Trump news at a glance: Lutnick threatens Harvard patents; former

Trump administration threatens Harvard federal funding and patents

In his letter to Harvard, Lutnick also said the commerce department had begun a “march-in” process under the federal Bayh-Dole Act that could let the government take ownership of the patents or grant licenses.

As of 1 July 2024, Harvard held more than 5,800 patents, and had more than 900 technology licenses with over 650 industry partners, according to the Harvard Office of Technology Development.

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Tammy Bruce nominated for US deputy ambassador to UN

Donald Trump said on Saturday he was nominating former Fox News commentator Tammy Bruce as the next US deputy representative to the United Nations.

Bruce has been serving as the chief spokesperson for the state department since Trump took office this year. Trump said Bruce, who had no prior foreign policy experience before becoming spokesperson in January, “will represent our country brilliantly at the United Nations”.

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IRS commissioner reportedly removed over immigration policy dispute

The removal of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) commissioner Billy Long after just two months came after the federal tax collection agency said it could not release some information on taxpayers suspected of being in the US illegally, it was reported on Saturday.

The Washington Post reported the Department of Homeland Security had sent the IRS a list of 40,000 names that it suspected of being in the country illegally. DHS asked the tax service to crosscheck confidential taxpayer data to verify their addresses.

The IRS reportedly responded that it was able to verify fewer than 3% of the names on the DHS list, but declined requests for further information, citing taxpayer privacy rights.

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‘We are at war – bring it on’: Democrats ready to fight dirty to stop Trump

Ken Martin, chair of the Democratic National Committee, speaking in Chicago this week, said: “This is a new Democratic party. We’re bringing a knife to a knife fight, and we are going to fight fire with fire.”

It was a brutally honest acknowledgement of what a decade of Donald Trump’s politics has wrought. Out go the courtly and courteous playing-by-the-rules Democrats convinced that Maga is a passing phase, a fever that will break. In come a new generation of pugnacious Democrats prepared to take off the gloves and fight dirty.

The trigger for this scorched-earth approach is Trump’s push to find more Republican seats in the House of Representatives ahead of next year’s crucial midterm elections through gerrymandering, a process of manipulating electoral maps to benefit one party over another.

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How did we get all this gerrymandering? A brief history

Extreme GOP gerrymanders have remade American politics over the last 15 years. They have locked Republicans into office in state legislatures nationwide, even in purple states when Democratic candidates win more votes. They have delivered a reliable and enduring edge to the GOP in the race for Congress.

How did we get here? How did gerrymandered lines, rather than voters, gain the power to determine winners and losers?

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Pete Hegseth reposts video that says women shouldn’t be allowed to vote

The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, recently shared a video in which several pastors say women should no longer be allowed to vote, prompting one progressive evangelical organization to express concern.

Hegseth reposted a nearly seven-minute report CNN segment on X on Thursday that focuses on pastor Doug Wilson, a Christian nationalist. In the segment, he raises the idea of women not voting.

Doug Pagitt, a pastor and the executive director of the progressive evangelical organization Vote Common Good, said the ideas in the video were views that “small fringes of Christians keep” and said it was “very disturbing” that Hegseth would amplify them.

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Under-fire FDA figure returns just days after leaving

Vinay Prasad is returning to his role overseeing vaccine, gene therapy and blood product regulation at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) a little more than a week after he left the agency.

Two days before Prasad stepped down last month, Laura Loomer, a far-right influencer and conspiracy theorist, had released misleadingly edited audio to suggest Prasad had admitted sticking pins in a Trump voodoo doll, when the full audio made it clear that he was talking about the kind of thing an imagined liberal Trump-hater would do.

Prasad is an oncologist who was a fierce critic of US Covid-19 vaccines and mask mandates.

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What else happened today:

• A Georgia man who opened fire on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta on Friday, killing a police officer, had blamed a Covid-19 vaccine for making him depressed and suicidal, a law enforcement official said.

• Documents filed recently in the New Orleans Roman Catholic archdiocese’s five-year bankruptcy case provide more clarity on how claims will be doled out to survivors of clergy abuse if a proposed settlement is approved.