Trump

It is the latest move by the Trump administration in a campaign against US universities and international students: a decision to revoke the visas of Chinese students, who number in the hundreds of thousands in the United States.

The US secretary of state has also announced the suspension of interviews for new student visa applicants – and an increase in the vetting of their social media postings.

With China being the second-biggest source of international students in the US after India, the reduction in revenues for American schools and universities is expected to be heavy.

US President Donald Trump has already cut funding to Harvard University.

How are academia and research likely to be affected in the US – and around the world?

Presenter:

James Bays

Guests:

Clay Harmon – Executive director of the Association of International Enrollment Management

Alexandra Miller – Immigration lawyer and senior adviser to Vecina, a non-profit group advocating for immigrant justice

Josef Gregory Mahoney – Professor of politics and international relations, East China Normal University

Washington, DC – For Anson, hearing the news that Chinese student visas were the latest target of US President Donald Trump’s administration was “heartbreaking”.

The Chinese graduate student, who is studying foreign service at Georgetown University, told Al Jazeera that he feels uncertain about the future of students like himself after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the US would begin to “aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields”.

“There is definitely a degree of uncertainty and anxiety observed amongst us,” Anson said, asking that only his first name be used.

The Trump administration has offered little further clarity on which students would be affected, with some observers seeing the two-sentence announcement, which also vowed to “revise visa criteria to enhance scrutiny” for future visa applicants from China and Hong Kong, as intentionally vague.

While 23-year-old Anson said he understood the US government had concerns about foreign influence and national security when it came to China, he was confused as to why the Trump administration’s new policy was potentially so wide reaching.

Most students from his homeland, he said, were just like the other more than one million students who study every year in the US, a country that is known both for its educational opportunities and for its “inclusivity and broad demographics”.

“It is heartbreaking for many of us to see a country built by immigrants becoming more xenophobic and hostile to the rest of the world,” he said, adding that he and other Chinese students in the US were still trying to decipher the policy shift.

‘Greater and greater suspicion’

It is not the first time the Trump administration has taken aim at Chinese students, with the US Department of Justice in 2018, during Trump’s first term, launching the so-called “China Initiative” with the stated aim of combatting “trade secret theft, hacking, and economic espionage”.

An MIT analysis instead showed the programme focused predominantly on researchers and academics of Chinese descent, in what critics said amounted to “racial profiling and fear mongering”. It was discontinued in February 2022 by the administration of former US President Joe Biden.

Since then, there has only been “greater and greater suspicion in the US, almost on a bipartisan basis, of various aspects of Chinese technology, actions by Beijing around the world, and now these concerns about surveillance and spying within the US”, according to Kyle Chan, a researcher on China at Princeton University.

That included a Republican-led congressional report in September 2024 that claimed hundreds of millions of US tax dollars – funneled through US-China partnerships at universities – helped Beijing develop critical technologies, including those related to semiconductors, artificial intelligence, hypersonic weapons, and nuclear capabilities.

But Chan, while acknowledging “genuine security concerns” exist, said the broad announcement from the Trump administration did not appear to actually address those concerns.

Instead, it has sent “shock waves of fear throughout university campuses across the country”, he said.

That uncertainty has been compounded by Trump’s recent pressure campaigns on US universities, which most recently involved a since-blocked revocation of Harvard University’s ability to enrol international students.

“I think the vagueness is part of the [Trump administration’s] strategy, because it is not about a concrete policy,” Chan told Al Jazeera. “I don’t think it’s really, at the end of the day, about national security and trying to find the few individuals who may pose a genuine risk.”

Instead, he saw the move as aimed at Trump’s political audience, those sitting at an “overlap between people who are very anxious about immigrants in general, and people who are very anxious about China”.

‘Tremendous disruption’

The administration has offered little clarity on the scope of the visa revocations, or how it will define students with “connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields”.

Speaking to reporters on Thursday, State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce gave few further specifics, saying only that the department “will continue to use every tool in our tool chest to make sure that we know who it is who wants to come into this country and if they should be allowed to come in”.

“The United States, I further can say here, will not tolerate the CCP’s exploitation of US universities or theft of US research, intellectual property or technologies to grow its military power, conduct intelligence collection or repress voices of opposition,” she said.

Despite the dearth of clarity, the eventual shape of the policy will determine just how “disruptive” it could be, according to Cole McFaul, a research analyst at the Center for Security and Emerging Technology at Georgetown University.

He pointed to “real concerns about research security and about illicit IP [intellectual property] transfer” when it comes to Beijing, noting there have been a handful of documented cases of such activity in recent years.

“My hope is that this is a targeted action based on evidence and an accurate assessment of risk that takes into account the costs and the benefits,” McFaul said.

“My worry is that this will lead to broad-based, large-scale revocations of visas for Chinese students operating in STEM subjects,” he said, referencing the abbreviation for science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

McFaul noted that about 80 percent of the estimated 277,000 Chinese students who study in the US annually are in STEM subjects, in what he described as “an enormously important talent pipeline from China to the United States for the past 40 years”.

A vast majority of Chinese PhDs in STEM subjects – also about 80 percent – tend to stay in the US after their studies, in what McFaul described as another major benefit to the US.

“The question is, what counts as someone who’s working in a critical technology? Are life sciences critical? I would say ‘yes’. Are the physical sciences critical? I’d say ‘yes’. Is computer science critical? Is engineering critical?” McFaul said.

“So there’s a world where the vast majority of Chinese students are disallowed from studying in the United States, which would be an enormous loss and tremendous disruption for the United States science and technology ecosystem,” he said.

‘Generating unnecessary fear’

As the policy remains foggy, Chinese students in the US said they are monitoring the often fickle winds of the Trump administration.

Su, a 23-year-old applied analytics graduate student at Columbia University, said she swiftly changed her plans to travel home to China this summer amid the uncertainty.

“I was afraid if I go back to China, I won’t be able to come back to the US for when classes begin,” said Su, who asked to only use her last name given the “sensitive” situation.

“When Trump announces something, we never know if it’s going to be effective or not,” she told Al Jazeera. “It’s always changing”.

Deng, a graduate student at Georgetown who also asked that his full name not be used, said he broadly agreed that reforms were needed to address issues related to Chinese influence in US academia.

Those included intimidation of political dissidents, the spread of nationalist propaganda, and “oligarchy corruption”, he said.

But, in an email to Al Jazeera, he said the administration’s approach was misguided.

“The current measures not only do not achieve such goals,” he said, “but [are] also generating unnecessary fear even among the Chinese student communities that have long been fully committed to the development and enrichment of US society.”

A federal appeals court has temporarily reinstated (PDF) US President Donald Trump’s tariffs a day after a trade court ruled that it exceeded the authorities granted to the president.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington temporarily blocked the lower court’s decision on Thursday, but provided no reasoning for the decision, only giving the plaintiffs until June 5th to respond.

The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit granted an emergency motion from the Trump administration arguing that a halt is “critical for the country’s national security”.

The White House has applauded the move.

“You can assume, even if we lose tariff cases, we will find another way,” trade adviser Peter Navarro said.

Wednesday’s surprise ruling by the US Court of International Trade had threatened to halt or delay Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs on most US trading partners, as well as import levies on goods from Canada, Mexico and China related to his accusation that the three countries were facilitating the flow of fentanyl into the US.

The International Court of Trade said tariffs issued under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which is typically used to address issues of national emergencies rather than addressing the national debt, were considered overreach.

Experts said the IEEPA, which was passed in 1977, is narrow in scope and targets specific countries, US-designated “terrorist organisations”, or gang activity pegged to specific instances. The US, for example, used the law to seize property belonging to the government of Iran during the hostage crisis in 1979 and the property of drug traffickers in Colombia in 1995.

“The 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act doesn’t say anything at all about tariffs,” Bruce Fain, a former US associate deputy attorney general under Ronald Reagan, told Al Jazeera.

Fein added that there is a statute, the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, which allows tariffs in the event of a national emergency. However, he said, it requires a study by the commerce secretary and can only be imposed on a product-by-product basis.

‘Product-by-product’

Despite the appeal court’s reprieve, Wednesday’s decision has been viewed as a blow to the administration’s economic agenda that has thus far led to declining consumer confidence and the US losing its top credit rating.

Experts believe that, ultimately, the tariffs will not last.

Posting on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Thursday, lawyer Peter Harrell, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote that, if the trade court’s decision “is upheld, importers should eventually be able to get a refund of [IEEPA] tariffs paid to date. But the government will probably seek to avoid paying refunds until appeals are exhausted.″

“The power to decide the level of tariffs resides with Congress. The IEEPA doesn’t even mention raising tariffs. And it was actually passed in order to narrow the president’s authority. Now the president is using it to rewrite the tariff schedule for the whole world,” Greg Schaffer, professor of international law at Georgetown Law School, told Al Jazeera.

