Trump Officials Target Columbia Accreditation Over Pro-Palestine Protests
The Education Department said Columbia University no longer appeared to meet accreditation standards after concluding that the school is in violation of anti-discrimination laws, the latest effort by the Trump administration to target elite schools over their handling of pro-Palestinian protests.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement that the school's leadership 'acted with deliberate indifference towards the harassment of Jewish students on its campus' after the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Israel.
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Yahoo
25 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump's chief intervened to save RFK Jr.'s top vaccine aide
White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles was behind President Donald Trump's highly unusual decision last week to rehire a vaccine regulator he'd just fired at the urging of MAGA influencer Laura Loomer. Wiles' intervention in getting Vinay Prasad's job back, as described by two senior administration officials granted anonymity to discuss sensitive details, followed pleas from both Prasad's boss, Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary, and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. They insisted that Prasad is part of Kennedy's broader 'make America healthy again' movement and integral to the Trump coalition. 'After Vinay left, Marty and Bobby worked very, very, very hard through Susie Wiles, the president's chief of staff, to tell the president that Vinay was not anti-Trump,' one of the senior administration officials said. 'The MAHA movement is an expansion of the MAGA, sort of, you know, big tent.' Trump's reversal demonstrated the limits of Loomer's influence and marked a fragile win for Kennedy in pursuing his plans to overhaul U.S. regulation of vaccines and drugs — and confirmation that the White House still sees Kennedy as a useful political ally as the midterm elections approach. Trump had forced Prasad out of his FDA job less than two weeks earlier after the Cambridge, Massachusetts, pharmaceutical manufacturer Sarepta Therapeutics, joined by GOP allies and Loomer, sought his ouster. Prasad in July had pushed the FDA to ask Sarepta to stop selling its Duchenne muscular dystrophy drug Elevidys due to safety concerns, according to one of the senior administration officials. Sarepta spokesperson Tracy Sorrentino wrote in an email that the company will 'continue working with the FDA, its leadership and review teams, as we have always done." In arguing Prasad was disloyal to Trump, Loomer had pointed to social media posts he made during the pandemic, in which Prasad said that he was once a Bernie Sanders supporter. Prasad's rehiring isn't the end of the war between Kennedy and his allies, and Loomer and corporations – from pharma to food manufacturers – that see Kennedy as a threat. Loomer, for instance, has only amped up her critique, most recently telling POLITICO that she planned to go after more Kennedy aides. Loomer remains close to Trump and he has occasionally, though not always, followed her advice on personnel decisions. Loomer did not respond immediately to a request for comment. The FDA referred questions to the White House. 'Secretary Kennedy and the entire HHS team are doing a terrific job as they deliver on President Trump's mandate to Make America Healthy Again," White House spokesperson Kush Desai said. "Scores of prominent restaurant chains and food brands dropping artificial ingredients from our food supply and historic reforms at the FDA to fast track lifesaving drugs and treatments prove that the entire HHS team is delivering for the American people.' According to the officials, Makary and Kennedy persuaded the White House to review statements by Prasad that Loomer said showed disloyalty, arguing they were taken out of context. 'I think it really is something good about the president that he's willing to change his mind when persuaded,' one of the senior administration officials said. But the victory could prove pyrrhic if Prasad's ability to set policy is diminished. Before his firing, Makary had named him not only the head of the FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, which oversees regulation of vaccines and gene therapies like Elevidys, but also the agency's chief medical and scientific officer. Makary, like Prasad, was a leading critic of the Biden administration's response to the Covid pandemic. Prasad, a University of Chicago-trained hematologist and oncologist, was previously a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), the author of a 2018 law Trump signed that permits patients greater access to experimental therapies, told POLITICO he texted Trump days ahead of Prasad's ouster to raise concerns of the Duchenne muscular dystrophy patient community about the FDA's efforts to restrict Elevidys. The company initially refused to comply with the agency's July 18 request that it halt