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Judge considers whether officials are in contempt of court in deportation case; Obama backs Harvard in funding face-off - key US politics stories from Tuesday 15 April at a glanceA federal judge has sharply rebuked the Trump administration and is evaluating whether officials are in contempt of court for failing to secure the return of a man wrongly deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador.The US supreme court last week ordered that the Trump administration to facilitate the release and return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a refugee who has legally lived in the US for 25 years. Continue reading...

Chris Van Hollen warns of constitutional crisis' and says he hopes to report back to family on Maryland man's conditionDemocratic senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland will travel to El Salvador on Wednesday and attempt to visit Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a constituent whose deportation and incarceration in the Central American country, he warns, has tipped the United States into a constitutional crisis.In an interview with the Guardian on Tuesday, Van Hollen said he hopes to learn of Abrego Garcia's condition and convey it to his family, who also live in the state he represents. Continue reading...

Green-card holder Mohsen Mahdawi, 34, arrested at appointment where he was meant to take citizenship testThe Trump administration is justifying its efforts to deport a student at Columbia University by saying that his activities could potentially undermine" the Middle East peace process.In a memo from the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, reviewed exclusively by the New York Times, the administration asserts that Mohsen Mahdawi, 34, a green-card holder and student who led pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia, had undermined the Middle East peace process and threatened the US goal to peacefully" resolve conflict in Israel and Gaza. Continue reading...

Winner bought ticket in San Luis Obispo, getting prize with odds of one in 2,047,423, according to California LotteryAn unhoused man in California won $1m from a lottery ticket that he bought from a liquor store on the state's central coast.The winner, who has not been publicly identified, purchased the scratcher ticket from Sandy's Deli-Liquor in San Luis Obispo, where he has been a customer for years, according to media reports. Continue reading...

Administration will have to share under oath how it's trying to get Kilmar Abrego Garcia back to US, says district judgeA federal judge sharply rebuked the Trump administration and scolded officials on Tuesday for taking no steps to secure the return of a man wrongly deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador, as the US supreme court had ordered in a contentious ruling last week.The US district judge Paula Xinis said that Donald Trump's news conference with El Salvador's president, Nayib Bukele, where the leaders joked that Kilmar Abrego Garcia would not be released, did not count as compliance. Continue reading...

Order instructs health department to work with Congress on changing law that allows Medicare to negotiate drug pricesDonald Trump directed his health department on Tuesday to work with Congress on revamping a law that allows Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices, seeking to introduce a change the pharmaceutical industry has lobbied for.Drugmakers have been pushing to delay the timeline under which medications become eligible for price negotiations by four years for small molecule drugs, which are primarily pills and account for most medicines. Continue reading...

Lawsuit argues that culling library books prevents children from learning about health, hygiene, biology and abuseTwelve students studying in Pentagon schools in the US and around the world are suing the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, over the book bans he has instigated to remove titles on race and gender from their libraries.A lawsuit lodged on the students' behalf by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on Tuesday argues that their first amendment rights are being irreparably harmed. The complaint says that the censorship has been applied system-wide across Pentagon schools, and was endangering children by preventing them from learning critical information about health, hygiene, biology and abuse. Continue reading...

US secretary of state Marco Rubio also spoke with foreign minister about strengthening countries' tiesThe United States has removed sanctions on a close aide of the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orban, the state department said, adding that the punitive measures had been inconsistent with US foreign policy interests".Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, spoke on Tuesday with his Hungarian counterpart, the foreign minister Peter Szijjarto, and informed him of the move, state department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said in a statement. Continue reading...

Dan Caldwell reportedly removed from building over unauthorized disclosure' amid scandal over recent leaksOne of US defense secretary Pete Hegseth's leading advisers, Dan Caldwell, was reportedly put on leave and removed from the Pentagon on Tuesday following a Department of Defense investigation into leaks.Caldwell was escorted out of the Pentagon after being identified during the investigation and subsequently placed on administrative leave for an unauthorized disclosure", a source told Reuters. Continue reading...

