Trump issues travel ban barring US entry from 12 countries and signs order restricting student visas at Harvard – as it happened

This ends our live coverage of the second Trump administration for the day, but we will be back on Thursday. Among the day’s developments:

• Donald Trump issued a sweeping new travel ban, with the total exclusion of citizens of 12 countries from entering the United States, and the partial exclusion of nationals of seven others.

• Trump also ordered an investigation of the validity of the actions of his predecessor, Joe Biden, based in part on a viral conspiracy theory.

• In the most severe step yet in hi campaign against Harvard University, Trump said that no visas would be issued to foreign student to study there.

• Elon Musk continued to rage-post against the spending and tax bill that Trump wants to sign.

• In a video statement justifying the new travel bans, Trump lumped together economic migrants who might overstay tourist visas with terrorists plotting attacks as “national security threats”.

In a brief, pre-recorded White House address posted on social media on Wednesday evening, Donald Trump argued that this week’s terror attack in Boulder, Colorado, “underscored the extreme dangers posed to our country by the entry of foreign nationals who are not properly vetted, as well as those who come here as temporary visitors and overstay their visas. We don’t want them.”

Trump went on to claim that the new travel restrictions on 19 nations he imposed on Wednesday were necessary to prevent further such attacks. One flaw in that argument, however, is that Egypt, which is the home country of the suspected attacker, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, is not on the list. Neither is Kuwait, where Soliman reportedly lived for 17 years.

Soliman had also not simply overstayed his tourist visa, but had applied for asylum before the visa expired.

“Today, there are millions and millions of these illegals who should not be in our country,” Trump claimed. In its most recent annual report to Congress, the Department of Homeland Security estimated that 565,155 people, or 1.45% of foreign visitors, had overstayed their visas in 2023.

Trump said that on his first day back in office he had directed the secretary of state to conduct a review of “high risk regions and make recommendations for where restrictions should be imposed”.

Among the “national security threats” US officials considered, Trump said, are “the large-scale presence of terrorists; failure to cooperate on visa security; inability to verify travelers’ identities; inadequate record-keeping of criminal histories and persistently high rates of illegal visa overstays”.

By lumping together economic migrants who might overstay tourist visas with terrorists plotting attacks as “national security threats”, Trump appeared to invoke the power vested in him as president to defend the US from attack to justify excluding visitors from poor nations, whose citizens might be fleeing poverty or civil unrest.

The nations Trump singled out as examples in his address were Yemen, Somalia, Haiti and Libya. That is, three Muslim-majority nations that were included in the travel ban Trump imposed in 2017, and Haiti, a country the president reportedly referred to as one of the “shithole countries” he did not want to accept refugees from in 2018, and whose citizens he spread a malicious rumor about during a presidential debate in 2024.

Donald Trump ordered an investigation into Joe Biden’s actions as president, alleging that his top aides masked his predecessor’s ‘cognitive decline’ and asserting as fact a viral conspiracy theory that Biden was unaware of the contents of pardons and orders signed in his name using automatic signature technology.

An autopen is a mechanical device that is used to replicate a person’s authentic signature, and presidents have used them for decades.

The investigation builds on a Republican-led campaign to discredit the former Democratic president and overturn some of his executive actions, including presidential pardons and federal rules.

Speculation about Biden’s cognitive abilities had been a Republican talking point for years, and Trump’s 2020 campaign even manufactured fake Biden senior moments through deceptive video editing. The former president’s declining mental acuity was, however, glaringly obvious four years later, when he was forced to abandon his run for reelection after a disastrous performance in an early debate his aides had pushed for.

Subsequent reporting in a pair of books – Fight by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, and Original Sin by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson – revealed that top Democrats and people in Biden’s inner circle also had serious misgivings about his ability to do the duties of president.

In a new presidential memorandum, Trump directs the White House counsel, “in consultation with the Attorney General and the head of any other relevant executive department or agency” to “investigate, to the extent permitted by law, whether certain individuals conspired to deceive the public about Biden’s mental state and unconstitutionally exercise the authorities and responsibilities of the President.”

“This conspiracy marks one of the most dangerous and concerning scandals in American history,” Trump says in the memo. “The American public was purposefully shielded from discovering who wielded the executive power, all while Biden’s signature was deployed across thousands of documents to effect radical policy shifts.”

Read more here:

In a presidential proclamation, apparently signed earlier on Wednesday in private, Donald Trump has barred foreign students from obtaining visas to enter the United States to attend Harvard University.

“I have determined that it is necessary to restrict the entry of foreign nationals who seek to enter the United States solely or principally to participate in a course of study at Harvard University or in an exchange visitor program hosted by Harvard University,” Trump said in the written order.

The legal justification for the ban, he said, are sections of the Immigration and Nationality Act, “which authorize the President to suspend entry of any class of aliens whose entry would be detrimental to the interests of the United States”.

Read more here:

Donald Trump imposed a sweeping new travel ban in a presidential proclamation issued on Wednesday evening, barring entry to the United States for all nationals of a dozen countries, and restricting entries from an additional seven nations.

