Key events

Roque Planas

Current and former prosecutors are denouncing the Trump administration for fast-tracking the deportation of immigrant children, as a key contract for legal services is set to expire on Friday.

A series of federal laws has for decades shielded child immigrants from removal, either to protect their safety or to allow them to testify against abusers or human traffickers.

But the Trump administration has undermined those laws, immigrant advocates and prosecutors say, by directing immigration judges to fast-track deportation cases for minors and blocking their access to lawyers who might help them apply for several forms of relief from removal – including acting as witnesses in cases of human trafficking or domestic violence.

“By arresting and deporting survivors who have come forward and applied for protection, the Administration not only risks endangering the survivor and their family members, but the Government also sends a chilling message to the larger community: don’t call the police, don’t report crime – you or your loved ones will get deported,” reads a Wednesday letter to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from 10 current and former prosecutors. “This undermines public safety for us all.”

Although Kamala Harris did not announce whether she would run for president in 2028, she did appear to signal a policy platform at the conference, saying:

“We need to revisit the point of expanding the court to 13 justices like we have 13 district courts. We need to revisit, if they so want, statehood for Puerto Rico and DC.”

Kamala Harris also condemned Donald Trump’s decision to enter a war with Iran, saying: “I would have opposed it even if [Congress] had approved this war.”

“They’re asking for hundreds of billions of dollars to pay for this war, meanwhile, you have people in America who are losing their health care every day, cannot afford their housing, cannot afford health care, cannot afford child care. There has been no articulation of the end game,” she said.

Harris went on to say: “[Trump] is now talking about this deal. You know, the deal would basically be what Barack Obama got – that he pulled us out of,” referring to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action the US signed during the Obama administration which Trump pulled out of in 2018.

“I think that it is important to not be a conspiracist, but at the same time, you can listen to what people are saying. And one, it just a full-on distraction from the things he can’t handle or has not handled. But this war is a war of choice that this president got into with Israel, with no clear national security issue,” she continued.

Kamala Harris says she has "not made a decision" on potential 2028 run

Kamala Harris, who is speaking at the National Urban League conference in Nashville, Tennessee, said that she has “not made a decision” on a potential 2028 presidential run.

“I am fully, sincerely, focused on these midterms,” she told the audience.

Harris further stressed the importance of “having an agenda that is about turning out the vote in the greatest numbers we have ever seen so that…in this environment where they are cheating, we will be too big to rig.”

“It means being ruthless. They are ruthless. We need to be ruthless, too. And by that, I do not mean cruel. That is not our nature. By that, I do not mean breaking the law. That is not what we do. But I do mean we must be uncompromising,” she added.

Gavin Newsom and his wife made from $1.7m to $2m annually from 2022 through 2024, and paid about half a million a year in federal and state taxes, according to tax returns released by his office.

The California Democratic governor’s office released more than 700 pages of tax filings spanning four years for reporters to review, offering a window into Newsom’s finances as he prepares to leave office and considers a 2028 presidential bid. Newsom’s office did not release returns for 2025, because the couple filed for an extension and will complete those returns in October.

The returns show the Newsoms’ income has remained relatively consistent since he took office in 2019, when the couple reported $1.7m in annual income. The exception was in 2021, when the family sold a house for nearly $6m in Marin county, making roughly $800,000 from the sale. That year, they made $4.2m and paid more than $1m in federal and state taxes. They earned roughly $2m in 2022.

The release of the couple’s tax filings comes as their finances have been under scrutiny after the US justice department launched investigations into the Newsoms, the governor announced last month. Newsom has blasted the investigations as politically motivated.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez talked about her involvement in midterm primaries and how voters are responding to the schisms in the Democratic party after the 2024 loss, which are playing out in campaigns in swing states now.

She told the Majority Report this week that her motivation is “winning” and that requires “a lot of different players on the field”. When she first got to Congress, and still now, she said, there was a concrete idea in the Democratic party of who could win a swing seat, and it was “very conservative” and “very cookie-cutter”.

Ocasio-Cortez is supporting Abdul El-Sayed, the progressive candidate in the US senate primary in Michigan. She has used her fundraising prowess to help candidates who were willing “to take a risk and buck convention” to help build the left movement, she said.

