Before the US launched military strikes on Yemen in March, Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, sent detailed information about the planned attacks to a private Signal group chat that he created himself, which included his wife, his brother and about a dozen other people, the New York Times reported on Sunday.

The Guardian has independently confirmed the existence of Hegseth’s own private group chat.

According to unnamed sources familiar with the chat who spoke to the Times, Hegseth sent the private group of his personal associates some of the same information, including the flight schedules for the F/A-18 Hornets that would strike Houthi rebel targets in Yemen, that he also shared with another Signal group of top officials that was created by Mike Waltz, the national security adviser.

The existence of the Signal group chat created by Waltz, in which detailed attack plans were divulged by Hegseth to other Trump administration officials on the private messaging app, was made public last month by Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic, who had been accidentally added to the group by Waltz.

The fact that Hegseth also shared the plans in a second Signal group chat, according to “people familiar with the matter” who spoke to the Times, is likely to add to growing criticism of the former Fox weekend anchor’s ability to manage the Pentagon, a massive organization which operates in matters of life and death around the globe.

According to the Times, the private chat also included two senior advisers to Hegseth – Dan Caldwell and Darin Selnick – who were fired last week after being accused of leaking unauthorized information.

Hegseth has previously been criticized for including his wife, Jennifer, a former Fox News producer, in sensitive meetings with foreign leaders, including a discussion of the war in Ukraine with Britain’s most senior defense officials at the Pentagon last month, during which she was pictured sitting directly behind her husband. Phil Hegseth, the secretary’s younger brother, is a podcast producer who was recently hired as a Department of Homeland Security liaison to the Pentagon. It is unclear why either would need to know the details of strike plans in advance.

According to the Times, Hegseth used his private phone, rather than a government device, to access the Signal chat with his family and friends.

CNN reported later on Sunday that three sources familiar with Hegseth’s private Signal group confirmed to the broadcaster that he had used it to share Yemen attack plans before the strikes were launched.

The same information was also confirmed to the Associated Press by a source familiar with the group chat who said that it included 13 people.

Shortly after the news of the second Signal chat broke, Politico published an opinion article by Hegseth’s former press secretary, John Ullyot, which began: “It’s been a month of total chaos at the Pentagon. From leaks of sensitive operational plans to mass firings, the dysfunction is now a major distraction for the president – who deserves better from his senior leadership”.

A draft Trump administration executive order reported to be circulating among US diplomats proposes a radical restructuring of the US state department, including drastic reductions to sub-Saharan operations, envoys and bureaus relating to climate, refugees, human rights, democracy and gender equality.

The changes, if enacted, would be one of the biggest reorganizations of the department since its founding in 1789, according to Bloomberg, which had seen a copy of the 16-page draft. The New York Times first reported on the draft.

The US state department disputed the report, with a spokesperson telling Newsweek that the reporting is “entirely based on a fake document”.

Earlier on Sunday, the US secretary of state Marco Rubio called the reported overhaul “fake news” in a post on X. “The ⁦nytimes falls victim to another hoax.”

The proposals reportedly also include the elimination of the Bureau of International Organizations, which liaises with the United Nations and a cut in diplomatic operations in Canada.

Under the changes, the sprawling state department would be reorganized into four regional bureaus covering Indo-Pacific, Latin America, the Middle East and Eurasia. But an unspecified number of “non-essential” embassies and consulates in Sub-Saharan Africa would be closed.

The New York Times said the proposal executive order could be signed by Donald Trump this week and the changes would take effect by 1 October.

The order is designed to impose “a disciplined reorganization” of the state department and “streamline mission delivery” while cutting “waste, fraud and abuse”, the outlet quoted from the document.

If the proposals happened, they would be a significant rejection of the US commitment to a multilateral world order.

A senior diplomatic official in Africa said information circulating within the state department about foreign service reforms that are set to be announced would be less sweeping than those described in the document.

One poster on a US foreign service-dedicated Reddit page said they doubted that the changes would go as far as the draft order. “I suspect this is being leaked as a red herring designed to make us grateful for a more modest but still unpopular reorganization,” wrote one user. “It will be basically immediately challenged and enjoined, and then ‘implementation’ will be dragged out until Trump is voted out.”

Still, any radical reorganization of the US foreign operations comes after the Trump administration moved to fold the US Agency for International Development (USAID) into the state department, cut operations, and then reinstate some, including programs for emergency food assistance.

The bureau of humanitarian affairs would “assume any mission-critical duties previously carried out by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)”, the order reads.

The draft order leaked on Sunday would eliminate the Bureau of African Affairs, the special envoy for climate, the Bureau of International Organizations, and the Office of Global Women’s Issues.

“Diplomatic relations with Canada shall fall under a significantly reduced team delegated as the North American Affairs Office (NAAO) within the Office of the Secretary,” according to the document. That includes a substantial downsizing of the US embassy in the capital, Ottawa.

The shake-up would also see US diplomatic staff assigned to regions for the duration of their careers rather than be deployed in rotations around the world. State department-awarded Fulbright scholarships would be reformed as “solely for master’s-level study in national security-related disciplines” with emphasis placed in “critical” languages.

Fellowships associated with historically Black Howard University in Washington, would also be cancelled as part of the administration’s effort to end diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.

“All positions and duties must receive explicit written approval from the President of the United States,” according to the order, which also calls for ending the foreign service exam for aspiring diplomats. The new criteria for hiring, it said, includes “alignment with the president’s foreign policy vision”.

But the order is not the only internal document circulating to propose changes to US diplomatic operations. Another proposes a 50% reduction in the state department budget, and a third calls for the cutting 10 embassies and 17 consulates.

The US state department workforce includes 13,000 members of the foreign service, 11,000 civil service employees, and 45,000 locally employed staff at more than 270 diplomatic missions worldwide, according to its website.

The US vice-president, JD Vance, has arrived in India for talks with the prime minister, Narendra Modi, on a bilateral trade deal as the US tariff war with China escalates and the US global economic alliances fray.

Vance, joined by the second lady, Usha Vance, and their three children, Ewan, Vivek and Mirabel, landed in Delhi on Monday for a four-day visit that blends high-level negotiations with a family sightseeing tour. The Vance family was greeted at the airport by railways minister Ashwini Vaishnaw. They stood under a red canopy that shielded them from the blazing sun as soldiers stood in salute and a military band played the US anthem.

The White House described the visit as focused on “shared economic and geopolitical priorities”, while India said Vance’s stay would “provide an opportunity for both sides to review the progress in bilateral relations”.

Talks will centre on fast-tracking a trade pact amid Washington’s global tariff offensive, even as farmer protests and tensions over US immigration threaten to overshadow the trip.

India was hit with 26% tariffs by Donald Trump on 2 April despite his good relations with Modi. A 90-day pause has offered temporary relief but Delhi remains wary.

To head off further economic fallout, officials in the Indian capital have been working overtime to hammer out the first tranche of the trade deal that both sides hope to have completed by autumn. India has already slashed tariffs on some US goods and further sweeping cuts are expected.

