The Senate parliamentarian has ruled against a controversial provision in the Senate Republicans’ megabill that would have made it significantly more difficult for courts to enforce contempt findings against the Trump administration.

The parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, ruled that limiting courts’ ability to hold Trump officials in contempt violated the Senate’s rules governing what can be passed with a simple-majority vote on the budget reconciliation fast track.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) hailed the parliamentarian’s decision as a major victory.

“Senate Republicans tried to write Donald Trump’s contempt for the courts into law — gutting judicial enforcement, defying the Constitution and bulldozing the very rule of law that forms our democracy,” Schumer said in a statement responding to the development.

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Senior White House adviser Kari Lake issued mass layoff notices Friday to 639 employees of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, the federal outlet which owns the Voice of America and through which Congress directs money for other government-funded international networks, such as Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia.

The vast majority of the job cuts, intended to be a permanent reduction in the size of the workforce, affects Voice of America, the government-owned international network that has beamed news reports to countries under autocratic regimes since World War II.

In a press release, Lake called her action "part of a long-overdue effort to dismantle a bloated, unaccountable bureaucracy." She said 85% of jobs, or 1,400 positions, had been eliminated in total, in keeping with an executive order in mid-March from President Trump.

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A federal judge on Friday blocked the Trump administration’s efforts to keep Harvard University from hosting international students.

An order from U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs preserves the ability of Harvard to host foreign students while the case is decided. It marks another victory for the Ivy League school as it challenges multiple government sanctions amid a battle with the White House.

Harvard sued the Department of Homeland Security in May after the agency withdrew the school’s certification to host foreign students and issue paperwork for their visas. The action would have forced Harvard’s roughly 7,000 foreign students to transfer or risk being in the U.S. illegally. New foreign students would have been barred from coming to Harvard.

The university called it illegal retaliation for rejecting the White House’s demands to overhaul Harvard policies around campus protests, admissions, hiring and other issues. Burroughs temporarily halted the action hours after Harvard sued.

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