Columbia University agrees to pay more than $220m as settlement to Trump administration
Columbia University announced on Wednesday that it has signed an agreement with the U S government to pay $200m to settle multiple investigations into alleged violations of federal anti-discrimination laws.
The university also agreed to pay a further $21m “to settle investigations brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission”.
In return for the massive payments, to be made over three years, “a vast majority of the federal grants which were terminated or paused in March 2025 – will be reinstated and Columbia’s access to billions of dollars in current and future grants will be restored”, according to the university.
The agreement was signed by the university trustees and three Trump administration cabinet members: Pam Bondi, the attorney general, Linda MacMahon, the education secretary, and Robert F Kennedy Jr, the health secretary.
The settlement comes after Columbia already gave in to many of the Trump administration’s demands, agreeing last week to adopt a controversial definition of antisemitism that precludes criticism of Israel and expelling or suspending over 70 students who briefly occupied a campus library reading room in May to protest the Israeli assault on Palestinians in Gaza.
On Monday, Harvard University argued in federal court that the Trump administration’s decision to cut $2.6bn in funding from that university, over similar claims, was an illegal, politically motivated attempt to pressure the school into adopting policies on student conduct, admissions, antisemitism and diversity more in line with the president’s own views.
Key events
Closing summary
This brings our live coverage of the day in US politics to an end, but we will be back on Thursday to continue chronicling the second Trump administration in real time. Here are the latest developments:
A federal appeals court ruled on Wednesday that Donald Trump’s executive order declaring an end to birthright citizenship is unconstitutional, affirming a lower-court decision that blocked its enforcement nationwide.
The House oversight subcommittee on federal law enforcement voted to issue a subpoena to the justice department compelling “the full, unredacted release” of files from the federal investigations of Jeffrey Epstein.
Columbia University signed an agreement with the US government to pay $221m to settle multiple investigations into alleged violations of federal anti-discrimination and equal opportunity employment laws.
Trump repeated his tale that the king of Saudi Arabia told him during a visit to the kingdom in May: “You have the hottest country anywhere in the world”. Trump did not meet the king during his trip but was hosted by the crown prince, whom US intelligence says approved the murder of a US-based journalist.
The White House press secretary expressed “outrage” that, during the Obama administration, “the intelligence community was concocting this narrative … that the president’s son was holding secret meetings with the Russians”. Donald Trump Jr admitted in 2017 that he had secretly met a Russian who promised to deliver Russian government dirt on Hillary Clinton.
Trump signed executive orders, including one that would bar the US government from buying or promoting AI models that “embrace wokeism and critical race theory”.
In 2017, Donald Trump Jr admitted meeting Russian who promised dirt on Hillary Clinton. Today, the White House press secretary called that a lie.
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, told reporters earlier on Wednesday that it was an “outrage” that, during the Obama administration, “the intelligence community was concocting this narrative that the president colluded with the Russians, that the president’s son was holding secret meetings with the Russians.”
“All of these lies”, Leavitt said, “that were never true”.
While Trump and his aides have for years tried to maintain that every accusation that his 2016 campaign was aware of or encouraged the Russian attempts to damage Hillary Clinton were false, it is very odd that Leavitt chose to call the idea that the president’s son met secretly with the Russians false, because Donald Trump Jr admitted it was true in 2017.
He even provided documentary evidence for how the meeting came about. On 11 July 2017, Donald Trump Jr tweeted a copy of an email exchange he had in June of 2016 with a publicist for a powerful Russian oligarch. The email showed that the British publicist, Rob Goldstone, on June 3, 2016, offered to pass on secret information about Clinton from one of the most senior officials in the Russian government.
“The Crown prosecutor of Russia” Goldstone wrote, in reference to the prosecutor general of Russia, Yuri Chaika, “offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father.”
“This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump”, Goldstone added.
The younger Trump replied to this offer of Russian government help: “if it’s what you say I love it”. Six days later the president’s son, along with his brother-in-law Jared Kushner and Trump’s campaign manager Paul Manafort, met in Trump Tower with Natalia Veselnitskaya, who was described to him by Goldstone as a “Russian government attorney who is flying over from Moscow for this.”
Federal appeals court blocks Trump’s ‘unconstitutional’ attempt to end birthright citizenship
A federal appeals court ruled on Wednesday that Donald Trump’s executive order declaring an end to birthright citizenship is unconstitutional, affirming a lower-court decision that blocked its enforcement nationwide.
