Fired health official testifies to Senate committee about chaos in RFK Jr’s department – live | Trump administration

Speaking now, Dr Susan Monarez says that there have been “several explanations” about her removal from the top role at the CDC.

“I told the secretary I would resign, that I was not aligned with the administrative administration priorities, or that I was untrustworthy. None of those reflect what actually happened,” Monarez said.

“I will share the details, but I want to be clear, today should not be about me. Today should be about the future of trust in public health,” she said.

The hearing where the fired CDC director Susan Monarez has started. In his opening remarks, Republican senator Bill Cassidy – who chairs the Senate health committee – summarized the crux of today’s proceedings.

If someone is fired 29 days after every Republican votes for her, the Senate confirms her. The Secretary said in her swearing in that she has “unimpeachable scientific credentials”, and the president called her an incredible mother and dedicated public servant. Like what happened?”

A reminder that Monarez was the first CDC director to require Senate confirmation.

Cassidy noted that health secretary Kennedy said in a Senate finance committee earlier this month that his decision to clear house at the CDC was “imperative” because of the agency’s “conflicts of interest and catastrophically bad judgment and political agendas.”

“If what he said is true, we as senators need to ask ourselves, did we look past something? Did we do something wrong?,” Cassidy added.

A driver rammed into an entrance of the FBI field office in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania today. The individual was later identified as Donald Henson, from Penn Hills, which is about 10 miles from the site of the attack.

Henson allegedly got out of the car after the crash, and threw an American flag on to the gate. He then left the scene on foot, according to a statement from the FBI Pittsburgh office.

Law enforcement officials are treating as a “targeted attack”, but confirmed that no FBI personnel were injured.

Back on Capitol Hill today, we have two hearings that we’ll be watching closely, both are due to begin at 10am ET.

The fired director of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) will appear before the Senate health committee following her termination in August.

After Susan Monarez was removed from her role, less than a month after she was confirmed to the agency’s top position, it set off a wave of resignations from top public health officials. One of those experts, Debra Houry, will join Monarez today. Houry was the CDC’s chief medical officer prior to stepping down from her post, citing the spread of vaccine misinformation and the interference of politics in the agency’s work.

A reminder, health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr sat before the Senate finance committee earlier this month and was grilled about the circumstances around Monarez’s firing. He claimed that she was “lying” about her claims that her ousting was the result of refusing to sign off on the secretary’s new vaccine policies.

Instead, Kennedy said that she was removed because she admitted to being untrustworthy.

Meanwhile, in Congress’ lower chamber today, FBI director Kash Patel will testify before the House judiciary committee. His second Hill appearance of the week. On Tuesday, Patel sparred with Democratic lawmakers in the Senate about accusations that recent firings within the department were politically motivated.

The chair of the House foreign affairs committee moved to cut a contentious provision from legislation that would have granted the secretary of state sweeping powers to revoke US citizens’ passports over allegations of supporting terrorism.

Representative Brian Mast, a Florida Republican, filed an amendment to eliminate the measure from his department of state policy provisions act, a bill meant to reform the state department in the Trump administration’s image, after widespread criticism from civil liberties advocates, according to the Intercept.

The original language would have given Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, the power to deny or revoke passports for individuals the department determines have provided “material support” to terrorist organizations. Given similar language employed by the Trump administration in other contexts, it is believed to have been intended to target pro-Palestinian activists specifically.

Since Rubio became secretary of state, he has overseen efforts to deport pro-Palestinian international students and deploy an AI-powered “Catch and Revoke” system to target foreign nationals government authorities allege support Hamas. The US also recently announced it will look for “anti-American” views when assessing visa applications.

But the new measure would have significantly escalated these efforts by targeting US citizens. Mast had initially defended the broader legislation, saying it “ensures every dollar and every diplomat puts America First and is accountable to the president’s foreign policy” when the House foreign affairs committee introduced the package last week.

Mark Sweney

The boss of upmarket retailer Fortnum & Mason has said Donald Trump’s trade war has hit sales of its luxury tea exports to the US and forced up prices.