In the proclamation, Trump references the travel ban he issued at the start of his first term, in 2017, which prompted nationwide protests at airports, and claims that new restrictions are necessary for national security on nations where vetting or immigrants or even tourists is difficult for US officials.

“I have determined to fully restrict and limit the entry of nationals of the following 12 countries: Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen”, Trump states in the proclamation. “I have determined to partially restrict and limit the entry of nationals of the following 7 countries: Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela.”

The banning of all citizens from Haiti is notable since, during his 2024 campaign for the presidency, Trump amplified false claims made by his running mate, JD Vance, that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio were “eating the pets of the people that live there.”

The proclamation falsely claims that “hundreds of thousands of illegal Haitian aliens flooded into the United States during the Biden Administration” and this “influx harms American communities”. In fact, about 200,000 Haitians were granted Temporary Protected Status, which gives legal residency permits to foreign nationals who are unable to return home safely due to conditions in their home countries. In other words, the Haitians slandered by Trump and Vance last year were legal residents of that Ohio town.

The restrictions on Afghans are also jarring, given that many of the Afghans approved to live in the US as refugees were forced to flee their home country as a result of working to support US troops there, before the full withdrawal of US forces in 2021. The agreement with the Taliban to withdraw US troops was negotiated by Trump during his first term.

Last month, homeland security secretary Kristi Noem announced “the termination of Temporary Protected Status for Afghanistan” effective 20 May.

“We’ve reviewed the conditions in Afghanistan with our interagency partners, and they do not meet the requirements for a TPS designation”, Noem said. “Afghanistan has had an improved security situation, and its stabilizing economy no longer prevent them from returning to their home country.” She did not explain how Afghans who had worked for the US military during its fight against the Taliban could now be considered safe in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.

As Elon Musk’s posting spree against the massive spending and tax bill continues to rage on, the Wall Street Journal reports that the billionaire Republican donor’s criticism was prompted, in part, by his anger over the White House decision to withdrawn the nomination of his ally to run the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa).

According to the Journal’s reporting:

A senior White House official said Trump wasn’t happy about Musk’s decision to lambaste his signature legislation, describing the president as confused as to why the Tesla chief executive decided to ratchet up his criticism after working so closely with the president for four months. The official said senior Trump advisers were caught off guard by Musk’s latest offensive.

The uneasy alliance between the two men was also strained by a recent move by the White House to nix Trump’s nominee to run NASA, Jared Isaacman, according to people familiar with the matter. Musk, a close ally of Isaacman, had advocated for him to get the job.

The decision infuriated Musk, who complained to associates over the weekend that he had donated hundreds of millions of dollars to help get Trump elected in last year’s campaign, only to see Isaacman’s nomination pulled, a person with direct knowledge of the matter said. Musk’s frustration over the NASA episode made him more willing to aggressively criticize the tax bill, people close to him said.

Jared Isaacman, the billionaire private astronaut who had been Musk’s pick to lead Nasa, suggested in a podcast interview on Wednesday that his abrupt withdrawal as Trump’s nominee to be Nasa administrator, as he was about to be confirmed by the Senate, was an act of retribution against Musk by White House advisers.

Speaking to the All-In podcast, Isaacman said that he got a call last Friday infomring him that Trump had decided to pull his nomination. “I don’t think the timing was much of a coincidence”, Isaacman said, referring to Musk’s departure from his White House role the same day.

“There were some people that had some axes to grind, I guess, and I was a good, visible target.” he added.

Isaacman also dismissed news reports, based on anonymous White House sources, that his past donations to Democrats had been the cause of his sudden defenestration.

He suggested that it was more likely “an influential adviser coming in” and suggesting to Trump that the nomination should be killed. “I think that was exactly how it went.”

Donald Trump remains committed to passing his spending and tax bill through the US Senate, despite increasingly vocal opposition from his billionaire donor, and former aide, Elon Musk, a White House official told Reuters on Wednesday.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, also told the news agency that the White House will not consult Musk on every policy decision.

The report comes as Musk has ramped up his opposition to the bill, arguing against it in two dozen posts on his social media platform TwitterX in the past 24 hours.

In one post to his 220 million followers on the platform, Musk rallied voters to contact lawmakers, writing: “Call your Senator, Call your Congressman, Bankrupting America is NOT ok! KILL the BILL.”

He followed that with a meme image of Uma Thurman adapted from the movie “Kill Bill”.

Musk also endorsed a proposal from another opponent of the bill, Senator Rand Paul, who argued that he would vote for an alternative bill that simply maintained the tax cuts signed by Trump in 2017.

However, as Donald Schneider, the former chief economist of the House Republican Ways and Means Committee, points out, Musk’s endorsement of a bill to just extend the 2017 tax cuts, which would massively benefit him personally, instead of the spending bill that adds $2.4tn to the deficit seems to betray a “basic misunderstanding” – since a bill like that “adds $4 trillion to the deficit”.

