Supreme court lifts order blocking Trump’s mass federal layoffs
The supreme court has cleared the way for Donald Trump’s administration to resume carrying out mass job cuts and the restructuring of agencies, key elements of his campaign to downsize and reshape the federal government.
The justices lifted San Francisco-based US district judge Susan Illston’s 22 May order that had blocked large-scale federal layoffs called “reductions in force” affecting potentially hundreds of thousands of jobs, while litigation in the case proceeds.
Workforce reductions were planned at the US departments of agriculture, commerce, health and human services, state, treasury, veterans affairs and more than a dozen other agencies.
Illston wrote in her ruling that Trump had exceeded his authority in ordering the downsizing, siding with a group of unions, non-profits and local governments that challenged the administration.
“As history demonstrates, the president may broadly restructure federal agencies only when authorized by Congress,” Illston wrote.
The judge blocked the agencies from carrying out mass layoffs and limited their ability to cut or overhaul federal programs. She also ordered the reinstatement of workers who had lost their jobs, though she delayed implementing this portion of her ruling while the appeals process plays out.
Illston’s ruling was the broadest of its kind against the government overhaul being pursued by Trump and Doge.
The San Francisco-based ninth US circuit court of appeals in a 2-1 ruling on 30 May denied the administration’s request to halt the judge’s ruling.
It said the administration had not shown that it would suffer an irreparable injury if the judge’s order remained in place and that the plaintiffs were likely to prevail in their lawsuit.
The ruling prompted the justice department’s 2 June emergency request to the supreme court to halt Illston’s order.
Controlling the personnel of federal agencies “lies at the heartland” of the president’s executive branch authority, the justice department said in its filing to the supreme court.
“The constitution does not erect a presumption against presidential control of agency staffing, and the president does not need special permission from Congress to exercise core Article II powers,” the filing said, referring to the constitution’s section delineating presidential authority.
The plaintiffs urged the supreme court to deny the request. Allowing the Trump administration to move forward with its “breakneck reorganization”, they wrote, would mean that “programs, offices and functions across the federal government will be abolished, agencies will be radically downsized from what Congress authorized, critical government services will be lost and hundreds of thousands of federal employees will lose their jobs”.
The supreme court has cleared the way for Donald Trump’s administration to resume carrying out mass job cuts and the restructuring of agencies, key elements of his campaign to downsize and reshape the federal government.
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The justices lifted San Francisco-based US district judge Susan Illston’s 22 May order that had blocked large-scale federal layoffs called “reductions in force” affecting potentially hundreds of thousands of jobs, while litigation in the case proceeds.
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Workforce reductions were planned at the US departments of agriculture, commerce, health and human services, state, treasury, veterans affairs and more than a dozen other agencies.
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Illston wrote in her ruling that Trump had exceeded his authority in ordering the downsizing, siding with a group of unions, non-profits and local governments that challenged the administration.
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“As history demonstrates, the president may broadly restructure federal agencies only when authorized by Congress,” Illston wrote.
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The judge blocked the agencies from carrying out mass layoffs and limited their ability to cut or overhaul federal programs. She also ordered the reinstatement of workers who had lost their jobs, though she delayed implementing this portion of her ruling while the appeals process plays out.
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Illston’s ruling was the broadest of its kind against the government overhaul being pursued by Trump and Doge.
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The San Francisco-based ninth US circuit court of appeals in a 2-1 ruling on 30 May denied the administration’s request to halt the judge’s ruling.
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It said the administration had not shown that it would suffer an irreparable injury if the judge’s order remained in place and that the plaintiffs were likely to prevail in their lawsuit.
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The ruling prompted the justice department’s 2 June emergency request to the supreme court to halt Illston’s order.
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Controlling the personnel of federal agencies “lies at the heartland” of the president’s executive branch authority, the justice department said in its filing to the supreme court.
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“The constitution does not erect a presumption against presidential control of agency staffing, and the president does not need special permission from Congress to exercise core Article II powers,” the filing said, referring to the constitution’s section delineating presidential authority.
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The plaintiffs urged the supreme court to deny the request. Allowing the Trump administration to move forward with its “breakneck reorganization”, they wrote, would mean that “programs, offices and functions across the federal government will be abolished, agencies will be radically downsized from what Congress authorized, critical government services will be lost and hundreds of thousands of federal employees will lose their jobs”.
