Inquirer.com – Zurich DR

Category: Wires

Iran must plan to overcome ‘unjust’ U.S. sanctions, top Tehran official says

A top Iranian official said Friday that his country would seek to dampen the effect of economic sanctions after the Trump administration vowed to aggressively tighten the pressure campaign against Iran.

“We must plan for the unjust sanctions so that we can overcome them,” the Iranian official, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who is the lead negotiator in talks with the United States, told a gathering of Iranian and Iraqi business representatives in Baghdad, according to a post on his social media channel.

The United States has already imposed debilitating sanctions on Iran’s economy and leadership, and the Trump administration has previously sanctioned foreign businesses and organizations that trade with Iran. But Washington suggested this week that officials were preparing measures to target countries that buy Iranian oil.

President Donald Trump has promised an “economic D-Day” against Iran and vowed “tremendous economic consequences” for countries that do business with Iran.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who is expected to detail the new measures targeting Iran at a news conference Monday, wrote on social media Thursday evening, “Any remaining tie to Tehran will hasten a nation’s economic oblivion, whether that tie be purposefully constructed or willfully ignored.”

Trump’s threats of economic escalation seem to reveal his reluctance to return to the full-blown military confrontation with Iran that began in February with a large-scale U.S.-Israeli attack.

Since a ceasefire in June, the war has settled into an uneasy standoff with little sign of diplomatic progress.

In Baghdad, Ghalibaf told the business representatives, “The Americans and Israelis have realized that they cannot prevail against Iran and Iraq in conventional military warfare.”

“Therefore,” he added, “they have entered into cognitive warfare and economic warfare, and now you are the soldiers and commanders on this battlefield.”

The Trump administration has also taken aim at Iran’s allies in the region. On Thursday, Washington said Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia in Lebanon, would be designated an affiliate of the Iranian regime under the command of the Revolutionary Guard. The announcement came along with the issuing of new sanctions against 10 individuals accused of working to smuggle cash to the militia.

The United States has designated Hezbollah a terrorist organization since 1997 and has long accused the group of being an Iranian proxy. The announcement on Thursday appeared to formalize Washington’s view that the group was a direct arm of Iran in the Middle East.

Broader sanctions targeting Iran’s ability to export oil would compound Iran’s economic challenges. The war and a U.S. blockade of the country’s ports have crippled key industries, and Iranians are already contending with sky-high inflation.

This week, the United Arab Emirates, a major trading hub for Iran, announced that it was halting all trade and financial transactions with Iran. Analysts say the UAE has been key to Iranian efforts to evade international sanctions, though Emirati officials deny that.

Iran has weathered decades of U.S. sanctions since the 1979 revolution that brought the Islamic republic to power, including by trying to diversify the country’s economy beyond oil. The U.S. naval blockade has severely restricted Iran’s ability to export oil.

On Thursday, Shamseddin Hosseini, chairperson of the Iranian parliament’s economic commission, said it was important for Iran to reduce reliance on the country’s southern ports, where the U.S. blockade is in place, and to expand trading routes across the land border in the northeast, according to Iranian state media.

“To get out of the current situation, the path of economic policymaking must be changed,” Hosseini said, according to the reports.

China, Iran’s largest trading partner, could be one of the countries most affected by U.S. penalties on importers of Iranian oil. For years, Beijing has defied Western sanctions by buying as much as 90% of Iran’s oil exports, though that represents a marginal share of China’s total oil imports, analysts say.

Lin Jian, a spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said Friday that his country opposed “unilateral sanctions” and called for the sides to resolve their differences through diplomacy.

This article originally appeared in the New York Times.

August 21, 2026
U.S., South Korean militaries wrap up drill early, a day after North Korea’s missile barrage

SEOUL, South Korea — The U.S. and South Korean militaries wrapped up their annual drill six days earlier than initially scheduled on Friday in a conciliatory gesture toward North Korea, though the North said the step isn’t enough to persuade it to return to talks.

U.S. President Donald Trump had earlier abruptly ordered the Pentagon to “substantially reduce” the Ulchi Freedom Shield exercise just before it began Monday. Trump cited what he described as a good relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korea’s refusal to support Trump over the war in Iran.

South Korea’s military said the Ulchi Freedom Shield, a command post exercise with the U.S., ended on Friday.

This month’s exercise was initially reportedly scheduled to be held in two phases for 11 days in simulation of North Korean attacks — the first part until Friday on defensive operations and the second part until Aug. 27 on counteroffensive operations. North Korea is extremely sensitive to the second phase.

South Korea and the U.S. had also planned to hold 14 joint field training exercises during the Ulchi Freedom Shield period. But they’ve agreed to halve them as well, according to South Korea’s military.

North Korea shrugs off Trump’s outreach

Kim Yo Jong, the influential sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, brushed aside Trump’s overture on Wednesday, saying that reducing the duration and size of the drills won’t change their “provocative, aggressive nature.”

The next day, North Korea fired about 10 short-range ballistic missiles toward the sea, apparently following through with its previous threat to respond to the U.S.-South Korean drills that it views as an invasion rehearsal.

