White House: Tariffs to stay despite legal setback
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you the latest news lines over the next few hours.
We start with news that president Trump’s top economic advisers have said they would not be deterred by a court ruling that declared many of the administration’s tariffs illegal.
They cited other legal options the White House could use to pressure China and other countries into trade talks.
They also indicated that Trump had no plans to extend a 90-day pause on some of the highest tariffs, making it more likely those duties will take effect in July.
“Rest assured, tariffs are not going away,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said on Fox News Sunday.
Asked about the future of the suspended reciprocal tariffs first announced in April, Lutnick added: “I don’t see today that an extension is coming.”
It comes as China accused the US of “seriously violating” the fragile US-China detente that has been in place for less than a month since the two countries agreed to pause the trade war that risked upending the global economy.
China and the US agreed on 12 May to pause for 90 days the skyrocketing “reciprocal” tariffs that both countries had placed on the others goods in a frenzied trade war that started a few weeks earlier.
Tariffs had reached 125% on each side, which officials feared amounted to virtual embargo on trade between the world’s two biggest economies.
In other news:
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The US veterans agency has ordered scientists not to publish in journals without clearance. The edict, laid down in emails on Friday by Curt Cashour, the VA’s assistant secretary for public and intergovernmental affairs, and John Bartrum, a senior adviser to VA secretary Doug Collins, came hours after the article published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
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Russell Vought, the director of the office of management and budget (OMB), on Sunday cast doubt on the constitutional obligation of the White House to ask Congress to sign off on Donald Trump’s massive cuts to the federal workforce spearheaded by Elon Musk. Vought indicated the White House preferred to rely on “executive tools” for all but a “necessary” fraction of the cuts instead of submitting the whole package of jobs and agency slashing that took place via the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), to the congressional branch for its official approval.
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The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) removed a list of “sanctuary” states, cities and counties from its website following sharp criticism from a sheriffs’ association that said a list of “noncompliant” sheriffs could severely damage the relationship between the Trump administration and law enforcement.
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The White House budget director Russ Vought on Sunday dismissed as “totally ridiculous” fears expressed by voters that cuts to benefits in the huge spending bill passed by the House will lead to premature deaths in America. Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, now awaiting debate in the US Senate, will slash two major federal safety net programs, Medicaid, which provides healthcare to poor and disabled Americans, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), which helps people afford groceries, which will affect millions of people if it becomes law.
Key events
The attack in Boulder occurred as people with a volunteer group called Run For Their Lives was concluding a weekly demonstration to raise visibility of the hostages who remain in Gaza.
Video from the scene shows a witness shouting, “He’s right there. He’s throwing molotov cocktails”, as a police officer with his gun drawn advances on a bare-chested suspect holding containers in each hand.
Alex Osante, of San Diego, said he was having lunch on a restaurant patio when he heard the crash of a bottle breaking on the ground, a “boom” sound followed by people yelling and screaming, AP reported.
In video of the scene captured by Osante, people can be seen pouring water on a woman lying on the ground who he said had caught on fire during the attack.
A man, who later identified himself as an Israeli visiting Boulder who decided to join the group that day, ran up to Osante on the video asking for some water to help.
After the initial attack, Osante said the suspect went behind some bushes and then re-emerged and threw a petrol bomb but apparently accidentally caught himself on fire as he threw it.
The man then took off his shirt and what appeared to be a bulletproof vest before the police arrived. The man dropped to the ground and was arrested without any apparent resistance.
One of the victims in Sunday’s attack on a group of Jewish community members in Colorado is a Holocaust survivor, a witness told CNN.
Eight people, ages 52 to 88, were injured when a suspect used a flame-thrower and molotov cocktails, according to the FBI.
One was “very seriously injured,” said Boulder police chief Stephen Redfearn.
Chany Scheiner, a friend of the survivor, told CNN affiliate KUSA:
She has spoken at our synagogues as well as other synagogues and schools just about her background and the Holocaust and from her own perspective.
She is passionate about standing up for good things and she is an extremely exceptional person. Always a smile on her face.
Her life wasn’t easy, but she is just a bright light. And anybody who is her friend is a friend for life.
A 45-year-old man, named as Mohamed Sabry Soliman, was arrested on Monday in Boulder, Colorado, after he allegedly threw an incendiary device at a crowd gathered to support hostages held in Gaza.
“It is clear that this is a targeted act of violence and the FBI is investigating this as an act of terrorism,” Mark Michalek, an FBI special agent, told a press conference.
Those injured were aged between 67 and 88, police said.
Key US weather monitoring offices understaffed as hurricane season starts
Oliver Milman
More than a dozen National Weather Service (NWS) forecast offices along the hurricane-prone Gulf of Mexico coast are understaffed as the US plunges into an expected active season for ruinous storms, data seen by the Guardian shows.