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Donald Trump and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet again on Tuesday evening to discuss Gaza, a day after they met for hours while officials conducted indirect negotiations on a US-brokered ceasefire.
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Trump and Netanyahu dined together on Monday at the White House during the Israeli leader’s third US visit since the president began his second term on 20 January.
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Netanyahu spent much of Tuesday at the Capitol, telling reporters after a meeting with House speaker Mike Johnson that while he did not think Israel’s campaign in the Palestinian territory was done, negotiators are “certainly working” on a ceasefire.
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“We have still to finish the job in Gaza, release all our hostages, eliminate and destroy Hamas’ military and government capabilities,” Netanyahu said.
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Netanyahu’s plan to return to the White House at 4.30pm ET pushed back his meeting with Senate leaders to Wednesday.
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Shortly after Netanyahu spoke, Trump envoy Steve Witkoff said he hoped to reach a temporary ceasefire agreement this week.
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“We are hopeful that by the end of this week, we’ll have an agreement that will bring us into a 60-day ceasefire. Ten live hostages will be released. Nine deceased will be released,” Witkoff told reporters at a meeting of Trump’s cabinet earlier.
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In his remarks to reporters at Congress, Netanyahu praised Trump, saying there has never been closer coordination between the US and Israel in his country’s history.
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}],”data”:{“alt”:”Benjamin Netanyahu at a dinner with Donald Trump in the Blue Room of the White House on Monday.”,”caption”:”Benjamin Netanyahu at a dinner with Donald Trump in the Blue Room of the White House on Monday.”,”credit”:”Photograph: Al Drago/UPI/Shutterstock”}}],”attributes”:{“pinned”:false,”keyEvent”:true,”summary”:false},”blockCreatedOn”:1752002193000,”blockCreatedOnDisplay”:”21.16 CEST”,”blockLastUpdated”:1752004516000,”blockLastUpdatedDisplay”:”21.55 CEST”,”blockFirstPublished”:1752002309000,”blockFirstPublishedDisplay”:”21.18 CEST”,”blockFirstPublishedDisplayNoTimezone”:”21.18″,”title”:”Trump says he will meet again with Netanyahu this evening”,”contributors”:[] ,”primaryDateLine”:”Tue 8 Jul 2025 23.11 CEST”,”secondaryDateLine”:”First published on Tue 8 Jul 2025 12.00 CEST”},{“id”:”686d67c08f082b1b947537f8″,”elements”:[{“_type”:”model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement”,”html”:”
A new study of defense department spending previewed exclusively to the Guardian shows that most of the Pentagon’s discretionary spending from 2020 to 2024 has gone to outside military contractors, providing a $2.4tn boon in public funds to private firms in what was described as a “continuing and massive transfer of wealth from taxpayers to fund war and weapons manufacturing”.
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The report from the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and Costs of War program at Brown University said that the Trump administration’s new Pentagon budget will push annual US military spending past the $1tn mark.
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That will deliver a projected windfall of more than half a trillion dollars that will be shared among top arms firms such as Lockheed Martin and Raytheon as well as a growing military tech sector with close allies in the administration such as JD Vance, the report said.
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The report is compiled of statistics of Pentagon spending and contracts from 2020 to 2024, during which time the top five Pentagon contractors (Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman) received $771bn in contract awards. Overall, private firms received approximately 54% of the department’s discretionary spending of $4.4tn over that period.
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Taking into account supplemental funding for the Pentagon passed by Congress under Trump’s flagship sweeping tax and spending bill, the report said, the US military budget will have nearly doubled this century, increasing 99% since 2000.
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“The US withdrawal from Afghanistan in September 2021 did not result in a peace dividend,” the authors of the report wrote. “Instead, President Biden requested, and Congress authorized, even higher annual budgets for the Pentagon, and President Trump is continuing that same trajectory of escalating military budgets.”
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That contradicts early indications from Trump in February that he could cut military spending in half, adding that he would tell China and Russia that “there’s no reason for us to be spending almost $1tn on the military … and I’m going to say we can spend this on other things”. Instead, the spending bill pushed by Trump through Congress included a $157bn spending boost for the Pentagon.
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The government of El Salvador has acknowledged to United Nations investigators that the Trump administration maintains control of the Venezuelan men who were deported from the US to a notorious Salvadoran prison, contradicting past public statements by officials from both countries.
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The revelation was contained in court filings on Monday by lawyers for more than 100 migrants who are seeking to challenge their deportations to El Salvador’s mega-prison known as Cecot.
