Trump administration lays off hundreds of Voice of America employees
The Trump administration sent layoff notices today to more than 600 employees at Voice of America, a federally funded news organization that provides independent reporting to countries with limited press freedom, the New York Times reports.
The layoffs will reduce the staff at the agency to fewer than 200, around one-seventh of its total at the start of 2025. The notices put journalists and support staff on paid leave until they are officially let go on 1 September.
In March, Donald Trump accused Voice of America of spreading “anti-American” and partisan “propaganda” and called it “the voice of radical America”. He later signed an executive order that effectively called for the dismantling of the agency and put nearly all Voice of America reporters on paid leave.
Key events
The US supreme court has declined to speed up its consideration of whether to take up a challenge to Trump’s sweeping tariffs before the lower courts have ruled in the dispute.
The supreme court denied a request by a family-owned toy company, Learning Resources, that filed the legal challenge against Trump’s tariffs to expedite the review of the dispute by the court.
The company previously won a court ruling in May that said Trump cannot unilaterally impose tariffs using the emergency legal authority he had cited for them. That ruling is currently on hold, leaving the tariffs in place for now.
Learning Resources asked the Supreme Court to take the rare step of immediately hearing the case to decide the legality of the tariffs, effectively skipping over the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in Washington, where the case is pending.
Two district courts have ruled that Trump’s tariffs are not justified under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the law that Trump cited for them. Both of those cases are currently on appeal. No court so far has backed the sweeping emergency tariff authority Trump has claimed.
Judge orders Mahmoud Khalil be freed from detention
A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to release Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil from immigration detention, a ruling that would end his three-month detention.
Judge Michael Farbiarz made the ruling from the bench in federal court in New Jersey today. Lawyers for the Columbia graduate had asked a federal judge to immediately release him on bail from a Louisiana jail, or else transfer him to New Jersey, where he can be closer to his wife and newborn son.
The same judge had ruled earlier that the government can continue to detain the legal US resident based on allegations that he lied on his green card application. Khalil disputes the accusations that he wasn’t forthcoming on the application.
Trump presided over a national security meeting about Iran with top aides at the White House today, a US official told Reuters.
The official also said US special envoy Steve Witkoff was in regular contact with the Iranians, both directly and indirectly, with Qatar acting as an intermediator.
Trump administration lays off hundreds of Voice of America employees
The Trump administration sent layoff notices today to more than 600 employees at Voice of America, a federally funded news organization that provides independent reporting to countries with limited press freedom, the New York Times reports.
The layoffs will reduce the staff at the agency to fewer than 200, around one-seventh of its total at the start of 2025. The notices put journalists and support staff on paid leave until they are officially let go on 1 September.
In March, Donald Trump accused Voice of America of spreading “anti-American” and partisan “propaganda” and called it “the voice of radical America”. He later signed an executive order that effectively called for the dismantling of the agency and put nearly all Voice of America reporters on paid leave.
Joseph Gedeon
A fresh wave of violent threats and incidents targeting elected officials broke out in the US this week, prompting more urgent calls for increased security measures just days after the killing of a Minnesota state legislator and the shooting of another.
Amid a series of attacks involving federal and local officials, the latest incidents included death threats against Zohran Mamdani, a New York mayoral candidate; a purported road rage attack on Max Miller, the Ohio congressman; and an alleged kidnapping attempt targeting Paul Young, the mayor of Memphis.
The New York police department (NYPD) hate crimes taskforce is investigating multiple death threats against Mamdani, a Muslim democratic socialist candidate in the final stretch of his campaign who is endorsed by national figures such as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The intimidation included threats to blow up his car and Islamophobic voicemails left at Mamdani’s office in the city’s Queens borough.
“The violent and specific language of what appears to be a repeat caller is alarming and we are taking every precaution,” his campaign said on Thursday, blaming the threats on “dehumanizing, Islamophobic rhetoric designed to stoke division and hate”.
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Donald Trump has once again brought up his baseless claim that the 2020 election was fraudulent, this time saying in a Truth Social post that he wants a “special prosecutor” to investigate the election.
