Evelyn Reynolds

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    Clean energy spending boosts GOP districts. But lawmakers are keeping quiet as Trump targets incentives

    Billions of dollars in clean energy spending and jobs have overwhelmingly flowed to parts of the US represented by Republican lawmakers. But these members of Congress are still largely reticent to break with Donald Trump’s demands to kill off key incentives for renewables, even as their districts bask in the rewards.The president has called for the dismantling of the Inflation Reduction Act – a sweeping bill passed by Democrats that has helped turbocharge investments in wind, solar, nuclear, batteries and electric vehicle manufacturing in the US – calling it a “giant scam”. Trump froze funding allocated under the act and has vowed to claw back grants aimed at reducing planet-heating pollution.Republicans who now control Congress have to decide if they will eliminate the IRA’s grants and, more crucially, the tax credits that have spurred a boom in clean energy activity in their own districts. A total of 78% of this spending has gone to Republican-held suburban and rural districts across the US, according to data from Atlas Public Policy.Of the 20 congressional districts that have attracted the most clean energy manufacturing investment since the IRA passed in 2022, 18 are represented by Republicans, according to Atlas. The top three districts, in North Carolina, Georgia and Nevada, represented by Richard Hudson, Earl Carter and Mark Amodei, respectively, have collectively seen nearly $30bn in new investments since the legislation.Despite this, none of the 18 Republican representatives contacted by the Guardian would comment on whether they agree with Trump that clean energy incentives should be scrapped.“Members aren’t necessarily looking for opportunities to disagree with the White House at the moment,” said Heather Reams, the president of Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions, a center-right group that advocates in favor of clean energy.The Atlas data set is the newest in a series of reports showing the IRA benefitted Republican-led districts the most. And the largest individual pools of money from the bill also went to projects in red communities, according to a separate data set shared with the Guardian by an anonymous source at the Department of Energy (DoE).The top grant from the IRA, worth $500m, went to a General Motors plant in Lansing, Michigan – represented by Republican Tom Barrett – the DoE data shows. And though the biggest loan of $15bn went to California’s Pacific Gas and Electric Company utility to expand clean power and modernize infrastructure, the second and third largest went to battery plants in Glendale, Kentucky, and Kokomo, Indiana, represented by conservatives Brett Guthrie and Victoria Spartz, respectively. Hageman, Guthrie and Spartz did not respond to requests for comment.Some Republicans have publicly lauded the tax credits’ impacts on their districts even as they have attacked the IRA. The ultraconservative Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, for instance, praised the IRA-funded expansion of solar manufacturing in her district but called the bill itself “dangerous”, winning her scrutiny from Joe Biden in 2023. Her district saw more investment than all but 14 others, the Atlas data shows.In a sign of private nervousness among conservatives about a repeal of the tax credits, though, a group of 21 Republican lawmakers, including Carter and Amodei, signed a letter to colleagues warning that axing the IRA risks planned projects and would escalate energy bills. Some conservatives made similar calls during a January hearing in the House ways and means committee.But these voices have gotten quieter in recent weeks, with some Republicans who privately supported the letter refusing to sign it for strategic reasons, and some letter signatories saying the IRA tax credits should not necessarily be a major priority.Ongoing budget concerns have made it especially difficult for conservatives to defend the credits. Republicans’ fiscal year 2025 proposal authorized $4.5tn in tax cuts through 2034 and called on committees to partially offset the cost with $2tn in spending reductions. A full repeal of the IRA’s green energy tax credits would slash about $850bn in spending the Tax Foundation thinktank recently found.“They’re trying to kind of balance finding the money so that they’re not adding to the federal debt, while also trying to protect these beneficial and popular tax credits and provisions,” said Dana Nuccitelli, the research coordinator at the non-partisan advocacy group Citizens’ Climate Lobby. “It’s not easy.”Reams, of the Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions thinktank, said that as the realities of lost jobs and increasing energy costs become clear, Trump may change his mind about the need to repeal the credits. “There’s what Donald Trump says – remember, he hated EVs, but he just bought a Tesla – and what he does,” she said. “You’ve got to not take it all so literally and bide some time to get a sense of what really is going on.”Still, there are already signs that Trump’s hostile stance towards renewables – he has halted approvals of wind and solar projects on federal land and waters – – is starting to dampen clean energy activity in the US.Approximately $8bn in clean energy manufacturing activity has been canceled so far this year, Atlas has calculated, with a separate analysis by Climate Power finding that 50,000 jobs have been lost or are threatened.A full repeal of the IRA would hike energy bills for households and imperil a further 1.5m jobs in the US, according to yet another recent report, by Energy Innovation. “Many of those jobs will be at risk if the IRA is repealed,” Jim Farley, the chief executive of Ford, warned recently about the company’s plans to expand its electric vehicle factories.“The Trump administration aims to restore US manufacturing jobs, but cutting existing federal energy incentives could really undermine that goal,” said Tom Taylor, a senior policy analyst at Atlas.It’s a message some climate advocates have been bringing to Republican lawmakers in recent weeks in an attempt to save the tax credits. Citizens’ Climate Lobby, for instance, this month lobbied 47 Republicans on Capitol Hill calling on them to protect the tax credits, and is now asking its members to call their Republican representatives, focusing not on their climate benefits but on their potential to spur economic growth.“Everybody loves manufacturing jobs,” Nuccitelli said.In their lobbying, Citizens Climate Lobby is also highlighting the low price of building clean power, the need for abundant energy amid forecasted spikes in energy from the artificial intelligence boom, and the fact that repealing the incentives could cause household electricity bills to increase by about 10% over the next decade.Despite the lack of public support for the tax credits from GOP lawmakers, the organization said they enjoy significant support on Capitol Hill, with some GOP lawmakers calling to protect them in private meetings and personal phone calls with other congressional colleagues.Only two Democratic-led districts were on the list provided by the Atlas Public Policy. One was Arizona’s Raúl Grijalva, who was a strong advocate for the IRA’s green incentives before he died this month.“The Inflation Reduction Act is a vital investment in the future stability of the planet,” his office wrote in a statement to the Guardian before his passing. “As a self-proclaimed business genius, Trump should easily be able to understand the high financial and humanitarian costs of increasing climate catastrophes.” More

