July 23, 2025, 2:52 p.m. ETThe Head Start program funds child care and other services for families in poverty, serving roughly 800,000 children.Credit...Rebecca Blackwell/Associated PressThe Trump administration illegally withheld funding from a roughly $12 billion federal child care program known as Head Start, according to congressional investigators, who said that President Trump and his top aides had wrongly interrupted the flow of money enacted by Congress.The disruption appeared to be resolved by June, according to the Government Accountability Office, a legislative oversight agency. But its conclusions, published Wednesday, still referenced reports showing that the government’s actions may have caused immense financial hardship to some child-care services, which struggled to receive federal aid for about three months.It was the third time this year that the congressional watchdog faulted the administration for defying Congress and trying to reconfigure the nation’s budget unilaterally. And the findings underscored the stakes of a simmering battle between Capitol Hill and the White House over the power of the purse.The Head Start program funds child care and other services for families in poverty, serving roughly 800,000 children up to age 5, according to recent federal estimates. Even though the safety-net initiative has long enjoyed bipartisan support, Mr. Trump considered proposing its full elimination as part of his fiscal blueprint for 2026, calling its curriculum “radical.”The president ultimately backed off the idea once he issued his full budget this spring. But some Head Start centers still began to report significant difficulties in getting federal funds that Congress had already approved. Democrats soon alleged that the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees Head Start, had stopped providing grants on a timely basis. By April, party lawmakers had determined that the program had supplied about $1 billion less than it had compared with the same time a year earlier.Facing significant disruptions, local Head Start associations joined parents and other groups in a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union in April. The groups charged that the funding delays were “unlawful acts in service of an unlawful goal” to undermine Head Start “in blatant contravention of congressional directives.”On Wednesday, the accountability office came to a similar conclusion. It found that the Trump administration had “significantly reduced the rate of disbursement of funds for Head Start grant programs” between Jan. 20, the day Mr. Trump took office, until mid-April, compared with the same period a year earlier.The watchdog acknowledged that the administration by June had supplied funding at a rate comparable to past years. But the G.A.O. still concluded that the previous interruptions violated a 1970s law that limits the president’s ability to withhold enacted funds, a move known as impoundment.The law aims to protect lawmakers’ budgetary powers from presidential encroachment, since the Constitution chiefly affords spending responsibilities to Congress. The congressional watchdog found earlier this year that the Trump administration had similarly violated the anti-impoundment rules when it held up infrastructure funding and money for museums and libraries.A spokeswoman for the White House budget office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Its leader, Russell T. Vought, has denied past allegations that the administration illegally impounded funds, while arguing that the law itself is unconstitutional. Mr. Vought has also signaled he could try to push the limits of those rules to cancel billions of dollars in spending closer to the end of the fiscal year, which concludes Sept. 30.As they look to sidestep Congress to conform the budget to the president’s views, Mr. Trump’s top aides have also attacked the watchdog known as the G.A.O. The White House has derided the investigators’ work as partisan, questioned their legal findings and worked alongside House Republicans in a bid to block nearly four dozen open inquiries into its spending cuts, according to documents previously viewed by The New York Times.The accountability office is a roughly century-old, nonpartisan advisory arm of the Capitol, and it long has produced reports — welcomed by both parties — identifying waste, fraud and abuse in federal spending. It is also tasked under law to investigate allegations of impoundment, with the power to sue the administration to force the release of frozen funds.Officials at the G.A.O. recently informed members of Congress that they planned to retain outside legal counsel in case they needed to bring a case. The leader of the office — Gene Dodaro, the comptroller general — said in an interview that a lawsuit is a last resort and that no decisions about legal action have been made.“Trump has signaled he would like to eliminate Head Start — but that’s not his choice to make,” said Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington who leads her party on the chamber’s Appropriations Committee. She added in a statement that the president needed to “ensure every penny of these funds get out in a timely, consistent way moving forward.”Representative Rosa DeLauro, the leading Democratic appropriator from Connecticut, went as far as to call for Mr. Vought’s removal on Wednesday. Other Democrats, including Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, have similarly called for his firing.In a statement, Ms. DeLauro said the White House budget director is “behind the illegal stealing of congressionally directed funds and must be removed from his position.”July 23, 2025, 2:44 p.m. ETRecovery efforts in Ingram, Texas, after the Guadalupe River flooded earlier this month.Credit...Callaghan O'Hare for The New York TimesDavid Richardson, the acting director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, defended the Trump administration’s handling of the recent catastrophic floods in Texas, insisting to members of Congress on Wednesday that recent policy changes did not slow the government’s response.Under questioning from Democrats on the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, Mr. Richardson said FEMA’s response to the Texas floods represented a “model” for “how disasters should be handled.”Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who oversees FEMA, has been under fire for the federal government’s response to the flooding in Texas. Several Democrats have called for an investigation amid reports that Ms. Noem waited 72 hours to send urban search and rescue crews to Kerr County because a new policy required her to personally approve every expenditure over $100,000.