shipment. It agreed on July 21 to stop shipping the medicine by the end of business the next day to maintain a 'productive and positive working relationship with FDA.' The agency then allowed the company to resume distribution to ambulatory patients on July 28, a day before Prasad's ouster. Those patients are a subset of people with the condition, which weakens muscles and leads to the loss of the ability to walk, typically by age 12. Most die before they reach 30. Johnson's Right to Try Act, which Trump repeatedly touted on the campaign trail as a signature achievement of his first term, aims to allow patients with life-threatening diseases to try experimental medicines without FDA involvement. The agency has a separate longstanding program known as compassionate use that allows such patients to access experimental treatments when other options do not exist. 'I have never met or spoken to Dr. Prasad,' Johnson said when asked about Prasad's return. 'I hope all the new appointees within HHS and its subsidiary agencies restore integrity to scientific research, fully respect both the letter and spirit of the Right to Try Act, and carefully listen to and empathize with the patients who are impacted by their decisions.' Former FDA officials said they expect the power struggle between Republicans who support pharma and Kennedy to continue. Loomer, meanwhile, says she now wants Trump to dismiss Stefanie Spear, Kennedy's principal deputy chief of staff and senior counselor, and Casey Means, Trump's nominee to be surgeon general. Casey Means is a close Kennedy ally and sister of Kennedy adviser Calley Means. 'I think she wants to split the MAHA and MAGA coalition,' one of the senior officials said of Loomer. 'She wants to split them in two.' Tim Röhn is a member of the Axel Springer Global Network.
Time Magazine
28 minutes ago
- Time Magazine
What to Know About Leaked Plans for Trump's Golden Dome
The Trump Administration has tried to keep planning for the Golden Dome, the President's multibillion-dollar pet project to build a missile-defense system for the continental U.S. and potentially Canada too, secret. But details keep leaking. Since Donald Trump formally announced plans for the shield in May—after ordering the 'Iron Dome for America' a week into his second term—the Pentagon has tried to keep discussion of its development under wraps, including by reportedly banning officials from discussing it at a military-industrial conference earlier this month and asking organizers to keep it off the general agenda, according to Politico. Organizers said they were told to keep discussion of the Golden Dome to a specific, closed-to-the-press summit on the sidelines of the main conference. The Atlantic's Tom Nichols, who expressed doubts over the viability of the Golden Dome, described the choice to 'go silent' on the ambitious and expensive undertaking, at the 2025 Space and Missile Defense Symposium in Huntsville, Ala., which 'is exactly the kind of place where the government can tell its story and get science, industry, and the military on the same page,' as 'strange.' Even former military officials have been baffled by the clamp down. 'We gotta be able to talk about it,' Ret. Army Lt. Gen. Daniel Karbler, who served as commander of the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command from 2019-2024, told the Washington Times. 'We have to be able to share with the American public what we are intending to do with Golden Dome for America. We gotta share with the industry what the architecture is going to look like. We have to share with the services what is going to be called upon for their forces,' said Karbler. 'We have gotta do a good job at just communicating.' A Defense Department official told media in a statement that 'it would be imprudent for the Department to release further information on this program during these early stages,' citing 'operational security.' The Washington Times theorized that the secrecy 'could be explained by spying concerns,' particularly from geopolitical rivals like Russia and China. But despite efforts to keep details out of the public eye, Reuters this week obtained a government-prepared slideshow presented to thousands of defense contractors at the industry summit that reveals new information about the plans for the Golden Dome. Here's what that and other reporting so far has revealed about the project. Four 'integrated' layers Trump said in May that he envisioned the Golden Dome as a latticework of missiles, satellites, and sensors that would be 'capable of intercepting missiles even if they are launched from other sides of the world.' According to the slides obtained by Reuters, the structure of that latticework will come in four layers. One layer would reportedly be in space, tasked with sensing and targeting to track and warn against missiles. Another task for the space layer is 'missile defense,' though it wasn't elaborated; the U.S. has been studying space-based missile interceptors, which are technologically difficult to execute. Three