The U.S. Pacific Command said the events didn’t pose an immediate threat to U.S. territory or its allies. The command said the U.S. remains committed to the defense of the U.S. homeland and its allies in the region.

Kim Yo Jong’s statement dampened hopes for an early resumption of talks between Trump and Kim Jong Un, whose earlier nuclear diplomacy collapsed in 2019. Kim Jong Un has used the diplomatic stalemate to increase his leverage by modernizing his nuclear and missile arsenals and aligning with Russia over its war against Ukraine. Kim Jong Un suggested last year that he won’t return to talks unless the U.S. drops its demand for North Korean denuclearization as a precondition for diplomacy.

Kim Yo Jong still used relatively measured language, avoided typical harsh North Korean rhetoric, and touched upon what she called an “excellent” relationship between her brother and Trump. This suggests North Korea doesn’t want to completely shut the door for future talks and may seek to win bigger U.S. concessions, such as international recognition as a nuclear state and broad sanctions relief.

More nuclear weapons, Russia ties give North Korea leverage

With its supply of ammunition and troops to Russia, North Korea is likely receiving economic and military assistance in return, and its expanding ties with Russia provide it with leverage to ask for greater support from China, its biggest trading partner.

“After this strategic play has run its course, Kim may seek further economic and reputational benefits from Washington,” said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul. “But that will probably be after the U.S. midterm elections when Trump is expected to be in a weaker domestic political position and in search of headline-grabbing foreign policies.”

Kim Dong-yub, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, said that Kim Yo Jong’s statement showed North Korea’s position that a personal relationship between her brother and Trump “can’t be a factor that moves current North Korean-U.S. relations.” He said Kim Yo Jong likely aimed to head off speculation that Trump’s move can restore diplomacy so as not to fully take the blame when it doesn’t happen.

Kim Yo Jong denied Trump’s claim that Kim Jong Un had responded to his request for a conversation. When asked by reporters Wednesday if he would be meeting with Kim Jong Un this year, Trump said, “Yeah, I will be.”

The Ulchi Freedom Shield is one of the main military exercises conducted by the U.S. and South Korea annually to enhance their ability to cope with potential North Korean aggression. Its downsizing has caused worries about joint U.S.-South Korean readiness.

August 21, 2026
Prince Harry and 6 others must pay initial $13M over failed invasion of privacy case

LONDON — Prince Harry and six others, including Elton John, have been ordered to pay an initial 9.5 million pounds ($13 million) to the publisher of Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper following their failed invasion of privacy case — and could face an additional 25 million pounds in legal costs.

In a judgment Friday, Justice Matthew Nicklin said in a written statement that the payment to Associated Newspapers Ltd. will have to be made by Aug. 28. The payment is at the upper end of expectations and marks a vindication for the journalists at the Daily Mail and a defeat for the losing claimants and their lawyers.

The claimants lost a High Court case in London last month during which they had alleged malpractice, such as the illegal hacking of phones, on the part of Associated Newspapers.

The other high-profile figures behind the case were Doreen Lawrence, the anti‑racism activist whose son Stephen was stabbed to death in 1993 as he waited for a bus; Elton John’s film producer husband David Furnish; actors Sadie Frost and Liz Hurley; and politician Simon Hughes. Lawrence’s costs are expected to be covered by the others.

In excoriating comments accompanying his award, Nicklin said “several features” were important in his decision, including the “speculative” nature of the claims and the failure of the claimants to “voluntarily” withdraw serious allegations that could no longer be backed up.

“The conduct was unreasonable to a high degree,” he said.

Claimants face additional 25-million-pound charge

The publisher has said it incurred more than 34 million pounds during the case. Should it pursue the claimants for the remainder of the costs, and get the necessary legal approval to do so, then Harry and the six others will be liable for a further 25 million pounds or so.

The claimants took out insurance for around half of that total, in line with the budget estimates provided at the outset by the lawyers working for Associated Newspapers.

Though the judge said the costs appeared “excessive,” he said he would not impose a cap that would have limited the claimants’ liabilities as it would have been “too broad brushed, would risk unfairness, and would be vulnerable to the charge that it was arbitrary.”

The amount that will be paid could well be determined in the future by costs judges, specialists who assess and determine financial outcomes in civil litigation when parties cannot agree.

David Bailey-Vella, chairperson of the Association of Costs Lawyers, said the ruling “could not have gone much worse” for the claimants.

He said the claimants will “surely try again before the costs judges to try and show they relied on Associated’s original budget when buying the insurance and so should not have to pay more.”

Hughes, a former member of the centrist Liberal Democrats, said he was “disappointed and surprised” that Associated Newspapers’ recoverable costs were not limited.

None of the other claimants have yet commented on the judge’s decision. They have until Oct. 2 to decide whether to appeal.

Harry and the rest had failed to even win one of 97 claims

The publisher had strongly denied the claims made during the 11-week trial in London earlier this year. In his July 7 judgment, Nicklin said there had been a shortage of evidence to support the 97 claims and found there was a possibility that the reporting came from legitimate sources.

In a statement following the decision, Associated Newspapers said the judgment is a “devastating critique of an attempt to destroy a newspaper and the reputations of its journalists, editors, and executives.”