One day after she admitted that she did not read the full text of the massive Republican spending bill she voted for, and would have voted against it if she had done so, far-right Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene was confronted with her change of heart by a Democratic colleague on the House oversight committee.

During a hearing, Representative Robert Garcia displayed a placard with a blown-up image of a post from Elon Musk criticizing the spending bill and mentioned that Greene now said she regretted voting for it. But when he asked Greene to confirm that she was now against the bill, she refused to acknowledge what she said just yesterday and seemed to reverse her reversal. “I’m proud to have voted for that bill”, Greene said.

The United States on Wednesday vetoed a UN security council resolution demanding an “immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire” in Gaza, the release of all hostages and the resumption of humanitarian aid deliveries.

Before the vote the deputy US representative to the United Nations, Dorothy Shea, called the resolution “unacceptable” because it failed to include language blaming Hamas for the conflict and demanding that the Palestinian militant group disarm and leave the besieged Gaza Strip.

The 14 other members of the 15-nation council voted in favor of the resolution, which described the humanitarian situation in Gaza as “catastrophic” and called on Israel to lift all restrictions on the delivery of aid to the 2.1 million Palestinians in the territory.

Shea urged the UN to accept the sidelining of its own humanitarian aid agencies and support the work of the Israeli-backed, US-led Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which has led to the killings of scores of Palestinians seeking aid in its first week.

Israel’s UN ambassador, Danny Danon, thanked the US for vetoing what he called “a gift to Hamas” and a “surrender to terror”.

“Hurricane season just started and we’re actively seeing the consequences of Trump’s cuts to NOAA and NWS right before our eyes”, Representative Maxwell Alejandro Frost, a Florida Democrat, wrote in a social media post on Wednesday.

To support his point, Frost shared a video of John Morales, a veteran weatherperson with NBC’s South Florida affiliate NBC6, who argued during a broadcast this week that federal cuts to the National Weather Service would make it harder for him to provide accurate forecasts of the path of hurricanes this year, potentially putting the lives of some viewers at risk.

In an article on the broadcaster’s website, Morales explained what prompted his warning:

2025’s hurricane season is already unprecedented. Never have we faced the combustible mix of a lack of meteorological data and the less accurate forecasts that follow, with an elevated propensity for the rapidly intensifying hurricanes of the manmade climate change era.

Am I worried? You bet I am! And so are hundreds of other scientists, including all living former U.S. National Weather Service (NWS) directors, who fear a “needless loss of life” as a result of the loss of staff and resources at NWS brought on since January.

Central and southern Florida’s NWS offices are currently 19 to 39 percent understaffed. While that might be barely enough on a sunny day, long stretches of impending severe weather—like a hurricane—could lead to mistakes by tired skeleton crews can only work so many back-to-back shifts. Across the country, less data is being collected by fewer weather balloon launches as a result of the staff shortages.

Morales posted the video of his on-air warning on Elon Musk’s Twitter/X, with the comment: “Cuts have consequences.”

In response to a viewer who scolded him for his warning, by writing: “Please don’t inject politics into your weather newscasts,” Morales wrote: “Let me think about it. Okay I’m done thinking. No.”

Karine Jean-Pierre, who served as White House press secretary for Joe Biden, has left the Democratic party to become an independent, according to the publisher of her forthcoming book.

Jean-Pierre, who served two Democratic White Houses, is expected to detail the weeks that preceded Biden’s monumental decision to withdraw from the 2024 presidential race, per a preview of the book, which is set to be published this fall.

The book, titled Independent: A Look Inside a Broken White House, Outside the Party Lines, promises a detailed recounting of “the three weeks that led to Biden’s abandoning his bid for a second term and the betrayal by the Democratic party that led to his decision”.

Jean-Pierre did not arrive “lightly” at her decision to leave the Democratic party, according to the publisher. The book, billed as a “hard-hitting yet hopeful critique”, will make the case for “why Americans must step beyond party lines to embrace life as Independents”.

Jean-Pierre’s announcement comes as the party has been forced to reckon with its decision to staunchly support Biden’s decision to seek a second term as the oldest serving president in American history and despite voter concerns about his age and mental acuity. Tensions between Jean-Pierre and the White House press corps grew tense last year, as reporters pressed for more access and transparency around the president’s health.

The Department of Education said it has notified Columbia University’s accreditor of a violation of federal anti-discrimination laws by the Ivy League school.

This violation, the department said, means that Columbia has failed to meet the standards of accreditation set by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education.

The university did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

I’ll bring you more on this as we get it.

The Trump administration is considering a $1,000 fee for tourists and other non-immigrant visa applicants seeking an expedited interview appointment though government lawyers have raised legal red flags over the plan, according to an official and an internal state department memo.

Individuals entering the US on tourist and other non-immigrant visas already pay a $185 processing fee. The new $1,000 option the US is considering would be a premium service that allows some people to jump to the front of the line for visa interviews.

The program could arrive in pilot form as soon as December, the memo reviewed by Reuters said.