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    Palestinians must have the final say in Gaza’s reconstruction | Ahmad Ibsais

    On the 17th night of Ramadan – a time meant for prayer, reflection and mercy – Gaza burned. Once again, our screens fill with images too harrowing to describe: tiny bodies wrapped in bloodstained cloth, fathers carrying their children’s remains in plastic bags, mothers screaming into skies that rain death instead of mercy. In less than an hour, Israeli airstrikes killed more than 350 Palestinians, including 90 children. Entire families wiped out as bombs fell on areas Israel itself had designated as “safe zones”, turning supposed sanctuaries into mass graves.This was not merely a resumption of violence. This is the continuation of a genocide that never truly paused, only ebbed enough to vanish from headlines while Palestinians continued to die by the dozens daily. The heaviness of this moment is unbearable, bringing back the brokenness of the past year that has not yet healed. For this slaughter to continue while the world watches reveals how deeply indifferent global powers have become to Palestinian suffering, how thoroughly dehumanized an entire people must be for their massacre to be debated as a matter of “security concerns”.These newest atrocities underscore the ongoing reality that Palestinians have faced for months now. In the ruins of Gaza, amid the countlessly violated “ceasefire”, Palestinians confront not only the monumental task of rebuilding but also a struggle for who will control their future. Since 2 March, Israel has not allowed in any aid, most importantly food and reconstruction resources, while Palestinians starve through Ramadan. As families return to find neighborhoods reduced to rubble, they face competing visions for Gaza’s reconstruction – including proposals that threaten their very existence on the land.Donald Trump recently suggested transforming Gaza into a “riviera of the Middle East” by resettling its 1.8 million Palestinian residents elsewhere. This proposal reveals a profound misunderstanding of our connection to our homeland, a connection that transcends mere residence and forms the core of Palestinian identity.When outsiders ask why Palestinians don’t leave Gaza, or the increasingly genocidal violence in the West Bank, they fail to grasp that this land isn’t just where we live – it’s who we are. Our relationship with this soil has been cultivated through generations. Since 1967, Israel has systematically uprooted at least 2.5m trees in the occupied Palestinian territory, including nearly 1m olive trees. The olive trees that dot our landscape embody our history, resilience and indigeneity to the land – cultivated over generations of displacement.The question isn’t why Palestinians return to destroyed neighborhoods – it’s why anyone would expect us not to. Palestinians return because Gaza is home. The rubble beneath their feet isn’t debris; it contains memories, histories and the foundations of homes where generations were born and buried. Where the rubble has become a mass grave for 50,000 Palestinians.According to the UN’s latest assessment, rebuilding Gaza and the West Bank will require $53.2bn over the next decade: $29.9bn for physical infrastructure and $19.1bn for economic and social losses. These reconstruction efforts the result of 85,000 tons of bombs being indiscriminately dropped over the total area of Gaza. Behind these staggering figures lies a more fundamental question: will Palestinians be allowed to rebuild, or will they be rebuilt over?The answer must be Palestinians themselves. The future of Palestine will be determined by, with, and for Palestinians – no matter the form we choose. It is not for the United States, Israel, or the Arab states, who stood by as our people died, to decide what is best for us. Without Palestinians, rebuilding efforts merely perpetuate the cycle of violence and dispossession. We are not pieces on their geopolitical chessboard. We are a people with an inalienable right to self-determination, and reconstruction must serve that right – not subvert it.The immediate challenges are overwhelming. Over 80% of Gaza’s physical infrastructure has been decimated – roads, power plants, water facilities, schools, universities and every hospital, in contravention of international law and basic morality. The removal of more than 50m tons of rubble and unexploded ordnance will require decades to clear and restore semblance of normalcy.Yet amid this devastation, Palestinians demonstrate remarkable resilience. Journalists have documented people returning to northern Gaza, setting up tents in demolition sites, and even beginning construction work on new buildings. The “ceasefire” stipulated that 60,000 trailers and 200,000 tents should have entered Gaza to help house the forcibly displaced Palestinians – only 20,000 tents and no trailers have entered as Israel obstructs aid. However, Israel did deliver bombs as children slept; 70% of those murdered since Israel resumed its violence have been women and children. In Jabalia, men were seen building the walls of their destroyed home – a powerful symbol of determination to remain. There has been total destruction, but Palestinians remain steadfast like firm mountains. Palestinians are rooted in the land, there is no alternative.Does Israel think when it destroyed the stones, Palestinians will leave? As if their cities were not already built on the bones of our ancestors.This determination isn’t naive optimism, it is a recognition that to exist is to resist. We will not ask permission to narrate our pain. We will not wait for perfect victimhood to earn our humanity. Gaza is the site of resistance, rooted in every olive tree, every seed, every grave. We don’t build because we’re certain our homes will stand forever; we build because to stop building is to surrender. After previous bombardments, Gazans would collect concrete from destroyed houses to be crushed into gravel for new structures. Others extracted rebar from damaged walls to reinforce new construction.In the same interview, Trump also suggested Palestinians should leave so they no longer have to be “worried about dying”. Palestinians aren’t afraid of death – we’re afraid of being killed systematically. The solution isn’t removing the victims but stopping those doing the killing. Gaza doesn’t need redesigning as if it were an empty hotel room; it needs an end to the cycle of destruction.When I think about what Palestinians hope for, I’m struck by how basic their dreams are. Palestinians want to get jobs, build homes, visit the beach, perhaps travel knowing they can return. Palestinians dream of an airport, a seaport, welcoming tourists, praying at Al-Aqsa mosque, and returning to villages where their grandparents lived.What Gaza needs now is immediate: it needs life restored, urgently and unapologetically. It needs teachers for children who have been denied not just classrooms, but childhood itself. It needs dignified burials for the dead, those whose names are scribbled on their limbs so they might be recognized beneath the rubble. It needs seeds and soil, not just to replant crops, but feed those forcibly starved. It needs hospitals where women are not forced to give birth without anesthetics, where the wounded are not condemned to die for lack of electricity.And above all, Gaza needs the world to see Palestinians as people – people deserving of life, freedom and solidarity.While international support is crucial, it cannot come with strings that undermine Palestinian sovereignty. Foreign aid should not be conditioned on accepting foreign control. It should not be leveraged to force political concessions or normalize relations with an occupying power. True solidarity means supporting Palestinian-led reconstruction without imposing external agendas.The February letter from Arab foreign ministers to the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, speaks of implementing “a plan to realize the two-state solution”. However, any plan must begin with recognizing Palestinian agency. Without meaningful Palestinian participation, without respecting our right to choose our own political future, such plans remain hollow gestures. And expecting Palestinians to accept a solution from those who attempted to erase them completely is like asking the wounded to trust the hand that still holds the bloody knife.The challenges ahead are enormous, but so is Palestinian determination. As Israel continues to bomb starving Palestinians, their refusal to abandon our land isn’t stubbornness but existence itself. As Israel continues to murder Palestinian journalists, like Hossam Shabat, we will make sure the world not only sees their crimes, but remembers them. In the face of those who would make our lives impossible, we will continue to find ways to remain. We will rebuild not according to someone else’s vision but according to our own needs and aspirations.This rebuilding is more than reconstruction – it is resistance. It is our refusal to be erased, our determination to remain and our unwavering belief in our right to exist on our land. Nothing is more important than staying. Nothing is more revolutionary than returning. And nothing is more certain than that we will rebuild Palestine with our own hands, for our own people, on our own terms.

