The Trump administration is launching a new private health tracking system that asks Americans to share their personal health data and medical records with private tech companies.
Officials say the system will broaden access to health records, provide digital tools to help manage diabetes and other conditions, and make monitoring wellness easier. Experts caution that there are a number of ethical and legal concerns.
The initiative, spearheaded by an administration that has already freely shared highly personal data about Americans in ways that have tested legal bounds, has been met with concern from digital privacy activists.
Also Wednesday, President Donald Trump said he will impose a 25% tariff on goods from India, plus an additional trade tax beginning Friday, because of India’s purchasing of Russian oil. And the president said Friday's launch of revised tariffs on the goods from multiple countries is firm.
Here's the latest:
US to share biometric data with Chile ‘to track criminals,’ Homeland Security’s Noem says
Secretary Kristi Noem said Wednesday during a visit to the South American nation that the United States will deploy the biometric technologies in partnership with Santiago to control migration and disrupt criminal networks,
“This arrangement is going to serve as a bridge to help Chile and the United States work towards bringing criminals to justice and knowing who is in our countries perpetuating crimes,” Noem said while signing the preliminary agreement with Chile’s security and justice ministers.
The Trump administration is seeking to bolster regional cooperation in its clampdown against transnational criminal groups.
The agreement allows Chilean officials to identify potentially dangerous people entering or exiting the country and share their biometric data, such as fingerprints and iris scans, with the Department of Homeland Security to prevent their travel to the U.S.
Judge orders Trump administration to explain why order to restore Voice of America wasn’t followed
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth essentially accused the administration of ignoring his orders to restore Voice of America’s operations and explain clearly what it is doing with the government-run outlet.
Lamberth gave the administration until Aug. 13 to explain how it will get VOA working again. VOA, which provides news to other countries and dates back to World War, II has been largely dark since March.
The judge said the administration needs to show what it is doing with the $260 million Congress appropriated for VOA’s operations this year.
Kari Lake, the adviser appointed by Trump to run government news agencies, said in June that 85% of employees at VOA and its overseers at the U.S. Agency for Global Media had lost their jobs. She called it a “long overdue effort to dismantle a bloated, unaccountable bureaucracy.”
Lamberth said there is a process for eliminating funding that was previously appropriated: Congress must vote on it, as it recently did for NPR and PBS funding. But that did not happen with VOA, he said.
There was no immediate comment from the White House.
Trump announces trade agreement with South Korea
The president said the agreement reached Wednesday would impose a 15% tariff on goods from the Asian nation.
The countries have also agreed for South Korea to buy $100 billion in energy resources from the U.S. and give the U.S. $350 billion for “investments owned and controlled by the United States, and selected by myself, as president,” Trump said.
He also said in a social media post that new South Korean President Lee Jae-myung will visit the White House sometime in August.
Senate confirms Trump’s pick for National Counterterrorism Center, an ex-Green Beret with extremist ties
Joe Kent was confirmed on a 52-44 party-line vote as Republicans looked past his connections to right-wing extremists and support for conspiracy theories about the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. Democrats strongly opposed his confirmation.
Kent will oversee an agency tasked with analyzing and detecting terrorist threats. He plans to target Latin American gangs and other criminal groups tied to migration.
Kent enters the role after two unsuccessful campaigns for Congress in Washington state, a military career that saw him deployed 11 times as a Green Beret and work at the CIA.
During his 2022 congressional campaign, Kent paid Graham Jorgensen, a member of the far-right military group the Proud Boys, for consulting. He also worked closely with Joey Gibson, founder of the Christian nationalist group Patriot Prayer, and attracted support from a variety of far-right figures.
During his confirmation hearing, Kent refused to distance himself from a conspiracy theory that federal agents somehow instigated the Capitol riot and false claims that Trump won the 2020 election.
Top Obama official says the US is in a constitutional crisis
Eric Holder, the former attorney general during the administration of President Barack Obama, made the remark Wednesday and said voter turnout will be key.
“We still have power. If people participate in elections, if people are engaged in civic activities, I think we can push back against this power grab,” Holder said at a Democratic forum convened by Senators Alex Padilla of California and Dick Durbin of Illinois to discuss voter suppression.