The proposed fee for visa appointments, which has not been previously reported, comes alongside Donald Trump’s vision of a “gold card” that would sell US citizenship for $5m, granting faster access to those willing to pay.

But the state department’s legal team said there was a “high risk” it would be rejected by the White House budget office or struck down in US courts, the memo said. Setting a fee above the cost to provide the service “is contrary to settled supreme court precedent”, the memo said.

A state department spokesperson said the department does not comment on internal documents and communications.

“The department’s scheduling of non-immigrant visa interview appointments is dynamic and we are continually working to improve our operations worldwide,” the spokesperson said.

The state department has moved $250m to the Department of Homeland Security for voluntary deportations by migrants without legal status, a spokesperson said, in an unprecedented repurposing of funds that have been used to aid refugees uprooted by war and natural disasters.

The money has been transferred “to provide a free flight home and an exit bonus to encourage and assist illegal aliens to voluntarily depart the United States”, the state department spokesperson told Reuters.

Historically, those funds have been used “to provide protection to vulnerable people” overseas and to resettle refugees in the US, said Elizabeth Campbell, a former deputy assistant secretary of state.

The state department’s planned reorganization explicitly states that the agency’s refugee bureau now largely will focus on efforts to “return illegal aliens to their country of origin or legal status”.

The funds came from Migration and Refugee Assistance (MRA) overseen by the Bureau of Population, Refugee and Migration. Its website says its mission is to “reduce illegal immigration”, aid people “fleeing persecution, crisis or violence and seek durable solutions for forcibly displaced people”.

Deputy secretary of state Christopher Landau, citing the law authorizing the funding, said in a 7 May Federal Register notice that underwriting the repatriation of people without legal status will bolster the “foreign policy interests” of the US.

He did not mention the $250m transfer to DHS.

The DHS did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Trump’s administration has encouraged migrants to leave “voluntarily” by threatening steep fines and deporting migrants to notorious prisons in Guantánamo Bay and El Salvador. On 9 May, Trump announced ‘Project Homecoming’, an initiative overseen by DHS that offers $1,000 stipends and travel assistance to migrants who “self-deport”.

DHS said in a 19 May news release that 64 people had “opted to self deport” to Honduras and Colombia on a charter flight under the program.
Some experts said that while legal, sending the money to DHS for deportation operations was an unprecedented use of MRA funds.

The main purpose of the funds historically has been “to provide refugee and displacement assistance, refugee processing and resettlement to the US, and respond to urgent and emerging humanitarian crises - not to return those very people to the harm or persecution they fled,” said Meredith Owen Edwards, senior director of Policy and Advocacy at the Refugee Council USA.

Elon Musk, who only days ago left his role in Donald Trump’s administration, continues his onslaught of attacks on the president’s spending bill working its way through Congress, saying on social media that a new one should be drafted.

He wrote on his X platform:

A new spending bill should be drafted that doesn’t massively grow the deficit and increase the debt ceiling by 5 TRILLION DOLLARS.

In a phrase he repeats in several posts from today, the billionaire said:

America is in the fast lane to debt slavery.

It comes only a day after Musk blasted the bill as a “disgusting abomination”. “This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it,” he wrote on X yesterday.

He had previously said he was “disappointed” by the bill, which in adding $2.4tn to the budget deficit would “undermine” the work of his Doge federal cost-cutting team.

Donald Trump has said the nation’s debt ceiling should be eliminated, saying he agreed with Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren’s view on the subject.

“The Debt Limit should be entirely scrapped to prevent an Economic catastrophe. It is too devastating to be put in the hands of political people that may want to use it despite the horrendous effect it could have on our Country,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.

The GOP is looking to raise the debt ceiling as part of the party’s broader tax and spending cuts package to enact Trump’s domestic agenda.

Warren on Friday backed Trump’s call to abolish the nation’s debt ceiling, pressing for bipartisan action to “get rid of it forever”. She posted on X that she and Trump agree that the debt limit, which caps how much money the Treasury can owe to pay the country’s bills, should “be scrapped to prevent an economic catastrophe”.

However, she also added in a jab to the GOP’s “big, beautiful bill” that “jacking up the debt limit by $4tn to fund more tax breaks for billionaires is an outrage”.

Here’s Trump’s full post, which was posted alongside a screenshot of that X post from Warren:

I am very pleased to announce that, after all of these years, I agree with Senator Elizabeth Warren on SOMETHING. The Debt Limit should be entirely scrapped to prevent an Economic catastrophe. It is too devastating to be put in the hands of political people that may want to use it despite the horrendous effect it could have on our Country and, indirectly, even the World. As to Senator Warren’s second statement on the $4 Trillion Dollars, I like that also, but it would have to be done over a period of time, as short as possible. Let’s get together, Republican and Democrat, and DO THIS!

Donald Trump has said that he has just discussed the recent drone attacks by Ukraine on Russia and developments concerning Iran in a phone call with Russian president Vladimir Putin that lasted over an hour.