“The truth is that these outrageous claims should never have been brought,” it said. ”That they were pursued raises disturbing questions about the conduct of elements of the legal profession.”

Cost verdict comes days after Harry’s bombshell U.K. return news

The judgment comes two days after it was made public that Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle, are moving back to the U.K. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex, who are no longer working royals, decamped to California more than six years ago but will relocate back later this month to live in a nonroyal residence outside London.

Harry’s defeat against Associated Newspapers brought an end to a trio of lawsuits accusing tabloid publishers of using unlawful tactics, such as phone hacking or hiring private detectives to dig up dirt on his life.

Harry won a judgment in 2023 that condemned the publishers of the Daily Mirror for “widespread and habitual” phone hacking. Last year, Rupert Murdoch’s flagship U.K. tabloid, the Sun, made an unprecedented apology for intruding on his life for years and agreed to pay substantial damages to settle his privacy invasion lawsuit.

Harry has said his litigation — in which he broke with royal family tradition to seek relief in the courts — was a primary source of his falling out with his father, King Charles III, and brother Prince William.

His grudge with the tabloids runs deep and his legal actions are part of his larger quest to reform the news media that he says damaged his relationships and made him “paranoid beyond belief.”

He blames the press for the death of his mother, Princess Diana, who was killed in a car crash in 1997 while being pursued by paparazzi in Paris, and for attacks on his wife, Meghan, that led the couple to abandon royal life and move to the United States in 2020.

August 21, 2026
Enrollment in SNAP grocery aid is dropping faster than expected

PHOENIX — Enrollment in the biggest federally funded food aid program in the U.S. dropped by more than 13% in a 12-month span — a decline far steeper than the government estimated as work requirements and other provisions of President Donald Trump’s “big beautiful bill” take hold.

Those losing coverage in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, include people who don’t meet the tightening requirements to participate, and, advocates say, some who qualify for the help but are rejected because they miss deadlines or don’t have the needed documentation handy. It’s too early to tell exactly how many fall into each group.

It’s also unclear how many have lost coverage because some state agencies that run the programs are overwhelmed trying to keep up with changes. That was the case in Arizona, which saw the nation’s largest enrollment drop.

Tia Fields, who analyzes social safety net policies at the advocacy group Invest in Louisiana, said the main reason she’s seeing people lose coverage is not failure to meet work requirements. “A lot of it is administrative paperwork,” she said.

Proponents of welfare reform hope the roll reductions are driven by people earning too much to keep qualifying — a sign that policy changes are behaving as intended for a program they assert is riddled with fraud.

“If there are people that are leaving the welfare rolls because they’re working and they’re moving forward,” said Rachel Sheffield, a research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, which pushed for stricter requirements for SNAP, “that would be a step forward.”

Arizona has had the steepest decline so far, with a 12-month drop of more than 50%, according to data compiled by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which runs SNAP. The decline was more than 20% in Georgia, Louisiana, and Nevada — and in Florida, where the Department of Children and Families said in a statement that the decreasing number “is reflective of the state’s strong focus on advancing opportunities for Floridians and their families to achieve economic self-sufficiency.”

Eligibility requirements are tightening

SNAP helps more than 1 in 10 people in the U.S. buy food. Most of the beneficiaries have incomes below the poverty line. The monthly benefit, which is delivered on debit cards that can be used only for groceries, is $344 per household on average.

Newly released federal data found SNAP enrollment fell from 42.2 million in May 2025 to 36.6 million in May, a drop of more than 13% in a year. The May data are preliminary and could be revised.

Since 2010, the average number of monthly beneficiaries has been below 40 million for only two years — 2019 and 2020. The rolls started dropping after a recent peak of 43.3 million in October 2024. They’ve fallen much faster since implementation began last year for Trump’s “one big beautiful bill,” which cut taxes and overhauled social safety net programs.

The expanded SNAP work requirement has now kicked in for most of the country, but it won’t begin in some places until next year.

Many adults 54 and younger without minor children have long been required to work to get SNAP benefits. The new law requires most people who previously had been exempt from requirements to either work, volunteer, or go to school to get benefits. It now includes those ages 55 to 64, and those with children ages 14 to 17. Those 65 and older or with children younger than 14 remain exempt, as do those with health limitations. Some other groups that had been exempted from the requirement — including homeless people — no longer are.

In February, the Congressional Budget Office projected that the new requirements and other factors would push SNAP enrollment down over the next decade, falling below 34 million by 2036. But the nonpartisan office did not expect the drop to be as fast as it’s been. By May, the number of people receiving the benefits was about as low as it was forecast to go in 2030.

Experts expect another impact when states are required to pay part of the cost of benefits if their rate of payment errors — when recipients receive more or less than they should — is above 6%. Advocates for recipients say states may deny benefits to some people entirely rather than risk errors.

The cost-sharing is scheduled to start in October 2027, though Congress has considered a delay.

Changes have been hard to implement in Arizona

In Arizona, enrollment plummeted by 55% from April 2025 to April 2026 — the biggest drop in the country, with more than 400,000 fewer people getting benefits now.

