Closing summary
We are wrapping up our live coverage of the second Trump administration for the day, but will be back at it on Friday. In the meantime, here are the latest developments:
The Texas attorney general Ken Paxton and state house speaker Dustin Burrows have filed a lawsuit in Illinois to enforce arrest warrants against Democratic lawmakers who left Texas to block Republicans from enacting a gerrymandered congressional map that would likely add five more Republican seats before next year’s midterm elections. The civil petition was filed in an Adams county, Illinois, circuit court, about a four and a half hour drive from Chicago. More than 30 Texas Democratic members are named in the suit.
Donald Trump’s administration turned to the US supreme court in an effort to defend its aggressive immigration raids after a federal judge in Los Angeles blocked agents from profiling individuals based on race or language in pursuit of deportation targets. The justice department asked the supreme court in an emergency filing to lift the judge’s order temporarily barring agents from stopping or detaining people without “reasonable suspicion” that they are in the country illegally, by relying solely on their race or ethnicity, or if they speak Spanish or English with an accent.
Donald Trump will announce a peace deal between Azerbaijan and Armenia on Friday 8 August, according to reports from both Reuters and CBS News. The respective leaders of both Azerbaijan and Armenia, Ilham Aliyev and Nikol Pashinyan, will attend events at the White House tomorrow, despite decades-long tension between the two countries.
Colleges and universities will be forced to disclose more student admissions data to prove that they are not implementing affirmative action policies, according to a directive sent by the White House on Thursday. The move comes as the Trump administration seeks to crack down on the use of race in the higher education application process. Ivy League universities, like Brown University, have reached settlements that require them to release information about applicants’ race.
More than 60 countries around the world are scrambling to respond to the latest wave of US tariffs announced by Donald Trump, which came into force on Thursday. Industry representatives in rich and poor countries warned of job losses as the tariffs upended a decades-old world trading system with rates ranging from 10% to 39%, 40% and 41% for Switzerland, Brazil and Syria. All over the globe, leaders were attempting to put contingencies in place after Trump’s tariff threats turned to reality at a minute past midnight Washington time.
Donald Trump has said he was ready to meet Vladimir Putin despite the Russian leader’s refusal to meet Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy – dispelling speculation that direct talks between the two warring presidents were a precondition to a high-level US-Russia summit. Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday, Trump said that Putin did not have to meet with Zelenskyy first before the US and Russian presidents could meet.
Donald Trump has called on Intel’s chief executive to resign, alleging Lip-Bu Tan had ties to the Chinese Communist party, sending the stock of the US chipmaker falling. “The CEO of Intel is highly CONFLICTED and must resign, immediately,” Trump posted on Truth Social about Tan. “There is no other solution to this problem. Thank you for your attention to this problem!”
Donald Trump announced on Thursday that he has ordered the commerce department to conduct a new census that would exclude undocumented immigrants from the official count. In a post on Truth Social, Trump said the census would be “based on modern day facts and figures” and use “results and information gained from the Presidential Election of 2024”. He added that “people who are in our country illegally will not be counted”.
The US energy secretary, Chris Wright, is facing growing criticism from scientists who say their “worst fears” were realized when Wright revealed that the Trump administration would “update” the US’s premier climate crisis reports. Wright, a former oil and gas executive, told CNN’s Kaitlin Collins earlier this week that the administration was reviewing national climate assessment reports published by past governments.
A coalition of conservation groups has welcomed a federal judge’s ruling on Thursday that halts construction work on the immigration jail in the Florida Everglades known as Alligator Alcatraz. US district judge Kathleen Williams ordered workers to stop adding any new paving, infrastructure or ground filling at the remote tented detention camp that the Trump administration intends to use to eventually hold 3,000 immigrants awaiting deportation.
Leading Democrats are sounding the alarm over Donald Trump’s reported plan to divert funds from the US nuclear arsenal to convert a luxury jet gifted by Qatar into a new Air Force One. The US president provoked an outcry in May when it emerged that he would accept a $400m Boeing 747-8 jet as a free gift from the Qatari royal family. Stripping down and securing the plane so it can transport Trump for a few years will cost taxpayers an estimated $1bn.
White House signals increase in federal law enforcement in DC - report
The Trump administration plans to increase the federal law enforcement presence in Washington DC as early as Friday morning, CBS News reports.
The move follows the alleged assault of a former staffer of the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), Edward Coristine, over the weekend.
In a Truth Social post on Wednesday, Trump said that he may place DC under federal control if the city doesn’t “get its act together, and quickly”.
Officers will come from the DC national guard, FBI, US marshals, Ice, US Secret Service and other components of the Department of Homeland Security, according to an official who spoke with the news outlet.
A White House official told CBS News that the increased federal law enforcement presence on DC streets would begin at midnight Thursday and focus on tourist areas and other known hot spots.
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