The Latest: Chief Justice Roberts allows Trump’s foreign aid freeze that threatens nearly $5 billion

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Chief Justice John Roberts on Tuesday temporarily kept in place the Trump administration’s decision to freeze nearly $5 billion in foreign aid. The high court order is temporary, though it suggests that the justices will reverse a lower court's ruling that withholding the funding was likely illegal.

Roberts acted on the administration’s emergency appeal to the Supreme Court in the case involving billions of dollars in congressionally approved aid. President Donald Trump said last month that he would not spend the money, invoking disputed authority that was last used by a president roughly 50 years ago.

It comes as the Supreme Court has recently handed Trump wins on immigration and oversight of the Federal Trade Commission. The high court on Monday cleared the way for federal agents to conduct sweeping immigration operations in Los Angeles, and Chief Justice Roberts OK’d the firing of FTC commissioner Rebecca Slaughter.

The Latest:

The president is having dinner Tuesday night at a seafood restaurant around the corner from the White House.

He doesn’t usually dine away from the White House when he’s in Washington, but Trump is promoting his deployment of the National Guard and federalization of the police force to crack down on crime in the capital.

His motorcade sped the short distance to Joe’s Seafood, Prime Steak & Stone Crab on 15th Street.

It follows weeks of Trump boasting about mobilizing federal authorities and the military, which he says has made Washington “a safe zone.”

The State Department has announced that Secretary Marco Rubio will meet with South Korea’s foreign minister at the White House on Wednesday morning.

Foreign Minister Cho Hyun traveled to Washington in hopes of bringing home more than 300 South Korean workers who were taken into custody during a raid on an electric battery plant in Georgia.

Korean Air has said a Boeing 747-8i will fly to Atlanta as early as Wednesday to bring them home.

The raid stunned many in South Korea because the country is a key U.S. ally.

Elizabeth Tsurkov was freed following more than 900 days in custody after disappearing in Baghdad while pursuing a doctorate focused on sectarianism in the region.

Tsurkov’s sister, Emma, a U.S. citizen who campaigned for her release, said she was in Washington for meetings this week when she heard the news from Adam Boehler, the U.S. special presidential envoy for hostage affairs.

The sisters were able to connect by phone and expect to be reunited in the next 24 hours, though details are still being worked out, Emma Tsurkov said.

“I heard her voice for the first time in 2 1/2 years and still couldn’t believe it, and I just melted on the floor,” she said in an interview with The Associated Press. “I heard her voice and she heard mine, and it was the most joyous experience of my life, and we both started sobbing and screaming.”

Some of Chicago’s liveliest neighborhoods are quiet these days. Schoolteachers want online learning for children whose families are afraid to venture out. And houses of worship are urging people to carry identification everywhere.

As the nation’s third-largest city awaits a federal intervention threatened by Trump, who vows the city will see a surge in deportations and National Guard troops, residents are making changes in their daily routines.

While the feeling of being vulnerable isn’t new, especially among immigrants, many say this time the fear is deeper and the preparations more drastic.

Even Sam Sanchez, a restaurant owner who voted for Trump, criticized the president’s plan. And as a naturalized U.S. citizen from Mexico, he is taking precautions.

“They’re profiling,” Sanchez said of federal agents. “My wife and I went to a wedding, and I told my wife, ‘Bring your citizenship papers.’”

▶ Read more about Chicagoans and the impending federal intervention

The federal judge’s restriction will be in place while a motion to permanently stop the agencies from doing so is considered by the courts.

In orders issued Tuesday and Friday, a federal court found that the IRS may not share confidential taxpayer data with Immigration and Customs Enforcement without giving the court 24 hours notice.

A group of small businesses, a low-income tax clinic and two unions represented by Democracy Forward brought a lawsuit seeking to prevent the sharing.

The IRS and ICE struck a deal this year to share immigrants’ tax data for the purpose of identifying and deporting people in the U.S. illegally.

The small businesses and states challenging the president’s sweeping tariffs also agreed to an accelerated timetable for review by the high court.