    Ahmad Ibsais is a first-generation Palestinian American, law student and poet who writes the newsletter State of Siege More

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    Republicans are quietly trying to disenfranchise millions of voters | Alexis Anderson-Reed

    The first months of the new Trump administration have been dizzying with the breadth of executive actions to slash the social safety net, further enrich the wealthy, and inflame division based on outdated notions about culture and identity. While White House policy pronouncements have come with flair and political theater – such as the president signing orders on a Jumbotron – in Congress there are quieter but equally pernicious efforts aimed at silencing the votes and voices of communities across the country.One such piece of legislation is the so-called Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or Save Act, which would require Americans seeking to register or re-register to vote to prove US citizenship. This dangerous bill would in effect strip millions of Americans of their access to the vote, while making the voting process more difficult and burdensome for everyone else. Rather than make our elections more secure, the Save Act would disenfranchise millions based on nothing but a series of debunked conspiracy theories.Last week, meanwhile, the White House issued an executive order that would upend voter registration and our elections – requiring additional proof of citizenship on federal voting forms; seeking to block states from from processing mail-in ballots after election day; paving the way for funding cuts to states that refuse to fall in line; and directing Elon Musk and his so-called “department of government efficiency” to review voter information. It’s a blatant, brazen and unlawful attempt to try to remake our election system by fiat that represents a direct attack on the checks and balances that have secured our elections for generations. The order is sure to face legal hurdles and should not stand up to scrutiny by the courts or the American people. Now, at the same time as we are calling out this attempted power grab by the Trump administration, we must also prevent Congress from making the mistake of disenfranchising millions of voters.According to research by the Brennan Center for Justice, more than 21 million US citizens of voting age don’t have easy access to proof of citizenship documents, and only about half of American adults have a passport, while millions do not have access to paper copies of their birth certificates. Married women whose legal names do not match their birth certificates could be disenfranchised by the Save Act, and folks looking to obtain lost or misplaced birth certificates would face financial and logistical hurdles.The Save Act would restrict voters’ ability to register to vote online and through the mail while also severely limiting the ability of non-partisan civic organizations to conduct voter registration drives, which have been crucial to civic engagement for more than a century. That’s because, despite voters’ ability to register to vote at the DMV and registration efforts by political parties, data shows that voter registration drives from non-partisan organizations can account for about one-fifth of voter registration applicants – roughly equal to the political power of California, Florida and Texas combined. We simply cannot sit back and allow Congress or the White House to destroy the infrastructure of our elections by disenfranchising so many voters.Voter registration drives by non-profits have a rich and powerful history, dating back to the League of Women Voters and other civic groups encouraging women to register in the 1920s after the passage of the 19th amendment. During the Freedom Summer of 1964 in Mississippi, students from northern states traveled to Mississippi to canvass the state and register Black people to vote as the civil rights movement pushed back on centuries of racist voter suppression. And in more modern elections, voter registration drives have become a critical vehicle for driving community engagement among communities of color and marginalized groups that the traditional political system has left behind. Historically, political parties categorize voters based on their likelihood to vote, and “low propensity” voters are sometimes considered unworthy of political candidates’ time and resources. Without non-profit organizations and civic groups stepping in to spur engagement, we risk a vicious cycle in which marginalized communities are completely ignored.At State Voices, the nation’s largest non-partisan civic engagement network responsible for collecting more than 840,000 voter registration applications and contacting more than 66 million voters in 2024, we see first-hand the impact of voter registration drives to reach communities that are overlooked and underserved. Last year, our affiliate in Nevada, Silver State Voices, sent staff to help register tribal members from the Duck Valley and Pine Nut Reservations – carrying downloaded maps to register applicants who live in rural areas without a street address. In Wyoming, a network of civic organizations helped a county clerk to register hundreds of high school seniors. And in Nebraska, the Nebraska Voting Rights Coalition helps register newly eligible voters who have completed probation and parole requirements due to past felony convictions. These stories represent only a tiny fraction of the impact of nonpartisan voter registration efforts in communities across the country – and they’re all under threat should the Save Act become law.Our nation faces huge questions in the coming elections about the future of our economy, our healthcare system, our children’s education, the environment and more. For our democracy to thrive, we must allow voters to have their say – not restrict who has a voice based on logistical hurdles. As this bill moves forward, it is imperative for people to make clear to their members of Congress that they must reject the Save Act permanently.

    Alexis Anderson-Reed is the president of State Voices, which coordinates hyper-local election registration, education and mobilization across 24 states with 1,200 partners in Bipoc and working-class communities across the country More

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    Tesla investors brace for global sales data amid consumer backlash over Elon Musk

    Tesla investors are bracing for evidence of declining global demand this week as the electric carmaker battles headwinds including a consumer backlash against its chief executive, Elon Musk.On 2 April, the US company will release data for first-quarter deliveries – a proxy for sales – that is expected to show a dip on the same period last year. The figures follow global protests on Saturday against Musk and Tesla, targeting the carmaker’s showrooms.Analysts have been lowering their forecasts amid evidence that Musk’s senior role in the Trump administration has damaged the Tesla brand.Dan Ives, managing director at the US financial firm Wedbush Securities and a self-avowed Tesla “core bull”, forecast deliveries to come in at between 355,000 and 360,000, a fall of 7% on the same period last year and down from initial predictions across Wall Street of 400,000.View image in fullscreenIves, who recently warned investors that Tesla was facing a “brand tornado crisis moment”, said 30% of the anticipated decline was due to brand damage associated with Musk and his involvement in the so-called department of government efficiency (Doge). The advisory body has targeted federal agencies with cost-cutting policies and redundancies.Other issues affecting Tesla’s figures during the first three months of the year include consumers waiting for an update to the top-selling Model Y. The US is Tesla’s biggest market.In a note to investors last week, Ives said that while “much of this softness is related to customers waiting for Model Y refreshes along with a lower-cost new model set to be launched by the summer … the anti-Musk and brand issues are clearly at play”.Matthias Schmidt, a Berlin-based electric car analyst, said Musk was “hitting his liberal consumer demographic exactly where it hurts”.“He has become the core toxic issue behind the disintegration of the brand and should step-aside before it explodes like one of his rockets,” added Schmidt, who is expecting first-quarter deliveries in western Europe to come in at just under 70,000 for the first time since the end of 2022.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionView image in fullscreenAmong Tesla owners, the Democrat owner group has fallen from 40% during the Biden administration to 29% now, with the Republican group averaging about 30% since 2021, according to market research firm Strategic Vision.Last week, Donald Trump announced a 25% tariff on cars from overseas, with Tesla also expecting to be affected despite making its cars for the US market in America. The company imports some parts for its US-made cars. Last week, Musk wrote on X, his social media platform, that Tesla is “not unscathed” by tariffs. He added: “The tariff impact on Tesla is still significant.”The tariffs threaten to plunge the global auto industry into “pure chaos”, according to Ives. “Every auto maker in the world will have to raise prices in some form selling into the US and the supply chain logistics of this tariff announcement heard around the world is hard to even put our arms around at this moment,” he said in a note to investors last week.However, on Saturday, Trump said he “couldn’t care less” if carmakers raise prices in response to the tariffs on foreign-made vehicles. Indeed, the US president told NBC News that he hoped foreign carmakers raise prices as it means “people are gonna buy American-made cars. We have plenty.” More

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    Will Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ be the start of a trade war – or another climbdown?

