Multiple Republican senators objected to sending taxpayer dollars to the president’s East Wing revamp

In a blow to the White House, Senate Republicans will remove a $1 billion Secret Service funding request that would help Donald Trump’s ballroom project from their immigration enforcement funding bill amid internal objections. “We were told that the ballroom money is out,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) told reporters after a GOP lunch meeting Wednesday, adding he’d “like to read the text.” The decision to omit the security funding came after twin blows: Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough ruled over the weekend that the provision didn’t comply with the strict rules governing what Republicans can put in their filibuster-skirting bill because it funded activities outside of the Judiciary Committee’s jurisdiction.

Suit says administration is impinging on rights to life and liberty by worsening planet-warming and toxic pollution

Eighteen American youth are demanding that a court immediately halt the Trump administration’s repeal of the scientific finding underpinning virtually all US climate regulations.

The plaintiffs sued the Trump administration in February days after officials revoked the 2009 endangerment finding, which found that greenhouse gas pollution threatens public health and welfare. Filed in the Washington DC circuit court of appeals Venner v EPA alleges that the move infringes upon rights guaranteed by the US constitution, including to religious freedom, life and liberty.

“My faith has taught me to protect and nurture all children, all life, all creation,” said Elena Venner, the 21-year-old named plaintiff in the case. “With these repeals, the conditions for life are not being protected.”

Chinese and Russian leaders boast of close ties and warn ‘of a drift back to the law of the jungle’

Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin issued a joint condemnation of “irresponsible” US foreign policy on Wednesday, warning of “a drift back to the law of the jungle”.

The statement came after the Chinese and Russian leaders held a summit in Beijing that followed a visit to the capital by Donald Trump.

The exchanges between Xi and Putin were notably warm and Wednesday’s summit appeared to be more substantive than Xi’s meetings with the US president.

Donald Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order that requires banks to take a closer look at the citizenship of their customers, a new measure in his administration’s push to clamp down on people living in the country illegally.

The order directs bank regulators and government departments to look for signs that people without legal status are opening accounts or obtaining loans or credit cards. However, the order is less aggressive than banks had expected, as earlier reports suggested the White House was drafting an order that would make collecting customers’ citizenship information mandatory.

In the order, the White House framed the decision that banks would face credit risks if one of their customers were deported and any loans could no longer be repaid. The White House said it would not “permit risks to our financial system posed by the extension of credit or financial services to the inadmissible and removable alien population.”

Addendum quietly slipped into widely criticized agreement creating a $1.7bn fund to compensate president’s allies

The justice department quietly added a provision barring the IRS from auditing Donald Trump’s tax returns on Tuesday, amending a widely criticized agreement that creates a secretive and loosely controlled $1.776bn fund to compensate allies of the president.

The addendum, signed by Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, says the government is “forever barred” and “precluded” from examining the tax returns of Trump, his family, company and “related companies”. The agreement applies to anything filed before the agreement was reached. It was posted on the justice department website on Tuesday morning, a day after the department announced creation of the fund.

The inclusion only adds to mounting scrutiny of the wider agreement reached on Tuesday. The arrangement was announced after Trump said he was dropping a $10bn lawsuit against the IRS and other specious claims against the government in exchange for creating the compensation fund. IRS officials recommended fighting Trump’s lawsuit, the New York Times reported on Tuesday, but the agency decided to settle it anyway, raising further questions about improper interference.

New electoral maps are erasing Black representations. The effort takes its cues from American history

KEY POINTS

China reduced its stash of Treasury to $652.3 billion, the lowest level since September 2008.

Japan, the single largest foreign holder, shed approximately $47 billion to $1.191 trillion.

The U.S.-Iran conflict and a subsequent surge in crude oil prices sent currencies tumbling.

China has been gradually reducing its direct Treasury exposure since its peak in 2013, “shadow holding” in custodial countries.

Federal agents can no longer make arrests without exceptional circumstances in and around three Manhattan buildings where immigration proceedings occur, a judge ruled Monday.

The decision by U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel brings an abrupt halt to a practice begun under the Trump administration that enabled agents to take into custody individuals who follow requirements to appear before immigration judges.

The arrests have resulted in dramatic scenes in courthouse hallways as those being detained were sometimes pulled away from emotional family members.

Trump has repeatedly made false claims that white Afrikaners facing genocide with costs of resettling them at $100m

The US government has said it will increase the number of white South Africans it admits as refugees this year from about 7,500 to 17,500, claiming that “unforeseen developments in South Africa created an emergency refugee situation.”

Since starting his second term in office last year, Donald Trump has repeatedly made false claims that white Afrikaners are racially targeted and face a “white genocide”, which South Africa’s government has furiously rebutted.

His administration also cut aid to South Africa, boycotted the G20 summit in Johannesburg last year and disinvited South Africa from this year’s G20, which will be held at one of Trump’s resorts in Miami.

The New York Times sued the Defense Department on Monday for the second time in five months, arguing that a requirement that journalists be escorted while on Pentagon grounds violates the First Amendment.

The escort policy is “an unconstitutional attempt by the Pentagon to prevent independent reporting on military affairs,” a Times spokesman, Charlie Stadtlander, said in an email to The Associated Press.

“As we have said before: Americans deserve visibility into how their government is being run, and the actions the military is taking in their name and with their tax dollars.”

EPA outlines effort to kill Biden-era rules as critics condemn RFK Jr and Lee Zeldin’s ‘hocus pocus’

The Trump administration has announced a plan to kill Biden-era drinking water limits on four Pfas “forever chemicals”, and to delay the implementation of standards for two other compounds.

The Environmental Protection Agency is proposing two separate rules to delay and rescind the limits. The rules must go through an approval process that can take several years, and almost certainly will be challenged in court.

The Trump administration’s plan comes just two years after the US Environmental Protection Agency set legally enforceable drinking water limits for six of the most dangerous Pfas compounds that have been studied. The chemicals include some of the most toxic substances, and are linked to a range of cancers and other serious health problems.