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“In this context, the jurisdiction and legal responsibility for these persons lie exclusively with the competent foreign authorities,” Salvadorian officials wrote in response to queries from the unit of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
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The UN group has been looking into the fate of the men who were sent to El Salvador from the US in mid-March, even after a federal judge had ordered the planes that were carrying them to be turned around.
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The Trump administration has argued that it is powerless to return the men, as they are beyond the reach of US courts and no longer have access to due process rights or other US constitutional guarantees.
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But lawyers for the migrants said the UN report shows otherwise. American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Lee Gelernt said in an email:
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El Salvador has confirmed what we and everyone else understood: it is the United States that controls what happens to the Venezuelans languishing at Cecot. Remarkably the US government didn’t provide this information to us or the court.
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Skye Perryman, CEO and president of Democracy Forward, said the documents show “that the administration has not been honest with the court or the American people”. The ACLU and Democracy Forward are both representing the migrants.
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A justice department spokesperson declined to comment. White House and homeland security department officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment from the Associated Press.
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During his cabinet meeting, Donald Trump also suggested his administration was looking into taking over governance of Washington DC.
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Trump said his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, was in close touch with the city’s mayor, Muriel Bowser, a Democrat.
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It is not the first time the president floated a federal takeover of the city, home to the White House, Congress and the supreme court.
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Trump told reporters in February: “I think we should take over Washington DC – make it safe. I think that we should govern District of Columbia.”
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Under home rule, Congress already vets all laws in the city and federal lawmakers can overturn some of them. However, it would take an act of Congress to make federal rule a reality.
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Both houses would have to vote to repeal the 1973 Home Rule Act. It would be a controversial move and unlikely to make it through.
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A temporary ceasefire agreement in Gaza could be finalized by the end of the week, Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, said at the cabinet meeting.
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Witkoff added that proximity talks had reduced outstanding issues from “four issues … to one”.
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“We are hopeful that by the end of this week, we will have an agreement that will bring us into a 60-day ceasefire,” Witkoff said. “Ten live hostages will be released. Nine deceased will be released.”
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Trump added that he would meet with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, later to discuss Gaza “almost exclusively”, describing the situation as “a tragedy” while claiming that the prime minister has been “very unfairly treated” because of his corruption trial.
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“He’s been very unfairly treated. I think what they’ve done to him in Israel is very unfair. Having to do with this trial, he’s a wartime prime minister, had an unbelievable outcome, and I think he’s been treated very unfairly,” Trump said of Netanyahu.
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Speaking to reporters, Trump said that he is “not happy” with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, and noted that weekly casualties in Ukraine are now at 7,000 a week.
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“I’m not happy with Putin. I can tell you that much right now, because he’s killing a lot of people, and a lot of them are his soldiers, his soldiers and their soldiers mostly. And it’s now up to 7,000 a week,” Trump said.
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When pressed by reporters about potential action, Trump declined to elaborate, saying: “I wouldn’t be telling you, we want to have a little surprise.”
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Trump praised Ukrainian resistance while crediting US military aid: “The Ukrainians were brave, but we gave them the best equipment ever made.”
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Donald Trump has issued an ultimatum to the US’s trading partners, confirming that new tariffs will take effect on 1 August with no possibility of delays.
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In a Truth Social post on Tuesday, Trump said:
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As per letters sent to various countries yesterday, in addition to letters that will be sent today, tomorrow, and for the next short period of time, TARIFFS WILL START BEING PAID ON AUGUST 1, 2025. There has been no change to this date, and there will be no change. In other words, all money will be due and payable starting AUGUST 1, 2025 – No extensions will be granted. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
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David Axelrod, who served as senior adviser to Barack Obama, said the AI scam using Rubio was “only a matter of time” and urged urgent action to defend against such attacks.
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“A Marco Rubio impostor is using AI voice to call high-level officials,” Axelrod wrote on X. “This is the new world in which we live and we’d better figure out how to defend against it because of its implications for our democracy and the world.”
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Donald Trump is scheduled to have a meeting with his cabinet officials at 11 am.
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An unknown fraudster has used artificial intelligence to impersonate the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, contacting at least five senior officials.
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According to a state department cable seen by the Washington Post, the impostor sent fake voice messages and texts that mimicked Rubio’s voice and writing style to those targets including three foreign ministers, a US governor and a member of Congress.