“The reckoning that we’re seeing in some of these primaries is that what is different between Trump 1 and Trump 2 is that I think your median Democratic voter desperately wants to do everything to get Trump out of power and get Republicans out of power,” she said. “And in Trump 1, they trusted the establishment to do that. And in Trump 2, they do not. And we are seeing how that is playing out in real time.”

New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said she has been surprised by polls showing her strength as a presidential candidate in 2028, saying that in her travels around the US, “people are pissed off” at the state of the country.

Ocasio-Cortez appeared on leftwing podcast the Majority Report this week and shared how the electorate and politics have changed in the eight years she has served in congress. She said on data centers, in particular, a cross-partisan group is standing against them, giving Democrats a chance to harness the issue in a “majoritarian” way.

“I think we always have to be making three arguments at the same time for any issue: moral argument, an economic argument, and also a political argument. And when we’re able to argue for something in a chorus of all of those three, then we’re able to build a majoritarian coalition to actually win on them,” she said.

Ocasio-Cortez is the co-sponsor of a data center moratorium bill, which she said has gotten support not just from “your expected lefty members of congress” but from more moderate Democrats who are seeing the “outrage among the electorate” on the issue.

“I do think that the revolt that is happening in these communities is very palpable and powerful,” she said.

Here’s what’s happened today so far...

Donald Trump met with his Cabinet at Camp David, where he defended the Iran war, said he wasn’t sure about granting Patriot missiles to Ukraine and blamed Minnesota’s leaders for a cyberattack on water systems in the state.

• Trump told reporters he wasn’t sure whether he should grant Patriot missiles to Ukraine as the country has requested, calling it a “big step” because “they can someday turn on you”.

• When asked by a reporter at Camp David about negotiations with Iran, Trump said the US would be “hitting them very hard”.

• Trump defended the IRS slush fund while also claiming it was “dead” but saying that he wished it weren’t because he wanted to see people who were targeted by the Biden administration get paid. “Big damages should have been given to me. I don’t want anything. I’m not talking about myself,” he said.

• He attacked Senator John Cornyn over his refusal to approve Todd Blanche as attorney general, saying Cornyn was upset by Trump’s endorsement of his opponent in the senate race and that Blanche had become a “pawn” in the ordeal.

• Trump said of potential Iranian hackers’ involvement in water systems in Minnesota: “We heard in Minnesota there was a cyber-attack, and they blame it on Iran. I don’t think so. I think I blame it on Minnesota because they’re grossly incompetent.”

• In the last few days before Michigan’s 4 August primary, US representative Haley Stevens accused her opponent, Abdul El-Sayed, of blaming “all of (his) problems on Jewish Americans”.

• The Republican president pro tem of the Indiana senate, Rodric Bray, announced today that he wouldn’t run again to lead the chamber, which Donald Trump - who tangled with Indiana’s top Republicans on redistricting - applauded.

Trump says he is unsure about granting Patriot missiles to Ukraine

Trump told reporters he wasn’t sure whether he should grant Patriot missiles to Ukraine, calling it a “big step”.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy asked Trump for Patriot air defense interceptors to defend itself from Russian attacks when the two presidents met earlier this week.

“These weapons are incredible,” Trump said. “We have to be very careful about letting somebody build them. … You have to be very judicious, but you have to be very careful. … it’s a hard thing to give away that kind of technology, and I don’t think this would ever happen, but, you know, those people that you get that technology, they can someday turn on you. You know, that is possible.”

Expanding on his post on Truth Social earlier today that defended the IRS slush fund, Trump told reporters at Camp David that the Biden administration “weaponized and abused” Trump supporters who deserve compensation.

He said Todd Blanche, the nominee for attorney general, is a “very, very good man” who should not be used as a “pawn” in this argument. He said John Cornyn, a holdout on Blanche, has become “a very angry person” since Trump endorsed his opponent, who won the US senate primary.

He said the fund “is dead” though he wishes it weren’t because he wanted to see people compensated.

“This fund was not for me,” he said. “This fund was for those people that have been weaponized that have been abused. I was abused, they attacked my house, Mar-A-Lago, where I live. And I was, you know, big damages should have been given to me. I don’t want anything. I’m not talking about myself. I think that there’s a group of people in this country, history will show that were treated like nobody else has ever been treated, so badly, so horribly. … They’ve committed suicide. People that were very successful and wanted to go to a rally or an event and ended up spending the rest of their lives in horror.”