During the conversation, Putin told Trump that Russia will have to respond to the Ukrainian drone attacks, the US president said. “It was a good conversation, but not a conversation that will lead to immediate Peace,” he said in a Truth Social Post.

Putin had said “very strongly, that he will have to respond to the recent attack on the airfields” - referring to ‘Operation Spiderweb’, which saw Ukrainian agents move drones and explosives deep inside Russia to strike four airbases - Trump said.

He also said that Putin had suggested he may participate in talks with Iran to try to get a nuclear deal done. Trump said: “I stated to President Putin that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon and, on this, I believe that we were in agreement.”

Here’s the full post:

I just finished speaking, by telephone, with President Vladimir Putin, of Russia. The call lasted approximately one hour and 15 minutes. We discussed the attack on Russia’s docked airplanes, by Ukraine, and also various other attacks that have been taking place by both sides. It was a good conversation, but not a conversation that will lead to immediate Peace. President Putin did say, and very strongly, that he will have to respond to the recent attack on the airfields. We also discussed Iran, and the fact that time is running out on Iran’s decision pertaining to nuclear weapons, which must be made quickly! I stated to President Putin that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon and, on this, I believe that we were in agreement. President Putin suggested that he will participate in the discussions with Iran and that he could, perhaps, be helpful in getting this brought to a rapid conclusion. It is my opinion that Iran has been slowwalking their decision on this very important matter, and we will need a definitive answer in a very short period of time!

Germany’s new conservative leader, Friedrich Merz, is due in Washington tomorrow for his first official meeting with Donald Trump, putting political Berlin on tenterhooks like no other transatlantic encounter in living memory.

Discussions between the German chancellor and the US president will focus on Ukraine, the Middle East and trade policies. How well or badly the talks go – during a small group meeting, followed by a lunch and then, perhaps most nail-bitingly, a press conference in the Oval Office – may shape relations for decades to come, analysts say.

Having reportedly spoken by phone four times since Merz’s election win in February, swapped numbers and exchanged an undisclosed number of text messages, the two leaders are now on first-name terms.

But Merz knows the road to a normal friendship is thorny. The transatlantic relationship has been altered almost beyond recognition since Trump’s return to office, and the shock “sits very deep”, said Mariam Lau, a journalist and the author of a new in-depth portrayal of Merz. She went on:

It’s the equivalent of a medical emergency in political terms: the speed and degree to which the Merz government has had to react to the disintegration of the transatlantic alliance, one of its main foreign policy pillars, is like being forced to undergo dialysis or an organ transplantation.

Berlin has viewed as menacing and dangerous the unprecedented interference in German politics by leading members of the Trump administration – by his former adviser Elon Musk; the secretary of state, Marco Rubio; and the vice-president, JD Vance, in particular. There is the lack of unity over how and even whether to punish Vladimir Putin over his invasion of Ukraine, there are tensions over defence spending levels, and there are diverging viewpoints over the Middle East, and over Trump’s looming tariffs.

Indeed nobody in Berlin is resting on their laurels. As to just how quickly leaders’ inaugural visits to the Oval Office can curdle, one only needs to recall Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s lions’ den encounter three months ago, or more recently the South African president Cyril Ramaphosa’s. It has not gone unnoticed that Merz called the latter last Friday, reportedly to pick up a few Trump-whisperer tips.

Lau said Merz would have to “walk a tightrope between keeping an open dialogue with Trump and standing up to him, not giving into his whims”. And Merz is said to have been coached on an array of eventualities and is armed, rhetorically at least. Merz knows that keeping things brief, not interrupting, heaping praise and stressing the commonalities is the accepted playbook when dealing with Trump.

Commerce secretary Howard Lutnick has told a Senate hearing that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is “fully staffed” with weather forecasters and scientists after concerns were raised about some offices losing 24-hour staffing ahead of hurricane season.

“We are fully staffed with forecasters and scientists. Under no circumstances am I going to let public safety or public forecasting be touched,” Lutnick told a Senate appropriations subcommittee overseeing NOAA, saying he got the National Weather Service (NWS) exempted from a federal hiring freeze.

NOAA, which includes the NWS, lost around 1,000 people or 10% of its workforce amid federal job layoffs in the first months of the second Trump administration, including 600 at the weather service. At least six NWS offices had stopped the routine twice-a-day weather balloon launches that collect data for weather models.

The US hurricane season officially began on Sunday and lasts through November. NOAA forecast last week that this year’s season is expected to bring as many as 10 hurricanes.

The agency had been scrambling to reassign staffers internally to fill gaps in understaffed offices over the last few months, sources told Reuters.

Lutnick told the committee that they are going to fill these positions and focus on cutting programs that he said were not part of NOAA’s mission, including “children’s books about climate anxiety”.

An internal memo seen by Reuters said that NOAA plans to hire 126 mission-critical positions at the National Weather Service including forecasters, radar technicians, hydrologists and physical scientists that will be advertised externally.

