Key events
David Smith
Meanwhile, Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic minority leader in the House of Representatives, has begun a press conference on Capitol Hill by highlighting America’s affordability crisis.
“House Republicans are in complete disarray because they have no track record of accomplishment with respect to making life better for the American people,” he told reporters, flanked by signs that warned of a Republican healthcare tax hike.
“Costs are going up. Healthcare premiums are about to skyrocket.” They would cost Americans thousands of dollars more a year, “a crippling increase”.
Jeffries went on: “Electricity bills are skyrocketing through the roof, in part because of the damage that Republicans have done to the ability for America to generate the power that it needs.”
The leader added: “Donald Trump remains deeply unpopular. Democrats continue to win special elections all across the country. Their [Republicans’] efforts to gerrymander the midterm elections by rigging those congressional maps are going to backfire. And Republicans know that their One Big Ugly Bill is deeply unpopular.”
Changing the name of the bill will not help, he said, arguing that Republicans “stole food from the mouths of hungry children” to fund tax breaks for the wealthy.
The Republican senator Bill Cassidy, a physician, pressed Robert F Kennedy Jr about whether Donald Trump in 2020 deserved a Nobel prize for spearheading Operation Warp Speed, which quickly developed the Covid-19 vaccine that Kennedy has been attacking.
The health secretary agreed that Trump deserved the award.
“The reason that Operation Warp Speed was genius is it’s something nobody had ever done. I don’t think any president but President Trump could do it,” Kennedy said. “It got the vaccine to market that was perfectly matched to the virus at that time when it was badly needed, because there was low natural immunity, and there were people getting very badly injured by Covid.”
Kennedy then touted the value of “therapeutics like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin” in Coid-19 treatment. Ivermectin has been found ineffective as a human therapy for Covid.
Robert F Kennedy Jr noted the gap in longevity between European countries in the United States. “We spend two to three times what European countries spend on healthcare,” he said, while having worse outcomes.
The US health secretary said these outcomes justify firing healthcare leaders. “It’s chronic disease that’s bankrupting us and destroying our national security,” he said.
Senator Michael Bennet asked if parents should be prepared for more measles and mumps cases, when a vaccine panel changes the recommendations for vaccinations. The Colorado Democrat said he expected no changes to the MMR vaccine, which is currently free.
“This is not a podcast,” Bennet said. “This is the American people’s health on the line.”
Kennedy shot back, asking if the senator was aware that one vaccine was associated with an increase in myocarditis. The two began shouting over one another about who was asking – or evading – questions.
In a contentious round of questioning from Senator Ron Wyden, Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr described the American Academy of Pediatrics’ criticism of changes to a vaccine approval board as “gravely conflicted”.
“Their biggest contributors are the four largest vaccine makers,” Kennedy said. “They run a journal, Pediatrics, which they make a lot of money on, that is completely dependent on pharmaceutical companies. So, I don’t think I wouldn’t put a big stake in what they say that benefits pharmaceutical interests.”
Wyden shot back. “They’re all wrong, too?”
Senator Ron Wyden questioned Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr about the truth of the claim in the Wall Street Journal by Susan Monarez that she was ordered to pre-approve the recommendations of a vaccine advisory panel that has now been replaced with people who have publicly expressed opposition to vaccine use.
“I never had a private meeting with her,” Kennedy said. Kennedy then called her a liar.
“We are the sickest country in the world. That’s why we have to fire people at the CDC,” Kennedy said in testimony before the Senate finance committee.
Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr testified that changes in leadership at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “were absolutely necessary adjustments to restore the agency to its role as the world’s gold standard public health agency in the central mission of protecting Americans from infectious disease.”
“CDC failed that responsibility miserably during Covid when its disastrous, nonsensical policies destroyed small businesses, violated civil liberties, closed our schools and caused generational damage in doing so, masked infants with no science and heightened economic inequality,” Kennedy testified. The “unscientific interventions failed to do anything about the disease itself.”
Kennedy noted accurately that America is home to 4.2% of the world’s population and had 20% of its Covid deaths, without reference to rampant misinformation leading to public resistance to vaccine use that was not present elsewhere. “We literally did worse than any country in the world, and the people at CDC who oversaw that process, who put masks on our children, who closed our schools, are the people who will be leaving.”
RFK Jr’s opening remarks interrupted by protester
Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr opened his testimony this morning with an appreciation for Officer David Rose, who was killed while fending off a gunman at the Centers for Disease Control and Protection (CDC) last month.