The US is India’s top trading partner, with two-way trade surpassing $190bn (£144bn). That relationship was boosted after Modi paid a goodwill visit to Washington after Trump’s return to the White House. Both leaders pledged to more than double bilateral trade to $500bn – a “mega partnership”, as Modi called it.

But not everyone is happy. On 21 April, the day of Vance’s arrival, India’s biggest and oldest farmers’ union, the All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS), has called for nationwide protests to oppose a trade deal. The union says trade liberalisation could devastate farm incomes, particularly in the dairy sector.

The AIKS, affiliated with the Communist party of India, claims more than 16 million members and has accused the US commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, of “coercion” in demanding that India’s heavily subsidised agriculture sector be part of the deal.

Meanwhile, memories are still fresh in the Modi government of large-scale farmer protests in 2020–21 that forced the repeal of controversial farm laws.

Tensions are also flaring over student and H-1B visas, often awarded to tech workers. The Congress leader Jairam Ramesh has flagged US data showing that of 327 recent visa revocations for international students, half involved Indian nationals.

“The reasons for revocation are random and unclear. There is growing fear and apprehension,” Ramesh said, urging the external affairs minister to “raise the concern” with the US.

The American Immigration Lawyers Association says US immigration officials are “aggressively targeting international students”, including those with no protest history.

Concerns over H-1B visas, long vital for Indian tech workers in the US, are mounting, too. Indians accounted for 70% of all H-1B visas last year, more than 200,000. Uncertainty over re-entry is prompting many to cancel visits home.

The ministry of external affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said the government was “very positive” that Vance’s visit would “further boost” ties and promised “all relevant issues” would be discussed.

Vance’s time as vice-president has been marked by his assertive “America First” foreign policy. On a European tour, he raised tempers by criticising allies’ defence spending. In March, during a Greenland stop, he caused consternation by saying: “We have to have Greenland. It’s not a question of ‘Do you think we can do without it?’”

Vance’s India visit comes just after the head of US intelligence chief, Tulsi Gabbard, was in Delhi to bolster the Quad – the four-nation security grouping of the US, India, Japan, and Australia – seen as a counterweight to China’s growing clout.

Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, has also been on a south-east Asia charm offensive, promoting Beijing as a steadier and more dependable economic ally than Washington.

Although Vance is primarily on a working visit, his trip will have a strong personal element. The family will tour the royal palaces of Jaipur and the iconic Taj Mahal. Officials say the “private component” underscores Usha Vance’s Indian roots – she was born in the US to Indian immigrants – and deep ties to India.

Pope Francis and JD Vance, who have disagreed very publicly over the Trump administration’s attitude to immigration and its migrant deportation plans, met briefly in Rome on Sunday to exchange Easter greetings.

The meeting came a day after the US vice-president, who converted to Roman Catholicism in 2019, sat down with senior Vatican officials and had “an exchange of opinions” over international conflicts and immigration.

Francis, who is recovering from a near-fatal bout of pneumonia, received Vance in one of the reception rooms of the Vatican hotel where he lives. The 88-year-old pontiff offered the vice-president three big chocolate Easter eggs for Vance’s three young children, who did not attend, as well as a Vatican tie and rosaries.

“I know you have not been feeling great, but it’s good to see you in better health,” Vance told the pope. “Thank you for seeing me.”

The Vatican said the two men met for a few minutes at the Domus Santa Marta “to exchange Easter greetings”. Vance’s office confirmed that they met, but provided no further details. In all, Vance’s motorcade was on Vatican territory for 17 minutes.

Vance later joined his family for Easter mass at St Paul Outside the Walls, one of the four pontifical basilicas in Rome. The Vances visited the tomb of the apostle St Paul that is said to be located there.

Vance and the leader of the world’s 1.4bn Roman Catholics differ sharply when it comes to the issue of migration. In February, Francis – who has made caring for migrants a hallmark of his papacy – warned that the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts and other policies cracking down on immigration, were driving a “major crisis” that “damages the dignity of men and women”.

In a letter to US bishops, Francis also appeared to respond to Vance directly for having claimed that Catholic doctrine justified such policies.

Vance, who acknowledged the pontiff’s criticism, has said he would continue to defend his views. While he did not address the issue specifically during an appearance at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington in February, Vance called himself a “baby Catholic” and acknowledged there were “things about the faith that I don’t know”.

On Saturday, Vance met the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, and its foreign minister, Archbishop Paul Gallagher.

Vance’s office said he and Parolin “discussed their shared religious faith, Catholicism in the United States, the plight of persecuted Christian communities around the world, and President Trump’s commitment to restoring world peace”.

The Vatican, for its part, said there had been an “exchange of opinions” including over migrants, refugees and conflicts.

“Finally, hope was expressed for serene collaboration between the state and the Catholic church in the United States, whose valuable service to the most vulnerable people was acknowledged,” the Vatican added in a statement.

The reference to “serene collaboration” appeared to refer to Vance’s accusation that the US conference of Catholic bishops was resettling “illegal immigrants” in order to obtain federal funding. Top US cardinals have pushed back strongly against the claim.

In the traditional Urbi et Orbi message, which was read out on his behalf on Easter Sunday, Francis called on world leaders to help those in need and to work towards peace.

“I appeal to all those in positions of political responsibility in our world not to yield to the logic of fear which only leads to isolation from others, but rather to use the resources available to help the needy, to fight hunger and to encourage initiatives that promote development,” he said. “These are the ‘weapons’ of peace: weapons that build the future, instead of sowing seeds of death!”

The Associated Press contributed to this report

Ukraine issued air raid alerts for Kyiv and the country’s eastern half as blasts shook the city of Mykolaiv early on Monday, authorities said, hours after the one-day Easter “ceasefire” declared by Vladimir Putin came to an end.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy dismissed the Russian president’s unilateral Easter ceasefire declaration as a fake “PR” exercise and said Russian troops had continued their drone and artillery attacks across many parts of the frontline on Sunday.

Washington said it would welcome an extension of the truce, and Zelenskyy reiterated several times Ukraine’s willingness to pause strikes for 30 days in the war.

Putin ordered on Saturday the halt in all military activity along the frontline until midnight Moscow time on Sunday. He did not give orders to extend it.

“There were no other commands,” Russia’s Tass state news agency cited Kremlin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov as saying when asked whether the ceasefire could be prolonged.

Some regions in eastern Ukraine were under air raid alerts starting minutes after midnight on Monday, according to data from the Ukrainian air force, with the alerts gradually extending towards the central regions of the country.

“We urge city residents to immediately go to the nearest shelters and remain there until the alert is over,” Kyiv’s military administration said in a social media post at 4.41am local time.

Blasts shook the Ukrainian port city of Mykolaiv, said its mayor, Oleksandr Senkevich. He did not say whether it was air defence systems in operation or bombs landing.

