A foundation in her name said she was detained in Mashhad, some 680 kilometers (420 miles) northeast of the capital, Tehran, while attending a memorial for a human rights lawyer recently found dead under unclear circumstances.
There was no immediate comment from Iran over its detention of Mohammadi, 53. It wasn’t clear if authorities would immediately return her to prison to serve the rest of her term.
However, her detention comes as Iran has been cracking down on intellectuals and others as Tehran struggles with sanctions, an ailing economy and the fear of a renewed war with Israel. Arresting Mohammadi may spark increased pressure from the West at a time when Iran repeatedly signals it wants new negotiations with the United States over its nuclear program — something that has yet to happen.
Activist detained at ceremony for dead lawyer
Her supporters on Friday described her as having been “violently detained earlier today by security and police forces.” They said other activists had been arrested as well at a ceremony honoring Khosrow Alikordi, a 46-year-old Iranian lawyer and human rights advocate who had been based in Mashhad.
“The Narges Foundation calls for the immediate and unconditional release of all detained individuals who were attending a memorial ceremony to pay their respects and demonstrate solidarity,” a statement read. “Their arrest constitutes a serious violation of fundamental freedoms.”
Alikordi was found dead earlier this month in his office, with officials in Razavi Khorasan describing his death as a heart attack. However, a tightening security crackdown coincided with his death, raising questions. Over 80 lawyers signed a statement demanding more information.
“Alikordi was a prominent figure among Iran’s community of human rights defenders,” the New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran said Thursday. “Over the past several years, he had been repeatedly arrested, harassed and threatened by security and judicial forces.”
Footage published by her foundation also showed her without a hijab, surrounded by a large crowd.
Mohammadi had been on furlough for months
While that was to be only three weeks, Mohammadi’s time out of prison lengthened, possibly as activists and Western powers pushed Iran to keep her free. She remained out even during the 12-day war in June between Iran and Israel.
Mohammadi still kept up her activism with public protests and international media appearances, including even demonstrating at one point in front of Tehran’s notorious Evin prison, where she had been held.
Mohammadi had been serving 13 years and nine months on charges of collusion against state security and propaganda against Iran’s government. She also had backed the nationwide protests sparked by the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini, which have seen women openly defy the government by not wearing the hijab.
Mohammadi suffered multiple heart attacks while imprisoned before undergoing emergency surgery in 2022, her supporters say. Her lawyer in late 2024 revealed doctors had found a bone lesion that they feared could be cancerous that later was removed.
“Mohammadi’s doctors recently prescribed an extension of her medical leave for at least six more months to conduct thorough and regular medical examinations, including monitoring the bone lesion which was removed from her leg in November, physiotherapy sessions to recover from the surgery and specialized cardiac care,” the Free Narges Coalition said in late February 2025.
“The medical team overseeing Mohammadi’s health has warned that her return to prison — especially under stressful conditions of detention and without adequate medical facilities — could severely worsen her physical well-being.”
An engineer by training, Mohammadi has been imprisoned 13 times and convicted five. In total, she has been sentenced to over 30 years in prison. Her last incarceration began when she was detained in 2021 after attending a memorial for a person killed in nationwide protests.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Eight years ago this month, Trump’s White House published its first national-security strategy, a document that extolled NATO’s enduring value as “one of our great advantages over our competitors,” and praised America’s allies as, in the words of one of the strategy’s principal authors, the then national-security adviser H. R. McMaster, “the best defense against today’s threats.” Its most famous passage declared a new era of “great power competition” and warned that China and Russia posed grave long-term dangers to the United States. I cannot count the number of times I had this document quoted to me by Republican establishment types eager to prove that Trump really was a Reagan-esque tough-on-Russia guy, after all.
His new national-security doctrine, released late last week, has abandoned the language about great-power threats from China and Russia in favor of a reduced role for America as the unchallenged hegemon of the Western hemisphere. To the extent that a global theory of the case is expressed, it is a Darwinian vision of geopolitical might makes right: “The outsized influence of larger, richer, and stronger nations,” the document stresses, “is a timeless truth of international relations.” The thirty-three-page paean to the leadership of “The President of Peace” also calls for an end to NATO expansion, treats Russia as an equal to Europe (without mentioning its responsibility for launching a war of aggression against Ukraine), and essentially promotes regime change—for America’s European allies. (In the language of the strategy: “cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations.”) The plan, not surprisingly, was well received by the Kremlin, where Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, praised the adjustments to U.S. strategy as “largely consistent with our vision.”
However much Trump was personally involved in shaping these national-security documents, there’s little doubt that the 2025 version sounds a lot more like the man himself than the 2017 iteration. Back then, Trump’s real views about the world—a profoundly disruptive departure from decades of Republican foreign policy—were, like his “shithole countries” comment, still meant only for private consumption. Now he’s loud and proud about them.
The most important point here is that Trump’s second term—the “Do-Over Presidency,” I called it a few months ago—is an exercise in Presidential wish fulfillment. This time, he is not about to let persnickety lawyers, or his own past record, stand in the way. Think of the long list of extreme policies that Trump talked about in his first term but has only followed through on in this one: ending the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship, imposing sweeping tariffs on U.S. trade partners by declaring a national “emergency,”sending troops into Democratic-run cities to quell domestic political protests.
All three of these policies, it should be noted, are currently subject to lawsuits in the federal courts—a major reason that Trump’s first-term advisers warned him against pursuing them. But he did not get rid of the policies; he ditched the advisers. Unconstrained and emboldened, today’s Trump has learned from years of experience how to make the machinery of Washington give him what he wants, whether it is legal or not. He is, at last, the “Jurassic Park” velociraptor that figures out how to open the door, in the memorable image once evoked for me by a national-security official from Trump’s first term.
Some of the difference between Trump 1.0 and 2.0, as in the rally the other night, is in the presentation. While he’s always been lewd and rude, a liar and an extemporizer whose public shows are designed to shock and entertain, his tongue has clearly been loosened by advancing age and the adoring bubble of sycophants in which he now exists. Having dispensed entirely with the dreary rituals of acting Presidential, Trump now talks in public the way he does in private—swearing, rambling, sexist, racist. It wasn’t just the rant about Somali immigrants, or the extreme length of his speech. ( Ninety-seven minutes, compared with an average of forty-five minutes at rallies in 2016.) Or the cringe-y digression about“that beautiful face and the lips that don’t stop, pop, pop, pop, like a machine gun” of his young female press secretary. And the cursing—where to begin? There’s just so much of it. Is that because he’s eight years older and no longer bound by his old inhibitions? Or maybe he’s just really angry that his poll numbers have sunk so low?
If that’s the case, we can expect a whole lot more expletives, because Trump, untethered, is now by many measures more unpopular than ever before. In his first term, the President was already a polarizing and historically unpopular figure, but he had a strong economy going for him—even if it was never “the greatest economy in the history of the world” that he so often proclaimed it to be. This time, with persistent inflation, fears of impending recession, and global jitters about his preference for market-crushing tariffs, support for Trump’s economic policies has fallen even lower than backing for the man himself. On Thursday, the Associated Press and NORC released a new survey showing him with his worst numbers of the year—with just thirty-six per cent approving of his job performance and thirty-one per cent supporting what he’s done for the economy, his lowest showing in either of his two terms. Gallup, in a similar recent survey, found that sixty per cent of Americans now disapprove of his second-term job performance. The electorate, it turns out, has a few choice words for Trump, too. ♦
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House was headed toward a final vote Wednesday on a sweeping defense bill that authorizes $900 billion in military programs, including a pay raise for troops and an overhaul of how the Department of Defense buys weapons.
The annual National Defense Authorization Act typically gains bipartisan backing, and the White House has signaled “strong support” for the must-pass legislation, saying it is in line with Trump’s national security agenda. Yet tucked into the over-3,000-page bill are several measures that push back against the Department of Defense, including a demand for more information on boat strikes in the Caribbean and support for allies in Europe, such as Ukraine.
Overall, the sweeping bill calls for a 3.8% pay raise for many military members as well as housing and facility improvements on military bases. It also strikes a compromise between the political parties — cutting climate and diversity efforts in line with Trump’s agenda, while also boosting congressional oversight of the Pentagon and repealing several old war authorizations. Still, hard-line conservatives said they were frustrated that the bill does not do more to cut U.S. commitments overseas.