    Donald Trump won back the White House with a promise to transform the US economy. Millions of Americans, struggling with higher prices and bigger bills, elected a president who pledged to revive his country’s industrial heartlands – and leave the rest of the world to pick up the bill.On Wednesday – a day dubbed Liberation Day by the president and his aides – Trump has vowed to pull the trigger and impose an historic barrage of tariffs on goods from overseas he claims will fund an extraordinary revival.Ten weeks after obtaining power, Trump has said he will raise tariffs on all products from countries that charge tariffs on US exports; hit goods from Canada and Mexico with sweeping duties; introduce steep tariffs on foreign cars, computer chips and drugs; and target countries importing oil from Venezuela with duties on their US exports.This is “the big one”, according to the president. Business leaders and economists are certainly worried about the scale of his trade strategy, which the Tax Foundation already estimates could knock US gross domestic product (GDP) by roughly 0.7% and cost about 500,000 US jobs.“The escalating tariffs are a body blow to the global trading system,” said Eswar Prasad, professor of trade policy at Cornell University, and a former official at the International Monetary Fund.Wherever you stand, a move on this scale would constitute a radical shake-up – and set the stage for a fundamental overhaul of the US economy. And yet, even as he ramped up the rhetoric, Trump has appeared to tread carefully.“I will immediately begin the overhaul of our trade system to protect American workers and families,” the president declared at his inauguration in January. “Instead of taxing our citizens to enrich other countries, we will tariff and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens.”While the threats were immediate, the action was not.Take Canada and Mexico. The administration has adopted a strikingly hardline stance against the US’s largest and nearest trading partners, but its imposition of blanket tariffs has been hit by a dizzying array of shifting deadlines, delays and reversals.An initial pledge to impose tariffs from “day one” shifted, without explanation, to February. When February rolled around, a last-ditch deal kicked the can to March. When the tariffs were finally imposed, it was a little over 24 hours before carmakers were granted a temporary exemption, and 48 hours before all goods covered by an existing trade deal between the US, Mexico and Canada were spared for another month.All the while, Trump and his most senior officials have slowly, but surely, accepted the risks they are raising in pursuit of the rewards they have vowed to obtain.“Tariffs don’t cause inflation,” the president claimed in January. OK, prices “could go up somewhat short term”, he conceded in February. “There’ll be a little disturbance,” he added in March, stressing that he was alright with that.The US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, acknowledged earlier this month that there may well be a “one-time price adjustment” as a result of Trump’s tariffs. “Access to cheap goods is not the essence of the American dream,” he argued.While Trump predicts that slapping high US tariffs on foreign goods will prompt an influx of international companies to make products inside the US, rather than out, companies and investors worldwide are already struggling to keep up with his administration’s erratic trade policymaking.So far, since his return to office, Trump has hiked tariffs on Chinese exports to the US and raised tariffs on foreign steel and aluminium to 25%.The average US tariff rate has already shot up from 2.5% to 8.4% this year, the highest level since 1946, according to the Tax Foundation.Alex Durante, its senior economist, said the country is “inching towards” the kind of tariffs last seen since the 1930s, when the Smoot-Hawley bill, among the most decried pieces of legislation in US history, introduced tariffs on thousands of goods.“With each tariff action we’re rapidly approaching a universal tariff that would be damaging to the economy,” said Durante. “Behind the scenes, I think there is probably some concern, even among some of [Trump’s] staff, that they’re rapidly approaching the point of no return.”As his administration grappled with the fallout from the inadvertent inclusion of a journalist in a group chat about secret military plans last week, the president summoned reporters to the Oval Office to pre-announce tariffs on foreign cars. “This is very exciting,” he told them.The excitement is far from universal. Prasad, at Cornell, said: “We are shifting to a world where a commonly accepted set of rules is being displaced by unilateral actions that ostensibly promote a fair trading system, but will instead create volatility and uncertainty, inhibiting the free flow of goods and financial capital across national borders.”The car tariffs would be “a hurricane-like headwind to foreign (and many US) automakers”, said Dan Ives, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, who suggested they would push up prices by as much as $10,000 in the US. “We continue to believe this is some form of negotiation and these tariffs could change by the week,” he added, “although this initial 25% tariff on autos from outside the US is almost an untenable head-scratching number for the US consumer”.Such action is also widely expected to prompt retaliation – with US exporters in the firing line.While a spokesperson for the European Commission stressed it was too early to detail the European Union’s response to actions “still not implemented” by the US, they added: “I can assure you that it will be timely, that it will be robust, that it will be well calibrated and that it will achieve the intended impact.”Trump is watching closely. As countries and markets hit by new US tariffs consider how to hit back, the president publicly warned the EU and Canada that he would hit them with “far larger” duties if they worked together on their response.Some doubt whether the federal government has enough capacity to execute the trade onslaught which Trump has said is coming. “I simply just don’t think that [the US Trade Representative] right now has enough staff to even figure out how to implement some of these tariffs,” said Durante.But after myriad false starts and much fluctuation, the lingering question – despite all the shots, warnings and vows – is not how far Trump can take his trade wars, but how far he will.The president is, at heart, a salesman. In business, he sold real estate – with mixed success. In television, and then politics, he sold stories – with extreme success.Millions of Americans bought the image he constructed on The Apprentice of himself as a phenomenally successful entrepreneur. Millions more bought his promise on the campaign trail to share this phenomenal success with the rest of the nation.Trump is no longer selling a promise, but his strategy to deliver it. He won the White House twice by using stories, sometimes unbound by truth, to bend perceptions, break norms and build support. But rhetoric – however bold, and brash – can’t change reality.The president says unleashing a wave of tariffs, and triggering an abrupt surge in costs in the US and across the world, would cause just a “little disturbance”.Should Wednesday’s action prove as drastic as billed, businesses and consumers may struggle to reconcile this description with what they encounter.Liberation Day is the moniker coined by this administration. Liability Day might prove more apt. More