Dnipropetrovsk regional governor Sergiy Lysak said on Telegram: “The Russian army has launched drones at the region.”

He said a home was damaged and a fire broke out at a food establishment but no injuries had been reported.

There were no air raid alerts in Ukraine on Sunday but Ukrainian forces reported nearly 3,000 violations of Russia’s own ceasefire with the heaviest attacks and shelling seen along the Pokrovsk part of the frontline, Zelenskiy said on Monday.

Russia’s Voronezh region bordering Ukraine was also under air raid alerts for two hours, the region’s governor said. Russia’s defence ministry said on Sunday that Ukrainian forces had shot at Russian positions 444 times and it had counted more than 900 Ukrainian drone attacks, with deaths and injuries among the civilian population. Reuters could not independently verify the battlefield reports.

Donald Trump, hoping to clinch a lasting peace deal, struck an optimistic note on Sunday, saying that “hopefully” the two sides would make a deal “this week” to end the conflict.

On Friday, the US president and his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said the US would walk away from peace efforts without clear signs of progress soon.

Rubio met European leaders in Paris last week to discuss how to end the war. Leaks suggest the White House is pushing for a Kremlin-friendly deal that would freeze the conflict along the existing 1,000km-long frontline.

Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, has suggested that Crimea and four other Ukrainian provinces could be given to Russia. The US is considering recognising Crimea as Russian and offering Moscow other incentives such as sanctions relief, Bloomberg reported.

The Kremlin insists its original war goals must be achieved. They include the removal of Zelenskyy as Ukraine’s president, as well as the country’s “demilitarisation” and a guarantee of its non-Nato “neutral” status.

Since their disastrous meeting in February in the Oval Office, Zelenskyy has been seeking to improve relations with Washington. Last month, Ukraine accepted a 30-day US ceasefire proposal and it is poised to sign an agreement on Thursday giving the US access to minerals.

There are hints, however, that Zelenskyy is growing frustrated at the White House’s pro-Putin rhetoric. Trump has piled pressure on Ukraine – in effect cutting off military aid and temporarily pausing intelligence sharing – while taking no corresponding measures against Russia.

On Sunday, Zelenskyy appeared to take a swipe at Fox Television Stations after its Live Now network broadcast live coverage of Putin attending an Orthodox Easter service in Moscow with Russia’s patriarch, while incorrectly labelling Kyiv as part of Russia.

“Instead of broadcasting religious service from Moscow, the focus should be on pressuring Moscow to genuinely commit to a full ceasefire and to maintain it for at least 30 days after Easter – to give diplomacy a real chance,” Zelenskyy posted.

Ukraine’s foreign ministry said it had asked for an explanation. “If this was a mistake rather than a deliberate political statement, there should be an apology and an investigation into who made the mistake,” a ministry spokesperson said.

With Reuters

Senator Chris Van Hollen, who travelled to El Salvador last week to meet Kilmar Ábrego García, the man at the center of a wrongful deportation dispute, said on Sunday that his trip was to support Ábrego García’s right to due process because if that was denied then everyone’s constitutional rights were threatened in the US.

The White House has claimed Ábrego García was a member of the MS-13 gang though he has not been charged with any gang related crimes and the supreme court has ordered his return to the US be facilitated.

But in an interview with ABC’s This Week, Van Hollen, a Maryland senator, stressed that the government had presented no evidence linking Ábrego García to MS-13 in federal court. “Mr President,” the senator said, “take your facts to court, don’t put everything out on social media.”

Speaking on CNN’s State of the Union, Van Hollen said Trump’s “argument that you can’t fight gang violence and uphold people’s constitutional rights at the same time. That’s a very dangerous view. If we deny the constitutional rights of this one man, it threatens the constitutional rights of everyone in America.”

Van Hollen, who returned to the US on Friday after meeting with Ábrego García, has accused administration officials of lying about Ábrego García’s case in attempt to distract from questions about whether his rights were violated when he was deported to El Salvador last month.

“I’m for whatever gives him his due process rights,” Van Hollen told the outlet. “An immigration judge in 2019 said he should not be deported to El Salvador because that would put his life at risk from gang members like MS-13.

“The Trump administration did not appeal that immigration judge’s order to keep him in the United States. He is here legally now, has a work permit, is a sheet metal worker, has a family, and three kids,” he said.

“I am fine with whatever result happens as long as he is given his due process rights under the constitution,” Van Hollen added. The administration has said Ábrego García’s deportation was an “administrative error” and the supreme court has ordered that the government “facilitate” his return, setting up a contentious debate of what that means in practical terms.

As Van Hollen made the rounds of political shows on Sunday, he expanded on the theme of a constitutional crisis. On NBC’s Meet the Press he was asked if the US was in constitutional crisis with the Trump administration.

“Oh, yes, we are. They are very much flouting the courts as we speak. As the courts have said, facilitating his return means something more than doing nothing, and they are doing nothing. Yes, they’re absolutely in violation of the court’s orders as we speak,” he said.

“My whole point here is that if you deprive one man of his constitutional rights, you threaten the constitutional rights of everybody,” Van Hollen said later to Fox News Sunday host, Shannon Bream. “I would hope that all of us would understand that principle – you’re a lawyer. I’m not vouching for the individual, I’m vouching for his rights.”

On ABC’s This Week, Van Hollen was asked if he had walked into a trap when García was brought to his hotel for an hour-long meeting and the pair were pictured with margaritas. The senator said the drinks were placed there by a government official for the photos, and not touched, and added that the trip wasn’t a trap because his purpose had been to meet with García so he could “tell his wife and family he was okay”.

“That was my goal. And I achieved that goal,” he said.

But he added that “the Salvadorian authorities tried to deceive people. They tried to make it look like he was in paradise. They actually wanted to have the meeting by the hotel pool originally.”

The senator also accused Tom Homan, Trump’s “border czar”, of “lying through his teeth” about Ábrego García, and strongly rejected comments by Gavin Newsom, the California governor seen as a potential candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028, who said that it was politically dangerous for Democrats to defend the wrongly deported man.

“I think what Americans are tired of, is people who want to put their finger to the wind to see what’s going on,” the senator said. “I would say that anyone that’s not prepared to defend the constitutional rights of one man, when they threaten the constitutional rights of all, doesn’t deserve to lead.”

After the meeting, President Nayib Bukele post the image on X, writing that García “miraculously risen from the ‘death camps’ & ‘torture’, now sipping margaritas with Senator Van Hollen in the tropical paradise of El Salvador!”

Van Hollen said the venue for the meeting and the subsequent picture “just goes to show the lengths that Bukele and Trump will go to try to deceive people about what this case is all about”.

On Friday, the White House mocked Van Hollen by annotating a headline about his Thursday meeting with García. “Fixed it for you, New York Times,” the White House X account shared. “Oh, and by the way, Chris Van Hollen – he’s NOT coming back.”