The US trade court did not weigh in on tariffs put in place by other laws, such as the Trade Expansion Act – the law used to justify tariffs on steel, aluminium, and automobiles.

There are additional targets for similar narrow tariffs, such as pharmaceuticals from China. In April, the White House announced that the US Department of Commerce launched an investigation to see if the US reliance on China for active ingredients in key medications posed a national security threat, thus warranting tariffs.

“This is not an issue of whether the president can impose tariffs,” said Fein, the former associate deputy attorney general. “He can under the 1962 act after there’s a study and after showing that it’s not arbitrary and capricious and that it’s a product-by-product, not a country-by-country approach.”

“If he doesn’t like that, he can ask Congress to amend the statute.”

Federal Communications Commissioner Anna M. Gomez traveled to Los Angeles this week to sound an alarm that attacks on the media by President Trump and his lieutenants could fray the fabric of the 1st Amendment.

Gomez’s appearance Wednesday at Cal State L.A. was designed to take feedback from community members about the changed media atmosphere since Trump returned to office. The president initially expelled Associated Press journalists from the White House, for example. He signed an executive order demanding government funding be cut to PBS and NPR stations.

Should that order take effect, Pasadena-based radio station LAist would lose nearly $1.7 million — or about 4% of its annual budget, according to Alejandra Santamaria, chief executive of parent organization Southern California Public Radio.

“The point of all these actions is to chill speech,” Gomez told the small crowd. “We all need to understand what is happening and we need people to speak up and push back.”

Congress in the 1930s designed the FCC as an independent body, she said, rather than one beholden to the president.

But those lines have blurred. In the closing days of last fall’s presidential campaign, Trump sued CBS and “60 Minutes” over edits to an interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris, alleging producers doctored the broadcast to enhance her election chances. CBS has denied the allegations and the raw footage showed Harris was accurately quoted.

Trump-appointed FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, upon taking office in January, revived three complaints of bias against ABC, NBC and CBS, including one alleging the “60 Minutes” edits had violated rules against news distortion. He demanded that CBS release the unedited footage.

The FCC’s review of Skydance Media’s pending takeover of CBS-parent Paramount Global has been clouded by the president’s $20-billion lawsuit against CBS. The president rejected Paramount’s offer to settle for $15 million, according to the Wall Street Journal, which said Trump has demanded more.

Two high-level CBS News executives involved in “60 Minutes” were forced out this spring.

Gomez, in an interview, declined to discuss the FCC’s review of the Skydance-Paramount deal beyond saying: “It would be entirely inappropriate to consider the complaint against the ’60 Minutes’ segment as part of a transaction review.” Scrutinizing edits to a national newscast “are not part of the public interest analysis that the commission does when it considers mergers and acquisitions,” she said.

For months, Gomez has been the lone voice of dissent at the FCC. Next month, she will become the sole Democrat on the panel.

The longtime communications attorney, who was appointed to the commission in 2023 by former President Biden, has openly challenged her colleague Carr and his policies that align with Trump’s directives. She maintains that some of Carr’s proposals, including opening investigations into diversity and inclusion policies at Walt Disney Co. and Comcast, go beyond the scope of the FCC, which is designed to regulate radio and TV stations and others that use the public airwaves.

The pressure campaign is working, Gomez said.

“When you see corporate parents of news providers … telling their broadcasters to tone down their criticisms of this administration, or to push out the executive producer of ’60 Minutes’ or the head of [CBS] News because of concerns about retribution from this administration because of corporate transactions — that is a chilling effect,” Gomez said.

Wednesday’s forum, organized by the nonprofit advocacy group Free Press, was punctuated with pleas from professors, journalists and community advocates for help in fending off Trump’s attacks. One journalist said she lost her job this spring at Voice of America after Trump took aim at the organization, which was founded more than 80 years ago to counter Nazi propaganda during World War II.

The Voice of America’s remaining staffers could receive reduction-in-force notices later this week, according to Politico.

Latino journalists spoke about the difficulty of covering some stories because people have been frightened into silence due to the administration’s immigration crackdown.

For now, journalists are able to carry out their missions “for the most part,” said Gabriel Lerner, editor emeritus of the Spanish-language La Opinión.

But he added a warning.

“Many think that America is so exceptional that you don’t have to do anything because fascism will never happen here,” Lerner said. “I compare that with those who dance on the Titanic thinking it will never sink.”

The White House pushed back on such narratives:

“President Trump is leading the most transparent administration in history. He regularly takes questions from the media, communicates directly to the public, and signed an Executive Order to protect free speech on his first day back in office,” spokesperson Anna Kelly said. “He will continue to fight against censorship while evaluating all federal spending to identify waste, fraud, and abuse.”

FCC Commission Chairman Brendan Carr on Capitol Hill.

(Alex Wroblewski / Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Traditionally, the five-member FCC has maintained an ideological balance with three commissioners from the party in power and two from the minority. But the senior Democrat — Geoffrey Starks — plans to step down next month, which will leave just three commissioners: Gomez, Carr and another Republican, Nathan Simington.

Trump has nominated a third Republican, Olivia Trusty, but the Senate has not confirmed her appointment.

Trump has not named a Democrat to replace Starks.

Some on Wednesday expressed concern that Gomez’s five-year tenure on the commission could be cut short. Trump has fired Democrats from other independent bodies, including the Federal Trade Commission and the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

Gomez said if she is pushed out, it would only be because she was doing her job, which she said was defending the Constitution.

Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-Indio) applauded Gomez’s efforts and noted that he’s long appreciated coordinating with her on more routine FCC matters, such as ensuring wider broadband internet access.

“But now the fight is the survival of the free press,” Ruiz said.

He noted that millions of people now get news from non-journalist sources, leading to a rise of misinformation and confusion.

“What is the truth?” Ruiz said. “How can we begin to have a debate? How can we begin to create policy on problems when we can’t even agree on what reality is?”

California on Wednesday joined 15 other states filing suit against the National Science Foundation and its acting director, alleging the agency has illegally terminated millions of dollars in grants and imposed new fees that have ended or crippled research vital to health, the economy and the advancement of knowledge.

The Trump administration has defended its actions as both legal and necessary to align the NSF with the president’s priorities.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in the Southern District of New York, specifically targets the science foundation for “terminating grants for scientific research that seeks to promote and understand diversity in higher education and the workforce,” according to a statement from California Atty. General Rob Bonta.

The suit alleges that the NSF’s actions are illegally arbitrary and capricious and violate federal law on the management and use of federal funding.

Bonta’s office asserted that between 1995 and 2017, the number of women in science and engineering occupations, or with science or engineering degrees, doubled with help from federal support; minorities, meanwhile, went from representing about 15% in the occupations to about 35%.

The suit also seeks to overturn the Trump administration’s 15% cap on indirect costs related to research, which universities say are critical to carrying out their work. Such indirect costs include maintaining lab space, keeping the temperature controlled and the proper handling and disposal of biological, chemical and biochemical materials.

Like other key federal agencies, the National Science Foundation has been in turmoil since Trump took office in January — undergoing across-the-board funding cuts, layoffs and reorganization as well as apparent ideological litmus tests for research, sweeping grant terminations and a funding freeze on grant applications.

The Trump administration has fired back at critics.

Earlier this month Michael Kratsios, the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, criticized diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in federally funded research, calling them “close-minded” in a speech before the National Academy of Sciences in Washington.

Kratsios also called for a reduction of “red tape” in scientific research, the online news site FedScoop reported. He said there is a “crisis of confidence in scientists” that comes from fears that political biases are impacting research.

Trump officials also have repeatedly maintained that the federal government is rife with waste and fraud.

The federal actions have come at extreme cost, according to Bonta.

“President Trump wants to make America’s universities second tier with his backwards efforts to slash research funding that has kept us on the cutting edge of science and innovation,” Bonta said. “For more than 50 years, Congress has expressly authorized the National Science Foundation to train up the next generation of talent and invest in the infrastructure necessary to keep our position as a global leader” in science, technology, engineering and math.

“With President Trump’s latest round of indiscriminate funding cuts, America is poised to fall behind its competitors at a critical moment in the global technology race. We’re suing to stop him,” Bonta said.

In California, billions of dollars are at risk across the California State University, University of California and public community college systems.

“Many innovations — like the internet, GPS, and MRI technology — trace their origins to research initially funded by NSF. Without NSF funding, many California colleges and universities will be forced to substantially reduce or stop altogether potentially groundbreaking programs and research projects,” according to Bonta’s office.

Terminated NSF grants, for instance, include a five-year, $3-million project, “Computational Research for Equity in the Legal System.” This study examined crime data for patterns of racial bias while also looking at police misconduct and eviction policies, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Canceled UC Berkeley grants included projects on electoral systems and two on environmental science education.