Records offer details of Cody Balmer, 38, who is accused of setting fire to Pennsylvania governor's mansionThe man accused of setting fire to the Pennsylvania's gubernatorial mansion early on Sunday morning while the governor, Josh Shapiro, and his family were asleep inside was due in court three days later on allegations that he assaulted his wife and stepson after trying to take his own life.Those records help provide a more complete picture of Cody Balmer, 38, of the Pennsylvania capital of Harrisburg, who was denied bail on Monday on charges of attempted murder, terrorism, aggravated assault and aggravated arson in connection with the governor's mansion blaze. Continue reading...

County to cut budget by almost $90m as it tackles nearly $2bn in fire-related costs and cuts to federal fundingLos Angeles county is experiencing unprecedented financial challenges amid growing costs from the historic wildfires that ravaged the region earlier this year and a $4bn sex abuse case settlement, the county CEO said this week.The region faces roughly $2bn in expenses related to January's fires, which killed 30 people and destroyed nearly 17,000 structures. Earlier this month the county announced it had a $4bn agreement to settle thousands of claims of sexual abuse in juvenile facilities dating back 1959 - the largest such settlement in US history. Continue reading...

UBC and others report spike in interest from US citizens as Trump withholds funds and revokes foreign student visasMore students living in the United States are applying to Canadian universities or expressing interest in studying north of the border as Donald Trump cuts federal funding to universities and revokes foreign student visas.Officials at the University of British Columbia's (UBC) Vancouver campus said the school reported a 27% jump in graduate applications as of 1 March from US citizens for programs starting in the 2025 academic year, compared with all of 2024. Continue reading...

The Republican, 91, was confronted by attendees angered over mass deportations and executive overreach

Harvard faces funding freeze as Yale faculty asks leadership to resist and legally challenge any unlawful demands'

Trump proposed that homegrown criminals' should be deported, an idea that experts say is clearly illegalThe US attorney general declined on Tuesday to say whether Donald Trump's suggestion of removing US citizens to El Salvador was legal, in alarming remarks about what experts think is an obviously illegal idea.Trump proposed the idea on Monday in the Oval Office during a visit with El Salvador's president, Nayib Bukele, who has been accepting people deported from the US and imprisoning them in a gigantic facility notorious for human rights abuses. Continue reading...

The trip leaned on a vision of women's empowerment that is light on substance and heavy on a childlike, girlish sillinessThere are some spectacles of US decadence and decline that almost seem too on the nose - the sort of orgies of vulgar provocation or fantastic lack of self-awareness that exceed the limits of parody, so that if they were in a novel, you'd think the writer was laying it on a little thick. Among these is the all-female flight by Blue Origin, the Jeff Bezos-owned rocket tourism company, which on Monday launched a phallically shaped pod full of women - including the pop star Katy Perry and Bezos's partner, Lauren Sanchez - on a brief trip into space.The flight, which was promoted for months in advance, was touted as a triumph of feminism, a win for science and an embrace of the kind of expansive, curious human spirit of striving and possibility that once animated both. Instead, the flight served as a kind of perverse funeral for the America that once enabled both scientific advancement and feminist progress - a spectacle that mocked these aspirations by appropriating them for such an indulgent and morally hollow purpose. Continue reading...

It may be a turning point in the White House's attempt to gut allegedly liberal universities and punish law firmsIt might come to be seen as the moment the woke liberal empire" of Donald Trump's most fevered imaginings struck back.Harvard University, the world-renowned institution emblematic of the elitism that Trump and his coterie hold in contempt, received an extortive demand from the administration that it surrender the core of its academic freedoms - and promptly told it to get lost. Continue reading...