“This wasn’t just incompetence,” said Representative Greg Stanton, Democrat of Arizona. “It wasn’t just indifference. It was both, and that deadly combination likely cost lives.”Mr. Richardson denied that the new policy caused a bottleneck. He also disputed a report by The New York Times that, on July 6 and 7, thousands of calls to the agency went unanswered because hundreds of contractors had been fired.Representative Laura Friedman, Democrat of California pressed Mr. Richardson on documents showing that FEMA’s response rate went from 99.7 percent on July 5 to 15.9 percent on July 7.“Are you telling me those are fake numbers?” she asked.Mr. Richardson responded, “What I can tell you is the vast majority of phone calls were answered.” He said Ms. Noem was “concerned about due diligence and making sure the American people get what they deserve for their tax dollars.”Mr. Richardson offered little clarity on the future of FEMA. President Trump said he wanted to phase out the agency after hurricane season by shifting more responsibility for disaster response and recovery to the states.Asked on Wednesday if FEMA would exist in the future, Mr. Richardson replied, “What I can commit to is that the president wants a better emergency management for the American people.”July 23, 2025, 2:08 p.m. ETJeffrey Epstein appeared in court in West Palm Beach, Fla., in 2008.Credit...Uma Sanghvi/Palm Beach Post, via Associated PressA federal judge in Florida on Wednesday denied a request from the Trump administration to release grand jury transcripts from an investigation into the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, stymying efforts by President Trump to dispel a storm of criticism from many of his supporters.The quick denial came in response to a request by the government last week asking the court to unseal those documents and to transfer the case to New York, where Mr. Epstein was indicted after a grand jury investigation in 2019. In its request, the Justice Department cited “extensive public interest” and “transparency to the American public.”Mr. Trump and his subordinates, including Attorney General Pam Bondi, have come under enormous pressure to release further details about Mr. Epstein. Ms. Bondi had promised to do so but reversed course after a joint memo issued by the F.B.I. and the Justice Department on July 6 indicated that no more disclosures about Mr. Epstein’s conviction would be forthcoming.The memo concluded that after an exhaustive review of evidence in the cases against Mr. Epstein, the government had uncovered no new evidence “that could predicate an investigation into uncharged third parties.”Judge Robin L. Rosenberg wrote that the court’s “hands are tied.” The government had not requested the grand jury’s findings for use in a judicial proceeding, she wrote, adding that district courts are generally prohibited from unsealing grand jury testimony except in narrow circumstances.She ordered that a new case be created “in the public interest” that provided access to the government’s requests and the denial order, as the Epstein grand jury docket is still sealed. But she ordered closed the case where the government filed its request, which started with the investigation into Mr. Epstein in Florida in 2005.July 23, 2025, 1:59 p.m. ETThe Department of Education said it would investigate five universities for offering scholarships to students who came to the United States as unauthorized immigrants.Credit...Eric Lee/The New York TimesThe Trump administration opened another front Wednesday in its effort to target immigrants and root out diversity programming, promising to investigate scholarships for students brought to the United States illegally as children.The Education Department said it would investigate five universities that offer aid to students in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program, who are known among immigration advocates as Dreamers. The Trump administration argues that such scholarship programs violate civil rights laws prohibiting discrimination against national origin because they are open only to DACA students and not to U.S. citizens.Universities give aid to such students because they typically cannot access government financial aid as noncitizens, although recent political and legal scrutiny has led some universities to abandon such efforts.Republicans have argued that the programs divert resources from American students.“Neither the Trump administration’s America first policies nor the Civil Rights Act of 1964’s prohibition on national origin discrimination permit universities to deny our fellow citizens the opportunity to compete for scholarships because they were born in the United States,” Craig Trainor, the Education Department’s acting assistant secretary for civil rights, said in a statement.The universities under investigation are the University of Louisville, the University of Nebraska Omaha, the University of Miami, the University of Michigan, and Western Michigan University.John R. Karman III, a University of Louisville spokesman, said the university was notified of the investigation on Tuesday and was reviewing the government’s claims. The other universities under investigation either declined to comment or did not immediately respond to a message.The complaints were filed by the Legal Insurrection Clinic, a conservative group that supports “free speech, viewpoint diversity, and truly educating — not brainwashing — our students.”“Protecting equal access to education includes protecting the rights of American-born students,” William A. Jacobson, the founder of the clinic’s Equal Protection Project and a Cornell University law professor, said in the announcement.The Trump administration has unleashed a broad assault on colleges, including levying major funding threats against top colleges. Many of the efforts have been directed toward students who are not U.S. citizens.Federal agents have detained some international students for pro-Palestinian speech. The government has also targeted Harvard’s ability to enroll international students, including opening a new investigation on Wednesday into the school’s participation in the student visa program.July 23, 2025, 12:45 p.m. ETAna SwansonAna Swanson covers international trade and reported from Washington.The key to clinching a trade deal between the United States and Japan appeared to be President Trump’s agreement to lower tariffs for Japanese cars to 15 percent, a rate that would have been shocking not long ago.Credit...Kim Kyung-Hoon/ReutersSix months ago, few people would have anticipated that the United States would place a 15 percent tariff on exports from Japan, one of America’s closest and most longstanding allies. President Trump had campaigned on the idea of a 10 percent universal base-line tariff, plus a higher levy on China, but it was not clear whether he would follow through.But on Tuesday, when Mr. Trump announced a trade deal that included a 15 percent tariff on Japanese products — the highest rate those goods have