The NSF has also told staff to screen grant proposals for “topics or activities that may not be in alignment with agency priorities” that had shifted under the Trump administration, the journal Nature reported.

The lawsuit lays out a wide range of benefits and goals of the federal funding.

“From developing AI technology that predicts weather patterns to protect communities, to developing sustainable solutions for environmental and economic challenges, to making power grids more sustainable, NSF-funded research at American universities ensures this nation’s status as a global leader in scientific innovation,” according to the lawsuit.

The other states involved in the litigation are Hawaii, New York, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Wisconsin and Washington.

The pattern of federal cuts and turmoil related to research also is playing out with the National Institutes of Health. And California also is party to a lawsuit over cuts to these grants.

Tara Kerin, a project scientist who works in pediatric infectious disease research at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine, said that the funding cuts at the National Science Foundation echoed similar ones made at the National Institutes of Health.

That, she said, makes her “very nervous about the future of science and research.”

Kerin, whose work has partly focused on HIV prevention and detection in young adults, was funded by NIH grants — until they were cut this spring.

May 29 (UPI) — A federal judge blocked the Trump administration Thursday from its attempt to deny Harvard University’s ability to admit international students.

U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs said in a hearing she plans to issue a preliminary injunction requested by Harvard and then extended a temporary restraining order that stops the administration from any attempt to follow through on its threat.

Twenty-seven percent of Harvard’s student body consists of foreign students, and it filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration last week after Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem ordered the termination of the school’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program, or SEVP certification.

Noem said in a press release last week, “This administration is holding Harvard accountable for fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party on its campus.”

Her order also stated that foreign students at Harvard would need to transfer or lose their legal status.

The Harvard International Office’s Director of Immigration Services Maureen Martin filed a supplemental declaration in addition to the lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday, and among the concerns listed in the suit, she wrote: “As a result of the revocation notice, students and faculty alike have expressed profound fear, concern, and confusion. Faculty members and administrators have been inundated with questions from current international students and scholars about their status and options.”

CNN reported that Burroughs told the lawyers for both Harvard and the Trump administration to agree upon how to keep the student visa program in place, to which she added, “It doesn’t need to be draconian, but I want to make sure it’s worded in such a way that nothing changes.”

The Trump administration has also focused on Harvard’s finances in addition to the effort to block the enrollment of foreign students, as it announced Tuesday it plans to cancel all its contracts with Harvard University.

President Trump’s tariff strategy has been thrown into turmoil after a U.S. court issued a rare rebuke blocking many of the import taxes he has threatened and imposed on other countries.

In a ruling issued late Wednesday, a three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of International Trade declared that the Trump administration had wrongly invoked a 1977 law in imposing his “Liberation Day” tariffs on dozens of countries and they were therefore illegal. It also extended that ruling to previous tariffs levied on Canada, Mexico and China over the security of the U.S. border and trafficking in fentanyl.

The Trump administration immediately said it would appeal, putting the fate of the tariffs in the hands of an appellate court and potentially the Supreme Court. The ruling doesn’t affect Trump’s first-term levies on many imports from China or sectoral duties planned or already imposed on goods including steel, which are based on a different legal foundation that the Trump administration may now be forced to make more use of to pursue its tariff campaign.

It’s unclear just how fast Wednesday’s ruling will go into effect, with the court giving the government up to 10 days to carry out the necessary administrative moves to remove the tariffs. But if the decision holds, it would in a matter of days eliminate new 30% U.S. tariffs on imports from China, 25% tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico and 10% duties on most other goods entering the U.S.

Those tariffs and the prospect of retaliatory ones have been seen as a significant drag on U.S. and global growth and eliminating them — even temporarily — would improve prospects for the world’s major economies.

There is uncertainty over whether the ruling represents a permanent setback to Trump’s push to reshape global trade or a mere impediment. Trump and his supporters have attacked judges as biased and his administration has been accused of failing to fully comply with other court orders, raising questions over whether it will do so this time.

A White House spokesperson dismissed the ruling as one made by “unelected judges” who should not have the power “to decide how to properly address a national emergency.” Trump has invoked national emergencies ranging from the U.S. trade deficit to overdose deaths to justify many of his tariffs.

“Foreign countries’ nonreciprocal treatment of the Unites States has fueled America’s historic and persistent trade deficits,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement. “These deficits have created a national emergency that has decimated American communities, left our workers behind, and weakened our defense industrial base — facts that the court did not dispute.”

If the ruling isn’t reversed or ignored, one of the consequences could be greater fiscal concerns at a time when bond markets are questioning the trajectory of the U.S.’s mounting debt load. The Trump administration has been citing increased tariff revenues as a way to offset tax cuts in his “one big, beautiful bill” now before Congress, which is estimated to cost $3.8 trillion over the next decade.

U.S. importers paid a record $16.5 billion in tariffs in April and Trump’s aides have said they expected that to rise in the coming months.

Major trading partners including China, the European Union, India, and Japan that are in negotiations with the Trump’s administration must now decide whether to press ahead in efforts to secure deals or slow walk talks on the bet they now have a stronger hand.

Deal doubts

Also thrown into doubt would be the outlines for a trade deal that Trump reached with the UK earlier in May. That potential pact calls for the imposition of a 10% U.S. tariff on all imports from the UK that would be null and void if Wednesday’s decision endures.

“I don’t know why any country would want to engage in negotiations to get out of tariffs that have now been declared illegal,” said Jennifer Hillman, a Georgetown Law School professor and former WTO judge and general counsel for the U.S. Trade Representative. “It’s a very definitive decision that the reciprocal worldwide tariffs are simply illegal.”

Hillman and other legal experts pointed out that Trump has other legal authorities he can draw on. But none would give him as broad powers as those he invoked under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA.

A provision of the 1974 trade act gives presidents the power to impose tariffs of up to 15% for up to 150 days, though only in the event a balance of payments crisis, which Trump may not want to declare given the current nervous state of bond markets, Hillman said.

Trump could also invoke other authorities to impose tariffs on individual sectors or countries, as he did in his first term. In recent months, he has already used national security powers to impose duties on imported steel, aluminum and cars and launched seven other investigations pertaining to things like pharmaceuticals, lumber and critical minerals.

“The Trump administration’s toolbox won’t be completely empty,” Dmitry Grozoubinski, director of ExplainTrade and author of the book “Why Politicians Lie About Trade” said in an interview on Bloomberg Television. But as for IEEPA, “if they comply with this ruling that takes that toy out of the toy box.”

More uncertainty

Wednesday’s ruling came in two parallel cases brought by a conservative group on behalf of a small business and U.S. states controlled by Democrats.

“This ruling reaffirms that the President must act within the bounds of the law, and it protects American businesses and consumers from the destabilizing effects of volatile, unilaterally imposed tariffs,” said Jeffrey Schwab, senior counsel for the conservative Liberty Justice Center, which brought one of the cases.

For many other businesses, it brought the prospect of yet another sharp turn in U.S. tariff policies and more short-term questions and headaches.

Southern California-based Freight Right Global Logistics has several shipments on the water now for clients all over the U.S., carrying goods largely from China. Those containers are filled with everything from toys to robots, and it’s very uncertain what the tariff burden will be for those shipments when they land, said Freight Right Chief Executive Robert Khachatryan.

Khachatryan fielded questions Wednesday evening from his clients on potential refunds, which tariffs will be removed, and what would be the effective dates.

“We are working hard to answer customers questions but the reality is that there is not enough information out there yet,” he said. “Tomorrow we’re going to be all over the place figuring out what this means in practice.”

Donnan, Larson and Curtis write for Bloomberg News.

This latest twist in the Trump trade tariff drama has many people asking what it means for the UK’s deal with the US.

The answer is actually not as much as you might think.

For a start, the tariffs that the US court has ruled illegal do not include those on cars, which make up the bulk of what the UK exports to the US, and steel and aluminium, which are the other UK industries most affected.

UK exports of cars are currently attracting 27.5% tariffs while steel and aluminium are hit with 25% tariffs – the same as every other country. Wednesday’s ruling has not changed that.

And although the UK has done a deal with the US to reduce car tariffs to 10% and steel and aluminium tariffs to zero, that deal is yet to come into force.

Sources at Jaguar Land Rover told the BBC that these tariffs were costing them “a huge amount of money” and pushed back on the notion floated by the car industry trade body, the SMMT, that they could run down current US inventories before feeling the pain of the tariffs.

The government said it was working to implement the deal as quickly as possible and that Trade Secretary Jonathan Reynolds would press the case for speedy implementation when he meets US representatives at a meeting of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development think-tank in Paris next week.