The state said the drop was driven largely by the state’s own struggles putting new federal requirements in place.

“Implementing the federally mandated changes triggered unprecedented call volumes and administrative hurdles, including additional verification requirements, creating real barriers for applicants,” said Brett Bezio, a spokesperson for the Arizona Department of Economic Security.

Bezio said that hiring more staff members and introducing ways for people to submit their documents online have stemmed the enrollment drop in recent months as the state has reduced the chance for people who qualify to lose benefits.

In Phoenix, LaDiamond Lopez lost her benefits in January, with officials telling her she needed more documentation about her income and household — something that’s needed for officials to determine whether enrollees meet work requirements.

She’s been skipping meals and some bill payments to ensure her children have enough to eat.

In her quest to be reinstated, she had previous employers sign forms confirming she no longer worked for them and added her children — ages 3 and 9 — to her apartment lease. She expected payments to resume in August, but she doesn’t know if they’ll last.

“I was approved at the end of May, but now they’re asking me for more documents,” she said. “It’s a panic.”

Other factors could be driving down enrollment

The Heritage Foundation’s Sheffield says that some of the drop in SNAP use is likely a natural decline after peaks in the coronavirus pandemic era.

Paco Velez, the president and CEO of Feeding South Florida, said the 22% one-year enrollment drop in Florida is driven partly by immigrants who are in the U.S. legally but fear being targeted by Trump’s immigration crackdown if they’re seeking government benefits.

Invest in Louisiana’s Fields said SNAP enrollment declines have broader consequences. For instance, children in households that receive the benefit can be automatically enrolled in free school lunch programs or in the SNAP for Women, Infants, and Children program for low-income mothers, young children, and expectant parents if they meet the other criteria.

“What happens when that child can’t pay for lunch?” she asked.

Some food banks have ramped up donations to try to meet a demand that they say has risen as SNAP rolls have declined. But that isn’t expected to bridge the gap fully.

“We’re very worried about it because we know that no other organization or program can replicate the scale and success of SNAP,” said Carolyn Vega, a policy analyst at the advocacy group Share Our Strength. “We know that schools can’t fill this gap. We know that food banks can’t fill this gap.”

August 21, 2026
Trump announces plan to lower beef prices, but ranchers and some Republicans are already balking

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump announced Friday that his administration will allow more beef to be temporarily imported into the U.S. without triggering higher tariffs, as he remains under pressure to cut costs and address affordability issues ahead of November’s midterms.

Beef prices have climbed to record highs amid a sharp drop in the number of U.S. cattle, consistent consumer demand, and limits on cattle from Mexico, where the animals are facing a flesh-eating pest. The U.S. president has also imposed 50% tariffs on Brazil, a major beef exporter.

The president’s plan, however, drew immediate skepticism from agricultural experts and backlash from cattle ranchers and conservative rural-state Republicans. Ranchers, normally some of the president’s biggest supporters, are enjoying some rare profitable years and worry cheap beef imports will reduce cattle prices — and with it, the incentive to increase herd sizes.

“We all want lower grocery prices, but as I’ve said for months, we cannot do it at the expense of American producers,” Sen. Deb Fischer (R., Neb.) said in a statement. “Flooding the market with foreign beef hurts our livestock industry and undermines the long-term solution: growing the U.S. cattle herd to meet demand.”

Sen. Tim Sheehy (R., Mont.) said in a social media post just hours after Trump’s announcement that the president’s “heart is in the right place,” but importing beef will “harm our ranching families who feed the nation.”

The deal, Trump said, allows up to 300,000 metric tons of ground beef to be imported into the U.S. for the next 90 days without activating an “out of quota” tariff, which is a tax that goes into effect once a certain quantity of that product enters the country.

The president said on social media that he had committed to ensuring the imported beef would be sold at 25% below current market rates, making it cheaper for American consumers. A White House official said the deal is with foreign beef exporters who have agreed to the discount on beef.

“You don’t put America first by putting U.S. cattle producers last,” U.S. Cattlemen’s Association President Justin Tupper said in a statement. “This move will weaken our markets and gamble with food safety in the process.”

The president’s announcement and other market interventions sacrifice “long-term stability for short term messaging,” Colin Woodall, CEO of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, said in a statement.

Glynn Tonsor, a professor at Kansas State University who focuses on the cattle and beef industry, said he would like to see more details about the latest deal but that his immediate assessment was that it wouldn’t have a big effect on prices.

That’s because 300,000 metric tons amounts to roughly 3% of what Americans eat yearly, he said. “The relative magnitude we are talking about is pretty small.”

David Anderson, professor of agricultural economics at Texas A&M University, said he was skeptical other countries could redirect so much beef to the U.S. in such a short time period.

“Is that even achievable?” he questioned in a phone interview.

The White House official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a plan that has yet to be finalized, said the beef in question is lean beef trimmings that are used for ground beef production. Trump plans to sign an executive order formalizing the directive within two weeks, the official said. The administration made a push last year to buy more beef from Argentina to try to bring down prices.