“We need a ready, capable and lethal fighting force because the threats to our nation, especially those from China, are more complex and challenging than at any point in the last 40 years,” said Rep. Mike Rogers, the GOP chair of the House Armed Services Committee.
Lawmakers overseeing the military said the bill would change how the Pentagon buys weapons, with an emphasis on speed after years of delay by the defense industry. It’s also a key priority for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Rep. Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the armed services panel, called the bill “the most ambitious swing at acquisition reform that we’ve taken.”
Smith lamented that the bill does not do as much as Democrats would like to rein in the Trump administration but called it “a step in the right direction towards reasserting the authority of Congress.”
“The biggest concern I have is that the Pentagon, being run by Secretary Hegseth and by President Trump, is simply not accountable to Congress or accountable to the law,” he said.
The legislation next heads to the Senate, where leaders are working to pass the bill before lawmakers depart Washington for a holiday break.
Several senators on both sides of the aisle have criticized the bill for not doing enough to restrict military flights over Washington. They had pushed for reforms after a midair collision this year between an Army helicopter and a jetliner killed all 67 people aboard the two aircraft near Washington’s Ronald Reagan National Airport. The National Transportation Safety Board has also voiced opposition to that section of the bill.
Here’s what the defense bill does as it makes its way through Congress.
Boat strike videos and congressional oversight
Lawmakers included a provision that would cut Hegseth’s travel budget by a quarter until the Pentagon provides Congress with unedited video of the strikes against alleged drug boats near Venezuela. Lawmakers are asserting their oversight role after a Sept. 2 strike where the U.S. military fired on two survivors who were holding on to a boat that had partially been destroyed.
The bill also demands that Hegseth allow Congress to review the orders for the strikes.
Reaffirm commitments to Europe and Korea
Trump’s ongoing support for Ukraine and other allies in Eastern Europe has been under doubt over the last year, but lawmakers included several positions meant to keep up U.S. support for countering Russian aggression in the region.
The defense bill requires the Pentagon to keep at least 76,000 troops and major equipment stationed in Europe unless NATO allies are consulted and there is a determination that such a withdrawal is in U.S. interests. Around 80,000 to 100,000 U.S. troops are usually present on European soil. It also authorizes $400 million for each of the next two years to manufacture weapons to be sent to Ukraine.
Additionally, there is a provision to keep U.S. troops stationed in South Korea, setting the minimum requirement at 28,500.
Cuts to climate and diversity initiatives
The bill makes $1.6 billion in cuts to climate change-related spending, the House Armed Services Committee said. U.S. military assessments have long found that climate change is a threat to national security, with bases being pummeled by hurricanes or routinely flooded.
The bill also would save $40 million by repealing diversity, equity and inclusion offices, programs and trainings, the committee said. The position of chief diversity officer would be cut, for example.
Iraq War resolution repeal
Congress is putting an official end to the war in Iraq by repealing the authorization for the 2003 invasion. Supporters in both the House and Senate say the repeal is crucial to prevent future abuses and to reinforce that Iraq is now a strategic partner of the U.S.
The 2002 resolution has been rarely used in recent years. But the first Trump administration cited it as part of its legal justification for a 2020 U.S. drone strike that killed Iranian Gen. Qassim Suleimani.
Lifting final Syria sanctions
Lawmakers imposed economically crippling sanctions on the country in 2019 to punish former leader Bashar Assad for human rights abuses during the nearly 14-year civil war. After Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa led a successful insurgency to depose Assad, he is seeking to rebuild his nation’s economy.
Advocates of a permanent repeal have said international companies are unlikely to invest in projects needed for the country’s reconstruction as long as there is a threat of sanctions returning.
Democrats criticized Johnson for stripping a provision from the bill to expand coverage of in vitro fertilization for active duty personnel. An earlier version covered the medical procedure, known as IVF, which helps people facing infertility have children.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
President Donald Trump’s administration is expanding its immigration crackdown in the aftermath of the shooting of a pair of National Guard members in Washington.
The two guard members remained in critical condition on Thursday after they were shot in an ambush Wednesday near the White House. The suspect is Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29, an Afghan national who was subdued and taken into custody shortly after.
Federal authorities have launched a sprawling, nationwide terrorism investigation into what Jeanine Pirro, the US attorney for DC, called a “brazen and targeted” attack. Police scoured the scene of the shooting, while authorities searched homes in Washington state and California.
Trump, Vice President JD Vance and others in the administration quickly blamed the Biden administration for letting Lakanwal into the US and seized on the case to push for deeper immigration curbs, including halting reviews of Afghan immigration proceedings and ordering a review of those already in the US. That raises the prospect that settlement rights for Afghan allies of US forces may be curtailed.
“We must now re-examine every single alien who has entered our country from Afghanistan under Biden, and we must take all necessary measures to ensure the removal of any alien from any country who does not belong here or add benefit to our country,” Trump said in a recorded video address published by the White House Wednesday.
On Thursday, Joseph Edlow, the head of US Citizenship and Immigration Services, said in a social media post that his agency, under Trump’s orders, is conducting “a full scale, rigorous reexamination of every Green Card for every alien from every country of concern.” He didn’t name specific countries.
Even before Wednesday’s shooting, the Trump administration had moved to slash legal migration to the US. Trump’s second term has seen the administration severely lower its refugee cap, end temporary protected status for migrants from numerous countries, impose a $100,000 application fee for H-1B visas heavily used by tech companies and universities to bring over high-skilled workers and revoke thousands of visas. It also plans to review the cases of all refugees resettled under the Biden administration, according to an internal Nov. 21 memo seen by Bloomberg News.
The calls for further steps came swiftly after Wednesday’s shooting, even as the investigation is in its early stages. Authorities are treating it as a terror case but haven’t publicly described his specific motive. On Thursday morning, they said that interviews and search warrants were still being carried out.
Lakanwal lived in Washington state with his wife and, authorities believe, five children. They say he drove to Washington, DC — a cross-country trip of nearly 3,000 miles — with the intent of carrying out the attack. He then drew a revolver and fired at two national Guard Members from West Virginia, blocks from the White House. The two victims are Sarah Beckstrom, 20, and Andrew Wolfe, 24; both remained in critical condition Thursday.
Lakanwal was evacuated from Afghanistan in 2021 around the time of the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal. AfghanEvac, a nonprofit group dedicated to supporting resettlement of US allies in Afghanistan, said he served in an elite Afghan counterterrorism unit operated by the CIA with direct U.S. intelligence and military support to support their fight against the Taliban.
Lakanwal arrived in the US in September of that year “due to his prior work with the U.S. government, including CIA, as a member of a partner force in Kandahar,” CIA Director John Ratcliffe said in a statement.
Lakanwal arrived under humanitarian parole and was granted asylum earlier this year by the Trump administration, according to AfghanEvac.
But the administration’s response raises the prospect that it will seek to block or even revoke status of Afghan nationals who helped US forces fight the Taliban.
The US immediately suspended processing of immigration requests related to Afghan nationals and is reviewing all asylum cases approved under the Biden administration, according to Tricia McLaughlin, an assistant secretary of homeland security.
Trump called for reviewing every person who came to the US from Afghanistan under the Biden administration, while Vance said they will “redouble our efforts to deport people with no right to be in our country.”
And several top aides said that Lakanwal’s work with the CIA and other American agencies should not have meant that he was afforded residency or status in the US.
Ratcliffe said “this individual — and so many others — should have never been allowed to come here” while Attorney General Pam Bondi called Lakanwal a “monster who should not have been in our country” during a Fox News interview Thursday. FBI Director Kash Patel said at the Thursday press conference that “you miss all the signs when you do absolutely zero vetting” and Jeanine Pirro, the US attorney for Washington, DC, said “this is what happens in this country when people are allowed in who are not properly vetted.”
But while the Trump administration said it was a failure of vetting, the Afghan settlement rights group said there is vetting and that Lakanwal was a bad apple.
“Afghan immigrants and wartime allies who resettle in the United States undergo some of the most extensive security vetting of any population entering the country,” AfghanEvac President Shawn VanDiver said in a written statement.
The group supports “fully supports the perpetrator facing full accountability” and “rejects any attempt to leverage this tragedy as a political ploy to isolate or harm Afghans who have resettled in the United States,” VanDiver added.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights and advocacy group, said the anger over the crime must be directed at the perpetrator and not every Afghan national in the US or seeking to move to the US. “Using this horrific attack as an excuse to smear and punish every Afghan, every refugee, or every immigrant rips at something very basic in our Constitution and many faiths: the idea that guilt is personal, not inherited or collective,” the group said in a written statement.