The ruling does block Trump’s imposition of blanket tariffs of 10% on other UK goods entering the US – such as products like salmon and whisky. So how that part of the tariff deal will pan out remains uncertain.

British exporters’ sigh of relief at tariffs being stopped could be short-lived as the White House has said it intends to appeal the decision.

There are also other mechanisms for the President to impose tariffs – through different provisions in trade acts or pushing them through congress.

The UK announced its trade deal with the US to some fanfare, but there are question marks as to how much better off the UK will be than other countries if it turns out that the President is prevented from imposing swingeing tariffs on others by either the courts or his own legislature.

Perhaps the most corrosive effect of all is yet another wild card being thrown into an already unpredictable game of international trade stand-off.

It makes it hard for businesses to plan, to invest, with any confidence.

WASHINGTON — President Trump issued a series of pardons on Wednesday, awarding them to a former New York congressman, a Connecticut governor, a rapper known as “NBA YoungBoy,” a labor union leader and a onetime Army officer who flouted safety measures during the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump’s actions mixed his willingness to pardon prominent Republicans and other supporters, donors and friends with the influence of Alice Marie Johnson, whom Trump recently named his pardon czar after he offered her a pardon in 2020.

He commuted the sentence of Larry Hoover, a former Chicago gang leader serving a life sentence at a supermax prison in Colorado. Hoover was first imprisoned in connection with a murder in 1973, and was convicted of running a criminal enterprise in 1998, but later renounced his criminal past and petitioned for a reduced sentence. He remains incarcerated on state charges.

Louisiana rap artist NBA YoungBoy, whose real name is Kentrell Gaulden and whose stage moniker stands for “Never Broke Again,” also received a Trump pardon.

In 2024, he was sentenced to just under two years in prison on gun-related charges after he acknowledged having possessed weapons despite being a convicted felon. Gaulden also pleaded guilty to his role in a prescription drug fraud ring in Utah.

Gaulden’s and the other pardons were confirmed Wednesday evening by two White House officials who spoke only on condition of anonymity to detail actions that had not yet been made public.

In a statement posted online, Gaulden said, “I want to thank President Trump for granting me a pardon and giving me the opportunity to keep building — as a man, as a father, and as an artist.”

He said this “opens the door to a future I’ve worked hard for and I am fully prepared to step into this,” and thanked Johnson.

Trump has spent the week issuing high-profile pardons. Video released by a White House aide showed Johnson in the Oval Office on Tuesday, as Trump called the daughter of Todd and Julie Chrisley of the reality show “Chrisley Knows Best” to say he was pardoning them.

Their show spotlighted the family’s extravagant lifestyle, but the couple was convicted of conspiring to defraud banks in the Atlanta area out of more than $30 million in loans by submitting false documents Their daughter, Savannah Chrisley, addressed the Republican convention last summer and had long said her parents were treated unfairly.

Also Wednesday, Trump pardoned James Callahan, a New York union leader who pleaded guilty to failing to report $315,000 in gifts from an advertising firm and was about to be sentenced.

And the president pardoned former Connecticut Gov. John Rowland, a Republican who served from 1995 to 2004 and was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison for charges related to concealing his involvement in two federal election campaigns.

He also pardoned Michael Grimm, a New York Republican who resigned from Congress after being convicted of tax fraud. Grimm won reelection in 2014 despite being under indictment for underreporting wages and revenue at a restaurant that he ran.

Grimm eventually resigned after pleading guilty and serving eight months in prison. Last year, Grimm was paralyzed from the chest down when he was thrown off a horse during a polo tournament.

Yet another Trump pardon was issued for Army Lt. Mark Bradshaw, who was convicted in 2022 of reporting to work without undergoing a COVID-19 test.

Alice Marie Johnson was convicted in 1996 on eight criminal counts related to a Memphis-based cocaine trafficking operation. Trump commuted her life sentence in 2018 at the urging of celebrity Kim Kardashian West, allowing for Johnson’s early release.

Johnson then served as the featured speaker on the final night of the 2020 Republican National Convention, and Trump subsequently pardoned her before more recently naming her his pardons czar.

Weissert writes for the Associated Press.

The movie “The Big Short” — dramatizing the reckless behavior in the banking and mortgage industries that contributed to the 2008 financial crisis — captures much of Wall Street’s misconduct but overlooks a central player in the collapse: the federal government, specifically through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

These two government-created and government-sponsored enterprises encouraged lenders to issue risky home loans by effectively making taxpayers co-sign the mortgages. This setup incentivized dangerous lending practices that inflated the housing bubble, eventually leading to catastrophic economic consequences.

Another critical but overlooked factor in the collapse was the Community Reinvestment Act. This federal law was intended to combat discriminatory lending practices but instead created substantial market distortions by pressuring banks to extend loans to borrowers who might otherwise have been deemed too risky. Under threat of regulatory penalties, banks significantly loosened lending standards — again, inflating the housing bubble.

After the bubble inevitably burst, Fannie and Freddie were placed under conservatorship by the Federal Housing Finance Agency. The conservatorship imposed rules aimed at preventing future taxpayer-funded bailouts and protecting the economy from government-fueled market distortions.

Now, President Trump’s appointee to lead that agency, Bill Pulte, is considering ending this conservatorship without addressing the core structural flaw that fueled the problem in the first place: implicit government guarantees backing all Fannie and Freddie mortgages. If Pulte proceeds without implementing real reform, taxpayers on Main Street are once again likely to be exposed to significant financial risks as they are conscripted into subsidizing lucrative deals for Wall Street.

Without genuine reform, the incentives and practices that led to the crisis remain unchanged, setting the stage for a repeat disaster.

Pulte’s proposal isn’t likely to unleash free-market policies. Instead, it could further rig the market in favor of hedge funds holding substantial stakes in Fannie and Freddie, allowing them to profit enormously from the potential upside, while leaving taxpayers to bear all the downside risks.

A meaningful solution requires Fannie and Freddie to significantly strengthen their capital reserves. The two government-sponsored enterprises still remain dangerously undercapitalized. A report from JP Morgan Chase describes it this way: “Despite steady growth in [their net worth], the GSEs remain well below the minimum regulatory capital framework requirements set by the Federal Housing Finance Agency in 2020.” Imposing robust capital requirements similar to those that govern private banks would oblige the two enterprises to internalize their risks, promoting genuine market discipline and accountability.

Further reforms should address transparency and oversight. Enhanced disclosure standards would allow investors, regulators and the public to better assess risks. Additionally, limiting the types of mortgages these entities can guarantee could reduce exposure to the riskiest loans, further protecting taxpayers. Implementing clear rules that prevent Fannie and Freddie from venturing into speculative financial products would also mitigate potential market distortions.

Critically, the federal government must clearly communicate that future bailouts are not an option. Explicitly removing government guarantees would compel Fannie and Freddie to operate responsibly, knowing that reckless behavior will lead to their insolvency, not to another taxpayer rescue. Clear legal separation from government backing is essential to prevent moral hazard.

The combination of government guarantees, regulatory pressure from policies such as the Community Reinvestment Act and inadequate capital standards created the perfect storm for the 2008 financial crisis. Ignoring these lessons and repeating past mistakes would inevitably lead to a similar disaster.

Proponents of prematurely releasing Fannie and Freddie argue that market conditions have changed and risk management has improved. Yet, history repeatedly demonstrates that without structural changes, financial entities — particularly those shielded by government guarantees — inevitably revert to risky behavior when market pressures and profit incentives align. Markets function best when participants bear the full consequences of their decisions, something impossible under the current structure of these government-sponsored enterprises.

Ultimately, the only responsible approach is removing taxpayers from the equation entirely. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should participate in the mortgage market only as fully private entities, without any implicit government guarantees.

The American public doesn’t need a sequel to “The Big Short.” The painful lessons of the 2008 crisis are too recent and too severe to be ignored or forgotten. Market discipline, fiscal responsibility and genuine reform — not government-backed risk-taking — must guide our approach going forward. We can only hope that the Trump administration chooses fiscal responsibility over risky experiments that history has already shown end in disaster.

Veronique de Rugy is a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. This article was produced in collaboration with Creators Syndicate.

United States President Donald Trump commuted the federal drugs-and-extortion sentence of former Chicago gang leader, Larry Hoover, on Wednesday. Hoover has been serving multiple life sentences following both state and federal convictions over the past five decades.

For his federal conviction, Hoover is currently being held at the ADX Florence prison, a federal prison formally known as the United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility, in Florence, Colorado.

Commuting a sentence means reducing its length or severity, or ending it entirely. The US president has the power to commute federal sentences, but not state sentences.

Here is what we know.

Who is Larry Hoover and why was his sentence commuted?

Hoover, 74, is the cofounder of Gangster Disciples, one of Chicago’s most powerful gangs.