Musk's Doge team announced in March it had canceled about $577m in grants for programs it labeled America last'Labor groups have filed a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration's abrupt termination of international labor rights programs aimed at ending child labor and other abuses.The Solidarity Center, Global March Against Child Labour, and the American Institutes for Research (AIR), filed the lawsuit on Tuesday seeking to stop the cuts, enacted by Elon Musk's so-called department of government efficiency" (Doge), and arguing the programs were authorized by Congress and that the secretary of labor has no authority to cancel the funds. Continue reading...

Steve Witkoff's switch from saying low-level production could continue seen as example of chaotic US foreign policyDonald Trump's special envoy, Steve Witkoff, has announced Iran must totally eliminate its nuclear programme, seeming to reverse the policy he had articulated on Fox News only 12 hours earlier that would have allowed Iran to enrich uranium at a low level for civilian use.The switch to a more hardline policy is likely to make it much harder for the US to reach a negotiated agreement with Tehran, bringing back the threat of an attack on Iran's nuclear sites. Continue reading...

The US is retreating behind chokepoints and tariffs. It remains determined to invent the future but is struggling to ensure its controlGlobalisation is out; reshoring is the new realism. Intel's half-built Ohio campus and Nvidia's US supercomputer plan demonstrate the very different routes taken by Joe Biden and Donald Trump in the search for homegrown tech dominance. Mr Biden relied on institutions: grants, land and investment incentives. That approach has stalled after last year's election, rendering Intel's plant idle. Mr Trump prefers court politics: flattery, pressure and tariff threats. Nvidia's move seems driven less by design than executive ultimatum. Industrial strategy lives on - but, and this is a concern, increasingly through presidential menace, not policy.There's another important message in the Nvidia announcement. In an era where ideas spread freely, power lies not in invention but in chokepoints, such as artificial intelligence supercomputer fabrication, that determine who can scale those ideas into global platforms. Remember that as the US braces for a backlash over the breakdown of the old trade order. Continue reading...

Merwil Gutierrez sent from New York to El Salvador prison although family says he has no criminal history or gang tiesA 19-year-old Venezuelan in New York City reportedly was apprehended by Trump administration immigration authorities and deported to El Salvador despite agents' realizing he was not whom they meant to arrest in a targeted operation.Merwil Gutierrez, whose family opened an asylum case after arriving in the US, was deported from the Bronx to the notorious Cecot prison in El Salvador despite his relatives' insistence that he has no gang ties or criminal history, according to Documented, a newsroom dedicated to telling the stories of immigrants in New York City. The Gutierrez family says it has been left without information or answers. Continue reading...

Charlotte Young Bowens had an epiphany while competing - and now she helps bigger people feel confident outdoorsCharlotte Young Bowens was 48 years old and 48 miles into a 50-mile ultramarathon when suddenly she slumped to her knees and collapsed to the ground, emotionally and physically exhausted. Curled into the fetal position, she began crying harder than she had in years.She wondered if she could finish. She rolled over on her back, looked up at the sky and thought back to a dark period in her life, when she was clinically depressed and not sure if she wanted to live. She no longer doubted. She knew she could and would finish the race. Continue reading...

The program, set to expire on 24 April, aids migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and VenezuelaA judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration's attempt to terminate a Biden-era program that granted legal status to migrants from Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Haiti.The ruling, in federal district court in Boston, prevents the wholesale shutdown of the program, which was set to expire on 24 April. Continue reading...

Energy watchdog cuts forecast for growth in demand by a third, and says a trade war could mean it falls furtherThe world will use less crude oil than expected this year due the substantial risks" posed by Donald Trump's trade tariffs to the global economy, according to the global energy watchdog.The International Energy Agency slashed its forecasts for global oil demand growth by a third for the year ahead, and warned that it could make further downward revisions depending on whether a trade war develops. Continue reading...