The annotated headline changes “Senator Meets With Wrongly Deported Maryland Man in El Salvador” included crossing out “Wrongly” in red ink and replacing the words “Maryland Man” with “MS-13 Illegal Alien”. They also added “Who’s Never Coming Back.”

But Ábrego García’s deportation was also facing opposition from Republicans. On Sunday, Louisiana senator John Kennedy was asked on Meet The Press if Ábrego García should be returned to the US.

Kennedy said that Van Hollen’s trip to El Salvador and calls for Ábrego García to be returned to the US were “utterly and gloriously wrong” and said that “most of this gauzy rhetoric is just rage bait. Unless you’re next level obtuse, you know that Mr García is never coming back to the United States, ever.”

But Kennedy conceded that Ábrego García’s deportation “was a screw up”, adding that “the administration won’t admit it, but this was a screw up. Mr Garcia was not supposed to be sent to El Salvador. He was sent to El Salvador.” But he said Democrats’ response was typical.

“The Democrats say, ‘Look, you know, we told you, Trump is a threat to democracy’. This is going to happen every other Thursday afternoon. I don’t see any pattern here. I mean, you know, some day pigs may fly, but I doubt it,”” he added.

A federal judge on Friday ordered that a Turkish Tufts University student detained by immigration authorities in Louisiana be brought to Vermont by 1 May for a hearing over what her lawyers say was apparent retaliation for an op-ed piece she co-wrote in the student newspaper.

The US district judge William Sessions said he would hear Rümeysa Öztürk’s request to be released from detention. Her lawyers had requested that she be released immediately, or at least brought back to Vermont.

The 30-year-old doctoral student was taken by immigration officials as she walked along a street in the Boston suburb of Somerville on 25 March. After being taken to New Hampshire and then Vermont, she was put on a plane the next day and moved to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Basile, Louisiana. An immigration judge denied her request for bond Wednesday.

Öztürk is among several people with ties to American universities whose visas were revoked or who have been stopped from entering the US after they were accused of attending demonstrations or publicly expressing support for Palestinians. A Louisiana immigration judge has ruled that the US can deport Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil based on the federal government’s argument that he poses a national security risk.

Öztürk’s lawyers are challenging the legal authority for Ice’s detention. They asked that she be immediately released from custody, or returned to Vermont while her immigration case continues.

A lawyer for the justice department said her legal challenge should be dismissed, adding the immigration court has jurisdiction.

Öztürk’s lawyers first filed a petition on her behalf in Massachusetts. Initially, they didn’t know where she was. They said they were unable to speak to her until more than 24 hours after she had been detained. Öztürk herself said she unsuccessfully made multiple requests to speak to a lawyer.

Öztürk was one of four students who wrote an op-ed in the campus newspaper, the Tufts Daily, last year criticizing the university’s response to student activists demanding that Tufts “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide”, disclose its investments and divest from companies with ties to Israel.

Öztürk’s lawyers say her detention violates her constitutional rights, including free speech and due process.

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said last month, without providing evidence, that investigations found that Öztürk engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a US-designated terrorist group.

Earlier this week, however, the Washington Post reported that a state department review of the DHS investigation conducted before Öztürk’s arrest had cast doubt on that claim, and noted that there was no evidence that she had engaged in antisemitic activity or made any public statement indicating support for a terrorist organization.

Wrongly deported Salvadorian man Kilmar Ábrego García has been held incommunicado and faced threats in prison that have left him “traumatized”, a Democratic senator said Friday after returning from meeting him in El Salvador.

Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, the state Ábrego García had been living in with his US citizen wife and son until he was deported last month in what the Trump administration conceded was an “administrative error”, traveled to the central American country this week to see his constituent. After initially rejecting his request to meet Ábrego García and preventing him from traveling to the prison where he was being held, president Nayib Bukele’s government on Thursday facilitated a meeting at Van Hollen’s hotel.

“His conversation with me was the first communication he’d had with anybody outside of prison since he was abducted. He said he felt very sad about being in a prison because he had not committed any crimes,” Van Hollen said at a press conference at Dulles international airport outside Washington DC.

He recounted speaking to Ábrego García about his wellbeing, and informing him of the controversy caused by his arrest and Donald Trump’s refusal to let him back into the United States, in spite of a supreme court ruling saying the president should “facilitate” his return.

The senator said Ábrego García told him about how he had been arrested by federal agents after a traffic stop while driving with his five-year-old son, who has autism. He was taken to Baltimore, then Texas, where he was shackled and placed with other deportees on an aircraft where they could not see out the windows. The plane flew to El Salvador, where, Ábrego García said, he was taken to the Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot) and put in a cell with about 25 other people.

“He said he was not afraid of the other prisoners in his immediate cell, but that he was traumatized by being at Cecot and fearful of many of the prisoners in other cell blocks who called out to him, and taunted him in various ways,” Van Hollen said, adding that Ábrego García otherwise appeared to be in sound health.

Just more than a week ago, Ábrego García was moved to another prison in the city of Santa Ana, where conditions are better, but he still has no contact with the outside world, Van Hollen said. He has also not been told whether he is being charged with a crime, or how long he will be detained.

“They haven’t told him anything about why he was sent or how long he would be there,” the senator said.

Van Hollen described himself as motivated to make the trip both out of a desire to relay Ábrego García’s condition to his family, and outrage that the Trump administration had deported him despite a judge granting him protection from removal, over a “well-founded fear of future persecution” from gangs in El Salvador, and was now refusing to bring him back.

“This case is not only about one man, as important as that is. It is about protecting fundamental freedoms and the fundamental principle in the constitution for due process, that protects everybody who resides in America,” Van Hollen said. “This should not be an issue for Republicans or Democrats. This is an issue for every American who cares about our constitution.”

On Thursday, the federal appeals judge James Wilkinson, an appointee of Republican president Ronald Reagan, wrote an opinion blasting the administration’s conduct in the case as litigation over Ábrego García’s deportation continued.

“The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order,” he wrote.

The Trump administration has countered the criticism by claiming that Ábrego García was a member of the MS-13 criminal gang, with the White House posting on social media that he was “NOT coming back”.

Trump administration officials also seized on a claim from Bukele that Van Hollen and Ábrego García drank margaritas during their meeting, which the senator took pains to refute, saying the drinks had been placed on their table by a Salvadorian government employee.

“Let me just be very clear: neither of us touched the drinks that were in front of us,” he said, adding that the glass placed in front of Ábrego García contained less liquid, as if trying to create the impression that he had drunk from it.

“But this is a lesson into the lengths that president Bukele will do to deceive people about what’s going on. And it also shows the lengths that the Trump administration, or the president, will go to, because when he was asked about a reporter about this, he just went along for the ride.”

Van Hollen was joined at the airport by Ábrego García’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, who brushed away tears as the senator described meeting her husband. At the White House earlier in the day, Trump had read from a domestic violence protective order Vasquez filed in 2021, which she has said stemmed from a rough patch in their marriage that they later worked through.