Writing on his social media platform on Friday, Trump lashed out at his predecessor, saying:
“Biden was grossly incompetent, and the 2020 election was a total FRAUD! The evidence is MASSIVE and OVERWHELMING. A Special Prosecutor must be appointed. This cannot be allowed to happen again in the United States of America! Let the work begin!”
Trump’s latest attempts at reviving his longstanding grievance against Biden comes as his administration faces the critical decision of whether to involve the US in the Iran-Israel conflict, a question that many foreign policy experts have likened to the US decision to invade Iraq in 2003.
Andrew Roth
Elizabeth Warren has confronted the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, over reports that the state department is considering redirecting $500m from USAID to the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
In a letter addressed to Rubio and USAID’s acting administrator, Kenneth Jackson, the Massachusetts senator argued that the GHF, a self-proclaimed aid organisation that is backed by the Israeli and US governments, “marks an alarming departure from the professional humanitarian organizations that have worked on the ground, in Gaza and elsewhere, for decades”.
“The questions surrounding GHF – its funding sources and connection to the Trump Administration, its use of private contractors, its ability to serve and be seen as a neutral entity, its abandonment by its founders, and its basic competence in providing aid – must be answered before the State Department commits any funding to the organization,” Warren wrote in the letter, a copy of which was provided exclusively to the Guardian.
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222 Mexican nationals detained in US since LA Ice raids began, Sheinbaum says
At least 222 Mexican nationals have been detained in the US since a series of immigration raids in Los Angeles and subsequent protests against them started up in recent weeks, Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, said today.
She did not clarify where they had been apprehended or what their legal status was.
Vance travels to LA to meet with marines
JD Vance is traveling to Los Angeles today to meet with marines and visit various federal command centers.
The vice-president is expected to tour a multiagency Federal Joint Operations Center and a Federal Mobile Command Center. Vance’s office did not release a topic of discussion for his visit, but it is speculated to be related to the protests against the Trump administration’s mass deportation operations.
Trump deployed national guard troops to downtown LA earlier this month in response to the protests. The state sued for a temporary injunction to stop the deployment, but a federal appeals court ruled in the president’s favor on Thursday night while that legal challenge continues.
A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from withholding billions of dollars in transportation funds from states that don’t agree to participate in some immigration enforcement actions.
Twenty states sued after they said the US transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, threatened to cut off funding to states that refused to comply with President Trump’s immigration agenda. US district judge John McConnell Jr has barred federal transportation officials from carrying out that threat before the lawsuit is fully resolved.
An attorney for the Department of Transportation had argued that the department had the legal discretion to set conditions on states receiving the congressionally appropriated funds.
“The Court finds that the States have demonstrated they will face irreparable and continuing harm if forced to agree to Defendants’ unlawful and unconstitutional immigration conditions imposed in order to receive federal transportation grant funds,” wrote McConnell, adding that the states are “being put in a position of relinquishing their sovereign right to decide how to use their own police officers” and are “at risk of losing the trust built between local law enforcement and immigrant communities”.
What is Donald Trump’s plan for Iran? Is he about to break his campaign pledge of “no more wars”? And if he does, could this be the moment he loses some of his most loyal Maga supporters?
The Guardian’s Rachel Leingang and Andrew Roth discuss in the latest episode of the Politics Weekly America podcast.
US supreme court rules fuel firms can challenge California’s emission limits
Oliver Milman
Fossil fuel companies are able to challenge California’s ability to set stricter standards reducing the amount of polluting coming from cars, the US supreme court has ruled in a case that is set to unravel one of the key tools used to curb planet-heating emissions in recent years.
The conservative-dominated supreme court voted by seven to two to back a challenge by oil and gas companies, along with 17 Republican-led states, to a waiver that California has received periodically from the federal government since 1967 that allows the state to set tougher standards than national rules limiting pollution from cars. The state has separately stipulated that only zero-emission cars will be able to be sold there by 2035.
Although states are typically not allowed to set their own standards aside from the federal Clean Air Act, California has been given unique authority to do so via a waiver that has seen it become a pioneer in pushing for cleaner cars. Other states are allowed to copy California’s stricter standard, too.
But oil and gas companies, as well as Republican politicians, have complained about the waiver, arguing that it caused financial harm.