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The cable, dated 3 July, said the impostor “left voicemails on Signal for at least two targeted individuals” and sent text messages inviting others to communicate on the platform.
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It’s still a mystery who is behind the scam, but the cable reportedly reads that the goal had been “gaining access to information or accounts” of powerful government officials.
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The US is reeling after catastrophic floods killed more than 100 people in Texas, including 27 children and counsellors from an all-girls Christian camp. On Monday, Democrats asked a government watchdog to investigate whether cuts at the National Weather Service (NWS) affected the forecasting agency’s performance.
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But Republicans’ default response has been to express fealty to Donald Trump. They lavished praise on the president for providing federal assistance while studiously avoiding questions around the effect of his “department of government efficiency” (Doge) or threats to dismantle the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema).
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“It is a sign of the sickness and dysfunction of what was the Republican party that they have almost no thoughts about their constituents,” said Rick Wilson, a cofounder of the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group. “Their thoughts are, how do I avoid making sure that Donald Trump doesn’t look at me as an enemy or a critic?
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“Despite the fact that the Doge cuts and the reductions in force and the early buyouts have savaged the workforce of the National Weather Service, they can’t even utter the slightest vague, elliptical critique of the administration that is now engaged in these cuts that have cost the lives of the people they supposedly represent.”
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The raging flash floods – among the US’s worst in decades – slammed into riverside camps and homes in central Texas before daybreak on Friday, pulling sleeping people out of their cabins, tents and trailers and dragging them for miles past floating tree trunks and cars. Some survivors were found clinging to trees. Authorities say the death toll is sure to rise as crews look for the many who are still missing.
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The United States only has about 25% of the Patriot missile interceptors it needs for all of the Pentagon’s military plans after burning through stockpiles in the Middle East in recent months, an alarming depletion that led to the Trump administration freezing the latest transfer of munitions to Ukraine.
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The stockpile of the Patriot missiles has fallen so low that it raised concern inside the Pentagon that it could jeopardize potential US military operations, and deputy defense secretary, Stephen Feinberg, authorized the transfer to be halted while they reviewed where weapons were being sent.
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Donald Trump appeared to reverse at least part of that decision on Monday when he told reporters in advance of a dinner at the White House with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he would “send some more weapons” to Ukraine, although he did not disclose whether that would include Patriot systems.
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Trump also told Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in a phone call that he was not responsible for the halt in weapons shipments and that he had directed a review of US weapons stockpiles but didn’t order the freeze, according to people briefed on the conversation.
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But the determination last month to halt the transfer, as described by four people directly familiar with the matter, was based in large part on the Pentagon’s global munitions tracker, which is used to generate the minimum level of munitions required to carry out the US military’s operations plans.
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According to the tracker, which is managed by the joint chiefs of staff and the Pentagon’s defense security cooperation agency, the stockpiles of a number of critical munitions have been below that floor for several years since the Biden administration started sending military aid to Ukraine.
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Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news lines over the next few hours.
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We start with news that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet US vice-president JD Vance at 9.15am local time at the Blair House, The Times of Israel has reported.
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He will then meet US House of Representatives speaker Mike Johnson at Capitol House, before returning to Blair House for meetings.
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Then at 4pm, Netanyahu will head to the Senate for meeting with majority leader John Thune, Democratic senator John Fetterman and other lawmakers.
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It comes as Netanyahu told Donald Trump that he would nominate him for the Nobel peace prize on Monday, as the two leaders met for the first time since the US launched strikes on Iran’s nuclear program as part of a short-lived war between Israel and Iran.
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Trump was expected to press Netanyahu to agree to a ceasefire in Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza amid an outcry over the humanitarian cost of an offensive that has led to nearly 60,000 deaths.
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Read the full story here:
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In other developments:
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The White House published letters to 14 countries detailing new tariff rates on imported goods to the United States. He also signed an executive order on Monday extending a 90-day pause for a slate of so-called “reciprocal” tariffs first introduced in April – in effect pushing back the deadline of trade talks back to 1 August. The tariffs include:
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Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Kazakhstan, and Tunisia: 25%
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Indonesia: 32%
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Bangladesh and Serbia: 35%
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Bosnia: 30%
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Cambodia and Thailand: 36%
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South Africa: 30%
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Laos and Myanmar: 40%
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Trump signed two other executive orders today: one directs his administration to “strictly enforce the termination of the clean electricity production and investment tax credits”, Biden-era subsidies for wind and solar projects. The other extends a federal hiring freeze through 15 October 15.