US economic output will fall as a result of Donald Trump’s new tariffs on foreign goods that were in place as of 13 May, while also reducing federal budget deficits by $2.8tn over a decade, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has said.

Reuters reports that in a letter to Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and two other high-ranking Democrats, the CBO said the tariffs, which have been challenged in court cases, will raise the costs of consumer and capital goods.

“CBO estimates that, on net, real (inflation-adjusted) economic output in the United States will fall as a result,” the agency said.

“Inflation will increase by an annual average of 0.4 percentage points in 2025 and 2026, in CBO’s estimation, reducing the purchasing power of households and businesses,” the letter to Schumer and senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley stated.

Wyden is the senior Democrat on the Senate finance committee and Merkley is the ranking Democrat on the Senate budget committee. The three senators requested the CBO analysis on the impact of the Trump administration’s tariffs implemented between 6 January and 13 May through executive actions.

The CBO’s inflation estimates were compared to an economic outlook published by the CBO on 17 January.

The analysis was completed before two courts ruled that the tariffs exceeded the president’s authority to impose them. The administration has asked an appeals court to pause one of the rulings.

The Trump administration formally asked Congress to rescind $9.4bn in already approved funding from foreign aid and public broadcasters including NPR and PBS on Tuesday, seeking to enshrine spending cuts identified by Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge).

The process, known as rescission, is required by Donald Trump to retrieve money from programs and policies that have already received the funding.

A spokesperson for the White House office of management and budget told the Associated Press that $8.3bn was being cut from the state department and the US Agency for International Development (USAID). NPR and PBS will also lose about $1.1bn in federal funding if Congress fulfills Trump’s request.

The targeting of public broadcasters fits with the Trump administration’s ongoing war on the US media. Trump signed an executive order in May cutting federal funding to NPR and PBS, and has launched multiple lawsuits against other news organizations.

The House and the Senate will now weigh whether to rescind the funding. On Tuesday Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, pledged to pass the cuts.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has also projected an increase of 10.9 million people without health insurance under Donald Trump’s big tax and spending cut bill.

That would include 1.4m people who are in the country without legal status in state-funding programs, Associated Press reports.

As we reported earlier, the House-passed version of the bill could add $2.4tn to the federal government’s $36.2tn debt, according to the CBO’s revised estimate on Wednesday.

The new CBO estimate takes into account late changes that were made to the bill as Republican leaders steered it to passage.

Mexico will announce measures next week if there is no agreement reached with the United States on the steel and aluminum tariffs announced, president Claudia Sheinbaum has said.

She also called the US announcement to raise the metals’ tariffs an “unfair measure” during her morning conference, and added that Mexico’s answer will not be “an eye for an eye”.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has released a revised estimate of the cost of Donald Trump’s tax and spending cut bill passed by the House of Representatives, concluding it will add $2.4tn to the federal government’s $36.2tn debt.

The new assessment comes a day after Elon Musk blasted the bill as a “disgusting abomination”, emboldening GOP deficit hawks who have been pushing back against the measure.

An earlier CBO estimate predicted the bill, which passed through the House on 22 May by a single vote and with no Democratic support, would add around $3.8tn to Washington’s debt over the next decade.

The measure, now under consideration in the Senate, aims to extend Trump’s 2017 tax cuts while also achieving steep spending reductions to pay for them, largely – and highly controversially – on Medicaid.

The new CBO estimate takes into account late changes that were made to the bill as Republican leaders steered it to passage.

The United States and the United Arab Emirates have agreed to start negotiations for a potential bilateral trade agreement that could ease tariffs on the Gulf state’s steel and aluminum industry, four people familiar with the matter have told Reuters.

Emirati officials discussed the possibility of a trade agreement with US counterparts during Donald Trump’s two-day visit to Abu Dhabi last month, the sources said.

The Office of the US Trade Representative did not respond to a Reuters request for comment. Neither did Emirati officials.

Like other nations, the UAE has been hit by Trump’s 10% baseline tariff on its exports to the US. But its steel and aluminum products have also been hit by a 25% tariff that the Trump administration is now doubling to 50%.

While the UAE is a major oil producer, its steel and aluminium products are significant non-oil exports. In 2024, the UAE was the second-largest steel and aluminium exporter to the US, accounting for 8% of total US consumption, data shows.

In Abu Dhabi, Emirati officials highlighted to American counterparts comprehensive trade deals that it had signed with other countries over the past three years, the sources said, to illustrate that the UAE was capable of moving quickly on trade talks.

The sources said that US officials had responded positively, although it was unclear when talks would start. Two of the sources said Washington was likely to negotiate a limited deal that would fall short of a comprehensive free trade pact.

The UAE is Washington’s biggest trade partner in the Middle East, according to the Gulf state’s foreign ministry. Bilateral trade in 2024 was valued at $34.4bn, according to US trade data, with the US enjoying a $19.4bn surplus.

The Gulf state, which is reliant on the US security umbrella, has pledged to invest $1.4tn in the US over the next decade. Its sovereign wealth funds, including Abu Dhabi’s $330bn Mubadala, are already big US investors, and Trump and his family have business interests in the UAE.