Aside from immigration reform, the political fallout from the attack could widen. Bondi also signaled that the administration may scrutinize Democrats who had criticized the deployments.
Speaking on Fox News on Thursday morning, Bondi criticized Democratic lawmakers, without naming any, and media figures who have criticized Trump’s use of the National Guard.
“They should be praising our men and women in law enforcement. And we are looking at everything they have said, and why they said it, and if they encouraged acts of violence,” she said, without elaborating.
The administration is already seeking to court-martial Senator Mark Kelly, an Arizona Democrat, after a video in which Democratic lawmakers told US service members that they can refuse unlawful orders. Trump has called the video “seditious” and reposted calls for the lawmakers to be killed.
Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser, meanwhile, condemned the shooting and pledged that the suspect will be prosecuted, but also hinted at her unease with the deployment. “These young people should be at home in West Virginia with their families,” she said. She didn’t elaborate.
Pirro, separately, declined to discuss the issue. “I don’t even want to talk about whether they should have been there” she said. “We ought to kiss the ground and thank god that the president said it’s time to bring in more law enforcement.”
Josh Wingrove, Maria Paula Mijares Torres, Bloomberg
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Wednesday’s “heinous assault” on two National Guard members near the White House proves that lax migration policies are “the single greatest national security threat facing our nation.”
“No country can tolerate such a risk to our very survival,” he said.
Trump’s remarks, released in a video on social media, underscores his intention to reshape the country’s immigration system and increase scrutiny of migrants who are already here. With aggressive deportation efforts already underway, his response to the shooting showed that his focus will not waver.
The suspect in the shooting is believed to be an Afghan national, according to Trump and two law enforcement officials. He entered the United States in September 2021, after the chaotic collapse of the government in Kabul, when Americans were frantically evacuating people as the Taliban took control.
The 29-year-old suspect was part of Operation Allies Welcome, the Biden-era program that resettled tens of thousands of Afghans after the U.S. withdrawal from the country, officials said. The initiative brought roughly 76,000 Afghans to the United States, many of whom had worked alongside American troops and diplomats as interpreters and translators.
It has since faced intense scrutiny from Trump and his allies, congressional Republicans and some government watchdogs over gaps in the vetting process and the speed of admissions, even as advocates say it offered a lifeline to people at risk of Taliban reprisals.
Trump described Afghanistan as “a hellhole on earth,” and he said his administration would review everyone who entered from the country under President Joe Biden — a measure his administration had already been planning before the incident.
During his remarks, Trump also swung his focus to Minnesota, where he complained about “hundreds of thousands of Somalians” who are “ripping apart that once-great state.”
Minnesota has the country’s largest Somali community, roughly 87,000 people. Many came as refugees over the years.
The reference to immigrants with no connection to Wednesday’s developments was a reminder of the scope of Trump’s ambitions to rein in migration.
Administration officials have been ramping up deportations of people in the country illegally, as well as clamping down on refugee admissions. The focus has involved the realignment of resources at federal agencies, stirring concern about potentially undermining other law enforcement priorities.
However, Trump’s remarks were a signal that scrutiny of migrants and the nation’s borders will only increase. He said he wants to remove anyone “who does not belong here or does not add benefit to our country.”
“If they can’t love our country, we don’t want them,” Trump added.
Afterward, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services announced it would indefinitely stop processing all immigration requests for Afghan nationals pending a review of security and vetting protocols.
Supporters of Afghan evacuees said they feared that people who escaped danger from the Taliban would now face renewed suspicion and scrutiny.
“I don’t want people to leverage this tragedy into a political ploy,” said Shawn VanDiver, president of #AfghanEvac.
He said Wednesday’s shooting should not shed a negative light on the tens of thousands of Afghan nationals who have gone through the various legal pathways to resettling in the U.S. and those who await in the pipeline.
Under Operation Allies Welcome, tens of thousands of Afghans were first brought to U.S. military bases around the country, where they completed immigration processing and medical evaluations before settling into the country. Four years later, there are still scores of Afghans who were evacuated at transit points in the Middle East and Europe as part of the program.
Those in countries like Qatar and Albania, who have undergone the rigorous process, have been left in limbo since Trump entered his second term and paused the program as part of his series of executive actions cracking down on immigration.
Vice President JD Vance, writing on social media, criticized Biden for “opening the floodgate to unvetted Afghan refugees,” adding that “they shouldn’t have been in our country.”
“Already some voices in corporate media chirp that our immigration policies are too harsh,” he said. “Tonight is a reminder of why they’re wrong.”
___
Amiri reported from New York. Associated Press writer Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report.
President Donald Trump is directing the federal government to combine efforts with tech companies and universities to convert government data into scientific discoveries, acting on his push to make artificial intelligence the engine of the nation’s economic future.
Trump unveiled the “Genesis Mission” as part of an executive order he signed Monday that directs the Department of Energy and national labs to build a digital platform to concentrate the nation’s scientific data in one place.
It solicits private sector and university partners to use their AI capability to help the government solve engineering, energy and national security problems, including streamlining the nation’s electric grid, according to White House officials who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity to describe the order before it was signed. Officials made no specific mention of seeking medical advances as part of the project.
“The Genesis Mission will bring together our Nation’s research and development resources — combining the efforts of brilliant American scientists, including those at our national laboratories, with pioneering American businesses; world-renowned universities; and existing research infrastructure, data repositories, production plants, and national security sites — to achieve dramatic acceleration in AI development and utilization,” the executive order says.
The administration portrayed the effort as the government’s most ambitious marshaling of federal scientific resources since the Apollo space missions of the late 1960s and early 1970s, even as it had cut billions of dollars in federal funding for scientific research and thousands of scientists had lost their jobs and funding.
Trump is increasingly counting on the tech sector and the development of AI to power the U.S. economy, made clear last week as he hosted Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The monarch has committed to investing $1 trillion, largely from the Arab nation’s oil and natural gas reserves, to pivot his nation into becoming an AI data hub.
For the U.S.’s part, funding was appropriated to the Energy Department as part of the massive tax-break and spending bill signed into law by Trump in July, White House officials said.
As AI raises concerns that its heavy use of electricity may be contributing to higher utility rates in the nearer term, which is a political risk for Trump, administration officials argued that rates will come down as the technology develops. They said the increased demand will build capacity in existing transmission lines and bring down costs per unit of electricity.
Data centers needed to fuel AI accounted for about 1.5% of the world’s electricity consumption last year, and those facilities’ energy consumption is predicted to more than double by 2030, according to the International Energy Agency. That increase could lead to burning more fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas, which release greenhouse gases that contribute to warming temperatures, sea level rise and extreme weather.
The project will rely on national labs’ supercomputers but will also use supercomputing capacity being developed in the private sector. The project’s use of public data including national security information along with private sector supercomputers prompted officials to issue assurances that there would be controls to respect protected information.
President Donald Trump is directing the federal government to combine efforts with tech companies and universities to convert government data into scientific discoveries, acting on his push to make artificial intelligence the engine of the nation’s economic future.
Trump unveiled the “Genesis Mission” as part of an executive order he signed Monday that directs the Department of Energy and national labs to build a digital platform to concentrate the nation’s scientific data in one place.
It solicits private sector and university partners to use their AI capability to help the government solve engineering, energy and national security problems, including streamlining the nation’s electric grid, according to White House officials who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity to describe the order before it was signed. Officials made no specific mention of seeking medical advances as part of the project.
“The Genesis Mission will bring together our Nation’s research and development resources — combining the efforts of brilliant American scientists, including those at our national laboratories, with pioneering American businesses; world-renowned universities; and existing research infrastructure, data repositories, production plants, and national security sites — to achieve dramatic acceleration in AI development and utilization,” the executive order says.
Trump is increasingly counting on the tech sector and the development of AI to power the U.S. economy, made clear last week as he hosted Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The monarch has committed to investing $1 trillion, largely from the Arab nation’s oil and natural gas reserves, to pivot his nation into becoming an AI data hub.
For the U.S.’s part, funding was appropriated to the Energy Department as part of the massive tax-break and spending bill signed into law by Trump in July, White House officials said.
As AI raises concerns that its heavy use of electricity may be contributing to higher utility rates in the nearer term, which is a political risk for Trump, administration officials argued that rates will come down as the technology develops. They said the increased demand will build capacity in existing transmission lines and bring down costs per unit of electricity.
