Evelyn Reynolds

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    US supreme court blocks ruling that 16,000 fired federal workers must be rehired

    The US supreme court has handed Donald Trump a reprieve from a judge’s ruling that his administration must rehire 16,000 probationary workers fired in its purge of the federal bureaucracy.A day after ruling in the White House’s favor to allow the continued deportation of alleged Venezuelan gang members, the court gave the White House a less clear-cut victory in halting the order by a California court that dismissed workers from six government agencies must be rehired.The court struck down by a 7-2 majority last month’s ruling by US district court judge William Alsup because non-profit groups who had sued on behalf of the fired workers had no legal standing.It did not rule on the firings themselves, which affected probationary workers in the Pentagon, the treasury, and the departments of energy, agriculture, interior and veterans affairs.“The district court’s injunction was based solely on the allegations of the nine non-profit-organization plaintiffs in this case,” the unsigned ruling read. “But under established law, those allegations are presently insufficient to support the organizations’ standing. This order does not address the claims of the other plaintiffs, which did not form the basis of the district court’s preliminary injunction.”Two of the court’s three liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented.The victory, though limited, is likely to embolden the Trump administration in the belief that the spate of legal reverses it has faced since taking office can be eventually overturned in the supreme court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, due largely to three rightwing judges Trump nominated to the bench during his first presidency.The extent of Tuesday’s victory was qualified by the fact that it does not affect a separate order by a judge in Maryland applying to the same agencies plus several others. Judge James Bredar of the Maryland federal district court ordered the administration to reinstate workers in response to a case brought by 19 states and the government of Washington DC.In the California ruling, the court heard how staff were informed by a templated email from the office of personnel management that they were losing their jobs for performance-related reasons. “The Agency finds, based on your performance, that you have not demonstrated that your further employment at the Agency would be in the public interest,” the email said.While accepting that workforce reductions were acceptable if carried out “correctly under the law”, Alsup said workers had been fired for bogus reasons.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“It is sad, a sad day when our government would fire some good employee, and say it was based on performance, when they know good and well, that’s a lie,” he said.In filings to the supreme court, the acting solicitor general, Sarah Harris, argued that Alsup had exceeded his powers.“The court’s extraordinary reinstatement order violates the separation of powers, arrogating to a single district court the executive branch’s powers of personnel management on the flimsiest of grounds and the hastiest of timelines,” she wrote. “That is no way to run a government. This court should stop the ongoing assault on the constitutional structure before further damage is wrought.” More

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    To my husband, Mahmoud Khalil: I can’t wait to tell our son of his father’s bravery | Noor Abdalla

    Exactly a month ago, you were taken from me. This is the longest we have been apart since we got married. I miss you more and more every day and as the days draw us closer to the arrival of our child, I am haunted by the uncertainty that looms over me – the possibility that you might not be there for this monumental moment. Every kick, every cramp, every small flutter I feel inside me serves as an inescapable reminder of the family we’ve dreamed of building together. Yet, I am left to navigate this profound journey alone, while you endure the cruel and unjust confines of a detention center.I could not be more proud of you, Mahmoud. You embody everything I ever hoped for in a partner and the father of my children. What more could I ask for as a role model for our children than a man who, with unwavering conviction, stands up for the liberation of his people, fully cognizant of the consequences of speaking truth to power? Your courage is boundless, and now more than ever, I am in awe of your strength and determination. Your voice, your belief in justice, and your refusal to be silenced are the very qualities that make you the man I love and admire.We will not forget those who have orchestrated this injustice, the government officials and university administrators who have targeted you without cause, without any shred of evidence to justify their actions. They sit in their ivory towers, scrambling to fabricate lies and distort the truth, throwing accusations like stones in the hope that something will stick. What they fail to realize is that their efforts are futile. Their wrongful detention of you is a testament to the fact that you have struck a nerve. You’ve disrupted the false narratives they’ve worked so hard to maintain, and spoken a truth that they are too terrified to acknowledge. What more do we have than our fundamental right to free speech, when they constantly attempt to strip us of our dignity, telling us we are unworthy of life, of respect, of voice? Now, they seek to punish that very speech, to silence the words that challenge their corrupt and oppressive systems.They are trying to silence you. They are trying to silence anyone who dares to speak out against the atrocities happening in Palestine. But they will fail. We will not be silenced. We will persist, with even greater resolve, and we will pass that strength on to our children and our children’s children – until Palestine is free. I eagerly await the day when I can tell our son the stories of his father’s bravery, of the courage that courses through his veins, and of the pride he should feel to carry Palestinian blood … your blood. And, more than anything, I pray that he will not have to grow up fighting the same fight for our basic freedoms.We will be reunited soon. Until then, I will continue to fight for you, for us and for our family. Your resilience and your courage will guide us through the storm. You are my best friend, my comrade, the very air that sustains me when it feels as though there is none left. I know your spirit is unwavering, that they cannot break you, and that you will emerge from this stronger than ever. I have no doubt that, when you are finally released, you will raise your hands in the air, chanting: “Free Palestine.”

