Harvard says Trump administration’s block on international student enrollment ‘unlawful’ – US politics live

The supreme court declined to reinstate independent agency board members fired by Donald Trump.

The court’s action extended an order chief justice John Roberts issued in April that had the effect of removing two board members whom Trump fired from agencies that deal with labor issues, including one with a key role for federal workers as the president aims to drastically downsize the workforce.

Neither agency has enough appointed members to take final actions on issues before them, as Trump has not sought to appoint replacements.

The decision Thursday keeps on hold an appellate ruling that had temporarily reinstated Gwynne Wilcox to the National Labor Relations Board and Cathy Harris to the Merit Systems Protection Board.

Harris and Wilcox have been repeatedly fired and reinstated since Trump’s inauguration following contradictory rulings.

The shooting of the two Israeli embassy staff members was captured on surveillance video outside the museum, court documents show, which authorities say showed Elias Rodriguez firing at the victims several more times after they fell to the ground.

After he was arrested, Rodriguez told detectives that he admired the man who set himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in February 2024 and described the man as “courageous” and a “martyr,” court documents say.

Rodriguez also told detectives that he purchased tickets to the event at the museum about three hours before it started, according to the court documents.

Lauren Gambino and David Smith are reporting the latest on the killing of two Israeli embassy staff members:

Jeanine Pirro, the interim US attorney for Washington, said at a press conference on Thursday afternoon that authorities were also investigating as a “hate crime and a crime of terrorism” the killings that left the US capital in shock as world leaders condemned the “horrible” and “antisemitic” shootings.

The Trump administration has drawn condemnation from free speech groups, including the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which said Noem is demanding a “surveillance state”, after the Department of Homeland Security revoked Harvard University’s ability to enroll international students.

“The Department’s demand that Harvard produce audio and video footage of all protest activity involving international students over the last five years is gravely alarming,” said Will Creeley, FIRE’s legal director. “This sweeping fishing expedition reaches protected expression and must be flatly rejected.”

The Republican-controlled Senate voted to revoke California’s progressive vehicle emission standards, including a rule that would’ve effectively banned the sale of new gasoline-only cars by 2035.

In a 51-44 vote, the Senate overturned a Biden-era waiver that enabled California and a contingent of Democratic-led states to enforce zero-emission requirements for the sale of new passenger vehicles.

Legislators struck down a landmark regulation that aimed to drastically accelerate electric vehicle sales in California and nearly a dozen other states that chose to follow its lead, substantially reducing air pollution and planet-warming carbon emissions from tailpipes.

California governor Gavin Newsom posted on X that the Senate is “trying to illegally wipe out California’s clean air rules – the same rules that have reduced pollution and kept generations of Californians healthy”.

The suspect, Elias Rodriguez, was charged in Washington DC ahead of his initial appearance at E Barrett Prettyman federal courthouse.

Rodriguez is facing two counts of first-degree murder in the killings of ​Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim. He also faces charges of the murder of foreign officials, causing the death of a person through the use of a firearm and discharge of a firearm during a crime of violence.

Records say the suspect told police: “I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza”.

The man accused of killing two staff members of the Israeli embassy in DC was charged with murder of foreign officials and other crimes, the AP reports.

The killings occurred shortly after 9pm on Wednesday evening, outside the Capital Jewish Museum, where, according to officials, a gunman approached a group leaving an event hosted by the American Jewish Committee and opened fire at close range.

We’ll have more details as they come in.

Donald Trump has raised at least $600m in political donations ahead of the midterm elections, the AP reports. That’s a record-breaking amount for a president who can’t run for office again.

Trump is aggressively fundraising with a goal of reaching $1bn to support his political agenda and help Republicans keep control of Congress next year, sources told the news agency.

By out-raising Democrats and boosting GOP candidates, the president aims to extend his political influence long after leaving office.

Any leftover funds could help him shape the Republican party’s future, possibly through 2028 or beyond, as a major political force and party kingmaker.

“It’s leverage,” Marc Short, who served as Trump’s director of legislative affairs during his first term and later as Vice-President Mike Pence’s chief of staff, told the AP. “It’s a reflection of the power that he still holds.”