Today is the White House’s deadline for countries to submit their “best offers” in trade negotiations with the US in order to avoid being slapped with steep tariffs in July.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed yesterday that the Trump administration had sent letters to trading partners to push for offers by today as the deadline approached, underlining Trump’s use of tariffs as a negotiating tool.

“This letter was simply to remind these countries that the deadline is approaching and the president expects good deals, and we are on track for that,” she told reporters.

Reuters first reported on the office of the US trade representative’s letter seeking to accelerate unwieldy talks with multiple partners ahead of the Trump administration’s self-imposed deadline in under five weeks.

Those negotiations kicked off on 9 April when he paused his so-called “Liberation Day” tariffs for 90 days until 8 July amid stock, bond and currency markets turmoil over the sweeping levies.

While over the last few months Trump and his administration officials have boasted about the number of countries reaching out to discuss trading arrangements and have even claimed that several agreements are close to being over the line, they have also admitted that talks have been slow-moving and they don’t have the capacity to negotiate (hugely complex) trade deals with so many countries at once.

The US has so far only reached a framework agreement with the UK, and an agreement with China that both countries are now accusing each other of reneging on.

Trump administration officials delayed and redacted a government forecast because it predicts an increase in the nation’s trade deficit in farm goods later this year, two people familiar with the matter have told Politico, in a story that could raise questions about potential political interference in government reports that present “politically inconvenient” data.

Here’s an extract from Politico’s story:

The numbers run counter to Donald Trump’s messaging that his economic policies, including tariffs, will reduce US trade imbalances. The politically inconvenient data prompted administration officials to block publication of the written analysis normally attached to the report because they disliked what it said about the deficit.

The highly unusual rollout could raise questions about potential political meddling with government reports that have traditionally been trusted for decades.

“Objectivity is really key here and the public depends on it,” said Joe Glauber, a former USDA chief economist. “To lose that trust would be terrible.”

A USDA spokesperson blamed the delay on an internal review.

“The report was hung up in internal clearance process and was not finalized in time for its typical deadline,” said USDA spokesperson Alec Varsamis in a statement. “Given this report is not statutory as with many other reports USDA does, the Department is undergoing a review of all of its non-statutory reports, including this one, to determine next steps.”

It’s not clear when or if the written analysis portion will be released.

Donald Trump has – once again – called on Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, to lower interest rates, noting that payroll processing firm ADP reported that job creation slowed in May.

In the post on his Truth Social platform, he said that Powell – who in the past he has called a “major loser” – is “unbelievable”.

ADP NUMBER OUT!!! “Too Late” Powell must now LOWER THE RATE. He is unbelievable!!! Europe has lowered NINE TIMES!

ADP’s report showed private payrolls ticked up by only 37,000 in May - far below the Dow Jones forecast for 110,000 - and mark the lowest monthly reading from ADP since March 2023.

At a meeting with Trump at the White House last week, Powell had pushed back against the president’s demands, telling him “that the path of policy will depend entirely on incoming economic information and what that means for the outlook,” according to an unusually blunt statement issued by the central bank.

Trump, who has attacked Powell repeatedly over the Fed’s decision to not lower interest rates, recently said he has no intention of trying to fire Powell. But the possibility of a firing has unsettled financial markets that bank on an independent Fed’s ability to do its job without political interference.

Earlier this month, Powell kept interest rates on hold and cautioned that the president’s tariff regime was likely to raise prices, weaken growth and increase unemployment in the US if maintained.

The statement went on to say that Powell maintained that the Fed “will set monetary policy, as required by law, to support maximum employment and stable prices and will make those decisions based solely on careful, objective, and non-political analysis”.

The full statement read:

At the President’s invitation, Chair Powell met with the President today at the White House to discuss economic developments including for growth, employment, and inflation.

Chair Powell did not discuss his expectations for monetary policy, except to stress that the path of policy will depend entirely on incoming economic information and what that means for the outlook.

Finally, Chair Powell said that he and his colleagues on the FOMC will set monetary policy, as required by law, to support maximum employment and stable prices and will make those decisions based solely on careful, objective, and non-political analysis.

The Trump administration has reversed its decision to revoke the legal status of a four-year-old girl, receiving continuing life-saving treatment in the US, and her family after a national outcry.

Deysi Vargas, her husband and their daughter – whom lawyers identified by the pseudonym Sofia – had come to the US in 2023 to seek medical care for their daughter who has a rare condition that requires specialized treatment. But in April, the federal government ended their humanitarian parole, a temporary status granted to people on urgent humanitarian grounds, and ordered them to “self-deport”.

Sofia’s doctors warned that she would likely die “within days” if forced to return to Mexico and her family and attorneys fought the deportation order, describing it as unlawful and “a cruel betrayal of our nation’s values”.