A protester interrupted his initial comments, shouting from the seats “You’re killing millions of people!” before being dragged out of the committee room.
Kennedy began with a recitation of the activities of the health and human services department, including a reduction in animal testing, research on child mutilation, nutrition education in medical schools and the East Palestine chemical spills.
“We are now on track to approve more drugs this year than at any time in history.”
Democratic senator opens hearing by calling RFK Jr’s tenure a ‘disaster’
Senator Ron Wyden said the US is in a “healthcare calamity” after CDC employees were fired or resigned because they wouldn’t go along with Robert F Kennedy Jr’s anti-vaccine views. The Democrat called Kennedy’s tenure a “disaster”.
Wyden called for Kennedy to quit or be fired, noting that Kennedy testified earlier that he would do nothing to make it harder for Americans to get vaccines. “That was a lie,” Wyden said, asking for Kennedy to be formally sworn in before testifying.
The chairman refused.
Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr will begin testifying before congress momentarily. Healthcare workers, particularly those from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are looking for signs that lawmakers are prepared to address how the firing of CDC chief Susan Monarez and the subsequent resignation of four CDC directors has thrown the agency into turmoil.
Dr Debra Houry, who resigned as a CDC director last week, wants to see three questions answered: will America be healthier? Will America be prepared for the next pandemic or major health threat? And is this the gold standard of science and transparency, or are those just slogans?
The hearing is ostensibly about healthcare budgeting as Congress faces a 30 September deadline to avert a government shutdown.
“Secretary Kennedy has placed addressing the underlying causes of chronic diseases at the forefront of this Administration’s health care agenda,” said Senator Mike Crapo, the Republican chairman of the Senate finance committee. “I look forward to learning more about the Department of Health and Human Services’ Make America Healthy Again actions to date and plans moving forward.”
RFK Jr to testify at Senate hearing on chaos at federal health agencies
Health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr will appear before a congressional committee on Thursday, where he’s expected to face questions about turmoil at federal health agencies.
The US Senate finance committee has called Kennedy to a hearing about his plans to “Make America Healthy Again”.
But the health secretary is expected to face questions about layoffs and planned budget cuts that detractors say are wrecking the nation’s ability to prevent disease.
Kennedy recently fired Susan Monarez, a longtime government scientist he installed as the CDC director for less than a month and has sought to reshape the nation’s vaccine policies to match his long-standing suspicions about the safety and effectiveness of long-established shots.
Donald Trump suggested yesterday that New Orleans could be his next target for deploying the national guard, potentially expanding the number of cities around the nation where he may send federal law enforcement.
Trump says the escalation is necessary because New Orleans has a “crime problem” but city leaders point out that crime rates have dropped considerably this year.
Republican governor Jeff Landry said on social media that Louisiana would take Trump’s assistance “from New Orleans to Shreveport!” but leaders of the Democratic-controlled city were less supportive.
“Marching troops into New Orleans is an unnecessary show of force in effort to create a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist,” said city council president JP Morrell.
Trump has already said he plans to send the national guard into Chicago and Baltimore following his deploying troops and federal agents to patrol the streets of Washington, DC, last month.
A federal judge on Wednesday ruled that president Donald Trump’s administration unlawfully terminated about $2.2bn in grants awarded to Harvard University and can no longer cut off research funding to the prestigious Ivy League school.
The decision by US district judge Allison Burroughs in Boston marked a major legal victory for Harvard as it seeks to cut a deal that could bring an end to the White House’s multi-front conflict with the nation’s oldest and richest university, Reuters reported.
The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based school became a central focus of the administration’s broad campaign to leverage federal funding to force change at US universities, which Trump says are gripped by antisemitic and “radical left” ideologies.
The administration cancelled hundreds of grants awarded to Harvard researchers on the grounds the school failed to do enough to address harassment of Jewish students on its campus.
Harvard sued, arguing the Trump administration was retaliating against it in violation of its free-speech rights after it refused to meet officials’ demands that it overhaul its governance, hiring and academic programs to align with their ideological agenda.
Jakub Krupa
The US president, Donald Trump, has said he was not considering pulling US troops out of Poland and pledged to stand with Warsaw “all the way” during a meeting with the country’s conservative nationalist president, Karol Nawrocki, at the White House.