“When I asked him, what was the one thing he would ask for in addition to his freedom, he said he wanted to talk to his wife,” Van Hollen said of his meeting with Ábrego García. “I told him I would work very hard to make that happen.”

A Boeing jet intended for a Chinese airline landed back at the planemaker’s US production hub on Sunday, a victim of the tit-for-tat bilateral tariffs launched by Donald Trump.

The 737 MAX, which was meant for China’s Xiamen Airlines, landed at Seattle’s Boeing Field at 6.11pm, according to a Reuters witness. It was painted with Xiamen livery.

The jet, which made refuelling stops in Guam and Hawaii on its 5,000-mile (8,000-km) return journey, was one of several 737 MAX jets – Boeing’s bestselling model – that had been waiting at Boeing’s Zhoushan completion centre for final work and delivery.

Trump this month raised baseline tariffs on Chinese imports to 145%. In retaliation, China imposed a 125% tariff on US goods.

A Chinese airline taking delivery of a Boeing jet could be crippled by the tariffs, given that a new 737 MAX has a market value of around $55m, according to IBA, an aviation consultancy. Beijing is reportedly considering ways to support airlines that lease Boeing jets and are facing higher costs.

Last week it was reported that China’s government had asked Chinese airlines to pause purchases of aircraft-related equipment and parts from American companies like Boeing. China holds about 20% of the expected global demand for aircraft over the next two decades.

Boeing’s order book had 130 planes scheduled for deliver to Chinese companies at the end of March for both commercial airlines and leasing firms, Airways Mag reported.

It was not clear which party made the decision for the aircraft to return to the US. Boeing and Xiamen had not responded to Reuters requests for comment at time of publication.

Just hours before Trump detailed his so-called “liberation day” tariffs, Boeing chief executive, Kelly Ortberg, told a US Senate hearing that the company sold about 80% of its planes overseas and wanted to avoid getting into a situation where “certain markets become closed to us”.

Ortberg said there was about half a trillion dollars in backlogged orders at the time.

Confusion over changing tariffs could leave many aircraft deliveries in limbo, with some airline CEOs saying they would defer delivery of planes rather than pay duties, analysts say.

Michael O’Leary, the group chief executive of budget airline Ryanair, told the Financial Times last week that the company was due to receive 25 Boeing aircraft from August but “we might delay them and hope that common sense will prevail”.

A Boeing jet intended for a Chinese airline landed back at the planemaker’s US production hub on Sunday, a victim of the tit-for-tat bilateral tariffs launched by Donald Trump.

The 737 MAX, which was meant for China’s Xiamen Airlines, landed at Seattle’s Boeing Field at 6.11pm, according to a Reuters witness. It was painted with Xiamen livery.

The jet, which made refuelling stops in Guam and Hawaii on its 5,000-mile (8,000-km) return journey, was one of several 737 MAX jets – Boeing’s bestselling model – that had been waiting at Boeing’s Zhoushan completion centre for final work and delivery.

Trump this month raised baseline tariffs on Chinese imports to 145%. In retaliation, China imposed a 125% tariff on US goods.

A Chinese airline taking delivery of a Boeing jet could be crippled by the tariffs, given that a new 737 MAX has a market value of around $55m, according to IBA, an aviation consultancy. Beijing is reportedly considering ways to support airlines that lease Boeing jets and are facing higher costs.

Last week it was reported that China’s government had asked Chinese airlines to pause purchases of aircraft-related equipment and parts from American companies like Boeing. China holds about 20% of the expected global demand for aircraft over the next two decades.

Boeing’s order book had 130 planes scheduled for deliver to Chinese companies at the end of March for both commercial airlines and leasing firms, Airways Mag reported.

It was not clear which party made the decision for the aircraft to return to the US. Boeing and Xiamen had not responded to Reuters requests for comment at time of publication.

Just hours before Trump detailed his so-called “liberation day” tariffs, Boeing chief executive, Kelly Ortberg, told a US Senate hearing that the company sold about 80% of its planes overseas and wanted to avoid getting into a situation where “certain markets become closed to us”.

Ortberg said there was about half a trillion dollars in backlogged orders at the time.

Confusion over changing tariffs could leave many aircraft deliveries in limbo, with some airline CEOs saying they would defer delivery of planes rather than pay duties, analysts say.

Michael O’Leary, the group chief executive of budget airline Ryanair, told the Financial Times last week that the company was due to receive 25 Boeing aircraft from August but “we might delay them and hope that common sense will prevail”.

China has warned it will take “resolute and reciprocal” countermeasures against other countries negotiating with the US if they make a deal at China’s expense during the trade war.

China’s commerce ministry was responding to recent news reports that Donald Trump planned to pressure other countries to limit their trade with China in return for tariff exemptions. Beijing and the US are locked in an escalating trade war, running separately to the US’s efforts to rewrite trade deals with the rest of the world.

“China firmly opposes any party reaching a deal at the expense of China’s interests,” the ministry said on Monday.

“Appeasement will not bring peace, and compromise will not be respected … To seek one’s own temporary selfish interests at the expense of others’ interests is to seek the skin of a tiger.”

That approach, it warned, “will ultimately fail on both ends and harm others”.

Tit-for-tat tariffs between the US and China have reached 145% on Chinese exports to the US and 125% on US exports to China. Trump’s tariffs on China are the highest of the global tariffs he announced for all US trading partners as part of his so-called “liberation day” campaign to make trading relationships more favourable to the US and bring more manufacturing on to US soil.

This month, as the US appeared destined for a recession, Trump announced a 90-day pause of the higher tariffs, reducing all countries to a blanket 10% – except China.

Some countries are engaged in negotiations with the US to lower or remove tariffs before the 90-day deadline. Reporting in the last week has suggested that Trump’s team intends to use those negotiations for its trade war with China. The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg have both cited US official saying the US was preparing to pressure those nations to curb their own trade with China or impose monetary sanctions.

“If such a situation occurs, China will never accept it and will resolutely take reciprocal countermeasures,” China’s commerce ministry said.

Responding to the reports on Saturday, Rachel Reeves, the UK chancellor, dismissed the idea that the UK would economically disengage from China.

“Well, China is the second biggest economy in the world, and it would be, I think, very foolish to not engage,” Reeves told the Telegraph. “That’s the approach of this government.”

Trump said on Thursday that the US was in talks with China on tariffs, adding that he was confident the world’s largest economies could make a deal to end the bitter trade war.

“Yeah, we’re talking to China,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “I would say they have reached out a number of times.

“I think we’re going to make a very good deal with China.”

China has vowed to fight a trade war “to the end” and has not confirmed that it is in talks with Washington, though it has called for dialogue. Chinese officials have said the US need to show greater respect,

It has strongly criticised what it calls “unilateralism and protectionism” by the US – and warned about an international order reverting to the “law of the jungle”.

“Where the strong prey on the weak, all countries will become victims,” Beijing said on Monday.

Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar warned on Sunday that the US is “getting closer and closer to a constitutional crisis”, but the courts, growing Republican disquiet at Trump administration policies, and public protest were holding it off.

“I believe as long as these courts hold, and the constituents hold, and the congress starts standing up, our democracy will hold,” Klobuchar told CNN’s State of the Union, adding “but Donald Trump is trying to pull us down into the sewer of a crisis.”

Klobuchar said the US supreme court should hold Trump administration officials in contempt if they continue to ignore a court order to facilitate the return of Kilmar Ábrego García from El Salvador, the Maryland resident the government admitted in court it had deported by mistake.

Klobuchar said the court could appoint a special prosecutor, independent of Trump’s Department of Justice, to uphold the rule of law and charge any officials who are responsible for Ábrego García’s deportation, or have refused to facilitate his return.

The senator’s comments came hours after supreme court released justice Samuel Alito’s dissenting opinion on the court’s decision to block the Trump administration from deporting more Venezuelans held in north Texas’s Bluebonnet detention center .

In his dissent, Alito criticized the decision of the seven-member majority, saying the court had acted “literally in the middle of the night” and without sufficient explanation. The “unprecedented” relief was “hastily and prematurely granted”, Alito added.

Alito, whose dissent was joined by fellow conservative justice Clarence Thomas, said there was “dubious factual support” for granting the request in an emergency appeal from the American Civil Liberties Union to block deportations of accused gang members that the administration contends are legal under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.

The majority did not provide a detailed explanation for the order released early on Saturday, only that the administration should not to remove Venezuelans held in the “until further order of this court”.

The court has said previously that deportations under the 1798 law can only proceed if those scheduled to be removed are offered a chance to argue their case in court and were given “a reasonable time” to contest their pending removals.

Alito further wrote that both “the Executive and the Judiciary have an obligation to follow the law”, but it was not clear whether the supreme court had jurisdiction until legal avenues had been pursued through lower courts. He also objected to the fact that and the justices had not had the chance to hear the government’s side.

“The only papers before this Court were those submitted by the applicants,” Alito wrote. “The Court had not ordered or received a response by the Government regarding either the applicants’ factual allegations or any of the legal issues presented by the application. And the Court did not have the benefit of a Government response filed in any of the lower courts either,” Alito said.

In his dissent, Alito said the applicants had not shown they were in “imminent danger of removal”.

“In sum, literally in the middle of the night, the Court issued unprecedented and legally questionable relief without giving the lower courts a chance to rule, without hearing from the opposing party, within eight hours of receiving the application, with dubious factual support for its order, and without providing any explanation for its order,” Alito wrote.

“I refused to join the Court’s order because we had no good reason to think that, under the circumstances, issuing an order at midnight was necessary or appropriate”, Alito added.

When Narayan Kumar Subedi received a call from his daughter in the United States three weeks ago, he expected to hear news of his two children’s life abroad, perhaps even plans for a long-awaited reunion. Instead, he was told his 36-year-old son Ashish, a Bhutanese refugee resettled in the US, was being deported.

Ashish had been caught in a domestic dispute that led to police involvement. After several days in detention without proper legal support, he was caught up in Donald Trump’s migration crackdown and deported to Bhutan.

But what followed was a surreal sequence of events that left Ashish and nine other Bhutanese refugees stateless: abandoned by the country they once fled, expelled by the one they tried to call home, and detained by the one they sought refuge in.

Narayan was one of 100,000 Nepali-speaking Bhutanese who fled the country in the early 1990s to escape persecution. Many saw emigration as the only hope for a future. Narayan’s children were granted refugee status in the US, but Narayan himself was disqualified over paperwork errors and he still lives in the Beldangi refugee camp in eastern Nepal.

Now, decades later, his son is back – but not welcomed by Bhutan, nor recognized in Nepal.

According to Nepal’s director general of immigration, Govinda Prasad Rijal, four of the 10 deported Bhutanese refugees, including Ashish, were taken into custody for entering Nepal illegally via India.

“They were taken from the refugee camp on 28 March because they had entered Nepal without valid visas,” he said. “Since the matter is still under investigation, we have not decided whether they will be deported to India, returned to Bhutan, or what other action might be taken.”

However, after the family filed a habeas corpus petition in Nepal’s supreme court, the court issued an order to produce them before the court on 24 April and not to deport them until then.

Ashish and nine others were first flown from the US to Delhi, where they were reportedly treated well and even put up in a hotel during transit. The following day, they were flown to Paro international airport in Bhutan.

There, according to Ashish’s father, the Bhutanese government welcomed them courteously but didn’t allow them to stay long. After routine questioning, the group was handed 30,000 Indian rupees each and transported to the Indian border town of Phuentsholing. Within 24 hours, they were out of Bhutan again.

“The fact that Bhutan accepted them from the United States shows an acknowledgment of their citizenship. But deporting them to the Indian border within a day reveals a deceptive character,” said Dr Gopal Krishna Shiwakoti, former chair of the Asia Pacific Rights Network. “It’s strange in itself to send them to a country that had earlier refused to recognize them as its citizens, leading the US to resettle them in a third country.”

From Phuentsholing, the group made its way to Nepal through Indian intermediaries. Later, Ashish and his friends Santosh Darji, Roshan Tamang and Ashok Gurung were detained by Nepalese authorities.

“I was shocked,” Narayan says. “To be treated like a criminal in your own refugee camp, after all these years … it breaks you.”

Nepal has no comprehensive legal framework addressing refugee protection or statelessness. That leaves people like Ashish in legal limbo – neither welcomed back by Bhutan nor recognized as refugees in Nepal.

Tulsi Bhattarai, the immigration officer leading the investigation, confirmed that four of the 10 individuals are in custody. “Their statements confirm they entered Nepal from Bhutan via India,” he said. “We’ve collected documents from their time in the refugee camps and submitted a full report.”

Activists argue the situation echoes the early days of the 1990s refugee crisis.

“We’ve come full circle,” says Shiwakoti. “This is a 360-degree repeat of history. Nepal must urgently initiate diplomatic engagement with Bhutan to resolve this issue.”

From 2007 to 2018, more than 113,000 Bhutanese refugees were resettled in third countries, mainly the US, according to the UNHCR. But around 6,500 still remain in camps in Nepal, caught in a state of indefinite limbo. Now, for deportees like Ashish, a new crisis is unfolding.

International rights groups are raising alarm. In a joint statement, Bhutanese political and civil society leaders have appealed to the United Nations, the US and Indian embassies, and the government of Nepal for intervention. Their core demand is that the 10 deported individuals be recognized as Bhutanese nationals and protected under international refugee law.

“These people are not just numbers. They have histories, identities, and rights,” says Ram Karki, coordinator of the Global Campaign for the Release of Political Prisoners in Bhutan (GCRPPB).

Back in Beldangi, Narayan waits. His son remains in custody, with uncertain future.

“I just want my son to be free,” he adds. “We lost our country once. Must we lose it again?”