She is tragically mainstream, allergic to serving' on the red carpet and certainly hasn't thrived against the odds. It's the antithesis of gay culture - so why do I love her?As a self-evidently gay man, I've generally been spared the awkwardness of coming out. That was, until I became a Swiftie. In recent years I have become adept at gauging the temperature of a room before revealing my predilection. Is this a safe space? Will I be sidelined or treated as a pervert because of who I choose to love? Should I lie, or just be evasive? I want to live authentically, but at what cost?Taylor Swift is at once the closest thing we have to a monoculture and the most divisive pop star of modern times. As a self-identified Swiftie, I believe her gift lies in the ability to take hyper-specific experiences and render them universal. I've never performed a 149-date world tour while reeling from the heartbreak of having been ghosted by Matty Healy of the 1975, but listening to I Can Do It With a Broken Heart, her song about that indignity, has helped me put on a brave face when faced by life's more quotidian challenges. By writing a 10-minute epic about her three-month fling with Jake Gyllenhaal, Taylor gives fans space to mourn our own failed situationships or private disappointments - however fleeting or insignificant they may appear to others. Continue reading...

The tar-like mineral substance has long been used in Ayurvedic medicine, but the evidence of its efficacy is limited - and some products may contain harmful heavy metalsGender biases embedded in the way social media algorithms serve us content are well documented: algorithms have been found to amplify misogynistic content and unduly objectify women's bodies, and are often cited as a driver of political polarisation between young men and women.If you are online and of the male persuasion, you are more likely than me to have encountered videos extolling the supposed masculine benefits of substances such as shilajit and ashwagandha. Interest in shilajit has taken off in recent years, in no small part thanks to square-jawed men who pose with jars of the stuff in TikToks and Instagram posts, looking like perfect caricatures of virility with their fastidiously groomed facial hair and inexplicable shirtlessness. Continue reading...

The baseball hero grew up in Pasadena in an era of restrictive housing covenants - firm friendships were forgedEveryone from Jackie Robinson's home town has a story about the baseball legend. Stick around long enough in his southern California neighborhood and Jackie's name will bubble up in a story about a distant relative who once struck out the future Hall of Famer on a dusty field that now bears his name. Over the years, these stories gather layers - part memory, part myth - until they sound like hometown folklore.George Ito was one of those storytellers. A second-generation Japanese American who grew up in Pasadena, California, a few doors down from the Robinson family, George loved to remind his children about his friendship with Jackie. On jogs with his son, Steven Ito, he would rattle off tales of all the times he outran his legendary friend. Continue reading...

Carriers also asked to stop purchases of aircraft-related equipment and parts from US firms, report saysChina has reportedly ordered its airlines not to take any further deliveries of Boeing jets, the latest move in its tit-for-tat trade war with the US.The Chinese government has asked carriers to stop purchases of aircraft-related equipment and parts from American companies, according to a Bloomberg News article, which cited people familiar with the matter. Continue reading...

Email to Massachusetts lawyer warned her to depart the US immediately' even though removing US citizens is illegal

Allison Riggs won in November - but a court ruling has put ballots in North Carolina under threat. The stakes are highAllison Riggs, a Democratic justice on the North Carolina supreme court, is battling to keep her seat after a recent court ruling paved the way to overturn her election victory, telling the Guardian in an interview: This is not just a North Carolina problem. This is an existential threat to democracy."In November, Riggs won an election for the state supreme court by a razor-thin 734 votes. But on Friday, the North Carolina supreme court ordered the state board of elections to give certain overseas voters 30 days to prove their eligibility in order to have the votes they cast more than five months ago count. Continue reading...

Warnings emerge even as effect of economic and political turbulence on the foreign visitors to the US is hard to defineBatman said business was so-so, and King Kong beat his chest in agreement. But neither could predict that it would improve. Gotham's caped crusader and his muscular ape neighbour could only hope. As with Times Square's superhero-themed visitor-photography business last week, so it is with the US tourism business at large.The effect of economic and political turbulence on the number of foreign visitors coming to the US is for now hard to define. But both - whether through tariffs, currency exchange chaos, or fears over political ill-winds - are sending chills through the $2.36tn business, the world's most powerful travel and tourism market. Continue reading...