In a two-page order issued on Wednesday, the Trump administration commuted his federal sentence, considering it served “with no further fines, restitution, probation or other conditions” and ordering his immediate release, according to a copy of the document from Hoover’s legal team seen by The Chicago Tribune.

Hoover’s lawyers said the order was a vindication of their attempts to have their client’s sentence reduced.

Lawyers Jennifer Bonjean and Justin Moore said in a statement: “The Courts have demonstrated a complete unwillingness to consider Mr Hoover’s considerable growth and complete rehabilitation. Despite the Court’s unwillingness to do the right thing, Mr Hoover has been able to keep his voice alive through the incredible work of many advocates and supporters. Thankfully, Mr Hoover’s pleas were heard by President Trump who took action to deliver justice for Mr Hoover.”

Lobbying for Hoover’s pardon has mounted since Trump appointed Alice Johnson as his “pardon tsar” in February this year. Johnson was a non-violent drug offender and was sentenced to life in prison in a drug conspiracy case, but was pardoned by Trump in 2020.

What was Hoover convicted of?

Hoover has been convicted on both state charges and federal charges. A federal crime is a violation of the US Constitution, possibly spanning multiple states, while a state crime is one that breaks a state law.

He was convicted in 1973 on state charges in Illinois for the murder of 19-year-old drug dealer William “Pooky” Young and sentenced to 200 years in prison.

Online state prison records show that Hoover was an inmate at Dixon Correctional Center in western Illinois from 1974. He was accused of continuing to direct the Gangster Disciples from behind bars.

In 1997, Hoover was convicted on federal charges of extortion, federal drug conspiracy and continuing to engage in a criminal enterprise. Hoover has spent nearly three decades in solitary confinement at ADX Florence, a maximum security prison in Colorado, according to his lawyers.

What crimes has the Gangster Disciples gang been involved in?

According to court documents, Hoover was one of the leaders of the gang between 1970 and 1995. The documents state that under Hoover, the Gangster Disciples sold “great quantities of cocaine, heroin, and other drugs in Chicago”.

As of 1995, the gang was believed to have 30,000 members in Chicago and had spread to at least 35 other states, according to an article published by the US Department of Justice that year.

However, little is publicly known about the activities of the Gangster Disciples in recent years.

What are the conditions in the ADX Florence prison?

ADX Florence in Colorado is a super-max prison, or an administrative maximum (ADX) prison, a control unit prison with the highest level of security.

The prison opened in 1994. Prisoners are held in solitary confinement in 12-by-7ft (3.6-by-2 metre) cells with thick concrete walls, and cannot see each other. Inmates sleep on a thin mattress atop a concrete slab. The cells also have a sink, toilet and automated shower.

Prisoners may have access to televisions, books or arts-and-crafts materials. Human interaction is very limited in ADX prisons.

Is Larry Hoover free to leave prison now?

No, Hoover is still serving his 200-year state sentence following the 1973 Illinois murder conviction.

It is not known if or when Hoover might be moved to another prison – such as the Dixon Correctional Center, a medium-security prison in Illinois that opened in 1983 – now that his federal conviction has been commuted, to serve out his state convictions. In the past, Illinois Department of Corrections officials have suggested that Hoover complete his state sentence in federal prison, citing security concerns.

Is Hoover eligible for parole?

The online records at Dixon Correctional Center say that Hoover will not be eligible for parole until October 2062, when he will be 111 years old. It is not clear whether his parole date can be advanced.

Presidential clemency is reserved for federal crimes, and not state crimes, according to the US Congress website, so Trump cannot intervene. The power to commute state crimes rests in the hands of the governor of the state. The governor of Illinois is Democrat JB Pritzker, who has so far not spoken about Hoover, nor of any plans to grant him clemency.

What role have public figures played in this case?

Performer Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, has long advocated for the pardon of Hoover. In 2018, during Trump’s first term, Ye requested Trump pardon Hoover. On Ye’s 2021 album, Donda, a track called “Jesus Lord” features a vocal snippet from Hoover’s son, Larry Hoover Jr, thanking Ye for bringing up his father’s case in the Oval Office. “Free my father, Mr Larry Hoover Sr,” the junior Hoover is heard saying.

Rapper Drake also advocated for Hoover’s freedom. In 2021, Ye and Drake set personal tensions aside and collaborated on a “Free Hoover” concert in Los Angeles.

“WORDS CAN’T EXPRESS MY GRATITUDE FOR OUR DEVOTED ENDURING PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP FOR FREEING LARRY HOOVER,” Ye posted on X after the commutation order.

WORDS CAN’T EXPRESS MY GRATITUDE FOR OUR DEVOTED ENDURING PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP FOR FREEING LARRY HOOVER

— ye (@kanyewest) May 28, 2025

Why is Trump pardoning people now?

The exact reasoning for Hoover’s commutation is unclear. However, it comes amid a spree of commutations and pardons granted by Trump.

On Wednesday, Trump issued a pardon for former Republican Congressman Michael Grimm, who was convicted of tax fraud in 2015 and sentenced to several months in prison.

On Tuesday, the president pardoned reality television couple Todd and Julie Chrisley, who were convicted of tax evasion and defrauding banks of at least $30m in 2022. Todd Chrisley received a 12-year prison sentence, while his wife was sentenced to seven years.

President Donald Trump said Harvard University is refusing to tell the United States government who its international students are.

On May 22, the Trump administration stripped Harvard of the federal government certification that lets it enrol international students. A federal judge on May 23 temporarily blocked the administration’s effort.

“Part of the problem with Harvard is that there are about 31 percent of foreigners coming to Harvard … but they refuse to tell us who the people are,” Trump told reporters on May 25. “We want a list of those foreign students and we’ll find out whether or not they’re OK. Many will be OK, I assume. And I assume with Harvard many will be bad.”

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) says Harvard did not provide the information it requested about the university’s international students. DHS cited that as one reason for revoking Harvard’s certification. But Harvard disputed that in its lawsuit against the Trump administration.

Courts have not yet ruled on whether Harvard complied with providing DHS with the additional information it requested. DHS asked for details about students’ activities, including “illegal” and “dangerous or violent activity”. However, immigration law experts said Trump’s statement that the US government doesn’t know the identities of Harvard’s international students is incorrect.

US colleges and universities that enrol international students must be certified under the Department of Homeland Security’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program, called SEVP.

SEVP’s database “contains all information about every student visa holder. Addresses, courses, grades, jobs, social media accounts and much more”, Charles Kuck, an Atlanta-based immigration lawyer and Emory University law professor, said.

Harvard has been certified to enrol international students since 1954, according to court documents. As part of the certification, the university is required to report to the US government detailed information about its international students.

Schools renew their SEVP certification every two years. In its lawsuit, Harvard said the university’s “seamless recertification across this period – spanning more than 14 presidential administrations”, is evidence of its compliance.

Additionally, to enter the US, all international students must apply for and be issued student visas via the State Department. To be eligible for a student visa, a person must be enrolled in an SEVP-certified university. The visa application process requires students to provide the US government with detailed biographical information.

When contacted for comment, a White House spokesperson said Trump was “making a simple ask” for Harvard to comply with the government.

What is the Student and Exchange Visitor Program?

The Student and Exchange Visitor Program “collects, maintains, analyses and provides information so only legitimate foreign students or exchange visitors gain entry to the United States”, the DHS website says. “SEVP also ensures that the institutions accepting non-immigrant students are certified and follow the federal rules and regulations that govern them.”

As part of the programme, DHS manages the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System which maintains records on international students and certified universities. Immigration law dictates what records universities must keep and report to maintain certification.

These records include “US entry and exit data, US residential address changes, programme extensions, employment notifications, and program of study changes”, Sheila Velez Martínez, University of Pittsburgh immigration law professor, said. “The information is available to US government agencies.”

The certification programme does not provide visas to students. The federal State Department issues visas. To apply for a student visa, a person must fill out a form and schedule an interview. As part of the application process, students must provide biographical and employment information, including information about their relatives, and answer security questions, including about their criminal records.

Trump administration says Harvard failed to provide international students’ information

On April 16, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem sent Harvard a letter requesting information about every international student enrolled in the university. Noem asked for “relevant information” about international students’ “illegal activity”, “dangerous or violent activity”, “known threats to students or university personnel” and “known deprivation of rights of other classmates or university personnel”.

Noem said failure to comply with the request would “be treated as a voluntary withdrawal” from the SEVP certification programme.

On April 30, Steve Bunnell, a Harvard lawyer, responded to Homeland Security with information about 5,200 international students, according to Bunnell’s email included in the court filing.

The university said it did not seek to withdraw from the certification and said that while parts of Noem’s request used terms not defined in the immigration law that dictates what information universities must provide, “Harvard is committed to good faith compliance and is therefore producing responsive materials that we believe are reasonably required” by law.