faced in decades — there was a palpable sense of relief. Stock markets in Asia and Europe rose. The Japanese Nikkei 225 surged by over 3.5 percent, while shares of Japanese automakers, which will also be charged a 15 percent tariff on their exports to the United States, jumped more than 10 percent.The reaction is a testament to just how quickly and completely Mr. Trump has transformed the world’s expectations regarding tariffs. In a few short months, the president has normalized tariffs at rates that would have been shocking just months ago. But by threatening even higher levies and holding out the prospect of devastating trade wars, he has somehow made sharply higher tariffs, which are now at rates not seen in a century, feel like a relief.The reaction is largely due to the incredible uncertainty the president has created with his global trade negotiations. He has threatened higher tariffs on dozens of countries as of Aug. 1, unless they strike a deal with the United States. So far, the administration has announced deals with Britain, Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines, all of which have left tariffs of 10 to 20 percent in place.The fact that the United States closed the deal with Japan on Tuesday was in itself a positive surprise. Negotiations between the countries had been difficult, in part because Japan had been heading toward a national election where politicians were under pressure not to fold to the United States on Japan’s core interests.The governments were also clashing over the 25 percent tariff that Mr. Trump had imposed on global autos, a key export for Japan, as well as Japan’s barriers to U.S. rice, which it has long deemed to be of inferior quality. It was unclear whether the two countries would be able to overcome such barriers.The key to clinching the deal appeared to be the president’s agreement to lower auto tariffs for Japanese cars to 15 percent. That is significantly lower than the tariff rates that cars from other countries will face, but still a huge increase from the 2.5 percent tariff in effect before Mr. Trump came into office.Michal Jozwiak, a market analyst at Ebury, a global financial services firm, said the deal was “a potential lifeline for Japan, as it represents a fairly significant concession from the Trump administration, while protecting the country’s vital automotive sector from harsher tariffs.”It remains to be seen whether the president will offer similar tariffs to other auto exporters. But South Korea, the European Union and Mexico, all of which are in active negotiations, seem likely to push for lower tariffs as part of their own deals.The Japan deal reinforced “the perception that the White House is open to compromise,” Mr. Jozwiak said.But while Mr. Trump is celebrating putting his plan into practice and stock markets are at all-time highs, economists have continued to insist that the higher tariffs will eventually start to weigh on the U.S. economy. Price increases have been slow to materialize but started to become more apparent in appliances, toys, furniture and other imported items last month. Economists anticipate that higher prices will weigh on company sales and consumer activity, resulting in slower growth for the U.S. economy.Ryan Young, a senior economist at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian think tank, called the deal a “lose-lose” for both Japan and the United States, saying it would lead to a sevenfold increase on the tariffs Americans are paying on Japanese products.“While this is a smaller tax hike than President Trump’s threatened 25 percent tariff, it is still a big loss for American consumers and retailers, as well as American manufacturers who use Japanese components,” he said.Matt Gertken, the chief geopolitical strategist at BCA Research, said there was “little question that Japan would make concessions and come to a deal.” That is because the United States consumes 20 percent of Japanese exports and 37 percent of its car exports. The United States also receives about 43 percent of Japan’s outward direct investment, and also ensures Japan’s national defense, he said.“Japan can stomach this cost to retain access to the U.S. market,” he added.In a note to clients on Wednesday, analysts at Nomura said they were revising their forecasts, since recent tariffs had been more aggressive than expected. Mr. Trump’s tariffs on other countries seemed to be settling around 20 percent on average, rather than 10 percent, they said. And the 50 percent tariff the president has placed on foreign steel and intends to place on copper imports was also higher than expected.The analysts said they now expect the average effective U.S. tariff rate to settle around 19.5 percent, potentially pushing up inflation and weighing on economic growth.Many foreign governments have come to realize that tariffs will be permanently higher under Mr. Trump, and are just trying to push them as low as possible. It has also been important for other nations not just to have a lower rate overall, but to have a lower tariff than the countries they compete with for American consumers.For Japan, a 15 percent car tariff is a hefty burden compared with domestic automakers that do not pay tariffs. But it will give Japanese automakers an immediate advantage over car companies in other countries that pay a 25 percent rate.Patrick Anderson, the chief executive of Anderson Economic Group, an automotive consulting firm, said that the 15 percent tariff on Japanese cars would “put heavy pressure on Germany, Korea and the E.U.” The 25 percent tariff could add costs of $15,000 or more to a luxury car from those countries, he said.“That’s a punitive amount, and as a result imports of some of these vehicles have effectively halted,” he said.July 23, 2025, 12:35 p.m. ETSpeaker Mike Johnson defended the Republican leadership’s decision not to bring to a vote a resolution calling on the Trump administration to release the Epstein files, telling reporters that the Justice Department’s move to get grand jury testimony unsealed suggested it was already moving in the right direction.Johnson said he saw no point in “urging the administration to do something they’re already doing.” But several rank-and-file Republicans have said that the grand jury testimony was not sufficient and that they wanted to see the administration release a broader set of investigative materials and documents.July 23, 2025, 10:59 a.m. ETPresident Trump last week. His new executive order included the A.I. Action Plan, which contains policy guidelines to encourage the growth of the artificial intelligence industry in the United States.Credit...Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesThe Trump administration said on Wednesday that it planned to speed the development of artificial intelligence in the United States, opening the door for companies to develop the technology unfettered from oversight and safeguards, but added that the A.I. needed to be free of “ideological bias.”In a sweeping effort to put his stamp on the policies governing the fast-growing technology, President Trump’s A.I. Action Plan outlines measures to “remove red tape and onerous regulation,” as well as make it easier for companies to build infrastructure to power A.I.The plan also calls for the government to give federal contracts to companies that “ensure that their systems are objective.” It said a government agency should revise guidelines for A.I.’s development to remove mentions of diversity, equity and inclusion, climate change and misinformation.The report signals that the Trump administration has embraced A.I. and the tech industry’s arguments that it must be allowed to work with few guardrails for America to dominate a new era defined by the technology. It is a forceful repudiation of other governments, including the European Commission, that have approved regulations to govern the development of the technology.But it also points to how the administration wants to shape the way A.I. tools present information. Conservatives have accused some tech companies of developing A.I. models with a baked-in liberal bias. Most A.I. models are already trained on copious amounts of data from across the web, which informs their responses, making any shift in focus difficult.On Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Trump is scheduled to deliver his first major speech on A.I., a technology that experts have said could upend communications, geopolitics and the economy in the coming years. The president is also expected to sign executive orders related to the technology.“We believe we’re in an A.I race,” said David Sacks, the White House A.I. and crypto czar, on a call with reporters. “And we want the United States to win that race.”The changes outlined on Wednesday would benefit tech giants locked in a fierce contest to produce generative A.I. products and persuade consumers to weave the tools into their daily lives. Since OpenAI’s public release of ChatGPT in late 2022, tech companies have raced to produce their own versions of the technology, which can write humanlike texts and produce realistic images and videos.Google, Microsoft, Meta, OpenAI and others are jockeying for access to computing power, typically from huge data centers filled with computers that can stress local communities’ resources. And the companies are facing increased competition from rivals like the Chinese start-up DeepSeek, which sent shock waves around the world this year after it created a powerful A.I. model with far less money than many thought possible.The fight over resources in Silicon Valley has run alongside an equally charged debate in Washington over how to confront the societal transformations that A.I. could bring. Critics worry that if left unchecked, the technology could be a potent tool for scammers and extremists and lay waste to the economy as more jobs are automated. News outlets and artists have sued A.I. companies over claims that they illegally trained their technology using copyrighted works and articles.(The New York Times has sued OpenAI and its partner, Microsoft, claiming copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems. The companies have denied wrongdoing.)Mr. Trump previously warned of China’s potential to outpace American progress on the technology. He has said that the federal government must support A.I. companies with tax incentives, more foreign investment and less focus on safety regulations that could hamper progress.Former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. took one major action on artificial intelligence: a 2023 executive order that mandated safety and security standards for the development and use of A.I. across the federal government.But hours after his inauguration in January, Mr. Trump rolled back that order. Days later, he signed another executive order, “Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence,” which called for an acceleration of A.I. development by U.S. tech companies and for versions of the technology that operated without ideological bias.The order included a mandate for administration officials to come up with “an artificial intelligence action plan,” with policy guidelines to encourage the growth of the A.I. industry. The administration solicited comments from companies while it considered its plan.OpenAI called for the administration to expand its list of countries eligible to import A.I. technologies from the United States, a list that has been limited by controls designed to stop China from gaining access to American technology. OpenAI and Google called for greater support in building A.I. data centers through tax breaks and fewer barriers for foreign investment.OpenAI, Google and Meta also said they believed they had legal access to copyrighted works like books, films and art for training their A.I. Meta asked the White House to issue an executive order or other action to “clarify that the use of publicly available data to train models is unequivocally fair use.”The plan released on Wednesday did not include mentions of copyright law. But it did outline a wide range of policy shifts, divided into moves that the administration said would speed up the development of A.I., make it easier to build and power data centers and promote the interests of American companies abroad.The federal government should impose fewer environmental regulations on the construction of new data centers and support training programs for workers needed to staff the facilities, the plan said.The report called for the government to collect comments from companies and the public about regulations that “hinder A.I. innovation and adoption, and work with relevant federal agencies to take appropriate action.”It also threatened states with laws the administration deemed overly onerous could be at risk of losing out on federal funding related to A.I., and said the Federal Communications Commission should evaluate whether any state A.I. rules conflict with its authority over the nation’s networks.The power of the federal government should be used to ensure A.I. systems are built “with freedom of speech and expression in mind,” the plan said. That echoes longstanding conservative claims that products produced by tech companies, including online platforms like Facebook and YouTube, favor left-leaning perspectives.It also called on the Department of Commerce to revise a 2023 framework that offers guidance on how to reduce risks associated with the development of A.I., removing mentions of D.E.I., climate change and misinformation.The government should prioritize the export of American A.I. tools, the plan said, and called for federal agencies to help the industry sell packages of A.I. products abroad and work to counter China’s influence over the technology.Other initiatives include promoting the use of A.I. by federal agencies and the Department of Defense, studying the technology’s effects on the work force and promoting training for the general population.