The method is a vivid reminder of the brutality of state killing. That undermines the pro-capital-punishment narrativeSouth Carolina executed Mikal Mahdi by firing squad on 11 April. Mahdi had been convicted and sentenced for the 2004 killing of an off-duty law enforcement officer.One month before his execution, South Carolina put Brad Sigmon to death using the same method. He was the first person since 2010 to be killed by the firing squad. Both Mahdi and Sigmon chose the firing squad from a menu of three ways to die, the others being lethal injection and the electric chair. Continue reading...

The CEO of JPMorgan Chase says young people needn't worry - the future is bright and AI-enhanced. So why does the world feel so precarious?Chin up, everyone. Things may seem grim at the moment but a billionaire has swooped in to reassure everyone - particularly impecunious young people - that everything is going to be OK. Better than OK, in fact. According to JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, despite the current economic and political instability, gen Z should be grateful for what will be a very bright and AI-enhanced future.These kids, anyone who's depressed - as long as we don't have nuclear war - they're going to have an unbelievable life," Dimon said in a recent interview with Fox News. People say the next generation's in bad shape," he added. Really? They're going to inherit a country that's worth two [or] three hundred trillion dollars. They're probably going to live to 120; AI is going to cure some cancers ... They shouldn't be bemoaning their situation." Continue reading...

Firms pushed back against proposed regulations after surge in online gambling since 2018 supreme court ruling on sports bettingGambling firms have fanned out across the US, lobbying an array of state capitals against consumer protections that experts say could help reduce addiction-related harms, according to a non-profit watchdog.A new report by the Campaign for Accountability, shared with the Guardian, lists a string of proposed regulations - from restrictions on advertising and promotions to deposit limits - against which firms pushed back. Continue reading...

Ethical doubts over role of campaign backers and investors with financial ties to president worth hundreds of millionsSome of Donald Trump's biggest campaign donors and investors, who collectively have hundreds of millions of dollars in financial ties to the US president, are positioned to potentially profit from any American takeover of Greenland, raising even more ethical questions around Trump's controversial pursuit of the Arctic territory.The administration is in part aiming to secure rare minerals that are essential for the US tech industry and national security, and to potentially reopen oil and gas exploration: This is about critical minerals, this is about natural resources," Trump's national security adviser, Mike Waltz, recently said. Continue reading...

Former president says move is an attempt to stifle academic freedom'. Plus, the people forming relationships with AI chatbots

Republican-controlled state house poised to pass legislation that imposes regulatory hurdles on data centersDonald Trump's plans to expand infrastructure to produce artificial intelligence in the US could face years of delays with the Republican-controlled Texas statehouse poised to pass legislation that imposes regulatory hurdles on data centers.The Trump administration earlier this year announced that a joint venture called Stargate would construct a total of 20 data centers to provide computing power for AI as part of an effort to help the US compete against China for leadership of the technology and spur investors to pursue AI projects. Continue reading...

Elon Musk is obsessed with falling birth rates, as is the Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban. Why would leftwingers want to buy into their pronatalist' agenda?Perpetuating humanity should be a cross-politics consensus," read an article in the Atlantic last week, but the left was mostly absent at a recent pronatalism conference." It's such a simple proposition - everyone loves babies and wants the species to perpetuate, right? - but pronatalism has provoked a ferocious battle on the American left. Should they be trying to engage meaningfully at a preposterous far-right conference? Or should the left stop self-flagellating and start organising?But what is pronatalism - and is it really borderline fascist? I don't want to think about slippery, bad-faith, rightwing claptrap any more than you do, but in an era in which US politics can sneeze and the world catches encephalitis, we do, regrettably, have to think about bad-faith everything, all the time. Continue reading...