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Los Angeles mayor, Karen Bass,confronted immigration agents after US Customs and Border Patrol conducted a raid on the city’s MacArthur Park today, she said in a social media post.
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The Trump administration will deport Kilmar Ábrego García if he is released from custody, a justice department attorney said in court this morning, according to the New York Times.
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The Department of Veterans Affairs will no longer need to cut 80,000 jobs, as ordered by the Trump administration’s so-called “department of government efficiency”, because it has already cut staff by 30,000 through retirements, buyouts and hiring freezes, the agency said today.
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A judge has ordered the Trump administration to continue disbursing Medicaid payments to Planned Parenthood, despite a provision in the president’s recently signed tax and spending bill.
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Key events
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It appears that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has arrived at the White House for his closed-door meeting with Donald Trump.
A White House pool reporter says that Netanyahu’s motorcade has arrived, though press did not see Netanyahu enter the White House as he used a different entrance.
Travelers will soon be able to keep their shoes on while traversing US airport security, Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem announced today, in a reversal of a nearly two decades old policy.
In a press conference at Reagan Airport today, Noem announced the new Transportation Security Administration policy, which she said she hoped would make travel to the United States easier ahead of the Olympics, World Cup and 250th anniversary of the country.
“The Golden Age of America is here,” she said. “We’re so excited that we can make the experience for those individuals traveling throughout our airports in the United States more hospitable.”
The TSA policy requiring travelers to remove their footwear dates back to 2006.
Donald Trump’s scheduled meeting with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is starting later than the announced 4:30pm ET start time. We’ll bring you the top lines once it begins.
Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the sole member of the Supreme Court to dissent in the court’s recent ruling clearing the way for Donald Trump’s administration to resume mass job cuts and the restructuring of federal agencies.
In her dissent, Jackson criticized the court’s “enthusiasm for greenlighting this President’s legally dubious actions in an emergency posture” and called the decision “hubristic and senseless.”
She warned that the administration’s actions “promises mass employee terminations, widespread cancellation of federal programs and services, and the dismantling of much of the Federal Government as Congress has created it.”
Marco Rubio is headed to Malaysia this week, the Washington Post reports. The trip will mark the secretary of state’s first visit to Asia, which comes as the White House has just announced steep tariffs on goods imported from many other Asian nations.
Yesterday, Donald Trump announced 25% tariffs on goods from Malaysia, and equal or higher tariffs on goods from Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Thailand, Laos and Myanmar.
Relatedly, Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, told CNBC today that US officials will meet with their Chinese counterparts to discuss trade between the two countries next month.
Supreme court lifts order blocking Trump’s mass federal layoffs
The supreme court has cleared the way for Donald Trump’s administration to resume carrying out mass job cuts and the restructuring of agencies, key elements of his campaign to downsize and reshape the federal government.
The justices lifted San Francisco-based US district judge Susan Illston’s 22 May order that had blocked large-scale federal layoffs called “reductions in force” affecting potentially hundreds of thousands of jobs, while litigation in the case proceeds.
Workforce reductions were planned at the US departments of agriculture, commerce, health and human services, state, treasury, veterans affairs and more than a dozen other agencies.
Illston wrote in her ruling that Trump had exceeded his authority in ordering the downsizing, siding with a group of unions, non-profits and local governments that challenged the administration.
“As history demonstrates, the president may broadly restructure federal agencies only when authorized by Congress,” Illston wrote.
The judge blocked the agencies from carrying out mass layoffs and limited their ability to cut or overhaul federal programs. She also ordered the reinstatement of workers who had lost their jobs, though she delayed implementing this portion of her ruling while the appeals process plays out.
Illston’s ruling was the broadest of its kind against the government overhaul being pursued by Trump and Doge.
The San Francisco-based ninth US circuit court of appeals in a 2-1 ruling on 30 May denied the administration’s request to halt the judge’s ruling.
It said the administration had not shown that it would suffer an irreparable injury if the judge’s order remained in place and that the plaintiffs were likely to prevail in their lawsuit.
The ruling prompted the justice department’s 2 June emergency request to the supreme court to halt Illston’s order.
Controlling the personnel of federal agencies “lies at the heartland” of the president’s executive branch authority, the justice department said in its filing to the supreme court.
“The constitution does not erect a presumption against presidential control of agency staffing, and the president does not need special permission from Congress to exercise core Article II powers,” the filing said, referring to the constitution’s section delineating presidential authority.