Immigration officials detained a US citizen for nearly 10 days in Arizona, according to court records and press reports.

As the NPR affiliate Arizona Public Media, first reported, 19-year-old Jose Hermosillo, a New Mexico resident visiting Arizona, was detained by border patrol agents in Nogales, a city along the Mexico border about an hour south of Tucson.

According to a border patrol criminal complaint, on 8 April, a border patrol official found Hermosillo “without the proper immigration documents” and claimed that the young American had admitted entering the US illegally from Mexico. Two days later, the federal court document notes that Hermosillo continued to claim he was a US citizen. On 17 April, a federal judge dismissed his case.

Hermosillo’s wrongful arrest and prolonged detention comes amid escalating attacks by the Trump administration on immigrants in the US. Since Donald Trump took office, the administration has emboldened immigration officers to arrest and deport undocumented people, including foreign students whose visas have been revoked, leading to a series of errors.

“Under the Trump administration’s theory of the law, the government could have banished this U.S. citizen to a Salvadoran prison then refused to do anything to bring him back,” Mark Joseph Stern, a legal analyst for Slate, wrote on Bluesky. “This is why the Constitution guarantees due process to all. Could it be more obvious?”

During his campaign for the presidency, the US president promised to carry out “mass deportations”. In the three months since he took office, several foreign tourists have been wrongfully detained, federal agents from other agencies have been deputized to engage in immigration enforcement and Trump has invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, declaring that Venezuelan gang members are a leading foreign invasion of the United States to give himself the power to expel immigrants to a notorious Salvadorian prison.

According to AZPM’s report, Hermosillo was visiting the Tucson area from Albuquerque, got lost without identification and was arrested by border patrol officials near its headquarters in Nogales. Hermosillo’s girlfriend’s family made numerous calls looking for him before they discovered he was being held at the Florence Correctional Center, a privately run Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) facility. After his arrest, the court docket shows, he was temporarily detained in the custody of the US marshals.

After the family tracked him done, they provided officials with his birth certificate and social security card.

“He did say he was a US citizen, but they didn’t believe him,” Hermosillo’s girlfriend’s aunt told AZPM. “I think they would have kept him. I think they would have, if they would have not got that information yesterday in the court, and gave that to Ice and the border patrol. He probably would have been deported already to Mexico.”

Ice, Customs and Border Protection, the Department of Homeland Security and Hermosillo’s attorney did not respond to requests for comment.

Federal magistrate judge Maria S Aguilera dismissed the case on 17 April. Hermosillo was released later that evening.

Since Trump stepped into office, there have been a rising number of US citizens detained by immigration officials around the country. But immigration officials’ detention of citizens is not new, and it has taken place across presidential administrations. In 2021, the Government Accountability Office found that from 2015 through 2020, Ice arrested 674 US citizens and deported 70 of them. And from 2007 through 2015, 818 US citizens were held in immigration detention, according to a 2016 analysis from NPR.

In recent months, the Trump administration has revoked the visas of hundreds of foreign students, many for taking part in Gaza solidarity protests the administration call antisemitic . Among those swept up in that crackdown is Aditya Wahyu Harsono, an Indonesian student in Minnesota, who is married to a US citizen, arrested at his hospital workplace this month after his visa was secretly revoked.

Immigration officials detained a US citizen for nearly 10 days in Arizona, according to court records and press reports.

As the NPR affiliate Arizona Public Media, first reported, 19-year-old Jose Hermosillo, a New Mexico resident visiting Arizona, was detained by border patrol agents in Nogales, a city along the Mexico border about an hour south of Tucson.

According to a border patrol criminal complaint, on 8 April, a border patrol official found Hermosillo “without the proper immigration documents” and claimed that the young American had admitted entering the US illegally from Mexico. Two days later, the federal court document notes that Hermosillo continued to claim he was a US citizen. On 17 April, a federal judge dismissed his case.

Hermosillo’s wrongful arrest and prolonged detention comes amid escalating attacks by the Trump administration on immigrants in the US. Since Donald Trump took office, the administration has emboldened immigration officers to arrest and deport undocumented people, including foreign students whose visas have been revoked, leading to a series of errors.

“Under the Trump administration’s theory of the law, the government could have banished this U.S. citizen to a Salvadoran prison then refused to do anything to bring him back,” Mark Joseph Stern, a legal analyst for Slate, wrote on Bluesky. “This is why the Constitution guarantees due process to all. Could it be more obvious?”

During his campaign for the presidency, the US president promised to carry out “mass deportations”. In the three months since he took office, several foreign tourists have been wrongfully detained, federal agents from other agencies have been deputized to engage in immigration enforcement and Trump has invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, declaring that Venezuelan gang members are a leading foreign invasion of the United States to give himself the power to expel immigrants to a notorious Salvadorian prison.

According to AZPM’s report, Hermosillo was visiting the Tucson area from Albuquerque, got lost without identification and was arrested by border patrol officials near its headquarters in Nogales. Hermosillo’s girlfriend’s family made numerous calls looking for him before they discovered he was being held at the Florence Correctional Center, a privately run Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) facility. After his arrest, the court docket shows, he was temporarily detained in the custody of the US marshals.

After the family tracked him done, they provided officials with his birth certificate and social security card.

“He did say he was a US citizen, but they didn’t believe him,” Hermosillo’s girlfriend’s aunt told AZPM. “I think they would have kept him. I think they would have, if they would have not got that information yesterday in the court, and gave that to Ice and the border patrol. He probably would have been deported already to Mexico.”

Ice, Customs and Border Protection, the Department of Homeland Security and Hermosillo’s attorney did not respond to requests for comment.

Federal magistrate judge Maria S Aguilera dismissed the case on 17 April. Hermosillo was released later that evening.

Since Trump stepped into office, there have been a rising number of US citizens detained by immigration officials around the country. But immigration officials’ detention of citizens is not new, and it has taken place across presidential administrations. In 2021, the Government Accountability Office found that from 2015 through 2020, Ice arrested 674 US citizens and deported 70 of them. And from 2007 through 2015, 818 US citizens were held in immigration detention, according to a 2016 analysis from NPR.

In recent months, the Trump administration has revoked the visas of hundreds of foreign students, many for taking part in Gaza solidarity protests the administration call antisemitic . Among those swept up in that crackdown is Aditya Wahyu Harsono, an Indonesian student in Minnesota, who is married to a US citizen, arrested at his hospital workplace this month after his visa was secretly revoked.

Massachusetts governor Maura Healey said on Sunday that Donald Trump’s attacks on Harvard University and other schools are having detrimental ripple effects, with the shutdown of research labs and cuts to hospitals linked to colleges.

During an interview on CBS’s Face the Nation, the Democratic governor said that the effects on Harvard are damaging “American competitiveness”, since a number of researchers are leaving the US for opportunities in other countries. After decades of investment in science and innovation, she said: “intellectual assets are being given away.”