According to Harvard’s lawsuit, the information included student identification numbers, names, dates of birth, countries of citizenship and enrolment information such as academic status, coursework and credit hours. Harvard also provided information about international students who left and why they left, which can cover a “range of reasons, including but not limited to disciplinary action”, Harvard’s email to DHS said.

On May 7, DHS responded saying the information Harvard provided “does not completely address the Secretary’s request”. It reiterated its original request.

Harvard responded on May 14 saying it was “not aware of any criminal convictions” of international students and identified three students who received disciplinary consequences.

As for students who deprived the rights of classmates, faculty or staff, Harvard said it did not find any.

On May 22, Noem sent Harvard a letter saying the university’s certification had been revoked.

“As a result of your refusal to comply with multiple requests to provide the Department of Homeland Security pertinent information … you have lost this privilege.”

Our ruling

Trump said Harvard University “refuse(s) to tell us” who its international students are.

To enrol international students, Harvard, and all other certified institutions must provide the US government with detailed biographical information about every international student at its institution. That includes students’ names, addresses, contact information and details about their coursework.

Additionally, all international students must have student visas to enter the US. To get these, students who have enrolled in a government-certified university must apply via the State Department. That process also requires students to provide biographical and security information to the federal government.

We rate the statement False.

May 29 (UPI) — President Donald Trump on Wednesday issued several more pardons, including those for his political allies: former U.S. House member Michael Grimm of New York and ex-Connecticut Gov. John Rowland.

Trump has largely circumvented the process run through the Department of Justice. Trump’s new pardon attorney Ed Martin last week reviewed commutation applications for the president to consider, a source told CNN.

A pardon ends the legal consequences of a criminal conviction and a commutation reduces the sentence.

Grimm, a member of the U.S. House from 2011-2015, served seven months in prison after being convicted of tax evasion in 2014.

He attempted to win back his House seat in 2018 but lost in the Republican primary.

Grimm, 55, who worked for Newsmax from 2022-2024, was paralyzed in a fall from a horse during a polo competition last year.

After the State of the Union in 2014, Grimm threatened to break a reporter in half “like a boy” when questioned about his campaign finances. He also threatened to throw the reporter off a balcony at the Capitol.

Rowland, a Republican governor in Connecticut from 1996-2004, was convicted twice in federal criminal cases. He resigned as governor after the first offense of election fraud and obstruction of justice. Then, he was sentenced to a 30-month prison term in 2015 for his illegal involvement in two congressional campaigns.

Also pardoned was another Republican, Jeremy Hutchinson, a former Arkansas state senator, who was sentenced to 46 months in prison for accepting election bribes and tax fraud in 2014.

Hutchinson is the son of former Sen. Tim Hutchinson and nephew of former Gov. Asa Hutchinson.

Imaad Zuberi, who donated $900,000 to Trump’s first inaugural committee and was also a donor on fundraising committees for Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, had his sentence commuted on Wednesday.

In 2021, he was sentenced to 12 years in prison for falsifying records to conceal work as a foreign agent while lobbying high-level U.S. government officials and obstructing a federal investigation of the inaugural fund.

Trump also Wednesday commuted the sentences of eight others, a White House official said.

Larry Hoover, the co-founder of Chicago’s Gangster Disciples street gang, was serving six life prison sentences in the federal supermax facility in Florence, Colo., after a 1997 conviction. He ran a criminal enterprise from jail.

Hoover, who is now 74, had been seeking a commutation under the First Step Act, which Trump signed into law in 2018. U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber denied Hoover’s request, calling him “one of the most notorious criminals in Illinois history.”

But he won’t get out of a prison yet because he is also serving a sentence of up to 200 years on Illinois state murder charges. Trump can’t give clemency to those convicted on state charges.

An entertainer and a former athlete were also pardoned.

Rapper Kentrell Gaulden, who goes by NBA YoungBoy, was convicted in a federal gun crimes case last year. He was released from prison and won’t need to serve probation.

Charles “Duke” Tanner, a former professional boxer, was sentenced to life in prison for drug conspiracy in 2006. Trump commuted his sentence during his first term.

US president says Harvard must ‘show us their list’ of foreign students to make sure they are not ‘troublemakers’.

United States President Donald Trump has intensified his dispute with Harvard University, saying the college should cap foreign enrolments and share information with the government about its international students.

“Harvard has to show us their lists. They have foreign students, almost 31 percent of their students. We want to know where those students come from. Are they troublemakers? What countries do they come from?” Trump told reporters at the White House on Wednesday. According to university enrolment data, foreign students make up 27 percent of Harvard’s student body.

“I think they should have a cap of maybe around 15 percent, not 31 percent,” Trump said, adding that he wants universities to accept “people who are going to love our country”.

The Trump administration has sought to pressure Harvard into compliance on a number of demands, including greater control over the university’s curricula, information about foreign students and further steps to crack down on pro-Palestine student activism, which the administration has characterised as anti-Semitic.

“Harvard has got to behave themselves. Harvard is treating our country with great disrespect, and all they’re doing is getting in deeper and deeper,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

The university has resisted what it says is an effort to erode its independence from the government and commitment to academic freedom.

The Trump administration has severed grants worth billions of dollars to Harvard and announced that it would revoke Harvard’s ability to enrol international students entirely. The Department of Homeland Security said that order was a response to Harvard “fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party”.

The university said in a statement at the time that the order was part of a “series of government actions to retaliate against Harvard for our refusal to surrender our academic independence and to submit to the federal government’s illegal assertion of control over our curriculum, our faculty, and our student body”.

The university swiftly challenged the order in court, and it was temporarily blocked by a judge on Friday.

Patricia McGuire, president of Trinity Washington University, said on Wednesday that Trump’s actions against foreign enrolment at US universities “makes no sense”.

“It’s so irrational because higher education is one of the top US exports to the world and the international students who come to this country enrich American universities immensely and take their knowledge back to all of their countries around the globe for the improvement of their countries and their populations,” McGuire told Al Jazeera from Washington, DC.

However, McGuire said Trump’s actions are consistent with “an administration that has literally snatched students off the street and taken them to detention centres”, referring to Tufts University student Rumeysa Ozturk, who was forcibly taken into custody by masked federal agents in broad daylight on a street near her Massachusetts home in March.

This month, a court ordered the release of the 30-year-old Turkish doctoral student from the custody of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

“This is, in my view, completely anti-American values, and I think many academics are horrified by the fact that students are now being censored for their viewpoints,” McGuire said.

WASHINGTON — Dressed in a pink pullover, the 17-year-old girl rested her head in her hands, weighing her bleak options from the empty room of a shelter in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

During a video call into an immigration courtroom in Manhattan, she listened as a lawyer explained to a judge how new regulations imposed by President Trump’s administration — for DNA testing, income verification and more — have hobbled efforts to reunite with her parents in the U.S. for more than 70 days.

As the administration’s aggressive efforts to curtail migration have taken shape, including unparalleled removals of men to prisons in other countries, migrant children are being separated for long periods from the relatives they had hoped to live with after crossing into the U.S.

Under the Trump rules, migrant children have stayed in shelters an average of 217 days before being released to family members, according to new data from the Health and Human Services Department’s Office of Refugee Resettlement. During the Biden administration, migrant children spent an average of 35 days in shelters before being released to relatives.

“Collectively, these policy changes have resulted in children across the country being separated from their loving families, while the government denies their release, unnecessarily prolonging their detention,” lawyers for the National Center for Youth Law argued in court documents submitted May 8.

The Trump administration, however, has argued that the new rules will ensure the children are put in safe homes and prevent traffickers from illegally bringing children into the country.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Health secretary, told lawmakers in Congress this month: “Nobody gets a kid without showing that they are a family member.”

The family situation for the 17-year-old, and her 14-year-old brother who came with her from the Dominican Republic, is complicated. Their parents, who were living apart, were already in the U.S. Their children were trying to reunite with them to leave behind a problematic living situation with a stepmother in their home country.

After 70 days in detention, the teen girl seemed to wonder if she would ever get back to her mother or father in the U.S. If she agreed to leave America, she asked the judge, how quickly would she be sent back to her home country?

“Pretty soon,” the judge said, before adding: “It doesn’t feel nice to be in that shelter all the time.”

The siblings, whom the Associated Press agreed not to identify at the request of their mother and because they are minors, are not alone. Thousands of children have made the trek from Guatemala, Haiti, Mexico and other countries, often alone on the promise of settling with a family member already in the U.S.

They’ve faced longer waits in federal custody as officials perform DNA testing, verify family members’ incomes and inspect homes before releasing the children. The new rules also require adults who sponsor children to provide U.S.-issued identification.

The federal government released only 45 children to sponsors last month, even as more than 2,200 children remained in custody.