“As our global competitors race to exploit these technologies, it is a national security imperative for the United States to achieve and maintain unquestioned and unchallenged global technological dominance,” Mr. Trump said in the plan. “To secure our future, we must harness the full power of American innovation.”July 23, 2025, 10:38 a.m. ETBy pausing a push for new sanctions against Russia, the Senate has effectively frozen its effort to apply economic pressure on President Vladimir V. Putin. Credit...Nanna Heitmann for The New York TimesPresident Trump’s threat to penalize Russia if it fails to reach a cease-fire with Ukraine has halted a bipartisan push in the Senate to impose harsh new sanctions on countries that do business with Moscow, effectively freezing an effort by Congress to apply overwhelming pressure on President Vladimir V. Putin.The pause comes as Russia’s summer offensive against Ukraine is gaining ground and is the latest instance of the Republican-led Congress deferring to Mr. Trump even on matters on which lawmakers in both parties hold strong views.The legislation, cosponsored by Senators Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, and Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, has the backing of 83 other senators, reflecting a rare bit of consensus in a polarized Congress around targeting Moscow with exceedingly strong penalties. It would slap sanctions of a minimum of 500 percent on imports from Russia or from any country that buys Russian uranium or oil products.But after initially saying the bill could come to a vote this month, Republican leaders have stepped back to allow Mr. Trump to pursue unilateral action. Their retreat came after the president said this month that he would impose tariffs of 100 percent on Russia and its trading partners if Mr. Putin did not agree to a cease-fire in 50 days — a threat that some analysts and experts doubt Mr. Trump will act on.“The president, I think, has decided to move sort of unilaterally on that front,” Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the majority leader, said in an interview on Fox News, adding that Mr. Trump “understands what it’s going to take to get the Russians to the table.“We want to work with him and be partners on that,” Mr. Thune added. “And when he green-lights the legislation, we’ll move forward with it.”His comments underscored how even hawkish Republicans who are eager to ratchet up pressure on Mr. Putin are reluctant to assert Congress’s prerogative to impose sanctions.“The goal is to end the war honorably and quickly,” said Mr. Graham, who has been one of the most outspoken voices calling for tougher measures against Russia. He praised Mr. Trump’s timeline, which, if it holds, would lead to economic penalties on Moscow and countries that purchase Russian energy products starting the first week of September.“We’re on the clock now,” Mr. Graham added.His legislation would impose far more punishing penalties than the president has proposed. In particular, it would target countries like China and India, the largest purchasers of Russian oil, with what Mr. Graham and Mr. Blumenthal have spent months promoting as “bone crushing” sanctions.“The president adopted the concept we’ve been pushing,” Mr. Graham said, noting Mr. Trump’s major shift from his earlier, more conciliatory tone toward Mr. Putin.While Mr. Blumenthal spoke approvingly of Mr. Trump’s vow to target the Russian economy that fuels its wartime operations, he said the legislation would be a more potent tool for doing so.“This actually is good,” Mr. Blumental said of the president’s newfound willingness to penalize Moscow. “Our bill is better because it’s not just a hammer; it’s a sledgehammer, and it’s stronger and sends a message of unity. So that’s why we’re going to keep pushing.”But the president does not like the idea of signing a bill that would effectively require that he take action against Russia. Negotiations on the bill between senators and the White House had become snagged over how much authority the president would have over the sanctions.The bill includes standard language usually included in sanctions measures to allow the president to lift the penalties temporarily for national security reasons. But it would require him to impose them if he determined that Russia was refusing to negotiate a peace agreement with Ukraine, violating one, initiating another invasion of the country or overthrowing its government.White House officials indicated in the talks that Mr. Trump did not want to be forced to do so. Instead, his threat to impose tariffs unilaterally has, for now, cut Congress out of the equation, and delayed any action against Mr. Putin by at least 50 days.Some Republicans have quietly questioned the pause, given that the weeks leading up to Mr. Trump’s announcement included some of the deadliest Russian strikes on the Ukrainian capital in nearly a year. But most appear willing to cede ground to Mr. Trump and view his pivot on Russia as progress.“I’ve never been more pleased,” Mr. Graham said of the president’s announcement. “I am not going to fault President Trump for spending the time to try to get Putin to the table, to entice him to the table.”July 23, 2025, 9:56 a.m. ETMichael C. Bender and Alan BlinderMichael C. Bender and Alan Blinder have been covering the Trump administration’s attacks on Harvard and its efforts to upend higher education.Harvard has been given a one-week deadline by Secretary of State Marco Rubio to produce a lengthy list of university records related to the Exchange Visitor Program.Credit...Sophie Park for The New York TimesThe Trump administration has opened a new investigation into Harvard University’s compliance with a government-run visa program for international students and professors, targeting the elite college with another aggressive action even as the two sides negotiate a possible settlement to their acrimonious dispute.Secretary of State Marco Rubio notified Dr. Alan M. Garber, the president of Harvard, of the investigation in a letter on Wednesday, according to a copy of the correspondence reviewed by The New York Times.Mr. Rubio did not refer to any specific allegation of wrongdoing and instead said the inquiry, which Harvard criticized as retaliatory, was necessary “to assist the department in meeting its policy objectives.”The investigation targets the university’s participation in the Exchange Visitor Program, which is designed to promote cultural and educational programs with visas for a variety of applicants, including students and professors as well as researchers, interns and au pairs.Mr. Rubio’s letter gave Harvard a one-week deadline to produce a lengthy list of university records related to the student visa program. He said the department plans to interview university staff associated with the program and also may want to speak with visa holders.In a statement, Mr. Rubio said the investigation was aimed at verifying that the visa program does not “compromise the national security interests of the United States.”