Tom Athron, the London-based retailer’s chief executive, said Trump’s stricter country of origin rules and the end of the “de minimis” cost exemption for parcels worth less than $800 (£587) had hit customers across the Atlantic.

“The American authorities have told us – this is the tea industry in its entirety – that if you’ve got tea from China and India in your tea, then its country of origin [is] China or India, and therefore those enormous tariffs apply,” he told the Financial Times.

Trump, who landed in the UK on Tuesday for an unprecedented second state visit for a US president, last month imposed a 50% tariff on imports from India as a punishment for buying Russian oil.

And earlier this year, the US administration raised tariffs as high as 145% on Chinese goods as the trade war intensified, before dropping them to 30% in May to facilitate talks between the two trading giants. The world’s two largest economies held talks in Madrid this week to try to reach a potential deal.

For a 250g canister of loose leaf Royal Blend tea, which retails to US consumers at $27.85, Fortnum’s has now been forced to charge delivery fees starting at $25.41 owing to the changes to US taxes and duties.

The Trump administration is using civil rights laws to wage a campaign against the University of California in an attempt to curtail academic freedom and undermine free speech, according to a lawsuit filed on Tuesday by faculty, staff, student organizations and every labor union representing UC workers.

The lawsuit comes weeks after the Trump administration fined the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) $1.2bn and froze research funding after accusing the school of allowing antisemitism on campus and other civil rights violations. It was the first public university to be targeted by a widespread funding freeze. The administration has frozen or paused federal funding over similar allegations against elite private colleges, including Harvard, Brown and Columbia.

According to the lawsuit, the Trump administration has made several demands in its proposed settlement offer to UCLA, including giving government access to faculty, student and staff data; releasing admissions and hiring data; ending diversity scholarships; banning overnight demonstrations on university property and cooperating with immigration enforcement.

The Department of Justice didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did the office of the UC system’s president.

The coalition is led by the American Association of University Professors union, or AAUP, and represented by Democracy Forward, a legal group that has brought other lawsuits against the Trump administration over frozen federal funds.

“The blunt cudgel the Trump administration has repeatedly employed in this attack on the independence of institutions of higher education has been the abrupt, unilateral, and unlawful termination of federal research funding on which those institutions and the public interest rely,” the lawsuit filed in federal court in San Francisco said.

The US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has launched dozens of federal investigations also targeting K-12 school districts.

The Trump administration has aggressively rolled back efforts across the federal government to combat human trafficking, a Guardian investigation has found.

The sweeping retreat threatens to negate decades of progress in the drive to prevent sexual slavery, forced labor and child sexual exploitation, according to legal experts, former government officials and anti-trafficking advocates. They say the administration’s moves are impeding efforts to prosecute perpetrators and protect survivors in the United States and around the world.

“It’s been a widespread and multi-pronged attack on survivors that leaves all of us less safe and leaves survivors with few options,” said Jean Bruggeman, executive director of Freedom Network USA, a national coalition of service providers, researchers and trafficking survivors.

Under Trump, key initiatives for fighting human trafficking have been cut back at the US Department of State, Department of Justice, Department of Labor, Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Guardian found. Senior officials and other staffers have been forced out, workers shifted to other priorities and grants delayed or cancelled.

At DHS, Trump has ordered agents formerly dedicated to investigating and arresting human traffickers to focus on deporting immigrants. Current and former DHS staffers interviewed by the Guardian confirmed that these investigators’ day-to-day work has been broadly shifted toward deportations and away from investigating “major crimes” with “real victims”.

At the state department, the Trump administration slashed more than 70% of the workforce at the agency’s office to monitor and combat trafficking in persons (Tip office), which is responsible for leading anti-trafficking efforts across the US government. The department has also held up grants for nonprofit organizations fighting trafficking around the world, putting their operations and services at risk.

A former CIA officer stripped of his security clearance by the Trump administration has announced he’s running for Senate as a Democratic candidate to claim Mitch McConnell’s long-held Kentucky seat.

Joel Willett launched his candidacy Wednesday, weeks after director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard revoked his clearance as part of a purge targeting 37 current and former intelligence officials.

“I’ve seen firsthand how the Trump administration and their far-right allies are trying to weaponize the government against anyone who disagrees with them,” Willett said in his announcement. “That just made me more determined to run.”