• The Trump administration has said it is halting Harvard University’s ability to enroll international students and has ordered existing international students at the university to transfer or lose their legal status. On Thursday, the New York Times reported that the Trump administration notified Harvard about its decision following ongoing correspondence regarding the “legality of a sprawling records request”, according to three people familiar with the matter. The records request comes as part of an investigation by the homeland security department in which federal officials are threatening the university’s international student admissions. Story here.

• A federal judge in California blocked the Trump administration from terminating the legal status of international students at universities across the US, reports the Associated Press. District Judge Jeffrey S White also barred the administration from arresting or detaining foreign-born students based on their immigration status while a legal challenge to earlier terminations proceeds through the courts. In the injunction, White said that the Trump administration has “wreaked havoc” on the lives of the plaintiffs as well as other international students.

• Authorities were investigating a brazen attack that killed two young Israeli embassy staff members outside an event at the Jewish museum in downtown Washington DC, leaving the US capital in shock as world leaders condemned the “horrible” and “antisemitic” shootings. Early on Thursday morning, federal agents in tactical gear descended on a Chicago apartment believed to be the alleged gunman’s home. According to a post on X from the FBI’s Washington field office, agents in Chicago were “conducting court-authorized law enforcement activity” that it said was “in relation to yesterday’s tragic shooting in Washington, DC”. More here.

• Donald Trump showed a screenshot of a Reuters video taken in the Democratic Republic of Congo as part of what he falsely presented on Wednesday as evidence of mass killings of white South Africans, Reuters itself reports. “These are all white farmers that are being buried,” said Trump, holding up a print-out of an article accompanied by the picture during a contentious Oval Office meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. In fact, the video published by Reuters on February 3 and subsequently verified by the new agency’s fact check team, showed humanitarian workers lifting body bags in the Congolese city of Goma. The image was pulled from Reuters footage shot following deadly battles with Rwanda-backed M23 rebels.

• Mahmoud Khalil, the detained Palestinian activist, was allowed to hold his one-month-old son for the first time after a federal judge blocked the Trump administration’s efforts to keep the father and infant separated by a plexiglass divider, reports the Associated Press. The visit today came ahead of a scheduled immigration hearing for Khalil, a legal permanent resident and Columbia University graduate who has been held in a Louisiana jail since 8 March.

• A Republican push to dismantle clean energy incentives threatens to reverberate across the US by costing more than 830,000 jobs, raising energy bills for US households and threatening to unleash millions more tonnes of the planet-heating pollution that is causing the climate crisis, experts have warned. A major tax bill moving through the Republican-held House of Representatives will, as currently written, demolish key components of climate legislation signed by Joe Biden that has spurred a record torrent of renewable energy and electric vehicle investment in the US. Story by Oliver Milman here.

• A federal judge has blocked Donald Trump’s executive order to shut down the Department of Education and ordered the agency to reinstate employees who were fired in mass layoffs. US district judge Myong Joun in Boston granted a preliminary injunction stopping the Trump administration from carrying out two plans announced in March that sought to work toward Trump’s goal to dismantle the department.

• Republicans in the House of Representatives won passage on Thursday of a major bill to enact Donald Trump’s tax and spending priorities while adding trillions of dollars to the US debt and potentially prevent millions of Americans from accessing federal safety net benefits. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act was approved in the early morning hours along party lines by the slim Republican majority, with 215 votes in favor and 214 against. Its passage ended weeks of negotiations that drew into question the GOP’s ability to find agreement on Trump’s top legislative priority in a chamber they control by just three seats. Story here.

• A new report led by the health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, lays out a dark vision of American children’s health and calls for agencies to examine vaccines, ultra-processed foods, environmental chemicals, lack of exercise and “overmedicalization”. Kennedy has made combatting the chronic disease “epidemic” a cornerstone of his vision for the US, even as he has ignored common causes of chronic conditions, such as smoking and alcohol use. More here.

A federal judge in California blocked the Trump administration from terminating the legal status of international students at universities across the US, reports the Associated Press.

District Judge Jeffrey S White also barred the administration from arresting or detaining foreign-born students based on their immigration status while a legal challenge to earlier terminations proceeds through the courts.

In the injunction, White said that the Trump administration has “wreaked havoc” on the lives of the plaintiffs as well as other international students.

“At each turn in this and similar litigation across the nation, Defendants have abruptly changed course to satisfy courts’ expressed concerns,” the judge said. “It is unclear how this game of whack-a-mole will end unless Defendants are enjoined from skirting their own mandatory regulations.”