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    Elon Musk hands out $1m checks to voters amid Wisconsin supreme court election race

    Elon Musk gave out $1m checks on Sunday to two Wisconsin voters, declaring them spokespeople for his political group, ahead of a Wisconsin supreme court election that the tech billionaire cast as critical to Donald Trump’s agenda and “the future of civilization”.“It’s a super big deal,” he told a roughly 2,000-person crowd in Green Bay on Sunday night, taking the stage in a yellow cheesehead hat. “I’m not phoning it in. I’m here in person.”Musk and groups he supports have spent more than $20m to help conservative favourite Brad Schimel in Tuesday’s race, which will determine the ideological makeup of a court likely to decide key issues in a perennial battleground state. Musk has increasingly become the center of the contest, with liberal favourite Susan Crawford and her allies protesting Musk and what they say is the influence he wants to have on the court.“I think this will be important for the future of civilization,” he said. “It’s that’s significant.”He noted that the state high court may well take up redistricting of congressional districts, which could ultimately affect which party controls the US House.“And if the [Wisconsin] supreme court is able to redraw the districts, they will gerrymander the district and deprive Wisconsin of two seats on the Republican side,” Musk claimed. “Then they will try to stop all the government reforms we are getting done for you, the American people.”A unanimous state supreme court on Sunday refused to hear a last-minute attempt by the state’s Democratic attorney general to stop Musk from handing over the checks to two voters, a ruling that came just minutes before the planned start of the rally.Two lower courts had already rejected the legal challenge by Democrat Josh Kaul, who argues that Musk’s offer violates a state law. “Wisconsin law prohibits offering anything of value to induce anyone to vote,” Kaul argued in his filing. “Yet, Elon Musk did just that.”But the state supreme court, which is now controlled four-to-three by liberal justices, declined to take the case as an original action. The court gave no rationale for its decision. All four liberal justices have endorsed Dane County Judge Susan Crawford, the Democratic-backed candidate.Kaul had no immediate comment on the court’s order.Musk’s attorneys argued in filings with the court that Musk was exercising his free speech rights with the giveaways and any attempt to restrict that would violate both the Wisconsin and US constitutions.The payments are “intended to generate a grassroots movement in opposition to activist judges, not to expressly advocate for or against any candidate,” Musk’s attorneys argued in court filings.Musk’s political action committee used a nearly identical tactic before the presidential election last year, offering to pay $1m a day to voters in Wisconsin and six other battleground states who signed a petition supporting the First and Second amendments. A judge in Pennsylvania said prosecutors failed to show the effort was an illegal lottery and allowed it to continue through Election Day.Musk’s attorneys, about four hours before the rally was to begin, asked that two liberal justices who have campaigned for Crawford – Jill Karofsky and Rebecca Dallet – recuse themselves from the case. His attorneys argued their work for Crawford creates “the spectre of inappropriate bias.” If they did recuse, that would leave the court with a three-two conservative majority.Both justices rejected the request and said they would spell out their reasons why at a later date.One of the court’s conservative justices has endorsed Schimel, who wore a “Make America Great Again” hat while campaigning Sunday.Schimel said in a national television interview that he does not control “any of the spending from any outside group, whether it’s Elon Musk or anyone else” and that all Trump asked was whether he would “reject activist judges” and follow the law.“That’s exactly what I’ve committed to anybody, whether it’s President Trump, Elon Musk or any donors and donors or supporters or voters in Wisconsin. That’s my commitment,” Schimel told Fox News Sunday.The contest has shattered national spending records for a judicial election, with more than $81m in spending.It comes as Wisconsin’s highest court is expected to rule on abortion rights, congressional redistricting, union power and voting rules that could affect the 2026 midterms and the 2028 presidential election in the state. More

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    Vance’s posturing in Greenland was not just morally wrong. It was strategically disastrous | Timothy Snyder