The plaintiffs urged the supreme court to deny the request. Allowing the Trump administration to move forward with its “breakneck reorganization”, they wrote, would mean that “programs, offices and functions across the federal government will be abolished, agencies will be radically downsized from what Congress authorized, critical government services will be lost and hundreds of thousands of federal employees will lose their jobs”.
Trump says he will meet again with Netanyahu this evening
Donald Trump and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet again on Tuesday evening to discuss Gaza, a day after they met for hours while officials conducted indirect negotiations on a US-brokered ceasefire.
Trump and Netanyahu dined together on Monday at the White House during the Israeli leader’s third US visit since the president began his second term on 20 January.
Netanyahu spent much of Tuesday at the Capitol, telling reporters after a meeting with House speaker Mike Johnson that while he did not think Israel’s campaign in the Palestinian territory was done, negotiators are “certainly working” on a ceasefire.
“We have still to finish the job in Gaza, release all our hostages, eliminate and destroy Hamas’ military and government capabilities,” Netanyahu said.
Netanyahu’s plan to return to the White House at 4.30pm ET pushed back his meeting with Senate leaders to Wednesday.
Shortly after Netanyahu spoke, Trump envoy Steve Witkoff said he hoped to reach a temporary ceasefire agreement this week.
“We are hopeful that by the end of this week, we’ll have an agreement that will bring us into a 60-day ceasefire. Ten live hostages will be released. Nine deceased will be released,” Witkoff told reporters at a meeting of Trump’s cabinet earlier.
In his remarks to reporters at Congress, Netanyahu praised Trump, saying there has never been closer coordination between the US and Israel in his country’s history.
Pentagon provided $2.4tn to private arms firms to ‘fund war and weapons’, report finds
Andrew Roth
A new study of defense department spending previewed exclusively to the Guardian shows that most of the Pentagon’s discretionary spending from 2020 to 2024 has gone to outside military contractors, providing a $2.4tn boon in public funds to private firms in what was described as a “continuing and massive transfer of wealth from taxpayers to fund war and weapons manufacturing”.
The report from the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and Costs of War program at Brown University said that the Trump administration’s new Pentagon budget will push annual US military spending past the $1tn mark.
That will deliver a projected windfall of more than half a trillion dollars that will be shared among top arms firms such as Lockheed Martin and Raytheon as well as a growing military tech sector with close allies in the administration such as JD Vance, the report said.
The report is compiled of statistics of Pentagon spending and contracts from 2020 to 2024, during which time the top five Pentagon contractors (Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman) received $771bn in contract awards. Overall, private firms received approximately 54% of the department’s discretionary spending of $4.4tn over that period.
Taking into account supplemental funding for the Pentagon passed by Congress under Trump’s flagship sweeping tax and spending bill, the report said, the US military budget will have nearly doubled this century, increasing 99% since 2000.
“The US withdrawal from Afghanistan in September 2021 did not result in a peace dividend,” the authors of the report wrote. “Instead, President Biden requested, and Congress authorized, even higher annual budgets for the Pentagon, and President Trump is continuing that same trajectory of escalating military budgets.”
That contradicts early indications from Trump in February that he could cut military spending in half, adding that he would tell China and Russia that “there’s no reason for us to be spending almost $1tn on the military … and I’m going to say we can spend this on other things”. Instead, the spending bill pushed by Trump through Congress included a $157bn spending boost for the Pentagon.
Migrants deported from US to El Salvador prison remain under US control, Salvadorian officials tell UN
The government of El Salvador has acknowledged to United Nations investigators that the Trump administration maintains control of the Venezuelan men who were deported from the US to a notorious Salvadoran prison, contradicting past public statements by officials from both countries.
The revelation was contained in court filings on Monday by lawyers for more than 100 migrants who are seeking to challenge their deportations to El Salvador’s mega-prison known as Cecot.
“In this context, the jurisdiction and legal responsibility for these persons lie exclusively with the competent foreign authorities,” Salvadorian officials wrote in response to queries from the unit of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
The UN group has been looking into the fate of the men who were sent to El Salvador from the US in mid-March, even after a federal judge had ordered the planes that were carrying them to be turned around.
The Trump administration has argued that it is powerless to return the men, as they are beyond the reach of US courts and no longer have access to due process rights or other US constitutional guarantees.