The president said Friday that his plan would help grow the U.S. cattle supply, which is the smallest it’s been in decades. Some ranchers and experts said the opposite effect was more likely.

“Imports have been a major contributor to the decline in the U.S. cattle inventory,” said Bill Bullard, the CEO of the R-CALF USA, which represents independent cattle producers. “Using more imports today will exacerbate that decline and will prevent herd expansion.”

August 21, 2026
How Harvard’s epic fight with Trump is costing the university

One of Harvard University’s biggest federal funding streams is down sharply, according to a New York Times analysis of government data.

The declines have persisted even after a federal judge forced the Trump administration to reverse drastic cuts to the university last year.

The funding, from the National Institutes of Health, currently lags about 18% behind the average pace of grants during the Biden administration, the analysis shows.

Last year, Harvard successfully sued the Trump administration, after the government announced it had frozen more than $2.2 billion in 2025, from multiple federal agencies.

But unlike then, when Trump officials made a public spectacle out of announcing the cuts, the NIH is mainly delaying, reducing, or rejecting grant requests, often leaving researchers and university leaders in the dark about what is happening.

The reduction appears to be the latest front in the Trump administration’s on-again, off-again war with Harvard and other elite universities. It is a new, more subtle tactic that is harder to fight in court, but that could be just as damaging if cuts and uncertainty build.

The Trump administration has targeted a number of the nation’s elite universities, accusing them of tolerating antisemitism and pursuing racial diversity in ways that flout the law, among other criticisms. Harvard — the country’s wealthiest university — has been one of the most frequent targets of federal officials.

As the Trump administration has pulled multiple levers to try to bring Harvard and other schools to heel, Harvard has often pushed back. It was the first institution to sue the Trump administration, has won in court on a number of occasions, and has not reached a settlement with the federal government, as other prominent schools have done.

Now, however, the university faces cuts that may be harder to counter. Last September, a judge ruled that the administration had improperly cut off funding to Harvard when it ended all of its grants in 2025, finding that the government had violated Harvard’s First Amendment rights.

But in the ruling, the judge suggested that there were lawful means the government could pursue if it wanted to restrict Harvard’s money, should it choose to.

That is what is happening.

Through June 30 of this fiscal year, which began Oct. 1, the NIH provided Harvard 309 awards worth a total of $200 million. The amount is down from an average of roughly 440 awards worth $246 million for the same nine-month period in 2021-2024, according to the latest data available.

Harvard is still one of the largest recipients of NIH funding, though it is far behind the top grantees such as Johns Hopkins, the University of Michigan, and Yale University. Other major research universities have also seen reductions in NIH funding.

Though NIH support has slowed compared with the Biden years, the 2026 awards are outpacing last year, when Harvard’s funding was frozen. By the same point in 2025, NIH funding to Harvard was stalled at 201 grants worth $94 million.

In recent months, Harvard’s individual schools have laid off staff. The leadership of the university’s largest division, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, reported in an email to the division on Aug. 14 that 165 of its staff positions had been eliminated in a layoff and restructuring. The job cuts were aimed at reducing a major deficit.

Carrie Barbash, an organizer and former president of the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers, said the final number of layoffs may change as some staff members whose jobs were eliminated consider moving into some newly designed roles.

The current grant slowdown is not taking place evenly across Harvard. The university’s Chan School of Public Health is heavily dependent on NIH funds and has seen nearly 25% less in grant funding this year, compared with the average amount from 2021 to 2024.

The NIH has obligated $67 million across 63 awards to Chan through June of this fiscal year; the 2021-24 average for the same time period was $90 million across more than 100 awards.

Nancy Krieger, a professor of social epidemiology at the Chan School, said that fallout from the funding slowdown goes beyond individual projects that lost grants. More than a year of federal cuts — and legal fights over the reductions — have “shaken any sense of stability as to whether the federal government is a reliable funder,” she said.

The school is already cutting back, with layoffs and reductions in the number of slots for Ph.D. students. “It’s not just that you lost funding, it’s that you’re reducing the size of the cohort for the next generation of researchers that you’re training,” Krieger said. “What is the knowledge lost? And what are the myriad ripple effects for the economies of the cities and towns that depend on universities as major employers?”

Harvard has also won some rounds in its fight with the administration. Harvard’s court victories protected much of its grant money and its ability to host international students.

A federal judge on Aug. 13 dismissed a Trump administration lawsuit against Harvard that had accused the school of tolerating antisemitism and sought the ability to deny it grants.

Harvard’s endowment continues to ride the stock market to record highs, and the university’s steadfastness under pressure has inspired supporters and alumni who do not want it to yield to President Donald Trump.

While Yale is in talks to perhaps become the next elite school to settle with the administration, Harvard continues to hold out. Harvard is not believed to be engaged in any serious settlement talks at this time.

“Harvard is fighting for principles, both legal and constitutional, and doing so on behalf of the entire system of colleges and universities,” said Lee Bollinger, the former president of Columbia University. “We should all be grateful.”

Yet, as Bollinger noted, “any litigant will inevitably pay a high price.”

The administration has pushed the fight to Harvard on several fronts. The university is still engaged in other litigation and appeals with the Trump administration; a loss in any major case could be devastating.