In the past week, the US president cut off billions of dollars to Harvard in federal funds, after the university refused to concede to a number of the administration’s demands. Trump also called for its tax-exempt status to be revoked, a potentially illegal move, against the world-famous college in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Of the moves against colleges, Healey said: “It’s bad for patients, it’s bad for science, and it’s really bad for American competitiveness. There’s no way a state can make up for the cuts from federal funding.”

She added: “I was in a hospital recently, Boston Children’s, where some of the sickest kids in the country receive care. Cuts to Boston Children’s and other hospitals are a direct result of Donald Trump’s actions, as these are part of a teaching hospital system.

“These cuts to universities have significant ripple effects, resulting in layoffs of scientists and doctors, and clinical trials for cancer treatments have been shut down.

“As governor, I want Massachusetts and America to soar. What Donald Trump is doing is essentially inviting other countries, like China, to take our scientists and researchers. This is terrible, especially considering what he has done to the economy. I am working hard every day to lower costs in my state, cut taxes, and build more housing, while Donald Trump is making life more expensive and harder for all of us.”

Since Trump took office, his administration has deployed an “antisemitism taskforce” to demand various policy changes at different universities around the country.

Columbia University, one of the first institutions targeted by the taskforce, quickly caved to the Trump administration’s demands to restore $400m in federal funding. Some of the measures that Columbia conceded to included banning face masks on campus, empowering security officers to arrest people, and placing control of the Middle Eastern department under a new senior vice-provost.

Former Columbia University president Lee Bollinger said on Sunday that the Trump administration’s attacks on academic institutions represent a significant attack on first amendment rights.

“This is a kind of weaponization of the government’s power,” Bolinger said on CNN, adding that it “seems like a campaign of intimidation”.

“This is a kind of weaponization of the government’s power,” he said.

Earlier this month, the federal government sent Harvard two separate letters with specific demands. After the university publicly rejected those demands, the administration quickly froze nearly $2.3bn in federal funding.

The conflict between the administration and the elite university took a strange turn on Friday, with the New York Times reporting that an 11 April letter from the administration with additional demands – which escalated the showdown – was “unauthorized”. The university disputed that the letter was “unauthorized,” claiming the federal government has “doubled down” on its offensive.

When Sarah Palin arrived at a federal court on Monday, her appearance promised little in the way of legal fireworks.

Palin was in downtown Manhattan for a retrial in her defamation lawsuit against the New York Times. She lost her first trial against the newspaper in 2022 and the legal basis of Palin’s civil claim – that an incorrect editorial unlawfully smeared her – remains the same.

The retrial granted to the former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican vice-presidential contender stems from procedural errors rather than factual questions. The US second circuit court of appeals revamped Palin’s case in 2024, having determined that Judge Jed Rakoff wrongly intruded on jurors’ decision-making.

While the jury was originally deliberating, Rakoff decided that if they delivered a verdict in Palin’s favor, he would set aside this decision. Rakoff, who stated that he presumed Palin would appeal what he expected to be an unfavorable verdict, told both sides that an appeals court “would greatly benefit from knowing how the jury would decide it”, according to NBC News.

Some jurors received push notifications on their phones about Rakoff’s decision while they were actually deliberating. The second circuit also found that Rakoff erred by keeping information from jurors potentially showing that James Bennet, then the editorial page editor at the New York Times, knew this piece was incorrect.

While trial proceedings that started last week are largely a replay of Palin’s initial trial, first amendment constitutional advocates contend that they reflect a troubling trend. Politicians and public figures – especially Donald Trump and his allies – are waging campaigns against US media organisations that are critical of them.

Many of these lawsuits are unlikely to pass legal muster: public figures have a high burden in proving defamation. But many outlets lack the resources to fight a costly years-long legal battle against defamation claims in a culture that’s increasingly media-averse, suppressing free expression.

“Every libel case these days feels like it has significant implications because of the fear and concern that the supreme court might ultimately want to change the legal standards for public officials and public figures,” Roy S Gutterman, the director of the Newhouse School’s Tully Center for Free Speech at Syracuse University, said.

That said, Palin’s case might not be a referendum on the first amendment outright as “the actual malice standard, which requires the plaintiff to prove that the false information published about them was done either knowingly or with reckless disregard for the truth, is not an easy standard, which is why plenty of libel plaintiffs like Governor Palin do not win defamation lawsuits”, he added.

If Palin loses again, however, this does not equate to an automatic victory for first amendment rights. “She will almost certainly appeal again and keep appealing,” Gutterman said. “Appellate courts set precedent, so we might still be a ways away from seeing how strong the first amendment ultimately is these days.”

And if Palin were to land a shocking win, “it would not be great for the New York Times or the free press altogether. Even if she wins a nominal amount of money, both sides might still keep appealing,” Gutterman said.

Robert Corn-Revere, chief counsel at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (Fire), said the Palin proceedings hinge on procedural issues rather than a referendum on the first amendment. Philadelphia-based Fire is defending Iowa pollster J Ann Selzer from the US president, who is suing her over a poll which concluded that he was trailing Kamala Harris in the state just before his decisive victory in Iowa as well as nationally in the 2024 election.

“The retrial is more of a standard defamation claim,” Corn-Revere said. “The question is whether or not Sarah Palin will meet the very high bar that is required for a public figure deflation case.”

That said, the case is unfolding in a time where there is “contempt for constitutional norms”.

“People who want to bring some kind of action will do so regardless of whether or not they have some kind of valid claim, or whether or not such a claim even exists,” Corn-Revere said.

The 2017 editorial referred to the 2011 mass shooting that gravely injured then Arizona Democratic congresswoman Gabby Giffords and left six people dead. Prior to this attack, Palin’s political action committee (Pac) published an ad, featuring cross-hairs, spanning over several congressional districts led by Democrats.

The editorial article in question erroneously associated the Pac’s political rhetoric with the mass shooting. Asked about Palin’s claims, the Times said: “This case revolves around a passing reference to an event in an editorial that was not about Sarah Palin. That reference contained an unintended error that was corrected within 18 hours.”

Tom Spiggle, the founder of the Spiggle Law Firm, said that the retrial presents a “second bite at the apple” for Palin but “it really comes down to a factual issue at this point”.

“Can they show actual malice?” Spiggle said. “That’s going to be a jury question.”

Although the legal question is very specific, the case does speak to broader ongoing public discourse about free speech in the Trump era. “Trump has in the past made statements that he would like to reform defamation law and make it easier for people to win defamation cases,” he said.

But if Palin loses again, this could make an important statement for free speech.

“I think it does send a message that just because you’re angry at the New York Times – or insert your media source here – doesn’t mean you’re going to prevail. The standards are still high,” Spiggle said. “Actual malice is tough to prove, and there’s a reason for that, right? It’s because we want these reporters … not [to] be on pins and needles every time they publish a story.”

Lawyers for Palin did not respond to a request for comment.

The retrial is scheduled to resume on Monday. Jurors are expected to start deliberating midweek.