Her case, which an attorney for the family said highlighted “the recklessness of this administration’s deportation policies”, sparked outrage and a significant response from Democratic lawmakers. Dozens of representatives and both of California’s senators, Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla, signed a letter urging the Department of Homeland Security to extend the family’s legal status.

“We believe this family’s situation clearly meets the need for humanitarian aid and urge you and this Administration to reconsider its decision. It is our duty to protect the sick, vulnerable, and defenseless. Without action, S.G.V. will die,” the lawmakers wrote.

The Los Angeles Times first reported on Tuesday that the administration had restored legal status for the family, sending a letter on Monday that stated: “This is to advise you that effective June 2, 2025, you have been granted Humanitarian Parole for a period of one year.”

Senior US immigration officials over the weekend instructed rank-and-file officers to “turn the creative knob up to 11” when it comes to enforcement, including by interviewing and potentially arresting people they called “collaterals”, according to internal agency emails viewed by the Guardian.

Officers were also urged to increase apprehensions and think up tactics to “push the envelope” one email said, with staff encouraged to come up with new ways of increasing arrests and suggesting them to superiors.

“If it involves handcuffs on wrists, it’s probably worth pursuing,” another message said.

The instructions not only mark a further harshening of attitude and language by the Trump administration in its efforts to fulfill election promises of “mass deportation” but also indicate another escalation in efforts, by being on the lookout for undocumented people whom officials may happen to encounter – here termed “collaterals” – while serving arrest warrants for others.

The emails, sent by two top Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officials this past Saturday, instructed officers around the country to increase arrest numbers over the weekend. This followed the Department of Homeland Security secretary, Kristi Noem, and the White House deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, pressing immigration officials last month to jack up immigration-related arrests to at least 3,000 people per day.

Washington doubled its tariffs on steel and aluminium imports on Wednesday, when president Donald Trump’s administration also expects trading partners to make “best offers” to avoid other punishing import levies from taking effect in early July.

Maroš Šefčovič, the trade negotiator for the European Union, met US trade representative Jamieson Greer in Paris on Wednesday, with the 27-nation bloc set to make its case for cutting or eliminating threatened tariffs on European imports, Reuters reported.

Late on Tuesday, Trump signed an executive proclamation that activates from Wednesday a hike in the tariffs on imported steel and aluminium to 50% from the 25% rate introduced in March.

“We started at 25 and then after studying the data more, realized that it was a big help, but more help is needed. And so that is why the 50 is starting tomorrow,” White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett told a steel industry conference in Washington on Tuesday. The increase came into effect at 12.01am.

The increase applies to all trading partners except Britain, the only country so far that has struck a preliminary trade agreement with the US during a 90-day pause on a wider array of Trump tariffs. The rate for steel and aluminium imports from the UK – which does not rank among the top exporters of either metal to the US – will remain at 25% until at least 9 July.

Good morning and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news lines over the coming hours.

We start with news that Elon Musk, the billionaire tech entrepreneur, opened a new rift with Donald Trump by denouncing the US president’s tax and spending bill as a “disgusting abomination”.

Musk’s online outburst could embolden fiscally conservative Republican senators – some of whom have already spoken out – to defy Trump as they continue crucial negotiations on Capitol Hill over the so-called “one big, beautiful bill”.

“I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore,” Musk wrote on his X social media platform on Tuesday. “This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.”

Musk, who had previously voiced criticism of the proposed legislation, quipping that it could be big or beautiful but not both, added on X: “It will massively increase the already gigantic budget deficit to $2.5 trillion (!!!) and burden America citizens with crushingly unsustainable debt.”

He continued: “Congress is making America bankrupt.”

A top donor to Trump during last year’s election campaign, Musk departed the White House last week after steering its so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) with the stated mission of slashing fraud and abuse within federal departments. He has argued that the Republican bill will undermine Doge’s work and drive the US further into debt.

For the full report, see here:

In other developments:

• Republican firebrand Marjorie Taylor Greene has drawn widespread criticism from Democratic colleagues for admitting that not only did she not read Donald Trump’s tax and spending bill before voting for it, but she would have voted against it had she read thoroughly.

• The White House gloated on social media about the arrests of the wife and five children of Mohamed Sabry Soliman, the suspected Boulder attacker, and joked about providing them with “six one-way tickets”.

• In the 48 hours since the firebomb attack in Boulder, Colorado, on a demonstration in support of Israelis held hostage in Gaza, Republicans politicized the attack, attempting to blame Democrats, including the state’s multiple Jewish leaders.

• Democrats denounced the Trump administration’s “cruel” decision to rescind health department guidance issued in the wake of the 2022 Dobbs decision, striking down the right to an abortion, that required hospitals to provide abortions to women in medical emergencies even in state’s with local bans on the procedure.

• Millions of legal immigrants may be left unable to work after the US Social Security Administration quietly instituted a rule change to stop automatically issuing them social security numbers.

• A US judge on Tuesday ruled the US Bureau of Prisons must keep providing transgender inmates gender-affirming care, despite an executive order Donald Trump signed on his first day back in office to halt funding for such care.