Data centers needed to fuel AI accounted for about 1.5% of the world’s electricity consumption last year, and those facilities’ energy consumption is predicted to more than double by 2030, according to the International Energy Agency. That increase could lead to burning more fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas, which release greenhouse gases that contribute to warming temperatures, sea level rise and extreme weather.
The project will rely on national labs’ supercomputers but will also use supercomputing capacity being developed in the private sector. The project’s use of public data including national security information along with private sector supercomputers prompted officials to issue assurances that there would be controls to respect protected information.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
A major national security debate is unfolding, and it affects more than government networks. It touches your home, your devices and the Wi-Fi your family uses every day. The Commerce Department has proposed blocking new sales of TP-Link products after a months-long review into the company’s ties to China, citing a growing TP-Link security risk.
Multiple agencies, including the Departments of Homeland Security and War, supported that proposal. They believe the company’s connections could expose American networks to foreign influence.
Security experts warn that foreign-backed hackers have targeted home and office routers for years. These devices often act as silent steppingstones that help attackers move deeper into sensitive systems. When compromised, they can expose everything connected to them, including computers, smart home gear, military devices used on base and more.
This potential ban would be one of the biggest consumer tech actions in U.S. history. It comes as lawmakers raise fresh alarms about Chinese-made cameras, routers and connected home products sold on military exchanges and in homes across the country.
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The proposed TP-Link ban stems from growing concerns that foreign-linked routers and cameras could expose American homes and networks to outside influence.(Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)
Why military families are even more vulnerable
Lawmakers from both parties say military households face extra risk. Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, who leads a bipartisan group of 23 lawmakers, warns that TP-Link cameras and networking devices sold on Army, Navy and Air Force exchange sites could expose sensitive footage from base housing and dorms. Rep. Ashley Hinson, R-Iowa, echoed that concern, saying these devices could act as a backdoor for Chinese intelligence to collect information on service members and their families. Even when products appear out of stock, officials worry they remain popular in military communities.
These lawmakers say Chinese laws could force companies to share data or push hidden software changes that weaken U.S. networks. They argue that this creates a real risk for households on or near military installations. While TP-Link disputes every allegation and states that it stores U.S. data inside America, lawmakers want a deeper investigation.
“China will use any way to infiltrate us, and we must ensure they cannot access our homeland or military bases,” said Ernst. “High-tech security cameras sending video and audio directly back to Beijing must be treated like the grave threat that they are. We have seen this playbook from China before, with Huawei Technologies, and need the Trump administration to investigate and determine if TP-Link is a Trojan horse compromising our national security.”
How Congress is responding to TP-Link security risks
Ernst is pressing the Commerce Department to finish its investigation by Nov. 30. Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, says TP-Link could give the Chinese government access to American networks and wants faster action. Their concerns reflect past decisions involving Huawei and Kaspersky, which lost access to the U.S. market due to national security risks.
Congressional leaders say foreign-made smart home devices sold on military bases should face strict scrutiny. They see routers, cameras and other connected home gear as critical targets in a time when cyberthreats continue to grow.
We reached out to TP-Link Systems Inc., and a spokesperson provided CyberGuy with the following statement:
“TP-Link Systems Inc. (TP-Link), an American company based in California, refutes the claims in this letter. This letter repeats false and misleading media reports and attacks that have been thoroughly debunked.”
“TP-Link emphatically objects to any allegation it is tied to the Communist Party of China, dependent on the Chinese government, or otherwise subject to interference under Chinese national security laws,” the TP-Link spokesperson said. “The company is not controlled by any government, foreign or domestic. TP-Link has split from and has no affiliation with the China-based TP-LINK Technologies Co. Ltd., which is separately owned and operated.
Lawmakers warn that TP-Link devices sold on military bases may put service members and their families at greater risk, especially inside base housing.(John Moore/Getty Images)
“This letter has nothing to do with security and everything to do with a competitor trying to remove TP-Link Systems’ products from the marketplace. The ‘open source information’ the members reference is actually a manufactured echo chamber of false and misleading attacks that the media has parroted over the past year. Instead of directly engaging with TP-Link Systems, these members essentially pressed ‘copy and paste’ on unsubstantiated claims about our American company.
“TP-Link has not been contacted by policymakers to discuss the alleged concerns, but if we were to meet with them, they would learn that TP-Link has located its core security functions and data infrastructure in the United States. U.S. user data is securely stored on Amazon Web Services infrastructure in Virginia, under the full control of the company’s U.S. operations.
“TP-Link Systems currently holds a very small share of the U.S. security camera market, representing approximately 3% of the consumer market segment according to Circana checkout data. The company has virtually no business presence in the enterprise segment. Additionally, TP-Link Systems’ router market share in the U.S. has been inaccurately reported as being much higher than it actually is. Recent market research from Dell’Oro Group, Inc., found that TP-Link Systems’ market share of residential Wi-Fi router sales in North America is under 10%.
“TP-Link does not enable foreign surveillance of U.S. networks or users. The company’s operations are built to prevent potential attempts to subvert its business by outside influence. TP-Link’s substantial security investments cover its entire product portfolio, including security cameras and routers.
“TP-Link continually monitors its products and services and takes timely and appropriate action to address vulnerabilities it becomes aware of. TP-Link has not identified any reliable information regarding new vulnerabilities in its products in connection with this letter.”
Steps to protect yourself from this growing threat
Even as the debate continues, you can take simple steps to secure your home. These easy moves help defend against threats tied to any router brand.
1) Check your router and update it
Look at the brand on your router. Then update the firmware through the official app or web dashboard. If your device is several years old or no longer supported, replace it. Check out our article on the top routers for the best security at Cyberguy.com.
2) Change your Wi-Fi and admin passwords
Default passwords are dangerous. Create strong, unique passwords for both your Wi-Fi and the router’s admin panel. Consider using a password manager, which securely stores and generates complex passwords, reducing the risk of password reuse.
Next, see if your email has been exposed in past breaches. Our No. 1 password manager (see Cyberguy.com) pick includes a built-in breach scanner that checks whether your email address or passwords have appeared in known leaks. If you discover a match, immediately change any reused passwords and secure those accounts with new, unique credentials.
Check out the best expert-reviewed password managers of 2025 atCyberguy.com
Congress is pressing for a fast investigation amid fears that foreign-made smart home gear could become a gateway for cyberthreats across the country.(Cyberguy.com)
3) Use strong antivirus protection on every device
Threats like this continue to grow. Install strong, real-time antivirus protection on every computer, phone and tablet in your home. The best way to safeguard yourself from malicious links that install malware, potentially accessing your private information, is to have strong antivirus software installed on all your devices. This protection can also alert you to phishing emails and ransomware scams, keeping your personal information and digital assets safe.
Get my picks for the best 2025 antivirus protection winners for your Windows, Mac, Android & iOS devices at Cyberguy.com.
4) Turn off any of these features you do not need
Disable remote access, WPS and extra features you never use. These settings can open doors for attackers.
5) Put smart home devices on a guest network
Keep laptops and phones on your main network. Put cameras, plugs, TVs and IoT devices on a separate guest network so they cannot reach your sensitive devices.
Take my quiz: How safe is your online security?
Think your devices and data are truly protected? Take this quick quiz to see where your digital habits stand. From passwords to Wi-Fi settings, you’ll get a personalized breakdown of what you’re doing right and what needs improvement. Take my Quiz here: Cyberguy.com.
Kurt’s key takeaways
The debate around TP-Link shows how something as routine as a home router can become part of a broader security conversation. Whether or not the government issues a ban, this moment is a clear reminder that cybersecurity starts at home. Small steps make a meaningful difference in how well your devices stand up against foreign-backed hacking groups.
Should the government ban router brands linked to foreign influence or should consumers decide for themselves? Let us know by writing to us at Cyberguy.com.
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Copyright 2025 CyberGuy.com. All rights reserved.
Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson is an award-winning tech journalist who has a deep love of technology, gear and gadgets that make life better with his contributions for Fox News & FOX Business beginning mornings on “FOX & Friends.” Got a tech question? Get Kurt’s free CyberGuy Newsletter, share your voice, a story idea or comment at CyberGuy.com.
WASHINGTON (AP) — For years, Washington has been warning others not to trust loans from Chinese state banks fueling its rise as a superpower. But a new report reveals an ironic twist: The United States is the biggest recipient of all — by far. And the security and technology implications have yet to be fully understood.