“Even in the face of a gerrymander that they’re proposing, election turnout will ultimately matter,” Holder added.
Padilla lamented the maps released by the Texas legislature Wednesday, saying “I wish this conversation wasn’t as timely as it is.”
Democratic lawmakers sue Trump administration to ensure access to ICE detention centers
A dozen members of Congress who have been blocked from making oversight visits at immigration detention centers filed the federal lawsuit Wednesday seeking to ensure they are granted entry into the facilities even without prior notice.
The complaint says the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement are obstructing Congressional oversight of the centers at a time when there has been an increase in ICE arrests, with reports of raids across the country and people taken into custody at immigration courts.
By law members of Congress are allowed to visit ICE facilities and do not have to give any notice. But increasingly members have been stopped at the door. ICE officials have said a new rule requires a seven-day waiting period and they prohibit entry to field offices.
The lawsuit asks the court for full and immediate access to all ICE facilities.
▶ Read more about the lawsuit
Trump calls GOP’s Josh Hawley a ‘second-tier Senator’
The remark came in a social media post following a committee action on Hawley’s legislation that would ban members of Congress from trading stocks.
Trump complained that Hawley blocked another proposal from Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., that would have forced a review of stock trades by Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker emerita.
“Why would one ‘Republican,’ Senator Josh Hawley from the Great State of Missouri, join with all of the Democrats, to block a Review,” Trump said.
Hawley did not immediately respond to Trump’s post.
“We have an opportunity here today to do something that the public has wanted to do for decades,” Hawley told the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. “And that is to ban members of congress from profiting on information that frankly only members of congress have on the buying and selling of stock.”
Trump talks up new medical records push at White House event
“For decades, America’s health care networks have been overdue for a high tech upgrade,” the president said in at the White House, where he hosted the event to talk about the administration’s effort to streamline medical records.
“The existing systems are often slow, costly and incompatible with one another, but with today’s announcement, we take a major step to bring health care into the digital age.”
The effort would allow major health care and tech companies to agree on standards for electronic medical records in hopes they will seamlessly transfer between doctors. Trump said the guidelines will also make it simple for patients to access their records.
Trump boasted that health care providers will “finally be able to kill the clipboard,” referring to the physical pieces of paper on clipboards that patients fill out at doctors’ offices.
Companies represented in the crowd of about 200 people included Apple, Google, OpenAI, Anthropic and Amazon.
Brown University strikes agreement to resolve discrimination complaints and restore federal funding
The Ivy League school agreed to pay $50 million to workforce development organizations in Rhode Island over 10 years as part of the agreement, along with other concessions in line with the president’s political agenda. Brown will adopt the government’s definition of “male” and “female,” for example, and must remove any consideration of race from the admissions process.
University President Christina H. Paxson said the deal preserves its academic independence. The terms include a clause saying the government cannot dictate curriculum or the content of academic speech at Brown.
The deal has numerous similarities with one signed last week by Columbia that the government called a roadmap for other universities. Unlike that agreement, however, Brown’s does not include an outside monitor.
The agreement includes a pledge from Brown not to “maintain programs that promote unlawful efforts to achieve race-based outcomes, quotas, diversity targets, or similar efforts.”
Education Secretary Linda McMahon said the deal ensures students will be judged “solely on their merits, not their race or sex.”
Ousted vaccine panel members say rigorous science is being abandoned
The 17 experts who were fired by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from a government vaccine committee last month say they have little faith in what the panel has become.
Kennedy accused the entire Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices of being too closely aligned with manufacturers. He handpicked replacements including several vaccine skeptics.
In a commentary published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, the former panel members wrote that Kennedy — a leading voice in the anti-vaccine movement before becoming the government’s top health official — and his new panel are abandoning rigorous scientific review and open deliberation. That was clear, they said, during the new panel’s first meeting.
“That meeting was a travesty, honestly,” said former ACIP member Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, a pediatric infectious diseases expert at Stanford University.
What we know about a new health data tracking system being announced by White House
The president’s planned announcement of a new private health tracking system that would make it easier for patients to access their health records and monitor their wellness is raising a host of privacy concerns.