There is a lack of meteorologists in 15 of the regional weather service offices along the coastline from Texas to Florida, as well as in Puerto Rico – an area that takes the brunt of almost all hurricanes that hit the US. Several offices, including in Miami, Jacksonville, Puerto Rico and Houston, lack at least a third of all the meteorologists required to be fully staffed.
Meanwhile, the National Hurricane Center (NHC), the Miami-based nerve center for tracking hurricanes, is short five specialists, the Guardian has learned, despite assurances from the Trump administration that it is fully staffed ahead of what’s anticipated to be a busy hurricane season that officially started on Sunday.
The center and local field offices work together to alert and prepare communities for incoming hurricanes, but they have been hit by job cuts and a hiring freeze imposed by the president, with more than 600 staff departing the NWS since Trump took power.
“The system is already overstretched and at some point it will snap,” said Tom Fahy, legislative director of the National Weather Service Employees Organization, an independent labor union and provider of the office staffing data. “We are at the snapping point now.”
Joanna Walters
The White House budget director Russ Vought on Sunday dismissed as “totally ridiculous” fears expressed by voters that cuts to benefits in the huge spending bill passed by the House will lead to premature deaths in America.
Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill act, now awaiting debate in the US Senate, will slash two major federal safety net programs, Medicaid, which provides healthcare to poor and disabled Americans, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), which helps people afford groceries, which will affect millions of people if it becomes law.
Vought, director of the office of management and budget (OMB) and a key figure in Project 2025, the rightwing manifesto created to guide a second Trump term, defended the bill in an appearance on CNN on Sunday morning, also defending the lacerations to the federal workforce under Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge).
Vought was asked about a town hall meeting in Iowa last week hosted by the senator Joni Ernst where, when fielding questions about proposed cuts to Medicaid, a constituent yelled out that as a result people were going to die.
Ernst responded, to jeers: “People are not – well, we all are going to die. For heaven’s sakes, folks.”
Then, after the exchange went viral online, she posted a sarcastic non-apology video on Saturday, saying: “I made an incorrect assumption that everyone in the auditorium understood that yes, we are all going to perish from this Earth. So I apologize. And I’m really, really glad that I did not have to bring up the subject of the tooth fairy as well.”
The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) removed a list of “sanctuary” states, cities and counties from its website following sharp criticism from a sheriffs’ association that said a list of “noncompliant” sheriffs could severely damage the relationship between the Trump administration and law enforcement.
DHS on Thursday published a list of what it called sanctuary jurisdictions that it deemed were included in areas that have a policy of limiting cooperation with federal immigration enforcement. The list prompted a response from the National Sheriffs’ Association, which represents more than 3,000 elected sheriffs across the country and generally supports federal immigration enforcement.
Sheriff Kieran Donahue, president of the association, said in a statement on Saturday that DHS published “a list of alleged noncompliant sheriffs in a manner that lacks transparency and accountability”. Donahue said the list was created without input from sheriffs and “violated the core principles of trust, cooperation, and partnership with fellow law enforcement”.
Donald Trump had called for his administration to tally apparent sanctuary jurisdictions, in a late April executive order, saying the lack of cooperation amounted to “a lawless insurrection”.
The DHS website listing the jurisdictions was offline on Sunday, an issue that Fox News host Maria Bartiromo raised with the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, on the talkshow Sunday Morning Futures.
“I saw that there was a list produced,” Bartiromo said. “Now, the list I don’t see anymore in the media. Do you have a list of the sanctuary cities that are actually hiding illegals right now?”
Noem did not acknowledge the list being taken offline but said some localities had bristled.
José Olivares
Russell Vought, the director of the office of management and budget (OMB), on Sunday cast doubt on the constitutional obligation of the White House to ask Congress to sign off on Donald Trump’s massive cuts to the federal workforce spearheaded by Elon Musk.
Vought indicated the White House preferred to rely on “executive tools” for all but a “necessary” fraction of the cuts instead of submitting the whole package of jobs and agency slashing that took place via the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), to the congressional branch for its official approval.
The White House budget director, in an interview with CNN on Sunday, also defended the widespread future cost-cutting proposed by the US president’s One Big Beautiful Bill act that was passed by the House last week, which covers budget proposals for the next fiscal year starting in October.
But, as Dana Bash, CNN’s State of the Union host, pointed out, Doge cut “funding and programs that Congress already passed”. And while those cuts, cited by the departing Musk as being worth $175bn, are tiny compared with the trillion or more he forecast, Vought said OMB was only going to submit about $9.4bn to Congress this week for sign-off. That amount is understood to mostly cover the crushing of the USAID agency and cuts to public broadcasting, which have prompted outrage and lawsuits.