The Trump administration continues to open fresh battles. The government is proposing new budget rules that would give the administration’s political appointees more power over grants.

White House spokesperson Liz Huston blamed the ongoing battles between the university and the administration on Harvard’s “stubborn commitment to unlawfully discriminating on the basis of race and failing to properly protect its students.”

“Unless Harvard comes to the table in good faith, the Trump administration will continue pursuing every available legal avenue to enforce federal civil rights laws,” she said.

Facing the uncertainty caused by lawsuits, grant slowdowns, and other pressures from the administration, Harvard and other schools are likely to continue to retrench, said Tom Gerety, a former president of Amherst College.

“The main thing you do in uncertainty is hunker down and say, ‘What cuts can we make right now?’” he said, noting that research universities are already trimming back on Ph.D. programs.

Tighter research budgets will mean scientists are more likely to seek jobs outside the United States, he said, while those still at American schools may be less likely to take the unconventional big swings in their research that can lead to scientific breakthroughs.

“This is going to hurt,” Gerety said, “and it’s going to hurt a lot more in 10 years than it does now.”

The government has pursued appeals of federal court rulings that went Harvard’s way last year.

The two sides, as well as a number of outside parties, filed briefs this summer over last fall’s decision in the funding case. The government is also appealing a June 2025 court decision blocking the administration’s effort to stop Harvard from hosting international students. Oral arguments in that case are scheduled for October.

August 21, 2026
Supreme Court chief justice allows work on Trump’s $400M White House ballroom to continue for now

WASHINGTON— Chief Justice John Roberts on Friday allowed the White House to continue construction on President Donald Trump’s $400 million ballroom project for now, as the Supreme Court considers the Trump administration’s emergency request to intervene in lawsuits over the project.

The temporary order came hours before lower-court rulings would have forced a halt to aboveground construction of the project because Trump didn’t get congressional approval.

It will remain in place until the Supreme Court issues a more durable decision, though the one-page document does not detail Roberts’ reasoning or indicate when another ruling will be handed down. Roberts signed the order because he oversees emergency appeals of cases filed in the capital.

Ballroom case tests limits of presidential power

The case is coming before the nation’s highest court as Trump, a Republican, exercises unparalleled assertions of presidential power and increasingly seeks to mold the capital in his own image.

The administration has argued that the president has total authority to renovate the White House and other federal buildings as he sees fit and that the ballroom project must be completed due to national security concerns.

When Trump first announced the plans for a new ballroom, he did not emphasize national security. He said the project would be funded by private donations, including from himself.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation argues that Trump has no unilateral authority to undertake the work, which has included demolishing the East Wing. Lawyers for the preservation group accused the White House of trying to “outrun the courts” by accelerating construction.

A spokesperson for the trust said Friday that the order from Roberts is not a final decision and the group is awaiting further action. The full Supreme Court will likely weigh in next on whether construction can continue for the potentially long duration of the lawsuit.

Trump said his administration is grateful for Friday’s decision, writing in a social media post that the project is “under budget and ahead of schedule.”

While litigation plays out, the ballroom is going up quickly

The Trump administration says 65% of the work has already been completed on the planned 90,000-square-foot ballroom, where the East Wing stood before the president ordered its demolition.

Crews are working 20 hours a day, seven days a week, on the project, where about $200 million in private donations has been spent or committed, according to court documents filed by the Justice Department.

The work has proceeded against the backdrop of the litigation winding through the courts.

In April, a district court judge ordered a stop to the aboveground construction of the planned ballroom. That ruling was briefly suspended, then upheld by an appeals court panel. U.S. District Judge Richard Leon in Washington allowed work to continue only belowground on bunkers and military installations. Leon was nominated by President George W. Bush, a Republican.

Leon’s decision was upheld by an appeals court panel, as two judges appointed by Democratic presidents found the project was for Congress to decide and “not a matter for Executive self-help.” A third judge, appointed by Trump, found that the preservationist group challenging the project had no legal standing to sue.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer picked up on that argument, calling the decision halting the work “extraordinary and unlawful.” He said the completion of the project was “vitally required by national security.”

The Trump administration has scored a series of victories on the Supreme Court’s emergency docket, though the justices have ruled against some of the president’s signature policies after fuller review.

August 21, 2026
Trump administration moves to strip bar association’s power to accredit law schools

The Trump administration’s ongoing feud with the American Bar Association has come to a head, as the Education Department threatens to strip the organization of its power to oversee law school programs across the country.

Career staffers at the department recently recommended the ABA lose the federal recognition needed to operate as an accreditor. In a report made public Friday, staffers at the department said the ABA, which accredits nearly 200 law schools, had failed to keep both sides of its house “separate and independent,” undermining its effectiveness as an accreditor.

The association is both an accreditor for law schools and a trade group for legal professionals. As an accreditor, ABA oversees the quality of law school education and determines whether law schools not affiliated with a university can accept federal student aid.

President Donald Trump and other Republican lawmakers have accused the ABA of having a liberal bias and promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion, pushing a political agenda in law schools. Conservatives have also criticized the ABA, which has accredited law schools since 1952, for having a monopoly on oversight of law school education.