Backed by the populist rightwing opposition Law and Justice party, which ruled Poland between 2015 and 2023, Karol Nawrocki unexpectedly won Poland’s presidential election after running a campaign under a Trumpesque slogan of “Poland first, Poles first”.
The historian turned politician had met the US president before the election, securing his highly prized endorsement and presenting himself as someone who could safeguard Poland’s interests with the conservative US administration.
During their meeting in the Oval Office, Trump praised the Polish president for winning in a “pretty tough, pretty nasty race”, saying: “I don’t endorse too many people, but I endorsed him, and I was very proud of that, the job he’s done.”
Responding to a question from a Polish reporter, Trump declared he was not considering pulling US troops from Poland, despite growing concerns in the region about rumoured changes to the US force posture in Europe.
Richard Luscombe
Children in Florida will no longer be required to receive vaccines against preventable diseases including measles, mumps, chickenpox, polio and hepatitis, said Joseph Ladapo, the state’s surgeon general, on Wednesday in a speech during which he likened vaccine mandates to “slavery”.
Ladapo, hand-picked for the role by Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican governor, is a longtime skeptic of the benefit of vaccines, and has previously been accused of peddling “scientific nonsense” by public health advocates.
In his announcement at a press conference in Tampa hosted by DeSantis, Ladapo said every state vaccine requirement would be repealed, and that he expected the move would receive the blessing “of God”.
“Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery,” said Ladapo, who altered data in a 2022 study about Covid vaccines in an attempt to exaggerate the risk to young men who received one.
“People have a right to make their own decisions. Who am I, as a government or anyone else, to tell you what you should put in your body? Our body is a gift from God. What you put into your body is because of your relationship with your body and your God.”
Ladapo condemned lockdowns and vaccination requirements during the coronavirus pandemic as a time “when crazy things did happen”, and said that growing skepticism of vaccines were “reflections of God’s light against the darkness of tyranny and oppression”.
David Smith
A court ruling that blocked Donald Trump from invoking the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelans he alleged were part of a criminal gang has been hailed as “a victory for the rule of law”.
In a 2-1 decision on Tuesday, a three-judge panel of the fifth US circuit court of appeals issued a preliminary injunction that prevents the Trump administration using the 1798 law to justify rapid deportations.
Circuit judge Leslie Southwick, writing for the majority, rejected the administration’s assertion that the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua had engaged in a “predatory incursion” on US soil.
The Alien Enemies Act gives the government expansive powers to detain and deport citizens of hostile foreign nations, but only in times of war or during an “invasion or predatory incursion”.
Democrats welcomed the ruling by the fifth circuit, the first federal appeals court to rule directly on a 14 March presidential proclamation invoking the act.
Dick Durbin, the top Democrat on the Senate judiciary committee, told the Guardian in a statement: “This president has repeatedly attempted to use wartime authorities like the Alien Enemies Act to threaten our fundamental constitutional rights.”
Shrai Popat
Several survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse signaled their support on Wednesday for a bipartisan resolution to release all the files related to the convicted sex offender, who died in a Manhattan prison in 2019.
Speaking outside the US Capitol, Anouska De Georgiou, a survivor of both Epstein and his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, said that while “every day of this journey toward healing has come at a profound cost to my mental health”, she had chosen to be there because this legislation “really matters”.
The only motive to oppose the bill would be to “conceal wrongdoing”, she added, but also issued a plea to Donald Trump to use his power and influence to help release the full tranche of records on Epstein.
The section of the Capitol grounds, known as the House Triangle, was packed with reporters and demonstrators. Signs accusing the US president of “protecting pedophiles” were raised alongside placards demanding the administration “release the files”, and messages of support for survivors, reading “we believe you”. Many of those at the news conference told personal stories of how they were abused and trafficked. Annie Farmer, now 46, said she was only 16 when she was flown to New Mexico to spend a weekend with Epstein and Maxwell.
“For so many years, it felt like Epstein’s criminal behavior was an open secret,” Farmer said. “Not only did many others participate in the abuse, it is clear that many were aware of his interest in girls and very young women and chose to look the other way because it benefited them to do so.”
At the same press conference, the bill’s co-author, Republican representative Thomas Massie said that he is close to reaching the 218 signatures needed to bypass US House leadership and bring his bipartisan legislation, calling for the release of the Epstein files, to a floor vote.
“Hopefully they can find their spines,” the Kentucky lawmaker said of the Republican holdouts. “I’m calling on my colleagues to be one of the next two who sponsors this discharge petition.”