Following the revocation, Willett faced attacks from Trump-aligned online activists such as Laura Loomer and received death threats, according to his campaign. Gabbard at the time accused those targeted of “politicizing and manipulating intelligence” but provided no supporting evidence for the claims.

But for Willett, the experience has crystallized his concerns about democratic institutions and the treatment of public servants who express dissenting views.

“It’s not lost on me that this happened exactly two weeks after my name surfaced as a potential candidate,” Willett said in an early September interview with the Guardian, calling the revocations “a nakedly political act that is intended to silence dissent”.

Four people have been arrested after images of Donald Trump alongside deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were projected on to Windsor Castle, where the US president is set to be hosted by King Charles during his state visit to Britain.

Trump arrived in Britain late on Tuesday for an unprecedented second state visit, and will be greeted by Charles on Wednesday for a day of pomp at Windsor Castle, about 25 miles west of London.

Earlier on Tuesday, protesters unfurled a massive banner featuring a photograph of Trump and Epstein near Windsor Castle, and later projected several images of the two on to one of the castle’s towers.

The police said in a statement four adults were arrested on suspicion of malicious communications after an “unauthorised projection” at Windsor Castle, which they described as a “public stunt”. The four remain in custody.

Democrats in the US House of Representatives last week made public a birthday letter Trump allegedly wrote to Epstein more than 20 years ago, though the White House has denied its authenticity.

The letter was also projected on to the castle, along with pictures of Epstein’s victims, news clips about the case and police reports.

The release of the letter has brought renewed attention to an issue that has become a political thorn in the president’s side.

Fired Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Susan Monarez will tell senators that health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr pressured her to endorse new vaccine recommendations before seeing scientific evidence, according to a copy of the testimony she plans to give during a Wednesday hearing.

According to a copy of the prepared remarks, obtained Tuesday by the Associated Press, Monarez will tell senators that Kennedy gave her an ultimatum: “Pre-approve” new vaccine recommendations from a controversial advisory CDC panel that Kennedy has stocked with some medical experts who doubt vaccine safety or be fired.

That panel is expected to vote on new vaccine recommendations later this week.

Monarez, initially handpicked by Kennedy and nominated by president Donald Trump, was fired just weeks into the job over disagreements on vaccine policies. She is set to appear before the Senate’s powerful health committee to discuss her firing.

“Even under pressure, I could not replace evidence with ideology or compromise my integrity,” Monarez will say in her opening testimony to senators. “Vaccine policy must be guided by credible data, not predetermined outcomes.”

She said she was “fired for holding the line on scientific integrity.”

Monarez also notes that Kennedy directed her to fire a number of high-ranking CDC officials without cause.

The Senate hearing will focus on the impact the turmoil at the nation’s leading public health agency, which is responsible for making vaccine recommendations to the public, will have on children’s health.

It will also undoubtedly serve as an opportunity for Monarez and former chief medical officer Debra Houry, who will also testify before the committee, to respond to a number of Kennedy’s contentious claims about their final days at the agency.

Kennedy has denied Monarez’ accusations that he ordered “rubber-stamped” vaccine recommendations.

US attorney general Pam Bondi’s pledge that the Trump administration will “absolutely target” people who use “hate speech” after in the wake of the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk has prompted criticism of the idea from across the political spectrum, including from prominent conservatives.

Bondi said on a podcast hosted by Katie Miller, the wife of the rightwing White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, that there is “free speech and then there’s hate speech, and there is no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie, in our society”.

Legal experts and conservative pundits have condemned the comments because there is no “hate speech” exception in the first amendment right to speech and as such, targeting people for their charged rhetoric would be unconstitutional.

“There is no unprotected category of speech in the constitution or in the case law called ‘hate speech’,” said Heidi Kitrosser, a Northwestern University law professor. “By being so vague and by talking about speech that doesn’t fit into any legal category, she is basically opening the door for taking action against anyone who engages in speech that the president or the Department of Justice or Stephen Miller doesn’t like.”

Kirk, the founder of the powerful rightwing youth activist group Turning Point and a close ally of Donald Trump, was killed on 10 September at Utah Valley University during one of his signature events in which he debated students.