China’s state lenders have funneled $200 billion into U.S. businesses for a quarter of a century, but many of the loans have been kept secret because the money was first routed through shell companies in the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, Delaware and elsewhere that helped obscure their origins, according to AidData, a research lab at the College of William & Mary in Virginia.
More alarming, much of the lending was to help Chinese companies buy stakes in U.S. businesses, many tied to critical technology and national security, including a robotics maker, a semiconductor company and a biotech firm.
The report found a far more widespread and sophisticated lending network than previously thought — a web of financial obligations extending beyond developing countries to rich ones, including the U.K., Germany, Australia, the Netherlands and other U.S. allies.
“China was playing chess while the rest of us were playing checkers,” said former White House investment adviser William Henagan, who worries the hidden lending has given China a chokehold on technologies. “Wars will be won or lost based on whether you can control products critical to running an economy.”
China money gets a closer look
While the U.S. still welcomes most foreign investment — and President Donald Trump has courted it — money from China has drawn particular scrutiny as the world’s two biggest economies with opposing ideologies battle for global supremacy.
Deals financed by China’s state-owned banks, the ones studied in the AidData report, are especially problematic. The lenders are controlled by China’s central government and the Communist Party’s Central Financial Commission, and they are directed to advance China’s strategic goals.
In total, the AidData report found China lent more than $2 trillion from 2000 through 2023 around the world, double the highest previous estimates and a surprise to even longtime analysts of China’s rise. And much of the lending to wealthy countries was focused on critical minerals and high-tech assets — rare earths and semiconductors needed for fighter jets, submarines, radar systems, precision-guided missiles and telecom networks.
“The U.S., under both (former President Joe) Biden and Trump, have been beating this drum for more than a decade that Beijing is a predatory lender,” said Brad Parks, executive director of AidData. “The irony is very rich.”
Shell games
Until now, a full accounting of China’s state lending has never been published because much of the financing is buried beneath layers of secrecy, masked by Western-sounding shell companies and mislabeled by international databases as ordinary private financing.
“There is a complete lack of transparency that speaks to the lengths to which China goes, whether through shell companies or confidentiality agreements or redactions, to make it extremely difficult to come up with this full picture,” said Scott Nathan, the former head of the U.S. International Development Finance Corp., an agency set up in the first Trump term to invest in foreign projects deemed in the U.S. national interest.
Since the report’s last documented loan in 2023, U.S. scrutiny has gotten better. Screening mechanisms, such as the interagency Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., got beefed up in 2020 to protect sensitive sectors in the economy.
But China has gotten better, too, in part by setting up banks and branches overseas — more than 100 in recent years — that then lend to offshore entities, further clouding the origins of the money.
“In places where there are more cops on the beat,” Parks said, “it has found ways to work around barriers to entry.”
Where the loans ended up
Chinese state bank financing has touched projects across the U.S., particularly in the Northeast, the Great Lakes region, the West Coast and along the Gulf of Mexico, which Trump has renamed the Gulf of America. Many loans targeted critical high-tech industries, according to the report.
— In 2015, for instance, Chinese state-owned banks lent $1.2 billion to a private Chinese business to buy an 80% stake in Ironshore, a U.S. insurer whose clients included the Central Intelligence Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation officials and undercover agents who might need help paying legal bills in case they got into trouble in their jobs.
U.S. regulators were unaware of the Chinese government involvement because the financing was funneled through a Cayman Island business with no obvious ties to China, according to the report. U.S. officials later realized the Chinese government could access information and ordered the Chinese buyer to divest.
— That same year, the Chinese government published “Made in China 2025,” a list of 10 high-tech areas, such as semiconductors, biotechnology and robotics, where it wanted to reach 70% self-sufficiency within a decade. The next year, in 2016, the Export–Import Bank of China, a policy bank, provided $150 million in loans to help a Chinese company buy a robotics equipment company in Michigan.
After China’s adoption of the manufacturing master plan, the percentage of projects targeting sensitive sectors such as robotics, defense, quantum computing and biotechnology rose from 46% to 88% of China’s portfolio for cross-border acquisition lending, according to AidData.
— In 2017, a Delaware private equity firm using a Cayman Islands company tried to buy a U.S. chip maker; the deal was blocked when investigators discovered both companies were owned by a Chinese state-owned enterprise. That same Delaware company successfully bought a U.K. semiconductor maker that had to be divested when British authorities found out.
— And in 2022, the U.K. forced a Chinese company to divest another sensitive British firm in the industry, a designer of chips in Apple phones but potentially adaptable for military systems. The Chinese company had bought it through a company in the Netherlands that they owned. That Dutch firm is now accused of withholding semiconductors vital to automakers in the U.S.-China trade war.
Following the money
To trace China’s hidden lending, AidData dug through regulatory filings, private contracts and stock exchange disclosures in more than 200 countries written in multiple languages.
The effort to track China’s state loans and investment started more than a decade ago when Beijing launched its Belt & Road Initiative to build infrastructure in developing countries. The project expanded sharply three years ago when the AidData team, which eventually grew to 140 researchers, realized many of the loans were landing in advanced economies such as the U.S., Australia, the Netherlands and Portugal, where acquisitions could allow it to access technology that Beijing considers essential to its global rise.
The report says the findings show a shift in the use of state credit from promoting economic development and social welfare to gaining geo-economic advantages.
“There’s global concern that this is part of a concerted effort to gain control over economic chokepoints and use this leverage,” said Brad Setser, an adviser to the U.S. Trade Representative in the Biden administration. “It’s important that we understand what they’re doing, and they don’t make it easy.”
The U.S. military’s 20th strike on a boat accused of transporting drugs has killed four people in the Caribbean Sea, the U.S. military said Friday, coming as the Trump administration escalates its campaign in South American waters.The latest strike happened Monday, according to a social media post on Friday by U.S. Southern Command, which oversees military operations in the Caribbean and Latin America. The latest strike brings the death toll from the attacks that began in September to 80, with the Mexican Navy suspending its search for a survivor of a strike in late October after four days.Southern Command’s post on X shows a boat speeding over water before it’s engulfed in flames. The command said intelligence confirmed the vessel “was involved in illicit narcotics smuggling, transiting along a known narco-trafficking route, and carrying narcotics.”Southern Command’s post marked a shift away from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s practice of typically announcing the attacks on social media, although he quickly reposted Southern Command’s statement.Hegseth had announced the previous two strikes on Monday after they had been carried out on Sunday. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is expanding the U.S. military’s already large presence in the region by bringing in the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier. The nation’s most advanced warship is expected to arrive in the coming days after traveling from the Mediterranean Sea.Hegseth on Thursday formally named the mission “Operation Southern Spear,” emphasizing the growing significance and permanence of the military’s presence in the region. Once the Ford arrives, the mission will encompass nearly a dozen Navy ships as well about 12,000 sailors and Marines.The Trump administration has insisted that the buildup of warships is focused on stopping the flow of drugs into the U.S., but it has released no evidence to support its assertions that those killed in the boats were “narcoterrorists.” The strikes have targeted vessels largely in the Caribbean Sea but also have taken place in the eastern Pacific Ocean, where much of the cocaine from the world’s largest producers is smuggled.Some observers say the aircraft carrier is a big new tool of intimidation against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who faces charges of narcoterrorism in the U.S. Experts disagree on whether American warplanes may bomb land targets to pressure Maduro to step down.Secretary of State Marco Rubio says the U.S. doesn’t recognize Maduro, who was widely accused of stealing last year’s election, as the leader of Venezuela and has called the government a “transshipment organization” that openly cooperates with those trafficking drugs toward the U.S.Maduro has said the U.S. government is “fabricating” a war against him. Venezuela’s government this week touted a “massive” mobilization of troops and civilians to defend against possible U.S. attacks.Trump has justified the attacks by saying the United States is in “armed conflict” with drug cartels and claiming the boats are operated by foreign terror organizations that are flooding America’s cities with drugs.Lawmakers, including Republicans, have pressed for more information on who is being targeted and the legal justification for the strikes.Rubio and Hegseth met with a bipartisan group of lawmakers who oversee national security issues last week, providing one of the first high-level glimpses into the legal rationale and strategy behind the strikes.Senate Republicans voted a day later to reject legislation that would have put a check on Trump’s ability to launch an attack against Venezuela without congressional authorization.