The 2-1 ruling from a divided panel of the ninth US circuit court of appeals comes after Trump’s plan was also blocked by a federal judge in New Hampshire. It brings the issue one step closer to coming back quickly before the supreme court.
The appeals court ruling blocks the Trump administration from enforcing the order that would deny citizenship to children born to people who are in the United States without permanent legal status or temporarily.
“The district court correctly concluded that the Executive Order’s proposed interpretation, denying citizenship to many persons born in the United States, is unconstitutional. We fully agree,” the majority wrote.
Trump keeps saying Saudi king praised his leadership in May; there is no record they met
“When I traveled to the Middle East in May, every leader I met was thrilled to do business with American tech firms, and with America, and they were all thrilled to meet me”, Donald Trump boasted at an AI summit earlier on Wednesday.
He then regaled the assembled industry leaders with a story he has told dozens of times in the months since, despite the fact it seems to reveal that the president is confused about who hosted him on his visit to Saudi Arabia.
“The king of Saudi Arabia”, Trump recalled, “said, ‘You know what? One year ago, your country was dead, it was a dead country…. You had a dead country, and today, Mr President, you have the hottest country anywhere in the world’.
According to Trump, the leaders of Qatar and UAE echoed those comments by Saudi king. “They said that and they mean it so strongly”, the president said to widespread applause.
The problem with this anecdote is that Trump was not hosted by King Salman of Saudi Arabia, the 89-year-old monarch who has largely retreated from public life and took no part in the lavish ceremonies and meetings Trump attended in Riyadh.
Instead, Trump met with crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s de facto ruler, who approved the 2018 murder of the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, according to a US intelligence report made public three weeks after the end of Trump’s first term.
During a speech to a Saudi investment forum during his trip, Trump criticized his predecessor Joe Biden for keeping his distance from the crown prince and lavished praise on him.
Columbia University agrees to pay more than $220m as settlement to Trump administration
Columbia University announced on Wednesday that it has signed an agreement with the U S government to pay $200m to settle multiple investigations into alleged violations of federal anti-discrimination laws.
The university also agreed to pay a further $21m “to settle investigations brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission”.
In return for the massive payments, to be made over three years, “a vast majority of the federal grants which were terminated or paused in March 2025 – will be reinstated and Columbia’s access to billions of dollars in current and future grants will be restored”, according to the university.
The agreement was signed by the university trustees and three Trump administration cabinet members: Pam Bondi, the attorney general, Linda MacMahon, the education secretary, and Robert F Kennedy Jr, the health secretary.
The settlement comes after Columbia already gave in to many of the Trump administration’s demands, agreeing last week to adopt a controversial definition of antisemitism that precludes criticism of Israel and expelling or suspending over 70 students who briefly occupied a campus library reading room in May to protest the Israeli assault on Palestinians in Gaza.
On Monday, Harvard University argued in federal court that the Trump administration’s decision to cut $2.6bn in funding from that university, over similar claims, was an illegal, politically motivated attempt to pressure the school into adopting policies on student conduct, admissions, antisemitism and diversity more in line with the president’s own views.
House oversight subcommittee votes to subpoena Epstein files from justice department
The House oversight subcommittee on federal law enforcement voted on Wednesday to issue a subpoena to the justice department compelling “the full, unredacted release” of files from the federal investigations of Jeffrey Epstein, the late sex offender who socialized with future president Donald Trump throughout the 1990s.
A motion introduced by congresswoman Summer Lee, a Pennsylvania Democrat, passed by a vote of 8-2, with three votes coming from Republicans Nancy Mace, Scott Perry and Brian Jack, requires that files be released to the subcommittee.
On Wednesday, Congresswoman Summer Lee, a Pennsylvania Democrat, introduced a motion to compel the justice department to turn over its files related to Jeffrey Epstein to the House oversight subcommittee on federal law enforcement.
Trump signs executive order barring government from using ‘woke’ AI models
Donald Trump just completed his remarks to a summit of artificial intelligence industry leaders in Washington and signed three executive orders, including one that his aide, the White House staff secretary Will Scharf, said would bar the US government from buying or promoting AI models that “embrace wokeism and critical race theory and all of these terrible theories that have done so much damage to our country”.
In his earlier remarks, Trump claimed that his predecessor Joe Biden had “established toxic diversity, equity and inclusion ideology as a guiding principle of American AI development”.