“The American people have the right to expect their universities to uphold national security, comply with the law and provide safe environments for all students,” Mr. Rubio said.In a statement on Wednesday, Harvard called the investigation “yet another retaliatory step taken by the administration in violation of Harvard’s First Amendment rights.”The university said it was “committed to continuing to comply” with federal regulations and that it would “protect its international community and support them as they apply for U.S. visas and travel to campus this fall.”Mr. Rubio sent his letter two days after some of the Trump administration’s tactics against Harvard received a skeptical reception from a federal judge in Boston. During a crucial hearing in one of the university’s lawsuits against the administration, Judge Allison D. Burroughs’s questions suggested she had serious doubts about the legality of the government’s effort to condition Harvard’s federal research funding on its acceptance of demands from Washington.She had already shown concerns about the administration's efforts to target Harvard’s enrollment of international students. In May, as the government and Harvard tussled over data requests, the Homeland Security Department said it would prohibit Harvard from participating in the Student and Exchange Visitor Program, which provides visas specifically for academic pursuits in the country. Judge Burroughs quickly blocked that effort, as she did a subsequent proclamation by President Trump that sought to keep Harvard from enrolling international students.But Judge Burroughs made clear that the government could still conduct some investigations of Harvard. In a ruling in June, she wrote the administration was allowed to review Harvard’s compliance with federal regulations connected to international student enrollment and send related “routine requests for information and documents.”The latest clash between the university and the government comes amid negotiations around a potential deal. Officials from both sides have exchanged multiple offers since last month, when the talks restarted after a long hiatus, over the government’s role in admissions, hiring and curriculum. The details of the negotiations remain unclear as talks continue.Since those talks resumed, though, the administration has accused Harvard of civil rights violations and opened a challenge to the university’s accreditation, which could someday jeopardize the ability of Harvard students to receive federal student aid. And U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement served subpoenas with sprawling demands that included payroll records, years of disciplinary files and any videos Harvard had of international students protesting on campus since 2020.Mr. Rubio has become increasingly involved in Mr. Trump’s pressure campaign on Harvard and with the administration’s campaign around higher education more broadly.Mr. Rubio has privately pressed for his counterparts at the Treasury Department to open an investigation into whether Harvard violated federal sanctions by collaborating on a health insurance conference in China that may have included officials blacklisted by the U.S. government.The State Department has started screening social media accounts of student visa applicants. Mr. Rubio has also stated that the State Department would target visas held by Chinese students, an initiative complicated by Mr. Trump’s announcement that Chinese students are welcome to study in America as part of his trade deal with Beijing.July 23, 2025, 9:53 a.m. ETTulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, has contended that the intelligence work in 2016 was not only flawed but also amounted to a conspiracy against President Trump.Credit...Eric Lee for The New York TimesTulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, released a document on Wednesday that she said undermined the conclusion of intelligence agencies during the Obama administration that Russia favored the election of Donald J. Trump in 2016.The document was a report that the House Intelligence Committee originally drafted in 2017, when Republicans led the panel. The report took issue with the conclusion reached in December 2016 that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had favored Mr. Trump.The new material provides some interesting insights into the development of the review of Russian activity by American spy agencies, and the debate over their assessment. But none of the new information changes the fundamental view that Russia meddled in the election and that Mr. Putin hoped to damage Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee.On Sunday, Ms. Gabbard promised to refer the details of her findings to the Justice Department. And on Wednesday, she said in a social media post that Mr. Trump had ordered the declassification of the report and that the information showed the “most egregious weaponization and politicization of intelligence in American history.”The Obama administration, Ms. Gabbard wrote, was “promoting the LIE that Vladimir Putin and the Russian government helped President Trump win the 2016 election.”Ms. Gabbard has won praise from Mr. Trump for her investigation into the intelligence findings and spoke at length about how the 2016 assessment was part of a witch hunt against him. The president has been under sharp criticism for his handling of documents related to the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, and his attacks on the Obama administration appear to be part of a distract-and-deflect strategy.Ms. Gabbard reiterated her assertion that the intelligence assessment was intended to undermine Mr. Trump’s presidency.“In doing so, they conspired to subvert the will of the American people,” she wrote, “working with their partners in the media to promote the lie, in order to undermine the legitimacy of President Trump, essentially enacting a years-long coup against him.”The report was released with relatively few redactions, prompting criticism from Democrats.