WASHINGTON —
The U.S. military’s 20th strike on a boat accused of transporting drugs has killed four people in the Caribbean Sea, the U.S. military said Friday, coming as the Trump administration escalates its campaign in South American waters.
The latest strike happened Monday, according to a social media post on Friday by U.S. Southern Command, which oversees military operations in the Caribbean and Latin America. The latest strike brings the death toll from the attacks that began in September to 80, with the Mexican Navy suspending its search for a survivor of a strike in late October after four days.
Southern Command’s post on X shows a boat speeding over water before it’s engulfed in flames. The command said intelligence confirmed the vessel “was involved in illicit narcotics smuggling, transiting along a known narco-trafficking route, and carrying narcotics.”
Southern Command’s post marked a shift away from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s practice of typically announcing the attacks on social media, although he quickly reposted Southern Command’s statement.
Hegseth had announced the previous two strikes on Monday after they had been carried out on Sunday. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is expanding the U.S. military’s already large presence in the region by bringing in the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier. The nation’s most advanced warship is expected to arrive in the coming days after traveling from the Mediterranean Sea.
Hegseth on Thursday formally named the mission “Operation Southern Spear,” emphasizing the growing significance and permanence of the military’s presence in the region. Once the Ford arrives, the mission will encompass nearly a dozen Navy ships as well about 12,000 sailors and Marines.
The Trump administration has insisted that the buildup of warships is focused on stopping the flow of drugs into the U.S., but it has released no evidence to support its assertions that those killed in the boats were “narcoterrorists.” The strikes have targeted vessels largely in the Caribbean Sea but also have taken place in the eastern Pacific Ocean, where much of the cocaine from the world’s largest producers is smuggled.
Some observers say the aircraft carrier is a big new tool of intimidation against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who faces charges of narcoterrorism in the U.S. Experts disagree on whether American warplanes may bomb land targets to pressure Maduro to step down.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio says the U.S. doesn’t recognize Maduro, who was widely accused of stealing last year’s election, as the leader of Venezuela and has called the government a “transshipment organization” that openly cooperates with those trafficking drugs toward the U.S.
Maduro has said the U.S. government is “fabricating” a war against him. Venezuela’s government this week touted a “massive” mobilization of troops and civilians to defend against possible U.S. attacks.
Trump has justified the attacks by saying the United States is in “armed conflict” with drug cartels and claiming the boats are operated by foreign terror organizations that are flooding America’s cities with drugs.
Lawmakers, including Republicans, have pressed for more information on who is being targeted and the legal justification for the strikes.
Senate Republicans voted a day later to reject legislation that would have put a check on Trump’s ability to launch an attack against Venezuela without congressional authorization.
Three lower courts have ruled President Donald Trump’s use of emergency powers to impose worldwide tariffs to be illegal. Now the Supreme Court, with three justices Trump appointed and generally favorable to muscular presidential power, will have the final word.In roughly two dozen emergency appeals, the justices have largely gone along with Trump in temporarily allowing parts of his aggressive second-term agenda to take effect while lawsuits play out.But the case being argued Wednesday is the first in which the court will render a final decision on a Trump policy. The stakes are enormous, both politically and financially.The Republican president has made tariffs a central piece of his economic and foreign policy and has said it would be a “disaster” if the Supreme Court rules against him.Here are some things to know about the tariffs arguments at the Supreme Court:Tariffs are taxes on importsThey are paid by companies that import finished products or parts, and the added cost can be passed on to consumers.Through September, the government has reported collecting $195 billion in revenue generated from the tariffs.The Constitution gives Congress the power to impose tariffs, but Trump has claimed extraordinary power to act without congressional approval by declaring national emergencies under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act.In February, he invoked the law to impose tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China, saying that the illegal flow of immigrants and drugs across the U.S. border amounted to a national emergency and that the three countries needed to do more to stop it.In April, he imposed worldwide tariffs after declaring the United States’ longstanding trade deficits “a national emergency.”Libertarian-backed businesses and states challenged the tariffs in federal courtChallengers to Trump’s actions won rulings from a specialized trade court, a district judge in Washington and a business-focused appeals court, also in the nation’s capital.Those courts found that Trump could not justify tariffs under the emergency powers law, which doesn’t mention them. But they left the tariffs in place in the meantime.The appeals court relied on major questions, a legal doctrine devised by the Supreme Court that requires Congress to speak clearly on issues of “vast economic and political significance.”The major questions doctrine doomed several Biden policiesConservative majorities struck down three of then-President Joe Biden’s initiatives related to the coronavirus pandemic. The court ended the Democrat’s pause on evictions, blocked a vaccine mandate for large businesses and prevented student loan forgiveness that would have totaled $500 billion over 10 years.In comparison, the stakes in the tariff case are much higher. The taxes are estimated to generate $3 trillion over 10 years.The challengers in the tariffs case have cited writings by the three Trump appointees, Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, in calling on the court to apply similar limitations on a signal Trump policy.Barrett described a babysitter taking children on roller coasters and spending a night in a hotel based on a parent’s encouragement to “make sure the kids have fun.”“In the normal course, permission to spend money on fun authorizes a babysitter to take children to the local ice cream parlor or movie theater, not on a multiday excursion to an out-of-town amusement park,” Barrett wrote in the student loans case. “If a parent were willing to greenlight a trip that big, we would expect much more clarity than a general instruction to ‘make sure the kids have fun.’”Kavanaugh, though, has suggested the court should not apply the same limiting standard to foreign policy and national security issues.A dissenting appellate judge also wrote that Congress purposely gave presidents more latitude to act through the emergency powers law.Some of the businesses that sued also are raising a separate legal argument in an appeal to conservative justices, saying that Congress could not constitutionally delegate its taxing power to the president.The nondelegation principle has not been used in 90 years, since the Supreme Court struck down some New Deal legislation.But Gorsuch authored a dissent in June that would have found the Federal Communications Commission’s universal service fee an unconstitutional delegation. Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas joined the dissent.“What happens when Congress, weary of the hard business of legislating and facing strong incentives to pass the buck, cedes its lawmaking power, clearly and unmistakably, to an executive that craves it?” Gorsuch wrote.The justices could act more quickly than usual in issuing a decisionThe court only agreed to hear the case in September, scheduling arguments less than two months later. The quick turnaround, at least by Supreme Court standards, suggests that the court will try to act fast.High-profile cases can take half a year or more to resolve, often because the majority and dissenting opinions go through rounds of revision.But the court can act quickly when deadline pressure dictates. Most recently, the court ruled a week after hearing arguments in the TikTok case, unanimously upholding a law requiring the popular social media app to be banned unless it was sold by its Chinese parent company. Trump has intervened several times to keep the law from taking effect while negotiations continue with China.
WASHINGTON —
Three lower courts have ruled President Donald Trump’s use of emergency powers to impose worldwide tariffs to be illegal. Now the Supreme Court, with three justices Trump appointed and generally favorable to muscular presidential power, will have the final word.
In roughly two dozen emergency appeals, the justices have largely gone along with Trump in temporarily allowing parts of his aggressive second-term agenda to take effect while lawsuits play out.
But the case being argued Wednesday is the first in which the court will render a final decision on a Trump policy. The stakes are enormous, both politically and financially.
The Republican president has made tariffs a central piece of his economic and foreign policy and has said it would be a “disaster” if the Supreme Court rules against him.
Here are some things to know about the tariffs arguments at the Supreme Court:
Tariffs are taxes on imports
They are paid by companies that import finished products or parts, and the added cost can be passed on to consumers.
Through September, the government has reported collecting $195 billion in revenue generated from the tariffs.
The Constitution gives Congress the power to impose tariffs, but Trump has claimed extraordinary power to act without congressional approval by declaring national emergencies under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
In February, he invoked the law to impose tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China, saying that the illegal flow of immigrants and drugs across the U.S. border amounted to a national emergency and that the three countries needed to do more to stop it.
In April, he imposed worldwide tariffs after declaring the United States’ longstanding trade deficits “a national emergency.”
Libertarian-backed businesses and states challenged the tariffs in federal court
Challengers to Trump’s actions won rulings from a specialized trade court, a district judge in Washington and a business-focused appeals court, also in the nation’s capital.
Those courts found that Trump could not justify tariffs under the emergency powers law, which doesn’t mention them. But they left the tariffs in place in the meantime.