The Education Department declined to comment.

David Barker, assistant secretary for postsecondary education, told the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the recommendation, “We have said many times that accreditation, in general, operates like a cartel. When there’s no competition, accreditors feel free to inject their own political preferences, their own ideologies into the work that they do.”

The ABA’s accreditation council chairperson, Melissa Hart, told the Washington Post the council is confident it complies with the Education Department’s requirements for accreditors and federal laws.

“The outcomes produced by Council-accredited law schools are unmatched, and we continue the important work of accrediting law schools as our recognition process proceeds,” she said in a statement.

The Education Department last approved the association to accredit law schools in 2021, a five-year designation that is up for review next month.

The federal government relies on accreditors, little-known but powerful organizations, to deem colleges worthy to participate in the federal student aid program and to review educational quality.

The report comes as the Trump administration seeks to reshape college accreditation, a system it has accused of being captured by liberal politics. The Education Department has proposed regulations to encourage intellectual diversity and increase competition among accreditors. The proposed rule also calls on accreditors and trade associations to be separate to prevent conflicts of interest.

Tensions have simmered between the ABA and the Trump administration on multiple fronts, including in court. Top Justice Department officials have repeatedly taken aim at the legal group.

Then-Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote to the ABA last year that the group was biased in favor of Democrats and said the administration would not allow it to help vet judicial nominees.

Also last year, Todd Blanche — then the Justice Department’s No. 2 official, who has since replaced Bondi as attorney general — said that the agency would no longer pay for its employees to travel to the ABA’s events or allow them to even attend such functions.

The ABA has also sued the administration, including in a case challenging Trump’s campaign to crack down on prominent law firms.

Trump issued executive orders last year taking aim at several firms that had hired his perceived enemies or took on cases he disliked. Four of the firms that were targeted sued to fight those orders, and all of them won court orders blocking Trump’s sanctions.

The ABA filed its own lawsuit challenging Trump’s actions, saying it had to act to protect its members “and the rule of law itself.” The case is ongoing, and a judge earlier this year rejected the Trump administration’s effort to have the lawsuit thrown out.

An independent advisory board will meet next month to consider the Education Department’s recommendation and decide the ABA’s fate as an accreditor. A senior Education Department official will then weigh in.

“We look forward to the opportunity to address any misconceptions and clarify the record at our upcoming hearing,” Hart said. “We’re confident the Council will address any concerns the Department may have at that hearing.”

If the advisory board votes that the government should withdraw its recognition of the ABA as an accreditor and that decision is upheld by a senior department official, the ABA can then appeal to Education Secretary Linda McMahon.

If McMahon denies the appeal, law schools affiliated with a university could use their school’s accreditor, while unaffiliated schools will have to find a new accreditor.

August 21, 2026
Trump threatens suit over report he doesn’t like, aiming to intimidate a critic

President Donald Trump has opened a new front in his campaign to intimidate political foes, threatening a prominent liberal think tank with a $5 billion defamation lawsuit over a report concluding that his deployment of the National Guard to cities across the country has had little effect on reducing violent crime.

The threats against the think tank, the Center for American Progress, were Trump’s latest effort to use the legal system to punish critics for voicing unflattering facts and opinions generally protected by the First Amendment. And while it is unclear how far any suit the president might ultimately file would get in court, it could force the organization to spend money fighting it off and make it even more of a target of his allies and supporters.

On Monday, one of Trump’s personal lawyers, Alejandro Brito, wrote a letter to the center warning that he would file the suit if the group did not fully retract the report, which was published on its website July 13. The letter, viewed by the New York Times, was addressed to the group’s president and CEO, Neera Tanden, a longtime Democratic official who served as a senior adviser to President Joe Biden, and to several of its board members.

Brito claimed that the report about the National Guard was full of malicious and false statements. He gave Tanden and members of her board until 5 p.m. Friday to retract it and apologize to Trump.

Tanden pushed back, saying in a statement that the center would “neither cower nor bend in the face” of legal action. She also defended the report, asserting that while its findings might have been “inconvenient to the Trump administration,” they were “grounded in rigorous, evidence-based research and analysis.”

“This threatened lawsuit’s attack on facts and evidence is baseless,” she added. “A fundamental protection of the First Amendment is to allow for the publication of facts and analysis that is contrary to the arguments and claims of any administration. A lawsuit is a transparent attempt to silence us.”

Trump has often lashed out at scholars and commentators for reproaching or critiquing him in the news media. Since winning reelection, he has filed a flurry of lawsuits against news organizations like the BBC and the Times, claiming they defamed him. He has even filed suit against the Des Moines Register, arguing that a poll the paper published before the 2024 election indicating that he would lose the vote in Iowa amounted to consumer fraud and election interference.

(The Times has filed its own suits against the administration, including two seeking increased access for its reporters at the Pentagon.)

The president has repeatedly claimed that his administration is the most transparent in U.S. history. But he and his aides have used lawsuits and executive actions to go after law firms, universities, and television networks. They have also used criminal tactics such as search warrants and grand jury subpoenas in an effort to pry loose sensitive information from reporters.