“Given the rushed and unusual ‘declassification’ process the D.N.I. has implemented, I fear that the public release of this report could compromise sensitive sources and methods and endanger our national security,” said Representative Jim Himes of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, referring to the director of national intelligence.Officials familiar with the matter said that another, more heavily redacted version took care to hide more information about U.S. sources and had been considered for release. Ms. Gabbard said on social media that Mr. Trump had declassified the report.Kash Patel, now Mr. Trump’s F.B.I. director, was a key author of the report released on Wednesday, according to officials. Only Republicans on the committee participated in the drafting of the 2017 report and revisions in 2020.The House report found that most of the judgments made by the intelligence community in 2016 were sound. But it argued that the work was rushed, as a recent tradecraft analysis by the C.I.A. also found. The assessment that Mr. Putin had favored Mr. Trump did not follow the “professional criteria” of the other findings, the House report said.The findings were at odds with a bipartisan series of Senate reports from a committee that included Marco Rubio, then a Republican senator from Florida and now Mr. Trump’s secretary of state. The Senate Intelligence Committee affirmed the work of the C.I.A. and the other intelligence agencies on the 2016 assessment.The judgment about Mr. Putin’s preference, the House report said, was based on a single source who was biased against the Russian government. The raw intelligence was fragmentary and lacked context, the report added.The detailed discussion of the source has not been made public before, although the U.S. decision to extract and relocate him, first to Virginia, has become public. Russia officials made the source’s identity public and said he was an aide to a senior Russian official.The 2017 report portrays the information as incomplete and subject to interpretation, pointing to a single piece of intelligence from the man that said Mr. Putin had decided to leak emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee because Mrs. Clinton had better odds of the election and Mr. Trump, “whose victory Putin was counting, most likely would not be able to pull off a convincing victory.”But current and former American officials pushed back on the characterization of the source’s intelligence, saying he was well placed and had provided sound information to the United States on Mr. Putin’s intentions.While details about the debate over the source are new, the overall view of the House Intelligence Committee was well known, and members frequently took issue with the finding. But the full report with details of the C.I.A.’s work on the 2016 intelligence assessment has not been released.Attacking the conclusions of the 2016 assessment that Russia sought to denigrate Mrs. Clinton and help Mr. Trump has been a hobby horse of some of the president’s supporters. Republicans have long taken particular aim at the idea that the Kremlin favored Mr. Trump, arguing instead that Russia was simply trying to sow chaos or undermine democratic institutions.The attacks on the documents have intensified in recent weeks as first the C.I.A. and then Ms. Gabbard’s office have raised questions about the effort.Bipartisan Senate reviews have validated the C.I.A.’s work in 2016, and John H. Durham, a special prosecutor appointed by Attorney General William P. Barr during Mr. Trump’s first term, also failed to find any evidence undermining the intelligence agencies’ conclusions.While Mr. Trump’s Republican supporters criticized the assessment during his first term, the president focused much of his ire on Robert S. Mueller III, the former F.B.I. director appointed to investigate any ties between the Trump campaign and Russian officials.The newly released House document also takes a close look at the role that a dossier prepared by a former British intelligence officer, Christopher Steele, played in the 2016 assessment.Trump administration officials have maintained that the 2016 intelligence review was tainted by unverified information in the so-called Steele dossier. A classified annex to the report mentioned the dossier, but former officials said the C.I.A. did not take it seriously and did not allow it to influence their assessment.Few if any of the claims in Mr. Steele’s work about Mr. Trump have been verified in the ensuing years.In interviews this week, former officials insisted the Steele dossier did not influence the findings of the 2016 assessment. But the House report took issue with that, noting that in one of the bullet points in the original, classified version, the assessment referred readers to the annex discussing the dossier. The House report said the two-page annex summarizing the dossier “misrepresented the significance and credibility” of Mr. Steele’s work.The dossier “was written in an amateurish conspiracy and political propaganda tone that invited skepticism, if not ridicule, over its content,” the report continued.The House review also said one C.I.A. officer said he confronted John O. Brennan, the agency’s director at the time, with the flaws of the dossier. Mr. Brennan, according to the House report, acknowledged the flaws but added, “doesn’t it ring true.”Mr. Brennan, who emerged as one of the sharpest critics of Mr. Trump, has long denied that the dossier colored the assessment and said that he backed C.I.A. officers who wanted it kept out of the main body. He has said he placed the dossier in the annex at the insistence of the F.B.I.Former Obama administration officials acknowledged in hindsight that including the unverified dossier in the annex was a mistake, given the justifiable criticisms Republicans had of Mr. Steele’s assertions. But the officials said the F.B.I. felt it had no choice but to include it in the annex to avoid appearing as if they were hiding something from Mr. Trump.C.I.A. officials wanted to be sure the F.B.I. signed on to the overall assessments, and they felt that the bureau would do that only if the annex was included, former officials said.The existence of the dossier was initially exposed by CNN, and then Buzzfeed published its contents.Since Mr. Trump’s return to office, the C.I.A. and Ms. Gabbard have tried to sow doubts about the assessment. Ms. Gabbard has contended that the intelligence work in 2016 was not just flawed but also amounted to a conspiracy against Mr. Trump.On Friday, Ms. Gabbard issued a report that she said exposed a “treasonous conspiracy,” claiming senior Obama administration officials had pressured the intelligence committee to change its views on Russian meddling. The documents presented showed that the Obama administration was eager to quickly complete its work but not that the intelligence agencies were altering their conclusions.Mr. Trump has praised Ms. Gabbard, after criticizing her work just weeks earlier. Referring to Ms. Gabbard’s report, Mr. Trump said on Tuesday that while in office, President Barack Obama “was trying to lead a coup.”Ms. Gabbard has said she wants to end the weaponization of intelligence. She has condemned politicians for what she sees as the use of selective bits