They say the import duties on goods from almost every country in the world have nearly driven their businesses to bankruptcy.

“Congress, not the President alone, has the power to impose tariffs,” Liberty Justice Center attorney Jeffrey Schwab said.

The Supreme Court granted the unusually quick hearing Tuesday.

The president has placed a combined 50% tax on goods from India, but he signaled on his social media site that he’ll soon speak to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi about trade.

The tariffs include a 25% tax due to India’s use of Russian oil, which Trump says has helped fund and prolong the war in Ukraine. Yet Trump has avoided similarly harsh import taxes on China for its reliance on Russian oil.

The aggressive import taxes on India have raised questions about the goals of U.S. policy, as that country was seen as a way of countering China’s industrial dominance.

Trump said he looks “forward to speaking with my very good friend, Prime Minister Modi, in the upcoming weeks.”

“I feel certain that there will be no difficulty in coming to a successful conclusion for both of our Great Countries!” he added.

Donald Trump isn’t the only U.S. president to appear in a collection of birthday messages that were sent to Jeffrey Epstein.

An entry attributed to former President Bill Clinton is among some 50 greetings that appear in the 50th birthday book compiled for Epstein in 2003, years before the disgraced New York financier faced charges related to sexual exploitation of underage girls. Other notes appear to come from relatives, including Epstein’s father, and from business executives and scientists.

Some of the entries in the collection, which was released by a House committee Monday, are strictly well wishes, congratulations and benign birthday messages. Others are crude or sexually explicit, reminiscing about supposed past exploits or referencing Epstein’s focus on meeting women. It includes photos of Epstein, sometimes wearing little or nothing, as well as friends and associates.

▶ Read more about the business leaders and public figures associated with the birthday book

With a partial shutdown looming at the end of the month, the White House has proposed that Congress pass a short-term measure to keep the government funded through Jan. 31.

The continuing resolution would fund agencies at current levels. The White House submitted a list of proposed adjustments to those levels as part of its request.

House Appropriations Committee members from both parties said they would like a shorter extension. And Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., said he’d prefer a date that Democrats support.

“We’re not trying to jam them. We’re trying to work together with them,” Cole said.

Still, Democrats seethed at the request. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the committee’s top Democrat, said the White House is trying to “back Congress into a corner” and delaying work on next year’s spending bills is part of a plan to “never fund it at all.”

Congress has yet to approve any spending bills for the 2026 budget year, which begins Oct. 1.

“This was a decision made by Prime Minister Netanyahu, it was not a decision made by me,” Trump said of the Monday strike by Israeli forces that has been widely condemned.

The president reiterated comments made earlier on Monday by White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt that he directed his envoy Steve Witkoff to inform the Qataris of the impending Israel strikes after U.S. officials learned about the Israeli plan.

He added that the U.S. warning to Qatar was “unfortunately, too late to stop the attack.”

A Princeton University doctoral student who was kidnapped in Iraq in 2023 while doing research there has been freed and turned over to U.S. authorities, her family and President Trump said.

Elizabeth Tsurkov, who holds Israeli and Russian citizenship, spent more than 900 days in custody after being kidnapped in March 2003 in Baghdad, the Iraqi capital.

In the past few months, officials from several countries, including the Iraqi foreign minister and deputy prime minister, have confirmed she was alive and being held in Iraq by a Shiite Muslim militant group called Kataeb Hezbollah, according to her sister. The group has not claimed the kidnapping nor have Iraqi officials publicly said which group is responsible.

“My entire family is incredibly happy. We cannot wait to see Elizabeth and give her all the love we have been waiting to share for 903 days,” said a statement from her sister Emma in which she thanked, among others, Adam Boehler, the U.S. special presidential envoy for hostage affairs.

The only direct proof of life of Elizabeth Tsurkov during her captivity was a video broadcast in November 2023 on an Iraqi television station and circulated on pro-Iranian social media purporting to show her.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday granted an unusually quick hearing on whether Trump has the power to impose sweeping tariffs under federal law.