The appeals court relied on major questions, a legal doctrine devised by the Supreme Court that requires Congress to speak clearly on issues of “vast economic and political significance.”
The major questions doctrine doomed several Biden policies
Conservative majorities struck down three of then-President Joe Biden’s initiatives related to the coronavirus pandemic. The court ended the Democrat’s pause on evictions, blocked a vaccine mandate for large businesses and prevented student loan forgiveness that would have totaled $500 billion over 10 years.
In comparison, the stakes in the tariff case are much higher. The taxes are estimated to generate $3 trillion over 10 years.
The challengers in the tariffs case have cited writings by the three Trump appointees, Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, in calling on the court to apply similar limitations on a signal Trump policy.
Barrett described a babysitter taking children on roller coasters and spending a night in a hotel based on a parent’s encouragement to “make sure the kids have fun.”
“In the normal course, permission to spend money on fun authorizes a babysitter to take children to the local ice cream parlor or movie theater, not on a multiday excursion to an out-of-town amusement park,” Barrett wrote in the student loans case. “If a parent were willing to greenlight a trip that big, we would expect much more clarity than a general instruction to ‘make sure the kids have fun.’”
Kavanaugh, though, has suggested the court should not apply the same limiting standard to foreign policy and national security issues.
A dissenting appellate judge also wrote that Congress purposely gave presidents more latitude to act through the emergency powers law.
Some of the businesses that sued also are raising a separate legal argument in an appeal to conservative justices, saying that Congress could not constitutionally delegate its taxing power to the president.
The nondelegation principle has not been used in 90 years, since the Supreme Court struck down some New Deal legislation.
But Gorsuch authored a dissent in June that would have found the Federal Communications Commission’s universal service fee an unconstitutional delegation. Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas joined the dissent.
“What happens when Congress, weary of the hard business of legislating and facing strong incentives to pass the buck, cedes its lawmaking power, clearly and unmistakably, to an executive that craves it?” Gorsuch wrote.
The justices could act more quickly than usual in issuing a decision
The court only agreed to hear the case in September, scheduling arguments less than two months later. The quick turnaround, at least by Supreme Court standards, suggests that the court will try to act fast.
High-profile cases can take half a year or more to resolve, often because the majority and dissenting opinions go through rounds of revision.
But the court can act quickly when deadline pressure dictates. Most recently, the court ruled a week after hearing arguments in the TikTok case, unanimously upholding a law requiring the popular social media app to be banned unless it was sold by its Chinese parent company. Trump has intervened several times to keep the law from taking effect while negotiations continue with China.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court’s conservatives face a test of their own making this week as they decide whether President Trump had the legal authority to impose tariffs on imports from nations across the globe.
At issue are import taxes that are paid by American businesses and consumers.
Small-business owners had sued, including a maker of “learning toys” in Illinois and a New York importer of wines and spirits. They said Trump’s ever-changing tariffs had severely disrupted their businesses, and they won rulings declaring the president had exceeded his authority.
On Wednesday, the justices will hear their first major challenge to Trump’s claims of unilateral executive power. And the outcome is likely to turn on three doctrines that have been championed by the court’s conservatives.
First, they say the Constitution should be interpreted based on its original meaning. Its opening words say: “All legislative powers … shall be vested” in Congress, and the elected representatives “shall have the power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposes and excises.”
Second, they believe the laws passed by Congress should be interpreted based on their words. They call this “textualism,” which rejects a more liberal and open-ended approach that included the general purpose of the law.
That 1977 law says the president may declare a national emergency to “deal with any unusual and extraordinary threat” involving national security, foreign policy or the economy of the United States. Faced with such an emergency, he may “investigate, block … or regulate” the “importation or exportation” of any property.
Trump said the nation’s “persistent” balance of payments deficit over five decades was such an “unusual and extraordinary threat.”
In the past, the law has been used to impose sanctions or freeze the assets of Iran, Syria and North Korea or groups of terrorists. It does not use the words “tariffs” or “duties,” and it had not been used for tariffs prior to this year.
He and the five other conservatives said they were skeptical of far-reaching and costly regulations issued by the Obama and Biden administrations involving matters such as climate change, student loan forgiveness or mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations for 84 million Americans.
And unless there is a “clear congressional authorization,” Roberts said the court will not uphold assertions of “extravagant statutory power over the national economy.”
Now all three doctrines are before the justices, since the lower courts relied on them in ruling against Trump.
No one disputes that the president could impose sweeping worldwide tariffs if he had sought and won approval from the Republican-controlled Congress. However, he insisted the power was his alone.
In a social media post, Trump called the case on tariffs “one of the most important in the History of the Country. If a President is not allowed to use Tariffs, we will be at a major disadvantage against all other Countries throughout the World, especially the ‘Majors.’ In a true sense, we would be defenseless! Tariffs have brought us Great Wealth and National Security in the nine months that I have had the Honor to serve as President.”
Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer, his top courtroom attorney, argues that tariffs involve foreign affairs and national security. And if so, the court should defer to the president.
“IEEPA authorizes the imposition of regulatory tariffs on foreign imports to deal with foreign threats — which crucially differ from domestic taxation,” he wrote last month.
For the same reason, “the major questions doctrine … does not apply here,” he said. It is limited to domestic matters, not foreign affairs, he argued.
Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh has sounded the same note in the past.
Sauer will also seek to persuade the court that the word “regulate” imports includes imposing tariffs.
The challengers are supported by prominent conservatives, including Stanford law professor Michael McConnell.
In 2001, he and John Roberts were nominated for a federal appeals court at the same time by President George W. Bush, and he later served with now-Justice Neil M. Gorsuch on the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver.
He is the lead counsel for one group of small-business owners.
“This case is what the American Revolution was all about. A tax wasn’t legitimate unless it was imposed by the people’s representatives,” McConnell said. “The president has no power to impose taxes on American citizens without Congress.”
His brief argues that Trump is claiming a power unlike any in American history.
“Until the 1900s, Congress exercised its tariff power directly, and every delegation since has been explicit and strictly limited,” he wrote in Trump vs. V.O.S. Selections. “Here, the government contends that the President may impose tariffs on the American people whenever he wants, at any rate he wants, for any countries and products he wants, for as long as he wants — simply by declaring longstanding U.S. trade deficits a national ‘emergency’ and an ‘unusual and extraordinary threat,’ declarations the government tells us are unreviewable. The president can even change his mind tomorrow and back again the day after that.”
He said the “major questions” doctrine fully applies here.
Two years ago, he noted the court called Biden’s proposed student loan forgiveness “staggering by any measure” because it could cost more than $430 billion. By comparison, he said, the Tax Foundation estimated that Trump’s tariffs will impose $1.7 trillion in new taxes on Americans by 2035.
The case figures to be a major test of whether the Roberts court will put any legal limits on Trump’s powers as president.
But the outcome will not be the final word on tariffs. Administration officials have said that if they lose, they will seek to impose them under other federal laws that involve national security.
Still pending before the court is an emergency appeal testing the president’s power to send National Guard troops to American cities over the objection of the governor and local officials.
Last week, the court asked for further briefs on the Militia Act of 1908, which says the president may call up the National Guard if he cannot “with the regular forces … execute the laws of the United States.”
The government had assumed the regular forces were the police and federal agents, but a law professor said the regular forces in the original law referred to the military.
The justices asked for a clarification from both sides by Nov. 17.
HONG KONG (AP) — China’s Commerce Ministry said Tuesday that the Netherlands has caused “chaos” in the semiconductor supply chain that could threaten global auto production, even after Beijing allowed Nexperia’s Chinese unit to resume exports of its computer chips.
China had blocked shipments of chips from Nexperia’s plant in the southern Chinese city of Dongguan in response to the Dutch government’s seizure of Nexperia in late September.
The Netherlands cited national security concerns in taking control of the company, which is owned by the Chinese company Wingtech Technology. It also replaced Nexperia’s Chinese CEO Zhang Xuezheng with interim CEO Stefan Tilger.
Nexperia’s Chinese unit said in late October that its Netherlands headquarters had suspended supplies of wafers used to make chips to its factory in China, raising concerns over its ability to deliver finished semiconductors used by many automakers.
“That has created turmoil and chaos in the global semiconductor supply chain,” the Commerce Ministry said in a statement Tuesday. “The Netherlands should bear full responsibility for this.”
The ministry accused the Netherlands of failing to help resolve the problem, saying it was “further escalating the semiconductor supply chain crisis.”