But lawyers for the migrants said the UN report shows otherwise. American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Lee Gelernt said in an email:
El Salvador has confirmed what we and everyone else understood: it is the United States that controls what happens to the Venezuelans languishing at Cecot. Remarkably the US government didn’t provide this information to us or the court.
Skye Perryman, CEO and president of Democracy Forward, said the documents show “that the administration has not been honest with the court or the American people”. The ACLU and Democracy Forward are both representing the migrants.
A justice department spokesperson declined to comment. White House and homeland security department officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment from the Associated Press.
The US education secretary, Linda McMahon, yesterday threatened the state of California with legal action after the state refused to ban transgender girls from participating in girls’ sports as demanded by the Trump administration.
“@CAgovernor, you’ll be hearing from @AGPamBondi,” McMahon wrote on X, using the handles for California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, and the US attorney general, Pam Bondi.
McMahon’s statement was the latest salvo in the culture wars over transgender youth and ratchets up the personal rivalry between Trump and Newsom. Trump has made reversing advances in transgender rights a priority since returning to office on 20 January, while California law has allowed student athletes to participate in sports in alignment with their gender identity since 2013.
The justice department declined to comment and the education department did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for clarification on the meaning of McMahon’s comment.
California’s state education department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Newsom’s office and the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF), the governing body for high school sports, declined to comment.
The US education department issued a statement in June declaring California in violation of the Trump administration’s interpretation of Title IV, the education law banning sex-based discrimination, and demanding the state alter its policy. The state rejected the federal government’s directive, and in June filed a pre-enforcement lawsuit against the US justice department in anticipation of legal action.
With controversy brewing ahead of the state high school track and field championship in June, the CIF allowed girls displaced from the finals by a transgender athlete to also be granted space to compete. The CIF also allowed girls to appear on the winners’ podium if they would have won a medal without a transgender athlete competing.
As a result, the CIF crowned two champions in the girls’ high jump and triple jump after transgender girl AB Hernandez won both events.
Trump again floats federal takeover of Washington, DC
During his cabinet meeting, Donald Trump also suggested his administration was looking into taking over governance of Washington DC.
Trump said his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, was in close touch with the city’s mayor, Muriel Bowser, a Democrat.
It is not the first time the president floated a federal takeover of the city, home to the White House, Congress and the supreme court.
Trump told reporters in February: “I think we should take over Washington DC – make it safe. I think that we should govern District of Columbia.”
Under home rule, Congress already vets all laws in the city and federal lawmakers can overturn some of them. However, it would take an act of Congress to make federal rule a reality.
Both houses would have to vote to repeal the 1973 Home Rule Act. It would be a controversial move and unlikely to make it through.
Donald Trump said he would announce a 50% tariff on imported copper on Tuesday. The Trump administration announced a so-called Section 232 investigation into US imports of the red metal in February.
Trump had ordered the investigation into possible tariffs on copper imports to rebuild US production of a metal critical to electric vehicles, military hardware, semiconductors and a wide range of consumer goods.
Trump signed an order directing the commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, to start a new national security investigation under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, the same law that Trump used in his first term to impose 25% global tariffs on steel and aluminum.
A White House official said any potential tariff rate would be determined by the investigation, adding that Trump preferred tariffs over quotas.
The homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, said first responders in Texas are “still looking for a lot of little girls” who remain missing after a devastating flood in Texas.
Noem described the scene in Texas as Trump met with his cabinet at the White House on Tuesday.
Noem visited Camp Mystic in Kerrville on Saturday after the catastrophic flood on Friday.
You can read our Texas live coverage here:
Trump’s Middle East envoy says 60-day Gaza ceasefire could be finalized by end of week
A temporary ceasefire agreement in Gaza could be finalized by the end of the week, Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, said at the cabinet meeting.
Witkoff added that proximity talks had reduced outstanding issues from “four issues … to one”.
“We are hopeful that by the end of this week, we will have an agreement that will bring us into a 60-day ceasefire,” Witkoff said. “Ten live hostages will be released. Nine deceased will be released.”
Trump added that he would meet with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, later to discuss Gaza “almost exclusively”, describing the situation as “a tragedy” while claiming that the prime minister has been “very unfairly treated” because of his corruption trial.
“He’s been very unfairly treated. I think what they’ve done to him in Israel is very unfair. Having to do with this trial, he’s a wartime prime minister, had an unbelievable outcome, and I think he’s been treated very unfairly,” Trump said of Netanyahu.