    No one would allow that he could not see these much-admired clothes; because, in doing so, he would have declared himself either a simpleton or unfit of his office.” – Hans Christian Andersen, The Emperor’s New Clothes
    Elon Musk and Donald Trump inherited a state with unprecedented power and functionality, and are taking it apart. They also inherited a set of alliances and relationships that underpinned the largest economy in world history. This too they are breaking.The American vice-president, JD Vance, visited a US base in Greenland for three hours on Friday, along with his wife. National security adviser Mike Waltz and his wife also went along. Fresh from using an unsafe social media platform to carry out an entirely unnecessary group chat in which they leaked sensitive data about an ongoing military attack to a reporter, and thereby allegedly breaking the law, Waltz and Vance perhaps hoped to change the subject by tagging along on a trip that was initially billed as Vance’s wife watching a dogsled race.The overall context was Trump’s persistent claim that America must take Greenland, which is an autonomous region of Denmark. The original plan had been that Usha Vance would visit Greenlanders, apparently on the logic that the second lady would be an effective animatrice of colonial subjection; but none of them wanted to see her, and Greenland’s businesses refused to serve as a backdrop to photo ops or even to serve the uninvited Americans. So, instead, the US couples made a very quick visit to Pituffik space base. (Pete Hegseth, another group chatter, stayed home; but his wife was in the news as well, as an unorthodox participant in sensitive military discussions.)At the base, in the far north of the island, the US visitors had pictures taken of themselves and ate lunch with servicemen and women. They treated the base as the backdrop to a press conference where they could say things they already thought; nothing was experienced, nothing was learned, nothing sensible was said. Vance, who never left the base, and has never before visited Greenland, was quite sure how Greenlanders should live. He made a political appeal to Greenlanders, none of whom was present, or anywhere near him. He claimed that Denmark was not protecting the security of Greenlanders in the Arctic, and that the US would. Greenland should therefore join the US.It takes some patience to unwind all of the nonsense here.The base at Pituffik (formerly Thule) only exists because Denmark permitted the US to build it at a sensitive time. It has served for decades as a central part of the US’s nuclear armoury and then as an early-warning system against Soviet and then Russian nuclear attack.When Vance says that Denmark is not protecting Greenland and the base, he is wishing away generations of cooperation, as well as the Nato alliance itself. Denmark was a founding member of Nato, and it is already the US’s job to defend Denmark and Greenland, just as it is Denmark’s job (as with other members) to defend them in return.Americans might chuckle at that idea, but such arrogance is unwarranted. We are the only ones ever to have invoked article 5, the mutual defence obligation of the Nato treaty, after 9/11; and our European allies did respond. Per capita, almost as many Danish soldiers were killed in the Afghan war as were American soldiers. Do we remember them? Thank them?The threat in the Arctic invoked by Vance is Russia; and of course defending against a Russian attack is the Nato mission. But right now the US is supporting Russia in its war against Ukraine. No one is doing more to contain the Russian threat than Ukraine. Indeed, Ukraine is in effect fulfilling the entire Nato mission, right now, by absorbing a huge Russian attack. But Vance opposes helping Ukraine, spreads Russian propaganda about Ukraine, and is best known for yelling at Ukraine’s president in the Oval Office. On the base, Vance blamed the killing in Ukraine on Joe Biden rather than on Vladimir Putin, which is grotesque. Vance claimed that there is now an energy ceasefire in place between Russia and Ukraine; in fact, Russia violated it immediately. Russia is now preparing a massive spring offensive against Ukraine; the response of Musk-Trump has been to ignore this larger reality completely while allowing Biden-era aid to Ukraine to come to an end. Denmark, meanwhile, has given more than four times as much aid to Ukraine, per capita, than the US.Greenland, Denmark and the US have been enmeshed in complex and effective security arrangements, touching on the gravest scenarios, for the better part of a century. Arctic security, an issue discovered