Key events
Rachel Leingang
In May, the Arizona representative Yassamin Ansari toured a detention facility where immigrants rounded up as part of the Trump administration’s campaign of mass deportation were being housed. She described what she saw inside as “sickening” and “worse than prison” – immigrant detainees were held in overcrowded, moldy cells and many reported that they did not have reliable access to food, water or medical care.
Two months later, Ansari returned to the remote desert complex to conduct another congressional oversight visit. This time, she was denied entry.
It wasn’t an isolated incident. From New York to California, Democratic members of Congress have been repeatedly blocked from entering Ice detention facilities where thousands of noncitizens – many with no criminal convictions – are being held.
Democratic officials’ legislative checks – a legal right for members of Congress – have consistently confirmed reports that immigrant detainees are being kept in “filthy” and “inhumane” conditions with little regard for due process. Now, the facilities have become a battleground in the intensifying standoff between the Trump administration and Democratic lawmakers over the president’s supercharged immigration agenda.
“The administration’s goal is to intimidate us and bully us, bully us out of doing our jobs for sure,” Representative LaMonica McIver, a New Jersey Democrat who has been accused of assaulting federal agents during a confrontation at the Delaney Hall detention center, told the Guardian. “If they can get away with doing this to me, they can get away with doing it to anyone. But more importantly, imagine what they’re doing in the dark to others who are not of an elected status, who are not in public eye view.”
McIver, who has pleaded not guilty, said her concerns took on new resonance when, a month later, detainees at the hastily-converted jailhouse pushed down a dormitory wall – an act advocates described as an outcry against hunger and overcrowding.
Edward Helmore
The closely watched New York mayoral and governor’s races appear to be forming into shapes that will bring little comfort to centrist Democrats, with elections happening in November this year in New York City and the gubernatorial vote a year later.
A new Siena Institute poll released on Tuesday shows New York City’s Democratic socialist mayoral candidate, Zohran Mamdani, leading former New York governor Andrew Cuomo by 19 percentage points – while the Republican congresswoman Elise Stefanik is chipping away at incumbent Democrat Kathy Hochul’s lead in a hypothetical contest for the New York governor’s mansion in 2026.
Hochul’s lead over Stefanik, who was nominated to be US ambassador to the United Nations before withdrawing to help Republicans maintain a majority in Congress, has now dropped from 23 points in June to 14 points.
Stefanik has not officially decided on whether to seek the governor’s office, but she has been noticeably attacking Hochul’s record. The poll found that 49% of voters in the state said it would be bad for New York if Stefanik were elected governor.
“The latest Siena poll is catastrophic for Kathy Hochul as she is losing independent voters to Elise Stefanik, is below 50% on the ballot, and only 35% of voters want to re-elect Kathy Hochul,” said Stefanik’s executive director Alex DeGrasse in a statement to the Guardian. He predicted voters are looking to Stefanik to deliver new leadership.
California governor Gavin Newsom says the state will draw new electoral maps after Donald Trump “missed” a deadline on Tuesday night in an ongoing redistricting battle between Democratic and Republican states.
“DONALD ‘TACO’ TRUMP, AS MANY CALL HIM, ‘MISSED’ THE DEADLINE!!!”, Newsom’s office wrote on social media. “CALIFORNIA WILL NOW DRAW NEW, MORE ‘BEAUTIFUL MAPS,’ THEY WILL BE HISTORIC AS THEY WILL END THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY (DEMS TAKE BACK THE HOUSE!)”.
“BIG PRESS CONFERENCE THIS WEEK WITH POWERFUL DEMS AND GAVIN NEWSOM — YOUR FAVORITE GOVERNOR — THAT WILL BE DEVASTATING FOR ‘MAGA.’ THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER! — GN,” reads the post.
The post follows a series of snarky, all-caps tweets meant to mimic Trump’s social media writing style.
Newsom was mocking Trump’s moniker, “Taco”, short for “Trump always chickens out”, prompted by his flip-flopping deadlines.
Several states have waded into the redistricting wars, where Newsom and other Democratic state leaders had threatened to draw retaliatory maps if Texas were to move ahead with its redistricting scheme.
Donald Trump’s administration has significantly changed a key US government report on human rights worldwide, dramatically softening criticism of some countries that have been strong partners of the Republican president, such as El Salvador and Israel, which rights groups say have well-established histories of abuses.
Instead, the US state department sounded an alarm about what it said was the erosion of freedom of speech in Europe and ramped up criticism of Brazil and South Africa – both of which Washington has clashed with over a host of issues.
Criticism of governments over their treatment of LGBTQ+ rights, which appeared in Biden administration editions of the report, appeared to have been largely omitted. Washington referred to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine mainly as the “Russia-Ukraine war”.