land-based layers of the Dome would then, according to the slides, be made up of ground missile interceptors, radar arrays, and possibly lasers. Reuters said an 'upper layer' will include Next Generation Interceptors (NGIs) and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) Aegis ballistic missile systems made by defense contractor Lockheed Martin. An 'under layer' and 'Limited Area Defense' will serve as the last line of defense and will include new radars, the Patriot missile defense system, and a new but unspecified 'common' launcher. A missile field in the Midwest The Dome reportedly will include a new missile field in the Midwest to hold the NGIs from Lockheed Martin, on top of the existing Groundbased Midcourse Defense (GMD) launch sites in southern California and Alaska. The GMD is the U.S.'s 'sole hit-to-kill defense' against intercontinental ballistic missiles, according to a Congressional Research Service report last year. It is designed to thwart a missile attack in its midcourse phase, though it's neither able nor intended to defeat more sophisticated attacks from Russia or China. No mention of Elon Musk's Space X Reuters flagged that the slides did not mention Elon Musk's SpaceX, which earlier bid for Golden Dome contracts along with software firm Palantir and drone manufacturer Anduril before the billionaire tech mogul and the President had a very public falling out. Since Trump and Musk's friendship fizzled, the Trump Administration has reportedly been looking for alternatives, and leading defense manufacturers like Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Boeing have presented themselves as potential contractors for the project. A scheduled 2028 test date Other details beyond Reuters' slides have also leaked. Unnamed sources told CNN that the Pentagon has scheduled the first major test for the Golden Dome missile-defense system for the fourth quarter of 2028, just before the November presidential election. The test will reportedly involve the Golden Dome's sensors and weapons systems. This aligns with Trump's initial proposed timeline, but many remain skeptical of its feasibility. 'In the end, a lot of money could be spent trying to make this work, and then it might not even meet testing requirements or do what they want it to do,' an unidentified defense official told CNN. Canada removes hurdles to join Golden Dome Canada has also reportedly cleared the path to partner with the Trump Administration for the Golden Dome. The Ottawa Citizen reported that Canada's Defense Minister David McGuinty said that outdated restrictions and roadblocks had been removed during a July visit to the North American Aerospace Defense Command headquarters in Colorado. 'The threat environment has drastically changed and Canada needs to be prepared,' McGuinty told the paper. Trump had previously said that Canada would have to pay billions to be a part of the Golden Dome but that it could join at no cost if it cedes its sovereignty to the U.S. and becomes the 51st state.
CNN
28 minutes ago
- CNN
Republicans pitch Trump's domestic policy agenda in Iowa, but some entrepreneurs aren't yet sold
When Small Business Administrator Kelly Loeffler touted that her agency guarantees approximately 2,000 small business loans every week, Laura Pager, a small business contractor who says she has lost out on millions of dollars in work this year in the wake of the Department of Government Efficiency's slashing of the federal government, wrote it down in disbelief. Pager, the president of an Illinois-based contracting firm that contracts with agencies across the federal government, was sitting in the third row at an event hosted by GOP Sen. Joni Ernst with Loeffler and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin designed to help small businesses and entrepreneurs learn more about federal and state contracting opportunities in the Trump administration. The optimism she was hearing on stage was not reflecting her reality. 'I don't know who the 2,000 small businesses are that were approved every week,' said Pager, the president of Gale Construction Company. 'I could tell you it's not mine.' 'Since January 20, 2025, SBA has approved 46,430 504 and 7(a) loans for over $24 billion - as well as 25,032 disaster loans for $3.8 billion. This equates to nearly 2,500 loans per week,' SBA spokesperson Maggie Clemmons told CNN. The small businesses event hosted this week by Ernst at Iowa State University comes as her party has been tasked with using Congress' month away from Washington to sell President Donald Trump's massive agenda. That effort, on the heels of Trump's unprecedented overhaul of the federal work force and the GOP's historic cuts to the social safety net amid other provisions in his 'big, beautiful bill,' has already met some resistance from members of the public. In her nearly three decades of experience, Pager says she has not seen anything like the current environment for small businesses. She's lost out, she said, on approximately $6 million in work this year after DOGE pulled contracts as part of its federal cost-cutting efforts — one to secure a federal building in Pittsburgh that houses the Internal Revenue Service and Army Corps of Engineers and the other to fix the HVAC at an airport control tower in Maine. She said that a go-to contact for her at the SBA, a region-based business opportunity specialist who helps small businesses navigate the federal government, retired with no one appearing to replace her 'We don't have the number of resources and the people to go to anymore,' said Pager, who said she voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024 and works mostly with Republicans. 