Trump’s gutting of USAid to face further court challenges – US politics live

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US defense secretary Pete Hegseth arrived for his first meetings at Nato headquarters on Wednesday looking to push European nations over support for Ukraine and ramping up military spending.

Washington’s allies are waiting nervously for clarity from President Donald Trump’s administration after he demanded Nato more than double its spending target and vowed to end the war in Ukraine.

Hegseth’s two days of talks in Brussels with his counterparts from Nato and Ukraine are part of a series of visits to Europe this week by top US officials, AFP reports. They will culminate with vice-president JD Vance meeting Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy at a security conference in Munich on Friday.

Hegseth wrote on X:

Arrived at NATO HQ. Our commitment is clear: NATO must be a stronger, more lethal force - not a diplomatic club. Time for allies to meet the moment.

On Wednesday the Pentagon chief will sit down with an international coalition of Ukraine’s backers before huddling with the 31 other defence ministers from Nato on Thursday.

US defence secretary Pete Hegseth (left) meets with the UK’s defence secretary John Healey on the eve of a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) defence ministers’ meeting in Brussels. Photograph: Johanna Geron/EPA

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor advocates for courts to proceed 'cautiously'

US supreme court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, without directly mentioning the new administration, advocated on Tuesday evening for US courts to move cautiously to maintain a system of checks and balances with the executive.

“By and large, we have been a country who has understood that the rule of law has helped us maintain our democracy,” she said on Tuesday. “But it’s also because the court has proceeded cautiously, and has proceeded understanding that it has to proceed slowly.”

Speaking at an event hosted by the Knight Foundation, she said:

Court decisions stand, whether one particular person chooses to abide by them or not. It doesn’t change the foundation that it’s still a court order that someone will respect at some point.

She said that it was especially a responsibility of the supreme court to “make it clear to the society, to presidents, to Congress, to the people, that we are doing things based on law, and the constitution, as we are interpreting it fairly.”

“We must be cognizant that every time we upset precedent, we upset people’s expectations and the stability of law. It rocks the boat in a way that makes people uneasy about whether they’re protected or not protected by the law,” she said, adding “And if you’re going to undo precedent, do it in small measures. Let the society absorb the steps.”

Last year, in a stark dissent from the conservative-majority opinion granting Donald Trump some immunity from criminal prosecution, Sotomayor said the decision was a “mockery” that makes a president a “king above the law”.

Trump lost in federal court again on Tuesday when the first circuit court of appeals declined his administration’s request to lift a temporary restraining order issued by a federal judge that bars Trump from freezing spending at federal agencies.

Earlier this week vice-president JD Vance hit out at the legal challenges against Trump’s executive orders, saying on social media “Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.”

Jon Henley is the Guardian’s Europe correspondent, based in Paris

Donald Trump’s return to the White House has sparked a “remarkable shift” in Europeans’ view of the US, according to a survey, with even the most America-friendly no longer seeing Washington primarily as an ally.

The polling, of 11 EU member states plus Ukraine, Switzerland and the UK, found most people now regard the US as merely a “necessary partner”. An average of 50% of Europeans across the member states surveyed view the US this way, the study revealed, with an average of only 21% seeing it as an ally, leading the report’s authors to urge a more “realistic, transactional” EU approach.

The figures “speak to a collapse of trust in Washington’s foreign policy agenda” and heralded “the potential death knell of the transatlantic alliance” said Arturo Varvelli, co-author of the report, by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).

You can read Jon Henley’s report in full here: Most Europeans see Trump’s US as more a necessary partner than ally, poll finds

Court action over Trump's gutting of USAid agency to continue on Wednesday

US district judge Carl Nichols will hear arguments on Wednesday after a request from USAid employee groups to keep blocking the Trump administration’s move to put thousands of staffers on leave, Associated Press reports.

Nichols, an appointee of president Donald Trump, dealt the administration a setback Friday in its dismantling of the agency, temporarily halting plans to pull all but a fraction of USAid staffers off the job worldwide.

Trump and Elon Musk’s cost-cutting “department” have hit USAid particularly hard as they look to shrink the size of the federal government, accusing its work of being wasteful and out of line with Trump’s agenda. “The President’s powers in the realm of foreign affairs are generally vast and unreviewable,” government lawyers argued.

USAid staffers and supporters have called the aid agency’s humanitarian and development work abroad essential to national security. The administration has claimed USAid is rife with “insubordination” and must be shut down in order to decide what pieces could be salvaged.

A judge has ordered Louisiana State University to fully reinstate a professor who was removed from his teaching duties last month after he used vulgar language to criticise Gov Jeff Landry and President Donald Trump during a lecture, Associated Press reports.

Tenured law professor Ken Levy was recorded by students saying about November’s election “I can’t believe that fucker won”. An anonymous student complaint led to him being relieved from his teaching responsibilities. During two days of testimony, law students and another professor spoke about the “chilling effect” Levy’s removal had on them, and that it exacerbated fears over speaking freely in the classroom.

“Everyone was vulnerable if I lost this,” Levy said outside of the Baton Rouge courthouse Tuesday night, specifically speaking about other university faculty members and students. “So my win is their win.”

Welcome and opening summary …

Welcome to the Guardian’s rolling coverage of US politics and the second Donald Trump administration. Here are the headlines …

• The White House fired Paul Martin, the independent inspector general for the US Agency for International Development (USAid) on Tuesday, one day after he issued a damning report detailing the impact of the sudden dismantling of the agency.

• Elon Musk claimed in the Oval Office on Tuesday that his so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) was providing maximum transparency, contradicted by the reality of how he has operated in deep secrecy.

• Trump’s trade adviser Peter Navarro has claimed Australia is “crushing” and “killing” America’s manufacturing sector with its imports of aluminium

• The Associated Press said it was barred from sending a reporter to Tuesday’s Oval Office executive order signing in an effort to “punish” the agency for its style guidance on upholding the use of the name of the Gulf of Mexico.

• India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, is heading to Washington for high-stakes talks in an attempt to avoid a trade war. India is considering tariff cuts in at least a dozen sectors in the hope of dodging US tariffs.