The collaboration between the federal government and Big Tech would allow patients to more seamlessly track and share their medical records or data among doctors, hospital systems and health apps, the administration and participating companies say.
More details of the system are expected to be announced during a White House event dubbed “Making Health Technology Great Again” later Wednesday.
▶ Read more on what we know about the system
Trump signs order to close tariff loophole on imports under $800
The president said the government now has systems in place to enforce his February order closing the “de minimis” loophole, in which goods worth less $800 could enter America duty-free.
Trump signed an order for all goods coming into the U.S. to be inspected and taxed, essentially ending a vehicle that enabled merchants such as Temu and Shein to send cheap products into the country.
$50,000 hiring bonuses as ICE seeks to staff up
While other federal government agencies are firing employees, one agency is gearing up for a big hiring spree.
The Department of Homeland Security is launching a new campaign to find recruits as it seeks to add 10,000 more staff. Prospective employees looking to assist in Trump’s mass deportation agenda could get hiring bonuses of as much as $50,000. DHS is offering other benefits, too, like overtime and student loan forgiveness.
ICE is getting a huge influx of funding after Congress passed Trump’s massive spending bill earlier this July.
Federal Reserve leaves interest rates unchanged even as Trump demands cuts
The Federal Reserve left its key short-term interest rate unchanged for the fifth time this year, brushing off repeated calls from Trump for a cut.
The Fed’s decision Wednesday leaves its key short-term rate at about 4.3%, where it has stood after the central bank made three cuts last year. Chair Jerome Powell has said the Fed would likely have cut rates already if not for Trump’s sweeping tariffs. Powell and other Fed officials say they want to see how Trump’s duties on imports will impact inflation and the broader economy. So far the duties have lifted costs of some goods, such as appliances, furniture, and toys, and overall inflation has risen a bit, though less than many economists had expected.
There were some signs of splits in the Fed’s ranks: Governors Christopher Waller and Michelle Bowman voted to reduce borrowing costs, while 9 officials, including Powell, favored standing pat. It is the first time in more than three decades that two of the seven Washington-based governors have dissented. One official, Governor Adriana Kugler, was absent and didn’t vote.
Trump administration pushes for more crypto-friendly regulations and laws
A group tasked by Trump with recommending ways the U.S. could be friendlier to the crypto industry says regulators like the Securities and Exchange Commission should move quickly to provide clearer rules governing trading of digital assets.
The White House released a lengthy report Wednesday from a crypto working group. The report makes dozens of recommendations designed to make the U.S. a world leader in cryptocurrencies, Trump administration officials said. They include calling for regulators to make it easier for crypto companies to work with traditional banks and for Congress to pass crypto-friendly tax legislation.
SEC Chair Paul Atkins said his agency will use its existing authority to establish new rules and regulations in line with Trump’s vision. Once a skeptic, Trump has recast himself as a crypto enthusiast eager to please an industry that spent heavily to help him win last year’s election. Congress is also pushing pro-crypto policies.
Wednesday’s report comes less than two weeks after Trump signed into law new regulations for stablecoins, a rapidly growing form of cryptocurrency.
Fed chair says tariffs are impacting prices but not ‘overall’ inflation
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said that the higher tariffs imposed by Trump are showing inflation in the “prices of some goods, but their overall effects on economic activity and inflation remain to be seen.”
The Fed chair said the tariffs’ impact could be a “one-time shift” in prices, but it’s also possible that the inflationary impact could be “more persistent.”
Bessent says child savings accounts in Trump bill could lead to privatizing Social Security
The children’s savings program included in Trump’s sweeping tax breaks and spending cuts law “in a way, it is a backdoor for privatizing Social Security,” Bessent said while speaking at a forum hosted by the conservative media group Breitbart on Wednesday.
The law created a new children’s savings program, called Trump Accounts, allowing accounts to be created for babies born in the U.S. that come with a potential $1,000 deposit from the Treasury.
Democrats, who have warned for years that Republicans want to privatize Social Security, quickly seized on Bessent’s comments as “saying the quiet part out loud.”
“Trump is now coming after American seniors with a ‘backdoor’ scam to take away the benefits they earned,” DNC spokesman Tim Hogan said.
The Associated Press