of intelligence against their opponents.While she has portrayed the release of the documents as a corrective to the errors and missteps of the Obama administration, former officials and even some allies of Ms. Gabbard have said her effort to throw a lifeline to Mr. Trump is an example of the very politicization she has vowed to stamp out.July 23, 2025, 8:35 a.m. ETTreasury Secretary Scott Bessent dismissed the possibility that the E.U. will retaliate against U.S. tariffs, saying on Bloomberg TV that such threats were a negotiating tactic and that trade talks are making “good progress.”President Trump has threatened to impose 30 percent tariffs on European goods. E.U. officials, concerned that a deal will not be reached before they take effect next month, have been advancing plans for matching tariffs on more than $100 billion in American products.July 22, 2025, 8:16 p.m. ETAna Swanson and River Akira DavisAna Swanson, who covers trade, reported from Washington. River Akira Davis, the Japan business correspondent, reported from Tokyo.Newly manufactured cars awaiting export at a port in Yokohama, south of Tokyo, in March.Credit...Issei Kato/ReutersPresident Trump said Tuesday that he had reached a “massive” trade deal with Japan, helping to allay fears of heightened trade tensions between the United States and one of its closest Asian allies.In a social media post Tuesday evening, the president wrote that Japan had agreed to open its country to imports of American cars, trucks, rice and other agricultural products, as well as invest $550 billion into the United States. He said that Japanese exports to the United States would be charged a tariff of 15 percent, lower than the 25 percent tariff he had threatened against the country’s products if Japan did not strike a deal.The deal will also lower the tariff the United States charges on Japanese auto exports, which are subject to a separate tariff schedule, to 15 percent, including a preexisting tariff of 2.5 percent. That will come as a relief to Japanese carmakers, which, like manufacturers in other countries, have faced an additional 25 percent tariff since April.Japan’s prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba, told reporters in Tokyo on Wednesday morning that he had received an initial report about the agreement from Ryosei Akazawa, Japan’s chief trade negotiator, who is in Washington. “I will receive a report on the details in the future and examine them carefully,” Mr. Ishiba said.In a social media post, Mr. Akazawa said: “Mission accomplished.”Details of what the two sides had agreed to were not immediately available, but an agreement with Japan would be the most significant of the preliminary trade agreements that the Trump administration has announced thus far.In a bid to rework America’s trading relationships, Mr. Trump has been threatening stiff tariffs against dozens of countries globally to try to encourage them to strike trade deals with the United States. The White House says that it has reached framework agreements with Britain, Vietnam, the Philippines and Indonesia, in addition to a trade truce that rolled back tariffs with China.These agreements appear to be rough outlines of deals, where some of the provisions still need to be negotiated. For Vietnam, it remains unclear whether the country’s leaders have actually agreed to the terms that Mr. Trump announced.Speaking in Washington on Tuesday night, the president said the United States and Japan had worked “long and hard” on the agreement and that it would be “a great deal for everybody.” He also said that administration officials would be meeting again on Wednesday with representatives from the European Union, as the bloc also tries to stave off steep tariffs that would begin Aug. 1.“I was sitting there, screaming back and forth with Japan, and somebody said, ‘Can you imagine Biden doing this?’” Mr. Trump told a crowd gathered at the White House. “I don’t think so. There would be no negotiation. We’d just be ripped off, like we have been.”Japan and the United States had struggled for months to reach a trade agreement. One reason for the slow progress was that Japan had been heading toward a national election, ahead of which voters indicated they did not want the country to make big concessions in pursuit of a trade deal. Those elections were held in Japan on Sunday.Mr. Ishiba, the Japanese prime minister, had used ongoing U.S.-Japan trade negotiations as justification for remaining in office after his party suffered major losses in parliamentary elections held last weekend. On Monday, Mr. Ishiba dispatched Mr. Akazawa to Washington for an eighth round of trade negotiations.Mr. Trump’s existing tariffs on foreign cars, Japan’s biggest export to the United States, had hung over the negotiations. Mr. Trump has often railed against Japanese auto exports, saying that the country ships many more cars to the United States than it buys. Japanese officials had been refusing to accept any deal that didn’t remove the already-in-place 25 percent tariffs on its cars.Automobiles and auto parts are by far Japan’s largest export to the United States. Since the auto tariffs went into effect in April, Japanese automakers including Toyota, Honda and Nissan have warned they are losing billions of dollars’ worth of profits. Japanese officials likened the auto tariffs to a “national crisis.”In trading in Asia on Wednesday, Japanese auto stocks surged after reports that car exports would be charged a lower tariff. Toyota shares climbed more than 14 percent in trading, while Nissan rose 8 percent and Honda gained 11 percent. Japan’s Nikkei 225 benchmark index rose 3.5 percent.Without a deal, Japan had been facing the prospect of a 25 percent tariff on its exports to the United States beginning Aug. 1, which Mr. Trump communicated in a letter to the country earlier this month.“This is a very exciting time for the United States of America, and especially for the fact that we will continue to always have a great relationship with the Country of Japan,” Mr. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.Japan was one of the United States’ largest sources of imports in 2024, trailing only Mexico, Canada, China and Germany. It’s also a major export market for the United States. The United States ran a $63 billion trade deficit with Japan last year, which Mr. Trump has viewed as a sign of economic weakness.Mr. Trump negotiated a limited trade deal with Japan in his first term, in which Japan agreed to reduce Japanese barriers to American beef, pork, wheat, cheese and other products, while the United States cut tariffs on Japanese turbines, machine tools, bicycles, flowers and other goods. The two countries also reached an agreement on digital trade, in which they agreed to allow for the free flow of data, among other provisions.Tony Romm contributed reporting from Washington.