Judge sides with Harvard and orders Trump to reverse funding cuts
A federal judge in Boston has sided with Harvard university in its court battle with the Trump administration, ordering that the federal government reverse funding cuts, the AP reports.
Judge Allison Burroughs ruled Wednesday the cuts constituted illegal retaliation after Harvard had refused the White House’s demands to change its policies and governance, the AP reported.
Harvard’s complaint, filed in July, said:
This case involves the government’s efforts to use the withholding of federal funding as leverage to gain control of academic decisionmaking at Harvard. All told, the tradeoff put to Harvard and other universities is clear: allow the government to micromanage your academic institution or jeopardize the institution’s ability to pursue medical breakthroughs, scientific discoveries, and innovative solutions.
Key events
NAACP sues Missouri over redistricting: ‘Blatant effort to silence Black voters’
The NAACP has filed a lawsuit against the state of Missouri to block the red state’s special legislative session to redraw congressional maps and expand GOP representation.
The civil rights group said in a press release that it was suing to “stop an unlawful attempt to convene a special legislative session aimed at redrawing political maps in ways that would diminish the voting power of Black Missourians”.
Derrick Johnson, NAACP president, said in a statement:
This case is about defending democracy and protecting the voice of every voter. The Missouri legislature’s attempt to force a rushed, unconstitutional redistricting process in a special session is a blatant effort to silence Black voters and strip them of their fundamental rights. We will not stand by while elected officials manipulate the system to weaken our power and representation.”
The redistricting effort pushed by Mike Kehoe, Missouri’s GOP governor, followed calls by Donald Trump for the state to redraw its maps so it could “elect an additional Maga Republican in the 2026 midterm elections”. States traditionally have only redrawn maps every ten years based on the US census, but Republican efforts to add seats this year, in the middle of the decade, have sparked a redistricting battle with Democrats.
Judge sides with Harvard and orders Trump to reverse funding cuts
A federal judge in Boston has sided with Harvard university in its court battle with the Trump administration, ordering that the federal government reverse funding cuts, the AP reports.
Judge Allison Burroughs ruled Wednesday the cuts constituted illegal retaliation after Harvard had refused the White House’s demands to change its policies and governance, the AP reported.
Harvard’s complaint, filed in July, said:
This case involves the government’s efforts to use the withholding of federal funding as leverage to gain control of academic decisionmaking at Harvard. All told, the tradeoff put to Harvard and other universities is clear: allow the government to micromanage your academic institution or jeopardize the institution’s ability to pursue medical breakthroughs, scientific discoveries, and innovative solutions.
Federal agents reportedly practicing crowd control in Chicago
Hundreds of federal agents are arriving to the Chicago area for Donald Trump’s deployment, with some already “practicing crowd control with shields and flash-bang grenades”, according to a new report in the Chicago Sun-Times.
Roughly 230 agents, some who work for US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), are arriving from Los Angeles, the newspaper reported, with at least 30 of them training at a naval station near north Chicago.
JB Pritzker, Illinois’ Democratic governor, has strongly condemned the deployment, which the president has claimed is meant to address crime. “Any kind of troops on the streets of an American city don’t belong unless there is an insurrection, unless there is truly an emergency. There is not,” the governor said on Sunday. “I’m going to do everything I can to stop him from taking away people’s rights and from using the military to invade states. I think it’s very important for us all to stand up.”
More than 100 unmarked vehicles have been sent to the Navy training station, the Sun-Times reported.
Louisiana governor says he will ‘take Trump’s help’ in New Orleans
Jeff Landry, the Republican governor of Louisiana, said he backed the president’s threat to send federal troops to his state.
“We will take President @realDonaldTrump’s help from New Orleans to Shreveport!” Landry said on social media, responding to a White House post that said Trump was determining whether to send federal forces to Chicago or New Orleans “where we have a great governor”.
It’s ridiculous to consider sending the National Guard into another American city that hasn’t asked for it. Guardsmen are not trained law enforcement. They can’t solve crimes, they can’t interview witnesses and they aren’t trained to constitutionally police.
