Robert Tait in Washington

Groups say plan to resume limited humanitarian assistance under strict Israeli rules ‘risks enabling war crimes’

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Aid groups have voiced alarm at US moves to pressure them into accepting an Israeli proposal to resume limited humanitarian assistance to the war-ravaged territory under strictly controlled conditions.

The Trump administration has attempted to strong-arm international agencies – including the United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP) – into accepting Israel’s stringent rules for resuming deliveries, according to sources familiar with the discussions and news reports.

Georgetown professor called to testify says Republican-led proceedings ‘an attempt to chill protected speech’

A congressional panel investigating antisemitism on US college campuses on Wednesday was accused of trying to chill constitutionally protected free speech and likened to a cold-war era committee notorious for wrecking the lives of people suspected of communist sympathies.

The comparison was made by David Cole, a professor at Georgetown University law centre, who told the House education and workforce committee that its proceedings resembled those staged by the House un-American Activities Committee (Huac) during and after the second world war.

Daniel Lozano-Camargo, 20, was deported in March in violation of a legal settlement over his asylum application

The identity of a second man illegally deported from the US by the Trump administration in defiance of a court order and now in detention in El Salvador has been revealed.

Daniel Lozano-Camargo, a 20-year-old Venezuelan, was deported to El Salvador’s notorious Cecot terrorism confinement facility in March under the White House’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, Politico reported.

Former vice-president says tariffs ‘not a win for the American people’ and predicts public pressure will grow

Donald Trump’s tariffs policy will trigger a “price shock” and possible shortages, and lead to public pressure on him to change his approach, the former vice-president Mike Pence has said.

In one of his most wide-ranging critiques yet on the policies of the president he used to serve, Pence, speaking to CNN, derided the White House’s “wavering” support for Ukraine and declared – in direct contradiction of repeated assurances from Trump – that President Vladimir Putin of Russia “doesn’t want peace”.

Ignorance no barrier as president begins to put out approved version of history that ignores American failures

Donald Trump, it could be said, takes a breezy, Sam Cooke style approach to history.

Like the legendary “king of soul” in his 1960 hit Wonderful World, the US president has admitted to not knowing much about historical events or figures of the past – even when faced with authorities on the subject.

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Education, health, climate and more on chopping block and 13% rise – to over $1tn to Pentagon – in ‘skinny budget’

Donald Trump is proposing huge cuts to social programmes like health and education while planning substantial spending increases on defence and the Department of Homeland Security, in a White House budget blueprint that starkly illustrates his preoccupation with projecting military strength and deterring migration.

Cuts of $163bn on discretionary non-defence spending would also see financial outlays slashed for environmental and renewable energy schemes, as well as for the FBI, an agency Trump has claimed was weaponised against him during Joe Biden’s presidency. Spending reductions are also being projected for the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Secretary of state will take on dual role as national security adviser – and just like half a century ago, times are turbulent

Marco Rubio, you have come a long way.

From being ridiculed as “Little Marco” by Donald Trump during the 2016 Republican primaries, the former Florida senator now stands – on paper, at least – as the US’s most powerful diplomat since Henry Kissinger half a century ago after his former nemesis appointed him acting national security adviser to replace the departing Mike Waltz.

Four ex-heads of US embassies in nations that swung from democracies to dictatorships say landscape eerily familiar

The US is treading the path followed by democracies that descended into authoritarianism and dictatorship, former ambassadors to countries that underwent autocratic takeovers have warned.

At a panel discussion held to mark Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office, four ex-heads of American embassies in countries that had experienced swings away from democracy said the current domestic political landscape felt eerily familiar and was pervaded by a “climate of fear” deliberately created to make opponents “back off”.