The justices will hear arguments in November, lightning fast by the typical standards of the nation’s highest court.

The small businesses and states that challenged the tariffs in court also agreed to the accelerated timetable. They say Trump illegally used emergency powers to set import taxes on goods from nearly every country in the world, nearly driving their businesses to bankruptcy.

Two lower courts have found most of the tariffs were illegally imposed, though a 7-4 appeals court has left them in place for now.

The Trump administration asked the justices to intervene quickly, arguing the law gives him the power to regulate imports and the country would be on “the brink of economic catastrophe” if the president is barred from exercising unilateral tariff authority.

The case will come before a court that has been reluctant to check Trump’s extraordinary flex of executive power.

▶ Read more about the case here

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said Tuesday that he has met with Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for New York City mayor.

The New York senator has declined to endorse in the race and had not met with Mamdani since he won the Democratic primary in early July.

Schumer told reporters in the Capitol that he met with Mamdani on Monday. “We had a good meeting, we know each other well, we’re going to keep talking,” he said.

Hunger Free America has voluntarily dismissed its lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture after the federal agency renewed the organization’s contract to run a food assistance clearinghouse.

The nonprofit organization filed the lawsuit in June, roughly one month after the USDA abruptly canceled its contract. Hunger Free America said the cancellation violated the Administrative Procedure Act, and noted that the clearinghouse was required under the Healthy Foods for Healthy Americans Act passed by Congress in 1994.

In response, the USDA told the court that it began seeking new contractors in late June, and hoped to select the new contractor by September. Hunger Free America learned it won the contract on Sept. 5, according to court documents.

Hunger Free America has helped more than 220,000 callers locate local food pantries, food banks and soup kitchens since it first began operating the clearinghouse in 2014.

According to USDA research, there were one million more food insecure households in 2023 compared to 2022. President Donald Trump’s administration significantly slashed funding to some hunger-related programs earlier this year, including halting $500 million of expected food deliveries by the USDA, and cutting $1 billion for hunger relief programs supporting local producers.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., won’t commit to a Senate vote on legislation that would require the Justice Department to release files on the sex trafficking investigations into Jeffrey Epstein. But he said that he believes “transparency is always best.”

Asked on Tuesday if the Senate would vote on the bill if it is passed by the House, Thune said “I can’t comment on that at this point.”

Thune said the Justice Department “has already released tons of files related to this matter.”

“I trust them in terms of having the confidence that they’ll get as much information out there as possible in a way that protects the rights of the victims,” Thune said.

The federal budget deficit totaled $2 trillion for the first 11 months of fiscal year 2025, which is $92 billion more than the deficit recorded during the same period last fiscal year, according to a new Congressional Budget Office report released Tuesday.

Income increased by $299 billion, or 7% over the same period last fiscal year, and spending rose by $391 billion, or 6%.

The CBO says a large part of the change in the deficit was influenced by the timing of payments from 2024 to 2025.

If not for those shifts, the deficit so far this fiscal year would have been $11 billion (or 1%) more than the shortfall at this point last year, the CBO says.

The CBO currently projects that the deficit for fiscal year 2025 will be $1.8 trillion.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt says Democrats raising questions about Trump’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein are “pretending to care about victims of crime when they do not care about victims of crime, when they have done nothing to solve crimes, when they have done nothing to lock up child pedophiles and child rapist across the country.”

Leavitt did not say when asked if Trump would meet with the survivors of sex trafficking by Epstein. After Congress released files showing a birthday greeting from Trump to Epstein and a picture of Epstein holding up a novelty check bearing Trump’s name, Leavitt said the signatures were fake.

“The Democrats view this story as nothing more than an attempt to distract from the accomplishments and the achievements of this administration, and that is what we mean when we call it a hoax,” Leavitt said.

The president will mark the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks by visiting the Pentagon and heading to the Bronx as the New York Yankees host the Detroit Tigers on Thursday.

Leavitt said Trump “looks very much forward” to both, including heading to the Bronx.

“The president is a New Yorker at heart,” Levitt said. “He loves the city.”