Eric Adams, the mayor of New York, has denied, sort of, having conversations with the Trump administration about him being given a government job in exchange for dropping his re-election campaign.
The New York Times reported on Wednesday that advisers to Donald Trump “have discussed the possibility” of giving Adams a position, in an attempt to thwart Zohran Mamdani, the 33-year-old Democratic socialist who is currently the frontrunner to be elected mayor in November.
According to the Times, “intermediaries” for Trump have spoken to “associates” of Adams about leaving the race. Adams, who has proved to be deeply unpopular among New York Democratic voters and is running as an independent candidate, is well behind Mamdani in the polls, and is draining support from Andrew Cuomo, another independent candidate.
There is a suggestion that if Adams, a centrist Democrat, and the Republican candidate, Curtis Sliwa, were to drop out of the race, Cuomo could consolidate enough support to challenge Mamdani. The Times reported that there have been talks in the Trump administration about also finding a job for Sliwa.
Sliwa did not respond when asked about the Times story, but the Adams campaign did reply to the Guardian.
“Mayor Adams has made it clear that he will not respond to every rumor that comes up,” said Todd Shapiro, a spokesman for Adams.
“He has had no discussions with, nor has he met with, President Donald Trump regarding the mayoral race. The Mayor is fully committed to winning this election, with millions of New Yorkers preparing to cast their votes. His record is clear: crime is down, jobs are up, and he has consistently stood up for working families. Mayor Adams is focused on building on that progress and earning four more years to continue delivering for the people of New York.”
On Tuesday a poll found Adams with 9% of the vote in the election – Mamdani was at 42%, Cuomo 26%, and Sliwa 17%. It’s worth noting that the Times story did not claim that Adams himself had discussed leaving the race with Trump.
Rubio: US military will continue targeting vessels belonging to alleged Venezuelan drug cartels
Speaking in Mexico City, Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, warned that the US military would continue to target vessels belonging to alleged Venezuelan drug cartels.
Arguing that previous interdiction efforts in Latin America have not worked, Rubio said: “What will stop them is when you blow them up, when you get rid of them.”
“The president of the United States is going to wage war on narco-terrorist organizations,” Rubio said, adding that the strikes would continue, according to reporters covering the news conference. “It’ll happen again. Maybe it’s happening right now.”
Rubio’s visit to Mexico, his first since taking office, comes after the US military launched what the president said was a “a kinetic strike” on a “drug-carrying boat” in the Caribbean Sea. Trump said 11 drug traffickers were killed in the attack.
Defending Tuesday’s military operation, Rubio said of the Venezuelan vessel: “This one was operating in international waters, headed towards the United States, to flood our nation with poison. And under President Trump those days are over.”
House Republicans help sink motion to censure Democratic congresswoman
A handful of House Republicans helped tank a motion to censure Democratic congresswoman LaMonica McIver of New Jersey stemming from her indictment by a federal grand jury earlier this year for allegedly assaulting law enforcement during an altercation at an immigration facility in her home state – charges she denies.
The censure, brought by Republicans congressman Clay Higgins, was expected to succeed in the GOP-led chamber where the once-rare form of public disapproval is now increasingly common. The House voted 215-207 to set aside the censure resolution, which would have stripped her of her position on the homeland security committee, a role the resolution claimed represented a “significant conflict of interest”.
Nearly a half-dozen Republicans sided with Democrats in voting to table the resolution.
Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, has crossed the pond and popped up at House judiciary committee, a guest of House Republicans.
His testimony was met with scalding derision by Democrats on the panel, who accused the far-right leader of being a a “Putin-loving free speech impostor” working to “ingratiate yourself with tech bros”. At one point, Congressman Hank Johnson, asked Farage to confirm that Reform currently has four MPs.
Farage, who missed prime minister’s questions to appear before the committee, testified to the “awful authoritarian” situation for free speech in the UK.