by Trump and Vance very recently, was a preoccuption for decades during and after the cold war. There are fewer than 200 Americans at Pituffik now, where once there were 10,000; there is only that one US base on the island where once there were a dozen; but that is American policy, not Denmark’s fault.We really do have a problem taking responsibility. The US has fallen well behind its allies and its rivals in the Arctic, in part because members of Vance’s political party denied for decades the reality of global warming, which has made it hard for the US navy to persuade Congress of the need to commission icebreaker ships. The US only has two functional Arctic icebreakers; the Biden administration was intending to cooperate with Canada, which has some, and with Finland, which builds lots, in order to compete with Russia, which has the most. That common plan would have allowed the US to surpass Russia in icebreaking capacity. This is one of countless examples of how cooperation with Nato allies benefits the US. It is not clear what will happen with that arrangement now that Trump and Vance define Canada, like Denmark, as a rival or even as an enemy. Presumably it will break down, leaving Russia dominant.As with everything Musk-Trump does, however, the cui bono question about imperialism in Greenland is easy to answer: Russia benefits. Putin cannot contain his delight with US imperialism over Greenland. In generating artificial crises in relations with both Denmark and Canada, America’s two closest allies these last 80 years, the Trump people cut America loose from security gains and create a chaos in which Russia benefits.View image in fullscreenThe American imperialism directed towards Denmark and Canada is not just morally wrong. It is strategically disastrous. The US has nothing to gain from it, and much to lose. There is nothing that Americans cannot get from Denmark or Canada through alliance. The very existence of the base at Pituffik shows that. Within the atmosphere of friendship that has prevailed the last 80 years, all of the mineral resources of Canada and Greenland can be traded for on good terms, or for that matter explored by American companies. The only way to put all of this easy access in doubt was to follow the course that Musk-Trump have chosen: trade wars with Canada and Europe, and the threat of actual wars and annexations. Musk and Trump are creating the bloodily moronic situation in which the US will have to fight wars to get the things that, just a few weeks ago, were there for the asking. And, of course, wars rarely turn out the way one expects.Much effort is spent trying to extract a doctrine from all this. But there is none. It is just senselessness that benefits America’s enemies. Hans Christian Andersen told the unforgettable tale of the naked emperor. In Greenland, what we saw was American imperialism with no clothes. Naked and vain.As a parting shot, Vance told Greenlanders that life with the US would be better than with Denmark. Danish officials have been too diplomatic to answer directly the insults directed at them from their own territory during an uninvited visit by imperialist hotheads. Let me though just note a few possible replies, off the top of my head. The comparison between life in the US and life in Denmark is not just polemical. Musk-Trump treat Europe as though it were some decadent abyss, and propose that alliances with dictatorships would somehow be better. But Europe is not only home to our traditional allies; it is an enviable zone of democracy, wealth and prosperity with which it benefits us to have good relations, and from which we can sometimes learn.So consider. The US is 24th in the world in the happiness rankings. Not bad. But Denmark is No 2 (after Finland). On a scale of 1 to 100, Freedom House ranks Denmark 97 and the US 84 on freedom – and the US will drop a great deal this year. An American is about 10 times more likely to be incarcerated than a Dane. Danes have access to universal and essentially free healthcare; Americans spend a huge amount of money to be sick more often and to be treated worse when they are. Danes on average live four years longer than Americans. In Denmark, university education is free; the average balance owed by the tens of millions of Americans who hold student debt in the US is about $40,000. Danish parents share a year of paid parental leave. In the US, one parent might get 12 weeks of unpaid leave. Denmark has children’s story writer Hans Christian Andersen. The US has children’s story writer JD Vance. American children are about twice as likely as Danish children to die before the age of five.