In late 2024, the U.S. put Wingtech Technology, on its “entity list” that it deemed to be acting against the U.S.’s national security interests, subjecting it to export controls.
In late September, the U.S. expanded the list to include Wingtech’s subsidiaries, including Nexperia, and the Netherlands then took control of the company.
Global automakers including Ford Motor have warned that China’s export restrictions on Nexperia’s semiconductors could disrupt car manufacturing.
Following U.S. President Donald Trump’s meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in South Korea last week, the White House said China was moving to ease the export ban on Nexperia semiconductors as part of the latest trade truce between Washington and Beijing.
The EU’s trade commissioner Maroš Šefčovič said in a post Monday on X that the Dutch government and China were closely coordinating and in “constructive engagement” regarding Nexperia.
The Netherlands said last month it was willing to find a “constructive solution” with Chinese authorities to the Nexperia standoff after its economic affairs minister, Vincent Karremans, spoke by telephone with China’s commerce minister, Wang Wentao.
Nexperia was acquired in 2018 by partially state-owned Wingtech for $3.6 billion.
The Dutch ministry of economic affairs invoked its rarely used Goods Availability Act to effectively seize control of the company on Sept. 30. It said Nexperia’s governance “posed a threat to the continuity and safeguarding on Dutch and European soil of crucial technological knowledge and capabilities”.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump won’t be going in person to the Supreme Court hearing Wednesday that will determine the fate of the tariffs at the heart of his economic and foreign policy — but his treasury secretary says he will be there.
“I’m actually going to go and sit the — hopefully in the front row and listen — have a ringside seat,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Monday on Fox News Channel’s “Jesse Watters Primetime.”
Trump had said he badly wanted to attend the arguments, but ruled out what would have been a highly unusual appearance, saying it would have been a distraction. “It’s not about me, it’s about our country,” he told reporters Sunday.
On Monday, his top economic adviser said he would be there instead, signaling the importance of the case to the Trump administration. Asked whether his presence could be criticized as trying to intimidate the justices, Bessent told Fox: “They can say what they want. I am there to emphasize that this is an economic emergency.”
Earlier this year, lower courts determined that the president did not have the power under IEEPA to set tariffs, but left them in place while the Supreme Court considered the issue.
Bessent described the hearing as “a matter of national security.” But he has said there are contingencies in place. Last month, he told a group of reporters that in the event the court rules against the Trump administration, “there are lots of other authorities that we can operate under.”
“Remember too,” he said, “we also have numerous trade deals in effect. So I don’t think that countries are going to back out of the trade deals,” he said.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Key figures involved in the failed criminal case against two men accused of spying for China have given conflicting accounts to a parliamentary committee about why the case collapsed.
In September, prosecutors dropped charges against Christopher Cash and Christopher Berry, who had been charged under the Official Secrets Act. Both men deny wrongdoing.
The director of public prosecutions, Stephen Parkinson, had said the case could not progress because the government’s deputy national security adviser, Matt Collins, was unwilling to classify China as an active threat to national security.
However, Mr Collins told the committee he had been given legal advice that his evidence would be “enough”.
He said he always knew the case would be “a challenge” but that he had been “trying to ensure that we could support a successful prosecution”.
Mr Collins – who was set to be the government’s witness in the trial – added: “And so I was somewhat surprised when I was told on 3 September that the intention was to drop the case.”
In contrast Tom Little KC – who would have been the lead prosecuting barrister in the case – said he would be “surprised” if Mr Collins had not realised the prosecution would collapse unless he offered further evidence.
Earlier in the session, Mr Little had said Mr Collins had been clear he would not say that “China posed an active threat to national security at the material time”.
“That was in answer to what I regard as the million dollar question in the case, and once he had said that the current prosecution for those charges was effectively unsustainable,” he added.
He said the case was brought to “a crashing halt” when Mr Collins outlined the limits of what he would be wiling to say in court.
Asked by the National Security Strategy Committee about the evidence he provided to prosecutors, Mr Collins said: “What I was able to say is that China poses a range of threats to our national security.
“I was able to say that these include espionage threats, cyber threats, threats to our democratic institutions, threats to our economic security.
“I would be able to say that these threats are very real and persistent, and the operational partners are dealing with them on a daily basis.”
He added he believed the CPS was asking him to “use the generic term that China is a threat, or China is an active threat, which is not in line with government policy at the time”.
Members of the committee pressed Mr Parkinson and Mr Little on why they felt Mr Collins had not provided enough evidence that China could be considered a threat.
Labour peer Lord Paul Boateng noted that, in his evidence Mr Collins had said “China’s espionage operations threaten the UK’s economic prosperity and resilience, and the integrity of our democratic institutions”.
He argued the phrase would be enough to indicate “we are dealing with an enemy”.
Lord Mark Sedwill, a former national security adviser, suggested that if Mr Collins was only able to reflect the government view, the prosecution could have sought other witnesses who could have characterised China as a “threat to national security”.
However, Mr Little said the limits of Mr Collins’ evidence would have derailed the case, regardless of what others said.
Labour MP Dame Emily Thornberry asked why prosecutors could not have trusted a jury to conclude China could be deemed a threat.
Mr Parkinson argued that, without the key evidence from Mr Collins, a judge would not have let the case go to trial.
Mr Collins submitted his first witness statement in December 2023, after which prosecutors decided they had enough evidence to charge Mr Cash and Mr Berry under the Official Secrets Act 1911.
However, Mr Parkinson said a ruling in a separate court case in 2024 changed the requirements of what evidence would be needed and so prosecutors asked Mr Collins to provide further witness statements, in the hope he would label China a “threat to national security”.
In two further statements, Mr Collins detailed threats posed by China in cyberspace and to the UK’s democratic institutions but avoided labelling the country “a threat to national security”.
The collapse of the case triggered a political row over who was to blame. The Conservatives have accused the Labour government of allowing the case to fail because it wanted to foster better relations with Beijing.
However, the government said ministers had no role in providing evidence for the case and Mr Collins was giving evidence based on what Conservative government policy had been at the time.
On Wednesday, the committee will hear evidence from Attorney General Lord Hermer and senior minister Darren Jones.
The sensitive personal details of more than 450 people holding “top secret” US government security clearances were left exposed online, new research seen by WIRED shows. The people’s details were included in a database of more than 7,000 individuals who have applied for jobs over the last two years with Democrats in the United States House of Representatives.
While scanning for unsecured databases at the end of September, an ethical security researcher stumbled upon the exposed cache of data and discovered that it was part of a site called DomeWatch. The service is run by the House Democrats and includes videostreams of House floor sessions, calendars of congressional events, and updates on House votes. It also includes a job board and résumé bank.
After the researcher attempted to notify the House of Representatives’ Office of the Chief Administrator on September 30, the database was secured within hours, and the researcher received a response that simply said, “Thanks for flagging.” It is unclear how long the data was exposed or if anyone else accessed the information while it was unsecured.
The independent researcher, who asked to remain anonymous due to the sensitive nature of the findings, likened the exposed database to an internal “index” of people who may have applied for open roles. Résumés were not included, they say, but the database contained details typical of a job application process. The researcher found data including applicants’ short written biographies and fields indicating military service, security clearances, and languages spoken, along with details like names, phone numbers, and email addresses. Each individual was also assigned an internal ID.
“Some people described in the data have spent 20 years on Capitol Hill,” the researcher tells WIRED, noting that the information went beyond a list of interns or junior staffers. This is what made the finding so concerning, the researcher says, because they fear that if the data had fallen into the wrong hands—perhaps those of a hostile state or malicious hackers—it could have been used to compromise government or military staffers who have access to potentially sensitive information. “From the perspective of a foreign adversary, that is a gold mine of who you want to target,” the security researcher says.
WIRED reached out to the Office of the Chief Administrator and House Democrats for comment. Some staff members WIRED contacted were unavailable because they have been furloughed as a result of the ongoing US government shutdown.
“Today, our office was informed that an outside vendor potentially exposed information stored in an internal site,” Joy Lee, spokesperson for House Democratic whip Katherine Clark, told WIRED in a statement on October 22. DomeWatch is under the purview of Clark’s office. “We immediately alerted the Office of the Chief Administration Officer, and a full investigation has been launched to identify and rectify any security vulnerabilities.” Lee added that the outside vendor is “an independent consultant who helps with the backend” of DomeWatch.
