn’t be disconnected to her electronics. She ought to have the ability to take part within the assembly. She ought to do all of the issues that she did per week in the past earlier than all this began, as a result of that’s the established order.
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Up to date at 11.26 EDT
New Trump rule to ban VA abortions for veterans even in instances of rape and incest
Aaron Glantz
Medical doctors on the US Division of Veterans Affairs (VA) can be barred from performing abortions, even in instances of rape and incest, beneath new guidelines proposed by the Trump administration.
The draft rules, which additionally forbid suppliers from counseling feminine veterans about terminating a being pregnant, have generated practically 20,000 feedback within the federal register from conservative activists, abortion rights supporters and feminine veterans, lots of them survivors of sexual assault.
“I’m a veteran, a mom, and my abortion saved my life,” wrote Mary Dodson-Otten, a 41-year-old nurse and air power veteran who lives exterior Atlanta, Georgia.
Dodson-Otten instructed the Guardian she ended a being pregnant in her 20s after she obtained pregnant by an abusive boyfriend who was a fellow service member. With out the abortion, she stated, “I don’t assume I’d have survived, whether or not it will have been him hurting me or me hurting me.”
The rule proposed by the Trump administration has an exception that enables abortions to happen “when a doctor certifies that the lifetime of the mom can be endangered if the fetus have been carried to time period”. However abortion rights advocates stated the exception was too restricted.
“Girls are going to die,” predicted Caitlin Russell, a former US military captain who served two excursions in Afghanistan and research feminine veterans’ well being on the College of Pennsylvania.
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