'Agencies we work with generally have a much more limited staff now. And I feel like they're flustered.' The event on Tuesday laid bare the competing realities for small businesses trying to work with the Trump administration. While Trump and his Cabinet are seeking to promote business in the United States and tout the president's signature legislative achievement so far, their push to downsize the federal government has left some business owners and entrepreneurs with questions as they try to navigate a changing environment. It's requiring a threading of the needle for agency heads and GOP lawmakers —Republicans, who have broadly called for slashing federal spending, now find themselves having to make the case for why small businesses should find their agencies a worthy investment partner. In Iowa this week, they looked to frame the debate. On top of Loeffler and Zeldin's visits, Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins visited the Iowa State Fair over the weekend to announce new rural development investments and Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright is expected to visit the state later this week. 'We are reshaping the federal government to be more responsive to the private sector,' Loeffler argued. Ernst, who's facing reelection in 2026 and wouldn't comment to CNN Tuesday whether she plans to defend her seat, says her third annual 'Made in America Expo' was designed to help businesses in her state develop direct relationships with the decisionmakers in the federal government. But as chair of the DOGE caucus in the Senate, she argued that cutting the size of the federal government will help small businesses grow. 'We know that federal government is not the answer when it comes to issues at the local level. Those that are most responsive are at the local level,' she said. 'So, downsizing the federal government, pushing some of that outward, especially into the heartland where we actually have people that do want to work, provide efficient services for the federal government, that's the opportunity that we should be providing.' Ernst's event sought to bring key politicians and representatives from across the federal government to Iowa as a chance to level the playing field and create face-to-face interactions. Many small business directors for their respective agencies were in attendance. Charlie Smith, director of the Department of Energy's Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization, complimented Ernst and the agency heads for their emphasis on creating small business partnerships, suggesting the issue of creating that connection is not necessarily new. 'That's always been the struggle, is to make the opportunities known to small businesses,' he said. 'And I think this administration's got a number of initiatives that are looking to do exactly that.' To hear Loeffler, Zeldin and Ernst describe it, the Biden administration was completely wrong in how it tackled small business development. 'We inherited a very big mess,' Zeldin claimed. Part of their pitch in how they are making opportunities better for small businesses was highlighting the extensive cuts they've made to their agencies to eliminate what they saw as waste and emphasizing their desire to get government out of the way to encourage more manufacturing and investments in the US. The administrators and Ernst pointed to wins from Trump's tax and spending law, which will create several tax breaks that benefit small businesses, such as allowing businesses to fully and immediately deduct the cost of building new manufacturing facilities. The trio also credited Trump with keeping overall inflation tame in July and pointed to investments like the more than $90 billion from private companies across tech, energy and finance to turn Pennsylvania into an artificial intelligence hub. Ernst, who chairs the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, promoted her new, bipartisan legislation that would increase the maximum loan limit for small businesses in an aim to boost domestic manufacturing. She hopes the bill will get a final vote when the Senate returns in September. Meanwhile at the event, Iowa GOP Rep. Randy Feenstra stood in front of a crowd of small business leaders and entrepreneurs to make his case for why they should support Trump's sweeping tax and spending cuts law. 