Trump to host tech CEOs for first event in newly renovated Rose Garden
President Donald Trump on Thursday will host more than two dozen technology and business leaders for a dinner in the newly renovated White House Rose Garden, according to a White House official.
The guests include Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, the official said.
The gathering highlights Trump’s complicated but evolving relationship with Silicon Valley and the broader tech industry, Reuters reported.
Once a source of frequent clashes over issues such as content moderation and antitrust scrutiny, the tech sector has recalibrated since Trump’s 2024 election victory.
Executives have sought closer ties with the Republican administration, aligning corporate policies with the White House’s push to roll back diversity and equity initiatives while courting Trump’s favor on artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies.
“The president looks forward to welcoming top business, political and tech leaders for this dinner and the many dinners to come on the new, beautiful Rose Garden patio,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle said.
The Trump administration purposefully chose a notorious Louisiana prison to hold immigration detainees as a way to encourage people in the US illegally to self-deport, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) secretary Kristi Noem said Wednesday.
A complex inside the Louisiana state penitentiary, an immense rural prison better known as Angola, will be used to detain those whom Noem described as the “worst of the worst” Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detainees. Noem was speaking to reporters as she stood on the grounds of the facility near a new sign reading, “Louisiana Lockup.”
“This facility will hold the most dangerous of criminals,” Noem said, adding it had “absolutely” been chosen for its reputation.
Officials said 51 detainees were already being housed at Angola. But Louisiana governor Jeff Landry said he expects the building to be filled to capacity, expecting over 400 people to come in ensuing months, as president Donald Trump continues his large-scale attempt to remove millions of people suspected of entering the country illegally.
The dirt road to the new Ice facility meanders past lofty oak trees, green fields and other buildings – including a white church and a structure with a sign that says, “Angola Shake Down Team”.
The facility is surrounded by a fence with five rows of stacked barbed wire. Overlooking the outdoor area is a tower, where a guard paced back and forth.
At the prison entrance a sign reads: “You are entering the land of new beginnings.”
Trump asks US supreme court to overturn trade tariffs ruling
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news lines over the next few hours.
We start with news that Donald Trump has asked the US supreme court to overturn a lower court decision that most of his sweeping trade tariffs were illegal.
The US president filed a petition late on Wednesday to ask for a review of last week’s federal appeals court ruling in Washington DC, which centred on his “liberation day” border taxes introduced on 2 April, which imposed levies of between 10% and 50% on most US imports, sending shock waves through global trade and markets.
The court found in a 7-4 ruling last Friday that Trump had overstepped his presidential powers when he invoked a 1977 law designed to address national emergencies to justify his “reciprocal” tariffs.
The decision was the biggest blow yet to Trump’s tariff policies, but the levies were left in place until 14 October – giving the administration time to ask the supreme court to review the decision.
Trump has now appealed and the supreme court is expected to review the case, although the justices must still agree to do so. The administration asked for that decision to be made by 10 September.
The appeal calls for an accelerated schedule with arguments being heard by 10 November, according to filings seen by Bloomberg. Justices could then rule by the end of the year.
Read the full story here:
In other developments:
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Children in Florida will no longer be required to receive vaccines against preventable diseases including measles, mumps, chickenpox, polio and hepatitis.
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The governors of California, Oregon and Washington announced on Wednesday the creation of a West Coast Health Alliance aimed at safeguarding access to vaccines.
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A letter published on Wednesday from more than 1,000 past and present workers of the Department of Health and Human Services department (HHS) has demanded the resignation of Robert F Kennedy Jr.
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Donald Trump on Thursday will host more than two dozen technology and business leaders for a dinner, according to a White House official. The guests include Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
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Several survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse signaled their support on Wednesday for a bipartisan resolution to release all the files related to the convicted sex offender.
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A so-called “missing minute” of CCTV footage, a key ingredient of conspiracy theories surrounding Epstein’s death in prison has been found, contradicting the assertion of Pam Bondi, the attorney general, that it was recorded over.
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A federal judge on Wednesday ruled Donald Trump’s administration unlawfully terminated about $2.2bn in grants awarded to Harvard University and can no longer cut off research funding to the Ivy League school.
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Jeff Landry, the Republican governor of Louisiana, said he backed the president’s threat to send federal troops to his state.
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Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, warned that the US military would continue to target vessels belonging to alleged Venezuelan drug cartels.