Aaron Glantz
Senior officials at the US Department of Veterans Affairs have ordered that VA physicians and scientists not publish in medical journals or speak with the public without first seeking clearance from political appointees of Donald Trump, the Guardian has learned.
The edict, laid down in emails on Friday by Curt Cashour, the VA’s assistant secretary for public and intergovernmental affairs, and John Bartrum, a senior adviser to VA secretary Doug Collins, came hours after the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine published a perspective co-authored by two pulmonologists who work for the VA in Texas.
“We have guidance for this,” wrote Cashour, a former Republican congressional aide and campaign consultant, attaching the journal article. “These people did not follow it.”
The article warned that cancelled contracts, layoffs and a planned staff reduction of 80,000 employees in the nation’s largest integrated healthcare system jeopardizes the health of a million veterans seeking help for conditions linked to toxic exposure – ranging from Vietnam veterans exposed to Agent Orange to veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan who developed cancer after being exposed to smoke from piles of flaming toxic waste.
“As pulmonologists in the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), we have been seeing increasing numbers of veterans with chronic bronchitis, pulmonary fibrosis, asthma, and other respiratory conditions,” doctors Pavan Ganapathiraju and Rebecca Traylor wrote.
The authors, who practice at the VA in Austin, Texas, noted that in 2022 Congress dramatically expanded the number of medical conditions presumed to be linked to military service.
Boulder attack suspect lives in US illegally, White House says
The White House said on Sunday that the suspect arrested in connection with the Boulder, Colorado attack is an undocumented immigrant who overstayed a visa.
“A terror attack was committed in Boulder, Colorado by an illegal alien,” said Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security adviser, in a statement on X.
“He was granted a tourist visa by the Biden administration and then he illegally overstayed that visa. In response, the Biden administration gave him a work permit. Suicidal migration must be fully reversed,” he continued.
Law enforcement identified the suspect as Mohamed Soliman, 45. The attack occurred during a peaceful weekly walk organized to show solidarity with hostages held by Hamas in Gaza and to call for their release, The Hill reported.
At a press conference, FBI Special Agent in Charge Mark Michalek said the suspect used a “makeshift flame-thrower” and incendiary devices during the attack and reportedly shouted “free Palestine.”
Six people, aged 67 to 88, were injured and hospitalized, with two airlifted to a burn unit. The FBI and local authorities are investigating the incident as an act of terrorism.
White House: Tariffs to stay despite legal setback
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you the latest news lines over the next few hours.
We start with news that president Trump’s top economic advisers have said they would not be deterred by a court ruling that declared many of the administration’s tariffs illegal.
They cited other legal options the White House could use to pressure China and other countries into trade talks.
They also indicated that Trump had no plans to extend a 90-day pause on some of the highest tariffs, making it more likely those duties will take effect in July.
“Rest assured, tariffs are not going away,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said on Fox News Sunday.
Asked about the future of the suspended reciprocal tariffs first announced in April, Lutnick added: “I don’t see today that an extension is coming.”
It comes as China accused the US of “seriously violating” the fragile US-China detente that has been in place for less than a month since the two countries agreed to pause the trade war that risked upending the global economy.
China and the US agreed on 12 May to pause for 90 days the skyrocketing “reciprocal” tariffs that both countries had placed on the others goods in a frenzied trade war that started a few weeks earlier.
Tariffs had reached 125% on each side, which officials feared amounted to virtual embargo on trade between the world’s two biggest economies.
In other news:
-
The US veterans agency has ordered scientists not to publish in journals without clearance. The edict, laid down in emails on Friday by Curt Cashour, the VA’s assistant secretary for public and intergovernmental affairs, and John Bartrum, a senior adviser to VA secretary Doug Collins, came hours after the article published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
-
Russell Vought, the director of the office of management and budget (OMB), on Sunday cast doubt on the constitutional obligation of the White House to ask Congress to sign off on Donald Trump’s massive cuts to the federal workforce spearheaded by Elon Musk. Vought indicated the White House preferred to rely on “executive tools” for all but a “necessary” fraction of the cuts instead of submitting the whole package of jobs and agency slashing that took place via the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), to the congressional branch for its official approval.
-
The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) removed a list of “sanctuary” states, cities and counties from its website following sharp criticism from a sheriffs’ association that said a list of “noncompliant” sheriffs could severely damage the relationship between the Trump administration and law enforcement.
-
The White House budget director Russ Vought on Sunday dismissed as “totally ridiculous” fears expressed by voters that cuts to benefits in the huge spending bill passed by the House will lead to premature deaths in America. Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, now awaiting debate in the US Senate, will slash two major federal safety net programs, Medicaid, which provides healthcare to poor and disabled Americans, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), which helps people afford groceries, which will affect millions of people if it becomes law.