Child stays in shelter as Trump requires DNA testing

Under the Biden administration, officials tried to release children to eligible adult sponsors within 30 days, reuniting many families quickly. But the approach also yielded errors, with some children being released to adults who forced them to work illegally, or to people who provided clearly false identification and addresses.

Trump’s Republican administration has said its requirements will prevent children from being placed in homes where they may be at risk for abuse or exploited for child labor. Officials are conducting a review of 65,000 “notices of concerns” that were submitted to the federal government involving thousands of children who have been placed with adult sponsors since 2023.

Already, the Justice Department indicted a man on allegations he enticed a 14-year-old girl to travel from Guatemala to the U.S., then falsely claimed she was his sister to gain custody as her sponsor.

DNA testing and ID requirements for child protection are taking time

Immigration advocacy groups have sued the Trump administration seeking to block the more rigorous requirements on behalf of parents and adult siblings who are waiting to bring migrant children into their homes.

“We have a lot of children stuck … simply because they are awaiting DNA testing,” immigration lawyer Tatine Darker, of Church World Service, told the Manhattan judge as she sat next to the Dominican girl.

Five other children appeared in court that day from shelters in New York and New England, all saying they experienced delays in being released to their relatives.

The Trump administration’s latest guidance on DNA testing says the process generally takes at least two weeks, when accounting for case review and shipping results.

But some relatives have waited a month or longer just to get a test, said Molly Chew, a legal aide at Vecina. The organization is ending its work supporting guardians in reunification because of federal funding cuts and other legal and political challenges to juvenile immigration programs. DNA Diagnostics Centers, which is conducting the tests for the federal government, did not respond to a request for comment.

Plaintiffs in the class-action lawsuit filed by the National Center for Youth Law have also cataloged long wait times and slow DNA results. One mother in Florida said she had been waiting at least a month just to get a DNA appointment, according to testimony submitted to the court.

Another mother waited three weeks for results. But by the time those came through in April, the Trump administration had introduced a new rule that required her to provide pay stubs she doesn’t have. She filed bank statements instead. Her children were released 10 weeks after her application was submitted, according to court documents filed Tuesday.

Many parents living in the U.S. without work authorization do not have income documents or U.S. identification documents, such as visas or driver’s licenses.

The siblings being held at the Poughkeepsie shelter are in that conundrum, said Darker, the New York immigration lawyer. They crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in March with their 25-year-old sister and her children, who were quickly deported.

Their mother said she moved to New Jersey a few years ago to earn money to support them. She couldn’t meet the new income reporting requirements. Their father, also from the Dominican Republic, lives in Boston and agreed to take them. But the DNA testing process has taken weeks. The AP could not reach him for comment.

She said her children are downcast and now simply want to return to the Dominican Republic.

“My children are going to return because they can’t take it anymore,” the mother said in Spanish. She noted that her children will have been in the shelter three months on Sunday.

Attanasio and Seitz write for the Associated Press.

DEVELOPING STORYDEVELOPING STORY,

The US will also ‘enhance scrutiny of all future visa applications’ from China and Hong Kong, the State Department said.

The United States will “aggressively revoke” the visas of Chinese students studying in the US, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has announced, as the Trump administration continues its crackdown on foreign students enrolled at higher education institutions in the country.

Rubio announced the shock move both in a post on X, as well as a statement published late on Wednesday titled “New Visa Policies Put America First, Not China”.

“Under President Trump’s leadership, the US State Department will work with the Department of Homeland Security to aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields,” the statement said.

“We will also revise visa criteria to enhance scrutiny of all future visa applications from the People’s Republic of China and Hong Kong,” it added.

Rubio’s announcement added to the uncertainty for international students in the US, who have faced intensifying scrutiny over recent months amid the administration’s wider assault on higher education institutions.

On Tuesday, the White House also temporarily suspended the processing of visas for foreign students, ordering embassies and consulates not to allow any additional student or exchange visas “until further guidance is issued”.

The State Department also said it plans to “issue guidance on expanded social media vetting for all such applications”.

WASHINGTON — A federal trade court on Wednesday blocked President Trump from imposing sweeping tariffs on imports under an emergency-powers law.

The ruling from a three-judge panel at the New York-based Court of International Trade came after several lawsuits arguing Trump has exceeded his authority, left U.S. trade policy dependent on his whims and unleashed economic chaos.

The White House did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment. The Trump administration is expected to appeal.

At least seven lawsuits are challenging the levies, the centerpiece of Trump’s trade policy.

Tariffs must typically be approved by Congress, but Trump has says he has the power to act because the country’s trade deficits amount to a national emergency. He imposed tariffs on most of the countries in the world at one point, sending markets reeling.

The plaintiffs argue that the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act does not authorize the use of tariffs.

Even if it did, they say, the trade deficit does not meet the law’s requirement that an emergency be triggered only by an “unusual and extraordinary threat.” The U.S. has run a trade deficit with the rest of the world for 49 consecutive years.

Trump’s tendency to levy extremely high import taxes and then retreat has created what’s known as the “TACO” trade, an acronym coined by the Financial Times’ Robert Armstrong that stands for “Trump Always Chickens Out.” Markets generally sell off when Trump makes his tariff threats and then recover after he backs down.

Trump was visibly offended when asked about the phrase Wednesday and rejected the idea that he’s “chickening out,” saying that the reporter’s inquiry was “nasty.”

“You call that chickening out?” Trump said. “It’s called negotiation,” adding that he sets a “ridiculous high number and I go down a little bit, you know, a little bit” until the figure is more reasonable.

Trump defended his approach of jacking up tariff rates to 145% on Chinese goods, only to pull back to 30% for 90 days of negotiations. He similarly last week threatened to impose a 50% tax on goods from the European Union starting in June, only to delay the tariff hike until July 9 so that negotiations can occur while the baseline 10% tariff continues to be charged. Similar dramas have played out over autos, electronics and the universal tariffs that Trump announced on April 2 that were based in part on individual trade deficits with other countries.

Trump imposed tariffs on most of the countries in the world in an effort to reverse America’s massive and longstanding trade deficits. He earlier plastered levies on imports from Canada, China and Mexico to combat the illegal flow of immigrants and the synthetic opioids across the U.S. border.

His administration argues that courts approved then-President Richard Nixon’s emergency use of tariffs in 1971, and that only Congress, and not the courts, can determine the “political” question of whether the president’s rationale for declaring an emergency complies with the law.

Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs shook global financial markets and led many economists to downgrade the outlook for U.S. economic growth. So far, though, the tariffs appear to have had little impact on the world’s largest economy.

A lawsuit was filed by a group of small businesses, including a wine importer, V.O.S. Selections, whose owner has said the tariffs are having a major impact and his company may not survive.

A dozen states also filed suit, led by Oregon. “This ruling reaffirms that our laws matter, and that trade decisions can’t be made on the president’s whim,” Atty. Gen. Dan Rayfield said.

Whitehurst and Boak write for the Associated Press. A.P. writers Zeke Miller and Paul Wiseman contributed to this report.

US electronic design automation software makers were told via letters to stop supplies to China, the FT reported.

United States President Donald Trump’s administration has ordered US firms that offer software used to design semiconductors to stop selling their services to Chinese groups, the Financial Times has reported, citing people familiar with the move.

Electronic design automation software makers, which include Cadence, Synopsys and Siemens EDA, were told via letters from the US Commerce Department to stop supplying their tech, the report, which was published on Wednesday, said.

A spokesperson for the Commerce Department declined to comment on the letters but said it is reviewing exports of strategic significance to China, while noting that, “in some cases, Commerce has suspended existing export licenses or imposed additional license requirements while the review is pending”.

Shares of Cadence, which declined to comment, closed down by 10.7 percent, while shares of Synopsys fell by 9.6 percent.

Synopsys CEO Sassine Ghazi said in a call with analysts that the company had not received a letter, nor had it heard from the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry (BIS) and Security, which enforces export controls.

“We are aware of the reporting and speculations, but Synopsys has not received a notice from BIS. So, our guidance that we are reiterating for the full year, reflects our current understanding of BIS export restrictions as well as our expectations for year-over-year decline in China. We have not received a letter,” Ghazi said.

After the market closed, Synopsys reaffirmed its revenue forecast for 2025. Its shares and those of Cadence bounced back 3.5 percent in trading after the close.

Siemens EDA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The software of these firms is used to design both high-end processors as well as simpler products.

While the scope of the policy change described in the report was not immediately clear, any move to strip the software makers of their Chinese customers could deal a blow to their bottom line and to their Chinese chip design customers, which heavily rely on top-of-the-line US software.

“They are the true choke point,” said a former Commerce Department official, who added that rules restricting the export of EDA tools to China have been under consideration since the first Trump administration, but were ruled out as too aggressive.