'Maybe some of you don't always think it's beautiful. I do,' Feenstra quipped, before ticking through a list of tax breaks that are geared toward helping small businesses specifically. Feenstra, who has launched an exploratory committee for governor, is not facing a tough reelection battle should he remain in the House. But two of his Republican Iowan colleagues, GOP Rep. Zach Nunn and Mariannette Miller-Meeks, are running in some of the most competitive House races in the country for next year's midterms and are having to be even more delicate in their pitch. Majority Leader Steve Scalise was in Iowa this week making public appearances with Nunn and Miller-Meeks and fundraising on their behalf. Speaking with CNN at the Iowa State Fair, Scalise and Nunn laid out their perspective to voters and provided a window into how Republicans are trying to sell Trump's landmark legislation – instead of getting pulled into discussing the so-called Jeffrey Epstein files. Throughout his remarks on Tuesday, Zeldin argued that the EPA can both protect the environment and grow the economy after the administration's move to repeal the so-called endangerment finding that planet-warming pollution from fossil fuels endangers human health. But businesses in Iowa, a Republican stronghold that uses more clean energy than many blue states, must also contend with Republicans' rollback of clean energy tax credits. Iowa Republicans now face the challenge of having to defend the elimination of the renewable energy tax credits in Trump's trademark legislation that they sought to protect. Scalise and Nunn argued the elimination of those credits doesn't mean they don't support renewable energy, but argued the elimination was designed to create an even playing field and ween the US off of foreign energy. Nunn also pointed to the tax credit for biofuels that he worked to get in the final bill. 'We've got a great opportunity here in Iowa with wind. We are the number one producer and consumer of wind. We've made this work,' Nunn told CNN. 'It's most important that we're not dependent on foreign energy anymore. And this bill delivers that.' Scalise addressed the legislation's deep cuts to Medicaid and defended the work requirements Republicans put in place, which Democrats have seized on in their messaging against the law. 'By putting in place responsible work requirements, now it's going to help the truly needy be able to get better care in programs like Medicaid. And then the folks that are going to go get work, which is a good thing by the way, are going to be able to get work and get a job and get health care in the private sector, which is going to be even better than Medicaid,' he said. But for some in attendance at Ernst's event on Tuesday, what the officials were selling wasn't the full picture. Victor Santana, who owns a Chicago-based company that helps hundreds of small businesses nationwide secure federal contracts, said he spent most of the event introducing small business owners to representatives from federal agencies. 'They are lost,' Santana said of the business leaders he met at the event. 'They can't figure out which way is up, which way is down.' Santana, who said he has been in the business for 24 years and prides himself on his government contacts, said he's gotten few answers about replacements or a path forward after the slashing of the federal workforce. 'It's like, 'Wait a minute, so and so's not there? Well, who is taking over? Who is in charge?'' Santana said of his conversations with agency contacts. 'That's scary because a lot of these small businesses need to know. It's very hard to work with government and get those answers.' For some in the audience, Zeldin's message of rolling back environmental regulations is cause for concern. Jordi Quevedo-Valls, who co-founded a startup marketplace designed to facilitate the buying and selling of small businesses, said the EPA's rollback of environmental protections is concerning and has a real impact on how businesses move forward. 'I mean that I completely disagree with. I mean, the science is there,' Quevedo-Valls, who said he 'reluctantly' voted for Harris in 2024, told CNN. From Fairfield, Iowa, Quevedo-Valls said he is happy with some of the Trump administration rollbacks but called the decision to phase out clean energy tax credits 'terrible, terrible, terrible.' The emphasis from Ernst and the Trump administration officials on creating new businesses left Tanner Heikens wanting clarification. Heikens said he voted for Trump, but has things he likes and doesn't like about the administration. 'I'm glad that they're pro-business, but I think that they're pushing creation of business and not worrying as much about existing businesses, especially in the labor force that we're in,' said Heikens, who works at an Iowa-based food manufacturing company that feeds between 50,000-70,000 people a week in the restaurant and health care industries. 'In the manufacturing world it is tough already, and if you're putting a bunch of money into new businesses, that's just thinning the herd already.'