Florida surgeon general says state will eliminate vaccine mandates for children
Richard Luscombe
Children in Florida will no longer be required to receive vaccines against preventable diseases including measles, mumps, chicken pox, polio and hepatitis, the state’s surgeon general, Joseph Ladapo, announced on Wednesday.
In a speech announcing the move, Ladapo likened vaccine mandates to “slavery”.
Ladapo, hand-picked for the role by Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican governor, is a long-time skeptic of the benefit of vaccines, and has previously been accused of peddling “scientific nonsense” by public health advocates.
In his Wednesday speech he said that every state vaccine requirement would be repealed, and that he expected the move would receive the blessing “of God”.
“All of them. All of them,” Ladapo said. “Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery.”
In 2022, Ladapo altered data in a study about Covid-19 vaccines in an attempt to exaggerate the risk to young men who took one.
West coast states form public health alliance in response to turmoil at CDC
The governors of California, Oregon and Washington announced on Wednesday the creation of a West Coast Health Alliance aimed at safeguarding access to vaccines, amid growing turmoil at the nation’s top public health agency under the leadership of Robert F Kennedy Jr.
In a joint press release, governors Gavin Newsom of California, Tina Kotek of Oregon, and Bob Ferguson of Washington said the CDC had become a “political tool that increasingly peddles ideology instead of science”.
“President Trump’s mass firing of CDC doctors and scientists – and his blatant politicization of the agency – is a direct assault on the health and safety of the American people,” the Democratic governors said in a joint statement, adding: “California, Oregon, and Washington will not allow the people of our states to be put at risk.”
Speaking on Capitol Hill earlier, Chauntae Davies, one of Epstein’s victims, says the disgraced financier bragged often about his friendship with Trump.
Epstein and Maxwell “were always very boastful about their friends – their famous or powerful friends”, she told reporters in Washington. “And his biggest brag forever was that he was very good friends with Donald Trump.”
Davies added that Epstein kept an 8in x 10in framed photo of him and Trump on his desk. “They were very close,” she said.
Vance meets with families of Minneapolis shooting victims
Vice-President JD Vance and second lady Usha Vance have arrived in Minneapolis, where they will meet with the families of the victims of the Annunciation Catholic church shooting that killed two schoolchildren and injured nearly two dozen people last week.
The scene outside Annunciation Catholic Church, where the VP and Second Lady are currently paying their respects. Thousands of flowers line the walkway. Messages of love and hope are written in sidewalk chalk and painted on stones.
“They will hold a series of private meetings to convey condolences to the families of those affected by the tragedy,” the White House said in a statement.
Trump’s attorneys are asking the US supreme court to reverse a $5m sexual abuse and defamation lawsuit against him in the civil lawsuit brought by E Jean Carroll, Bloomberg News has reported.
According to a new filing, the president’s lawyers are asking the justices to extend the deadline for him to formally ask the court to toss out the verdict.
In 2023, a civil jury trial concluded that Trump had sexually abused Carroll, a former magazine columnist, in the 1990s, before he embarked on his political career, and then defamed her in 2022 when he denied the allegations as a hoax and said that she was “not my type”. Carroll was awarded $5m in damages.
The petition was due on 11 September, but Trump’s legal team has asked for an extension, until 10 November, Bloomberg wrote.
The day so far
Here’s a look back at what’s gone on today so far:
Democratic congressman Ro Khanna said only two more Republican signatures are needed for the success of a discharge petition to force a vote on legislation compelling the release of files related to the Jeffrey Epstein case.
Donald Trumpslammed the push for the files’ release as a “Democrat hoax that never ends” and mulled deploying federal agents into New Orleans to fight crime.
Republican congressman Thomas Massiecriticized how House GOP leaders handled the Epstein issue.
At a separate press conference outside the US Capitol, Epstein survivors detailed abuse they suffered at the disgraced financier’s hands.
The defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, said that the US would carry out more strikes like the one that targeted a suspected drug trafficking boat and killed 11 people on Tuesday off the coast of Venezuela.