The report’s section on Israel was much shorter than last year’s edition and contained no mention of the severe humanitarian crisis or death toll in Gaza. About 61,000 people have died, according to the Gaza health ministry, as a result of Israel’s military operations in response to an attack by the Palestinian militant group Hamas in October 2023.
Indian prime minister Narendra Modi is likely to meet president Donald Trump during a visit to the United States next month to attend the UN General Assembly meeting, the Indian Express newspaper reported on Wednesday, citing sources.
India’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
An Indian official familiar with the matter said a decision has not yet been taken, and that countries usually reserve slots for the general debate at the assembly, which is why India’s “head of government” features in a provisional list of speakers on 26 September.
A US judge on Tuesday ordered president Donald Trump’s administration to restore a part of the federal grant funding that it recently suspended for the University of California, Los Angeles.
US district judge Rita Lin in San Francisco ruled that the grant funding suspensions violated an earlier June preliminary injunction where she ordered the National Science Foundation to restore dozens of grants that it had terminated at the University of California.
That order had blocked the agency from cancelling other grants at the University of California system, of which UCLA is a part.
“NSF’s actions violate the Preliminary Injunction,” Lin, an appointee of Democratic former president Joe Biden, wrote. The White House and the university had no immediate comment on the ruling.
UCLA said last week the government froze $584 million in funding. Trump has threatened to cut federal funds for universities over pro-Palestinian student protests against US ally Israel’s military assault on Gaza.
The Los Angeles Times newspaper reported that the judge’s order asked for the restoration of more than a third of the suspended $584 million funding.
The University of California said last week it was reviewing a settlement offer by the Trump administration for UCLA in which the university will pay $1 billion. It said such a large payment would “devastate” the institution.
The government alleges universities, including UCLA, allowed antisemitism during the protests.
Opening summary: Trump at Kennedy Center same day that honors are announced
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. My name is Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news.
We start with the news that Donald Trump will be visiting the Kennedy Center on Wednesday, the same day that the recipients of this year’s honors are announced.
Trump avoided the Kennedy Center Honors during his first term after artists said they would not attend out of protest. This year, he has taken over as the Kennedy Center‘s new chairman and fired the board of trustees, which he replaced with loyalists.
In a Truth Social post Tuesday, Trump teased a name change for the performing arts center and said it would be restored to its former glory, AP reported.
“GREAT Nominees for the TRUMP/KENNEDY CENTER, whoops, I mean, KENNEDY CENTER, AWARDS,” Trump wrote. He said work was being done on the site that would be “bringing it back to the absolute TOP LEVEL of luxury, glamour, and entertainment.”
“It had fallen on hard times, physically, BUT WILL SOON BE MAKING A MAJOR COMEBACK!!!” he wrote.
It is unclear how this year’s batch of honorees were chosen, though Trump had indicated he wanted a more active role. Historically, a bipartisan advisory committee selects the recipients, who over the years have ranged from George Balanchine and Tom Hanks to Aretha Franklin and Stephen Sondheim. A message sent to the Kennedy Center press office asking how this year’s honorees were selected wasn’t returned Tuesday.
The Kennedy Center did post this on social media, however: “Coming Soon … A country music icon, an Englishman, a New York City Rock band, a dance Queen and a multi-billion dollar Actor walk into the Kennedy Center Opera House …”
In other developments:
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The DC national guard began deploying on the city’s streets Tuesday night, a day after Trump ordered their arrival and took control of the city’s police force, calling Washington DC a “lawless” city, despite official crime statistics saying otherwise.
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A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to immediately improve conditions at a New York City immigration holding facility, acting on mounting complaints from detainees that the cells are overcrowded, unsanitary and inhumane.
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The Texas Senate approved a GOP-drawn congressional map that would give Republicans five more House seats ahead of the 2026 midterms. But since House Democrats continue to break quorum, the legislation isn’t going anywhere. Speaker Dustin Burrows said the House will adjourn until Friday, at which point the legislature will attempt to reach quorum one more time.
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President Trump is due to speak with European leaders, including Volodymyr Zelenskyy, today ahead of Friday’s meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin. Trump’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt characterised Friday’s meeting between Trump and Putin as a “listening exercise” for the president, confirming that Zelenskyy would not be in attendance, but the president has hopes for a trilateral meeting in the future. For more on the upcoming meeting, follow our Europe live blog here.
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California governor Gavin Newsom says the state will draw new electoral maps after Trump “missed” a deadline on Tuesday night in an ongoing redistricting battle between Democratic and Republican states.
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The Trump administration is evidently extending its control of cultural representation at the Smithsonian, the world’s largest museum and research complex. In a letter posted on the White House website, the administration told the Smithsonian that it plans a wide review of exhibitions, materials and operations ahead of the US’s 250th anniversary celebrations in 2026.