    Timothy Snyder is the Richard C Levin professor of history at Yale University, and the chair in modern European history supported by the Temerty endowment for Ukrainian studies at the University of Toronto. His latest book is On Freedom. This post originally appeared on his Substack, Thinking About More

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    Ministers brace for more Trump tariffs as UK races to agree US trade deal

    Ministers believe Britain will be hit by more tariffs when Donald Trump unveils his latest round of trade barriers on Wednesday as part of what the US president is calling “liberation day”.On Sunday night, Keir Starmer spoke with Trump in what Downing Street described as part of “productive negotiations” towards a deal. A No 10 spokesperson said both men had agreed talks between the two sides would “continue at pace this week”, adding: “They agreed to stay in touch in the coming days.”Senior members of the government have been engaged in intense negotiations over recent weeks as they race to agree a trade deal with the US, which could avoid the UK being included in the package of measures.The stakes are high for the British government – forecasters have said a 20 percentage point increase on tariffs on UK goods and services would cut the size of the British economy by 1% and force the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, into tax rises this autumn.Officials now fear, however, they will not have agreed the deal in time, sources have told the Guardian, and are resigned to being hit by whatever Trump announces on 2 April.But ministers will continue negotiating after that date, hoping they can avoid a damaging hit to UK economic growth by agreeing a deal to reduce tariffs once they have already been promised.One Whitehall official told the Guardian: “We have been working hard behind the scenes for a while on an economic deal, and that work continues. But we don’t see Wednesday as a hard and fast deadline.”Another said: “If we don’t get a deal by Wednesday it won’t be the end of the world. The main thing is to make sure we get enough from the US to make a deal worth signing.”Trump has said he will unveil what he says are “reciprocal” tariffs on trading partners around the world on Wednesday. Last week, the US president announced he would introduce a 25% tariff on car imports to the US on 2 April, which would hit British carmakers such as Bentley and Aston Martin.But just days ahead of the larger announcement, even White House officials say they have little sense of which tariffs the president intends to levy, on which countries and by how much.British negotiators, led by the business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, have been talking to their US counterparts for weeks to agree a technology-focused trade deal, which they hope would also exempt the UK from the heaviest of Trump’s tariffs. Downing Street officials are closely involved in the talks, including the prime minister’s head of international economic affairs, Michael Ellam, and his business adviser Varun Chandra.In an indication of how far the British government is willing to go to sign the deal, ministers have offered to drop the UK digital services tax (DST). The DST is a levy on the revenues of the world’s largest technology companies – almost all of which are US-based – which is forecast to raise £1.1bn by the end of the decade.British officials are increasingly gloomy, however, about the prospect of getting the deal done in the next three days, albeit while still hoping it could come together at the last minute.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“This is an unpredictable situation and an unpredictable administration,” said one. “We’re having to plan for every scenario.”If the Trump administration does include the UK in its announcement on Wednesday, Britain is unlikely to reciprocate with its own tariffs, according to people familiar with the government’s thinking. Doing so would imperil the chances of signing a deal in the future, they added.One said: “Everything is on the table. But unlike other trading partners such as the EU, our approach will be to keep a cool head and keep talking. We know British industry does not want a trade war.”However, this approach has come in for criticism in recent days. Kim Darroch, the former British ambassador to the US, told the Observer on Sunday: “[UK ministers] need to be wary of giving Trump wins; tariffs are his all-purpose forcing mechanism and he’ll use them again and again if he sees them working.”Others believe ministers have little choice but to keep negotiating. Crawford Faulkner, who stepped down in January as the UK’s lead trade negotiator, said on Sunday Britain should be “prepared to negotiate” on the DST and other issues.He told Times Radio: “There is no reason why the United Kingdom could not, across the board, have liberalisation in goods, and as much of services as is feasible, with the United States.” More