The murder was part of a wave of political violence in the United States, including attempted assassinations of the US president and the assassination of Melissa Hortman, the Democratic speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives, and her husband.

While some people on both sides of the aisle have spoken about the need for respectful dialogue, Trump and others in his administration have continued to largely blame the violence on the left and warned of a “vast domestic terror movement” prompting fears he plans a broad crackdown on his political opponents.

JD Vance guest-hosted Kirk’s podcast this week, during which the vice-president urged people to call the employers of people celebrating Kirk’s murder and said that the administration would “work to dismantle the institutions that promote violence and terrorism in our own country”.

When asked about Bondi’s comments on Tuesday, Trump told an ABC News reporter: “We’ll probably go after people like you because you treat me so unfairly. It’s hate. You have a lot of hate in your heart. Maybe they’ll come after ABC.”

Bondi also threatened to prosecute an Office Depot employee who reportedly refused to print flyers for a vigil for Kirk.

Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news lines over the next few hours.

We start with news that Donald Trump has vowed to stop the “radical left media” from “destroying” the nation. Taking to his social media platform Truth Social, the president said that he had received “amazing” feedback on his case against the New York Times.

“The predominant feeling and sentiment is, “IT’S ABOUT TIME!” he wrote. “The Radical Left Media is working hard to destroy the U.S.A. We are going to stop them at each and every level!!!”

In a $15bn case filed in the Florida courts, Trump has accused the NYT of spreading “false and defamatory” content about him.

A spokesperson for the NYT said: “This lawsuit has no merit. It lacks any legitimate legal claims and instead is an attempt to stifle and discourage independent reporting. The New York Times will not be deterred by intimidation tactics. We will continue to pursue the facts without fear or favour and stand up for journalists’ first amendment right to ask questions on behalf of the American people.”

The case is the latest of several multibillion-dollar lawsuits Trump has launched against US media outlets since his return to the White House.

In other developments:

• Utah county attorney Jeff Gray formally announced charges against Tyler Robinson, the suspect accused of fatally shooting Charlie Kirk. Prosecutors have charged Robinson on seven counts, including aggravated murder, and will seek the death penalty. Later, Robinson made his first court appearance at a virtual hearing, wearing an anti-suicide smock, where Utah judge Tony F. Graf ruled Robinson qualifies for a court-appointed attorney and granted a pre-trial protective order for Erika Kirk, the widow of Charlie Kirk. The next hearing in Robinson’s case is scheduled for September 29, and will be conducted virtually.

• FBI director Kash Patel faced questions from the Senate judiciary committee during a more than four hour long hearing. The hearing twice included a shouting match between Patel and Democratic senator Cory Booker and later Adam Schiff. Patel defended his leadership of the FBI, denying that he has politicized the agency and ordered firings of agents and personnel over their work on cases related to Trump or the January 6 attack on the US Capitol. Patel also defended his actions over prematurely posting on social media that the suspect in Charlie Kirk’s killing had been found, only for that person to be released. Democratic senator Dick Durbin and others said Patel’s actions pointed to his lack of experience and “sparked mass confusion” during the investigation.

• The Trump administration will appeal the court decision blocking Trump’s bid to fire Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook. Yesterday, a US appeals court declined to allow Trump to fire Cook, in the latest step in a legal battle that threatens the Fed’s longstanding independence.

• Four people have been arrested after images of Donald Trump alongside deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were projected on to Windsor Castle, where the US president is set to be hosted by King Charles during his state visit to Britain. Trump arrived in Britain late on Tuesday for an unprecedented second state visit, and will be greeted by Charles on Wednesday for a day of pomp at Windsor Castle, about 25 miles west of London.

• Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Trump has invited him back to the White House on September 29. The trip will be the fourth time Netanyahu, a vocal supporter of Trump’s, has visited the White House since Trump’s second term began in January.

• California governor Gavin Newsom joined a host of Democratic influencers and officials for a virtual rally in support of Proposition 50, also known as the Election Rigging Response Act. The act seeks to redraw California’s political map, in response to efforts by politicians in Republican-led states to do the same.