Synopsys relies on China for about 16 percent of its annual revenue, while China accounts for about 12 percent of annual revenue for Cadence.

Synopsys, which partners with chip companies such as Nvidia, Qualcomm and Intel, provides software and hardware used for designing advanced processors.

American universities have long feared that the Chinese government will restrict its country’s students from attending institutions that cross Beijing’s sensitive political lines.

Universities still fear that consequence today, but the most immediate threat is no longer posed by the Chinese government. Now, as the latest punishment meted out to the Trump administration’s preeminent academic scapegoat shows, it’s our own government posing the threat.

In a May 22 letter, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced she revoked Harvard University’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification, meaning the university’s thousands of international students must transfer immediately or lose their legal status. Harvard can no longer enroll future international students either.

Noem cited Harvard’s failure to hand over international student disciplinary records in response to a prior letter and, disturbingly, the Trump administration’s desire to “root out the evils of anti-Americanism” on campus. Among the most alarming demands in this latest missive was that Harvard supply all video of “any protest activity” by any international student within the last five years.

Harvard immediately sued Noem and her department and other agencies, rightfully calling the revocation “a blatant violation of the First Amendment,” and within hours a judge issued a temporary restraining order against the revocation.

“Let this serve as a warning to all universities and academic institutions across the country,” Noem wrote on X about the punishment. And on Tuesday, the administration halted interviews for all new student visas.

This is not how a free country treats its schools — or the international visitors who attend them.

Noem’s warning will, no doubt, be heard loud and clear. That’s because universities — which depend on international students’ tuition dollars — have already had reason to worry that they will lose access to international students for displeasing censorial government officials.

In 2010, Beijing revoked recognition of the University of Calgary’s accreditation in China, meaning Chinese students at the Canadian school suddenly risked paying for a degree worth little at home. The reason? The university’s granting of an honorary degree to the Dalai Lama the year before. “We have offended our Chinese partners by the very fact of bringing in the Dalai Lama, and we have work to resolve that issue,” a spokesperson said.

Beijing restored recognition over a year later, but many Chinese students had already left. Damage done.

Similarly, when UC San Diego hosted the Dalai Lama as commencement speaker in 2017, punishment followed. The China Scholarship Council suspended funding for academics intending to study at UCSD, and an article in the state media outlet Global Times recommended that Chinese authorities “not recognize diplomas or degree certificates issued by the university.”

This kind of direct punishment doesn’t happen very frequently. But the threat always exists, and it creates fear that administrators take into account when deciding how their universities operate.

American universities now must fear that they will suffer this penalty too, but at an even greater scale: revocation of access not just to students from China, but all international students. That’s a huge potential loss. At Harvard, for example, international students make up a whopping 27% of total enrollment.

Whether they publicly acknowledge it or not, university leaders probably are considering whether they need to adjust their behavior to avoid seeing international student tuition funds dry up.

Will our colleges and universities increase censorship and surveillance of international students? Avoid inviting commencement speakers disfavored by the Trump administration? Pressure academic departments against hiring any professors whose social media comments or areas of research will catch the eye of mercurial government officials?

And, equally disturbing, will they be willing to admit that they are now making these calculations at all? Unlike direct punishments by the Trump administration or Beijing, this chilling effect is likely to be largely invisible.

Harvard might be able to survive without international students’ tuition. But a vast number of other universities could not. The nation as a whole would feel their loss too: In the 2023-24 academic year, international students contributed a record-breaking $43.8 billion to the American economy.

And these students — who have uprooted their lives for the promise of what American education offers — are the ones who will suffer the most, as they experience weeks or months of panic and upheaval while being used as pawns in this campaign to punish higher ed.

If the Trump administration is seeking to root out “anti-Americanism,” it can begin by surveying its own behavior in recent months. Freedom of expression is one of our country’s most cherished values. Censorship, surveillance and punishment of government critics do not belong here.

Sarah McLaughlin is senior scholar on global expression at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and author of the forthcoming book “Authoritarians in the Academy: How the Internationalization of Higher Education and Borderless Censorship Threaten Free Speech.”

United States President Donald Trump has brushed aside criticism of his wide-ranging budget bill — known as the One Big Beautiful Bill — from a high-profile source, government adviser Elon Musk.

On Wednesday, at a swearing-in ceremony in the Oval Office, Trump faced questions about Musk’s comments, which suggested the bill would balloon the national debt.

The Republican leader responded with a degree of ambivalence, though he staunchly defended the bill’s tax cuts.

“We will be negotiating that bill, and I’m not happy about certain aspects of it, but I’m thrilled by other aspects of it,” Trump said. “That’s the way they go.”

The budget bill clocks in at over a thousand pages, and it contains a range of domestic policy priorities for the Trump administration.

That includes legislation cementing some of the tax cuts Trump championed during his first term as president, in 2017. It would also increase the funds available for Trump’s “mass deportation” effort and heightened security along the US-Mexico border.

Some $46.5bn, for instance, would be earmarked to renew construction of the southern border wall and other barriers, another hallmark of Trump’s first term in office.

But to pay for those tax cuts and policy priorities, the bill proposes measures that remain controversial on both sides of the political spectrum.

One provision, for instance, would increase the federal debt limit by $4 trillion. Others would impose strict work requirements on programmes like Medicaid — a government health insurance for low-income Americans — and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), sometimes known as food stamps.

Those work requirements are expected to bar thousands of people from accessing those safety-net programmes, allowing for cost savings. But critics fear those barriers will drive some families deeper into poverty.

In a preview of an interview with the TV show CBS Sunday Morning, Musk expressed frustration with the sheer cost of the bill, echoing criticism from fiscal conservatives.

He also accused the “Big Beautiful Bill” of setting back the progress he made as leader of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a task force Trump established to pare back “wasteful” spending.

“I was, like, disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not decrease it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,” Musk told CBS, dressed in an “Occupy Mars” T-shirt.

“I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful,” he added. “I don’t know if it could be both. My personal opinion.”

This is not the first time that Musk has spoken out against a US budget bill. In December, under former President Joe Biden, Musk rallied public outrage against another piece of budget legislation that weighed in at over a thousand pages, calling on Congress to “kill the bill“.

Musk’s latest comments, however, signal a potentially widening fracture between himself and the Trump White House.

Up until recently, Musk, a billionaire thought to be the world’s richest man, has played a prominent role in Trump’s government. He even helped him secure a second term as president.

In 2024, Musk endorsed Trump’s re-election effort, joined him on the campaign trail and donated hundreds of millions of dollars to the Republican leader and his political allies.

For his part, Trump returned Musk’s warm embrace. Days after he won a second term as president, Trump announced that Musk would join his incoming administration as head of DOGE.

But Musk’s role in the White House has remained ambiguous, and highly controversial. Though Musk is a regular presence at presidential cabinet meetings, he has not had to undergo a Senate confirmation hearing.

The White House has described him as a “special government employee”, a temporary role given to consultants from business fields. Normally, those employees can only work with the government for 130 days per year, and they are barred from using their government roles for financial gain.

But critics have argued that the length of Musk’s tenure at the White House has not been clearly established and that he has indeed leveraged his position for personal profit. In March, for instance, Trump held a news conference to show off models from Musk’s car company Tesla.

Musk’s other business ventures, including the rocket company SpaceX and the satellite communications firm Starlink, have also raised conflict-of-interest questions, given that they are competitors for government contracts.

Media reports have indicated that there have been behind-the-scenes clashes between Musk and other members of the Trump White House that may have cooled relations between the president and his billionaire backer. But Trump has so far avoided criticising Musk publicly.

On Wednesday, for instance, Trump pivoted from the question about Musk’s comments to attacking Democratic members of Congress, who refuse to back his signature budget bill.

“ Remember, we have zero Democrat votes because they’re bad people,” Trump said. “There’s something wrong with them.”

A version of the budget bill narrowly passed the House of Representatives last week. Currently, it is being considered by the Senate. But with a 53-seat majority in the 100-person chamber, Senate Republicans can only afford to lose three votes if they hope to pass the bill.

Trump renewed his call for party unity on Wednesday, despite concerns from his fellow Republicans.

“We have to get a lot of votes,” Trump said. “We need to get a lot of support, and we have a lot of support.”

Some Republicans have voiced opposition to the increase in the national debt. Others fear the effects that Medicaid restrictions might have on their constituents.

Trump himself has said he opposes any cuts to Medicaid. But he has tried to frame the bill’s tax cuts as a boon to lower-income people, though critics point out those cuts are poised to deliver the biggest savings to the wealthy.

“We’ll have the lowest tax rate we’ve ever had in the history of our country,” Trump said. “Tremendous amounts of benefits are going to the middle-income people of our country, low- and middle-income people of our country.”