Many of these efforts have faltered once they reached court and faced judicial scrutiny. Brito himself has filed multiple failed suits on behalf of Trump. Last month, a federal judge in Florida referred Brito for potential disciplinary proceedings after ruling that a suit he filed for the president against the IRS amounted to an improper exercise in self-dealing.

The Center for American Progress report accused Trump of seeking to take credit for a nationwide decline in violent crime that began before he returned to the White House. The report determined that there was “no evidence” that the National Guard deployments had affected the crime rate, adding that they were poised to cost taxpayers more than $1.7 billion if they continued through the end of 2026.

The report asserted that the “primary goal” of the deployments was “never to stop crime.” Instead, it said they amounted to “a dangerous power grab by the Trump administration.”

The team that put the report together used an analysis based on homicide, violent crime, and gun victimization data in cities where the National Guard was deployed — Washington, Los Angeles, and Memphis, Tenn. — over the period from January 2023 to this February.

“This approach was employed to identify any statistical changes in crime trends associated with the deployment of the National Guard in specific cities,” its authors wrote.

Trump referred to the report on social media last week after watching a television segment about the report, which he described as “another Radical Left SCAM.” In the post, he threatened to sue the center and several of its funders, including liberal financier George Soros, who has long served as a boogeyman for the administration.

A week later, Brito’s letter arrived at the center, saying that the president would sue if Tanden and her colleagues did not retract the report, issue an apology, and give Trump unspecified financial compensation.

The letter ended with an all-caps salutation: “PLEASE GOVERN YOURSELVES ACCORDINGLY.”

On Friday, a lawyer for the center fired back in a letter of his own, deriding Trump’s accusations that he had been defamed.

“This is utterly absurd,” the lawyer, Kevin H. Metz, wrote to Brito. “Truth is not and cannot be defamation.”

Metz went on to say that the center welcomed the opportunity to make its case in court and receive more information on the National Guard deployments through the process of discovery.

Other think tanks of various political stripes have rallied to the center’s side.

“Independent organizations across the ideological spectrum must be free to express their analysis and opinions, and to challenge those in power without fear of political retaliation or legal intimidation,” said Peter Goettler, president and CEO of the libertarian Cato Institute. “Disagreements on matters of policy should be settled through open inquiry, evidence, and debate — not threats designed to silence criticism.”

This article originally appeared in the New York Times.

August 21, 2026
Court cuts $50M judgment against Infowars’ Alex Jones over falsely labeling Newtown killings a hoax

AUSTIN, Texas — A Texas court on Friday slashed a $50 million judgment to $1.5 million against Infowars founder Alex Jones after he falsely claimed the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school mass shooting was a hoax.

The ruling does not affect a $1.25 billion judgment against Jones in Connecticut, but is a legal victory for him after he and his company, Free Speech Systems, were found liable for damages for claiming the mass shooting didn’t happen.

Despite the multiple financial judgments against him in Connecticut and Texas, Jones has yet to make any payments as he appeals the amounts and the attempt to liquidate his company.

The unanimous opinion by the Texas Third Court of Appeals found that Sandy Hook parents Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis did not show evidence that harassment inflamed by Jones’ hoax claims rose to a level that would allow them to exceed the state’s $750,000 cap on damages for each plaintiff.

Heslin and Lewis’s 6-year-old son Jesse Lewis was among 20 children and six educators killed in the attack in Newtown, Conn. The lawsuit and the 2022 verdict against Jones marked the first time he was held financially liable for peddling lies about the massacre, claiming it was faked by the government to tighten gun laws.

Jones, who portrayed the lawsuit as an attack on his First Amendment rights, conceded during the trial that the attack was “100% real” and that he was wrong to have lied about it.

However, on his streaming show Friday, he called the Texas ruling “a gigantic victory for the First Amendment,” and said he will continue to appeal the case to the state Supreme Court to get the remaining damages thrown out.

“I got lawyers who are good constitutional lawyers and they are not backing down,” Jones said.

Mark Bankston, an attorney for Heslin and Lewis in Texas, shrugged off the appeals court ruling as “irrelevant” given that Jones still faces massive financial judgments.

“The families care not at all about this irrelevant ruling which affects only two of the 19 claims they all share. Jones still faces over a billion dollars of liability, so this changes absolutely nothing. All it does it highlight the absurdity of Texas law,” Bankston said.

Heslin and Lewis told jurors in the case that an apology wouldn’t suffice and called on them to make Jones pay for the years of suffering he has put them and other Sandy Hook families through.

Jones’ trial attorney Andino Reynal had said immediately after the verdict that Jones would appeal the damages amount, and predicted it would be reduced to $1.5 million.

Jones and his company have filed for bankruptcy, and those legal proceedings continue. The satirical website the Onion also moved to take over Jones’ Infowars platforms and turn his bullhorn of conspiracy theories into parody sites.

Jones gave up the Infowars brand in April and moved to a new location, switching his shows to new websites and posting them on his personal X account. The Onion, meanwhile, has set up its own Infowars webpage on its website, running videos of shows parodying Jones.

August 21, 2026