A federal appeals court ruled on Tuesday that Donald Trump unlawfully invoked the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelans he alleged were part of a criminal gang.
Donald Trump teased the possibility of deploying federal resources into New Orleans to fight crime.
“We’re going to be going to maybe Louisiana, and you have New Orleans, which has a crime problem. We’ll straighten that out in about two weeks. It’ll take us two weeks,” the president said.
New Orleans has a homicide rate that is among the highest in the nation, but lies in a Republican-governed state – unlike Los Angeles and Washington DC, where Trump deployed federal troops earlier this year.
Trump also confirmed that he was still sending federal agents into Chicago, saying: “We could straighten out Chicago”.
Trump calls clamor over Epstein files ‘Democrat hoax that never ends’
Asked at the White House about the push in Congress to release the Epstein files, Donald Trump again accused Democrats of orchestrating the controversy, and attempted to change the subject to his own purported accomplishments.
“This is a Democrat hoax that never ends,” Trump said. Referring to the recent release of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein, he said: “Nobody’s ever satisfied.”
“They’re trying to get people to talk about something that’s totally irrelevant to the success that we’ve had as a nation since I’ve been president,” Trump said. He went on to claim credit for making Washington DC a “totally safe zone” with “no crime, no murders, no nothing” – though crime, including murders and robberies, have continued since he deployed the national guard and took control of its police department.
Another boast from Trump: “I ended seven wars, nobody’s going to talk about it because they’re going to talk about the Epstein whatever.” It’s unclear which seven he is referring to, though his claims of having quelled recent fighting between Pakistan and India played a part in souring the relationship with New Delhi. He also has notably not ended the war in Ukraine – something he boasted, on the campaign trail, that he could do right after taking office.
The White House has referred to signing the discharge petition to release the Epstein files as a “hostile act”, and discouraged Republicans from supporting it.
Thomas Massie, the Republican congressman who introduced the petition and is one of four lawmakers from his party who signed it, replied:
I don’t know if that’s precedented in this country to have a president call legislators to say that they’re engaged in a hostile act, particularly when the so-called hostile act is trying to get justice for people who’ve been victims of sex crimes.
He also said that the fact that there was little new in the case documents released yesterday may spur more lawmakers to sign the petition:
What people are waking up and discovering right now is the folks who stayed up all night to go through the 34,000 individual pages have found that they’re so redacted as to be useless and that many of them were already available.
A reality check on the discharge petition that could force a vote in the House on legislation to release the Epstein files.
The petition needs two more signatures – which will probably have to come from Republicans – to reach the majority threshold to compel the vote. But even if the petition receives that support and the bill passes the House, the legislation will still need to be approved by the Senate, where Republican majority leader John Thune has given no indication he will put it up for a vote.
Should it pass the Senate, it faces another obstacle: Donald Trump. He’s condemned the furor over the Epstein files as a distraction created by the Democrats, and could veto the legislation. That would punt the issue back to Congress, where the bill would need two-thirds majority support to overcome his veto – a tall order.
Marjorie Taylor Greene is among the most outspoken conservatives in Congress, but has made a rare pact with the Democrats by signing the discharge petition that could force a vote on legislation to release the Epstein files.
“This is an issue that doesn’t have political boundaries. It’s an issue that Republicans and Democrats should never fight about. As a matter of fact, it’s such an important issue that it should bring us all together,” she said at the press conference convened by the petition’s sponsors outside the Capitol.
“The truth needs to come out, and the government holds the truth. The cases that are sealed hold the truth. Jeffrey Epstein’s estate holds the truth. The FBI, the DoJ and the CIA holds the truth. And the truth we are demanding comes out on behalf of these women, but also as a strong message to every innocent child, teenager, woman and man that is being held captive in abuse. This should never happen in America, and it should never be a political issue that divides us.”
Marjorie Taylor Greene speaks to encourage release of the Epstein files outside the Capitol. Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