Chris Columbus calls cameo an albatross' but worries he'd have to go back to Italy or something'Film-maker Chris Columbus says he has come to regard Donald Trump's cameo in his movie Home Alone 2: Lost in New York as an albatross" that he wishes to remove.But, Columbus added, he fears the president's administration would deport him if he followed through with nixing the scene from more than 30 years ago. Continue reading...

Vice-president says Donald Trump loves' the UK and there is good chance of reaching mutually beneficial agreementThe US is optimistic it can negotiate a great" trade deal with the UK, JD Vance has said.Donald Trump imposed sweeping tariffs on imports to the US several weeks ago, sending the global economy into turmoil as stock prices tumbled and fears of a global recession mounted. Continue reading...

Reese and Desiree Mistretta are the first mother-son pair to win New York's prestigious Golden Gloves, but their deeper bond is how boxing helped them survive life's hardest hitsReese Mistretta wasn't thinking about history after he climbed through the ropes on Saturday night. He was thinking about his legs, which felt like cement. About his lungs, which wouldn't quite fill. And about the man across from him: Ali Conde, a sinewy technician from El Maestro's Gym in the Bronx who has made his mark by waiting for opponents to strike first, then exploiting their openings.Two nights earlier, Mistretta had narrowly beaten Conde under the lights of Madison Square Garden in the elite 176lb final of the Ring Masters Championships, New York's premier amateur boxing competition. But the finals are double elimination. If Mistretta wanted to bring home the title, he'd have to beat Conde a second time at a sweaty gym in the Gravesend neighborhood of Brooklyn. He definitely came back, re-corrected, he put it on me a little bit more," Mistretta said. So I had to be a little busier, not get countered at the same time. He's a good counterpuncher." Continue reading...

Education department says $2.3bn in funds to be frozen after university rejects slew of demands as political ployThe US education department is freezing about $2.3bn in federal funds to Harvard University, the agency said on Monday.The announcement comes as the Ivy League school has decided to fight the White House's demands that it crack down on antisemitism and alleged civil rights violations, including shutting down diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Continue reading...

This live blog is now closed.Donald Trump will meet this morning with El Salvador's president, Nayib Bukele, at 11am ET at the White House.Referring to the cost of imprisoning the detainees in El Salvador, Trump told reporters on Sunday about Bukele:I think he's doing a fantastic job, and he's taking care of a lot of problems that we have that we really wouldn't be able to take care of from a cost standpoint.He's been amazing. We have some very bad people in that prison. People that should have never have been allowed into our country. People that murdered, drug dealers, some of the worst people on earth are in that prison. And he's able to do that. Continue reading...

Do they think it's just too hard to speak out?

El Salvador president says it is preposterous' to send Kilmar Abrego Garcia back to US after he was wrongly deported - key US politics stories from Monday 14 April at a glanceThe president of El Salvador said in a meeting with Donald Trump in the White House on Monday that he would not order the return of a Maryland man who was deported in error to a Salvadorian mega-prison.The question is preposterous," Nayib Bukele said in the Oval Office on Monday. How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? I'm not going to do it." Continue reading...

Administration advances new misrepresentations of US supreme court order in case of Kilmar Abrego GarciaThe Trump administration on Monday misrepresented a US supreme court decision that compelled it to return a man wrongly deported to El Salvador, using tortured readings of the order to justify taking no actions to secure his release.The supreme court last week unanimously ordered the administration to facilitate" the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was supposed to have been protected from deportation to El Salvador regardless of whether he was a member of the MS-13 gang. Continue reading...

Two students traveling on spring break were arrested and charged with assault in Copenhagen, police sayTwo American college students traveling for spring break were arrested in Copenhagen, charged with assault, and held in a Danish prison for two weeks following an alleged dispute with an Uber driver, Danish police said.The family of Owen Ray, a 19-year-old studying at Miami University in Ohio, said he and an unnamed friend have been forced to forfeit their passports and remain in the country. Continue reading...