“But the American people do not want woke Marxist lunacy in the AI models,” Trump said.
Trump tells AI leaders they should not have to worry about copyright laws
In a rambling set of remarks at an AI summit at the Mellon Auditorium in Washington on Wednesday, Donald Trump just told assembled industry leaders that he wants them to “change the name” of artificial intelligence and that they should not be forced to pay the authors of articles or books they use to train their large language models.
The subject of the summit, Trump said at the start of his remarks, was “the greatest power of them all, the brain power”.
He went on to boast, as he does at political rallies, about the scale of his victory in the 2024 presidential election, saying that he won by “millions and millions of votes” (it was 2 million), and that he won far more “districts as they would call them” (he meant counties) than Kamala Harris.
“Around the globe, everybody is talking about artificial intelligence,” Trump said, before veering away from his prepared remarks to say: “Artificial – I can’t stand it. I don’t even like the name, you know I don’t like anything that’s artificial. So could we straighten that out please? We should change the name.”
As some in the crowd laughed, Trump added: “I actually mean that. I don’t like the name artificial, because it’s not artificial, it’s genius, it’s pure genius.”
Given that one of Trump’s first acts in office was to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, he might indeed mean it.
The president then called for what he called “a commonsense application of artificial and intellectual property rules”. Trump appeared to have accidentally added the word “artificial” to his prepared remarks.
“It’s so important,” the president continued. “You can’t be expected to have a successful AI program when every single article, book or anything else that you’ve read or studied, you’re supposed to pay for.”
“‘Gee, I read a book, I’m supposed to pay somebody,’” the president added, dismissing the intellectual property concerns of authors whose work has been used without payment in a sarcastic aside.
“You know, we appreciate that, but you just can’t do it, because it’s not doable,” the president went on. “And if you’re going to try and do that, you’re not going to have a successful program.”
“When a person reads a book or an article, you’ve gained great knowledge. That does not mean that you’re violating copyright laws or have to make deals with every content provider,” Trump said. “And that’s a big thing that you’re working on right now.”
Yemen attack plans Hegseth shared in Signal chat were from classified email – report
An independent Pentagon inspector general reportedly has evidence that the detailed attack plans for strikes on Yemen shared in at least two Signal group chats by defense secretary Pete Hegseth in March were, in fact, classified, contradicting repeated claims to the contrary from Trump administration officials.
“The Pentagon’s independent watchdog has received evidence that messages from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s Signal account previewing a U.S. bombing campaign in Yemen derived from a classified email labeled “SECRET/NOFORN”, the Washington Post reports.
According to the Post, the Pentagon watchdog discovered that the 15 March strike plans Hegseth dropped in one Signal group that mistakenly included the editor of the Atlantic, and a second chat that included his wife, had first been shared “in a classified email with more than a dozen defense officials” sent through a secure, government system by General Michael Erik Kurilla, the top commander overseeing US military operations in the Middle East.
After the revelation that Hegseth had shared the secret attack plans on Signal with a journalist before the strikes, the defense secretary told reporters “nobody was texting war plans”. His chief spokesman, Sean Parnell, said at the time: “there were no classified materials or war plans shared”.
Another participant in the Signal group, Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, testified to congress in March that “there was no classified material that was shared” in the chat.
Maya Yang
A federal judge ruled on Wednesday that Kilmar Ábrego García must be released from jail as he awaits trial on human smuggling charges.
The decision from judge Waverly Crenshaw means that Donald Trump’s administration can potentially attempt to deport the Maryland father of two to his native El Salvador or a third country for a second time.
Crenshaw, sitting in Nashville, agreed with an earlier decision by a magistrate judge, concluding that prosecutors had not provided enough evidence to show Ábrego is either a danger to the public or a flight risk.
The judge said in his decision that the government “fails to show by a preponderance of the evidence – let alone clear and convincing evidence – that Ábrego is such a danger to others or the community that such concerns cannot be mitigated by conditions of release”.
Despite the bail ruling, Ábrego is not expected to walk free. His legal team has requested a 30-day delay in implementing the decision, opting to keep him in criminal detention while they consider next steps.
Meanwhile, in a separate courtroom in Maryland, US district judge Paula Xinis, who is overseeing a civil case Ábrego filed, issued a 72-hour freeze on any further attempts by the Trump administration to deport him. Xinis ruled that Ábrego must be returned to Maryland on an order of supervision.