    Dr Noor Abdalla is a dentist and a soon-to-be mother. She is the wife of Mahmoud Khalil More

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    The Guardian view on the US immigration crackdown: what began with foreign nationals won’t end there | Editorial

    While running for president, Donald Trump promised voters “the largest deportation operation in American history”. Now he wants to deliver. Thousands of undocumented migrants have been rounded up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials since he returned to the White House. On Monday, the US supreme court lifted a judge’s ban on deporting alleged gang members to Venezuela under an 18th-century law, though it said deportees had a right to judicial review. Even the Trump-backing podcaster Joe Rogan has described as “horrific” the removal of an asylum seeker – identified as a criminal because he had tattoos – under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act.What’s truly new is that the administration is also targeting those who arrived and remained in the US with official approval, such as the Palestinian activist and student Mahmoud Khalil. Normally, green card holders would be stripped of their status if convicted of a crime; he has not even been accused of one. But Mr Trump had pledged to deport international students who participated in pro-Palestinian protests that his administration has deemed antisemitic, and Mr Khalil was a leading figure in the movement at Columbia University. The president crowed that his arrest last month was “the first of many”. Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish student at Tufts, was detained by masked agents in the street, reportedly for an opinion piece she co-wrote with other students. Unrelated to the protests, dozens if not hundreds more students have had visas revoked, often for minor or non-criminal offences.This crackdown is exploiting legislation in ways that were never intended. The Alien Enemies Act was previously invoked only in wartime – but Mr Trump casts mass migration as an “invasion”. Mr Khalil and others are targeted under a rarely used provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which allows deportations when the secretary of state determines that a foreign national’s presence “would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States”. And while this campaign is indiscriminate in many regards, Mr Trump’s offer of asylum to white Afrikaners facing “unjust racial discrimination” in South Africa speaks volumes about who is and is not wanted in his America.The current fear among migrants, with all its social costs, is not a byproduct of this drive, but the desired result. The Trump administration is trying to push undocumented individuals into “self-deporting”, which is cheaper and easier than using agents to hunt people down. It reportedly plans to levy fines of up to $998 a day if those under deportation orders do not leave – applying the penalties retroactively for up to five years. Fairness, never mind mercy, is not relevant. The administration admits an “administrative error” led to the expulsion to El Salvador of Kilmar Abrego Garcia – who is married to a US citizen and was working legally in the US – but fights against righting that wrong.This crackdown should frighten US nationals too, both for what it says about their nation’s character and for what it may mean for their own rights. The Trump administration wants to remove birthright citizenship and is ramping up denaturalisation efforts. “I love it,” said Mr Trump, when asked about El Salvador’s offer to jail US citizens in its infamous mega-prisons – though at least he conceded that he might have to check the law first. The chilling effect of Mr Khalil’s arrest on dissent is already being felt by US nationals too: the first amendment’s protection of free speech is not exclusive to citizens.“The friendless alien has indeed been selected as the safest subject of a first experiment; but the citizen will soon follow,” Thomas Jefferson wrote when the alien and sedition laws were passed. That warning now looks more prescient than ever.

    Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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    ‘No guidance and no leadership’: chaos and confusion at CDC after mass firings

    For the past two months, members of the Elon Musk-led “department of government efficiency” (Doge) have stalked the halls of the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) Atlanta headquarters.Several employees told the Guardian that if a Doge staffer walked through their offices and saw a badge at an untended workstation, its owner would be fired promptly. Firing someone for a security violation gave Doge an excuse to circumvent the defenses of civil service protection, or performance reviews, or seniority.Loose badge. Gone.If being fired for leaving a badge at a bathroom break seemed arbitrary to those working at the CDC – some for decades – then the mass firings on 1 April made it brutally so. On that day thousands of federal workers at the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) all of its branches and related agencies across the country were let go in a culling indicative of Donald Trump’s second term.Roughly 10,000 people lost their jobs at agencies including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health in a continuation of one of the largest mass firings in American history.Among the cuts to the CDC: the entire Freedom of Information Act team, the Division of Violence Prevention, laboratories that test antibiotic resistance and a team that determines recalls for dangerous baby products.“There’s been no guidance and no leadership,” said one CDC scientist who still has a job, speaking on condition of anonymity. “This week has just been looking through the wreckage for survivors.”A week of chaos and confusionThe scope of the cuts remains a mystery to federal health workers, including it seems the Department of Health and Human Services secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, who said as much as 20% of the cuts may be mistakes, and moved to reinstate some staff fired in error. Kennedy said that “was always the plan”.In the hours after the cuts, an aqua-green dry erase board in a library at the CDC headquarters in Atlanta tallied the losses Tuesday morning like a casualty board for earthquake victims.View image in fullscreenThe words “DO NOT ERASE” topped a constellation of acronyms like NCCDPHP for the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, or NCICP for the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. Under each top line followed a second set of acronyms showing the branches of each department that had been pruned, like the Women’s Health and Fertility Branch (WHFB) of the Division of Reproductive Health, or the Violence Prevention Practice and Translation Branch (VPTB) in the Division of Violence Prevention.No real warning had been given about who would keep their job and who could expect to be fired. Right up until Doge sent reduction-in-force notices to inboxes early Tuesday morning, even supervisors had no idea who would be left.People gathered around the board for updates as word drifted in from colleagues about cuts, as it was the only planning document staff leaders had. Health workers circulated updated pictures of it through informal group chats and Discord servers.Scientists began breaking down in tears in the library stacks.An inquiry to the CDC about the scope of the cuts and its plan was routed to HHS.“All statutorily required positions and offices will remain intact, and as a result of the reorganization, will be better positioned to execute on Congress’s statutory intent,” said Emily G Hilliard, a deputy press secretary for the department. Hilliard claimed the “collaborative” process “included three rounds of feedback from each division”, and that “HHS leaders focused personnel cuts on redundant or unnecessary administrative positions”.The fact sheet Hilliard provided contained no references to the scientific functions lost in the purge.Heartbreak and warnings of dangerShelby Hutton, a biologist working on HIV research, learned she had been fired on 1 April. “We had until the end of the day to pack up our personal belongings before we lost all access,” she said at a press conference with Nikema Williams, the Democratic congresswoman representing Atlanta, on Friday.“We were given no time to conduct an orderly shutdown of the laboratories to ensure that our sensitive equipment and priceless biohazardous specimens were protected and stored properly.”Fired staffers like Hutton found themselves mourning not just for their lost jobs, but because they are acutely aware that without their research some people will die who would have otherwise lived, but for the research they had been conducting.View image in fullscreenLaboratories around the world submit biological samples and testing data to the CDC, which maintains a repository of historical information for research references.In critical areas like antibiotic-resistant infection surveillance, no one is left at the labs to take those samples, one scientist said.Hospitals also ask the CDC for advice when seeing a novel illness. But the process of examining those requests and answering them has been disrupted, said Kevin Pettus, a 30-year-old veteran scientist at the agency who lost his job last week.“I think when they decided to cut our branch, they didn’t think this through,” he said. “If the agenda was to make America healthy again, all Elon Musk and 47 have done is make this country in a worse position than it already was.“What has occurred has put everybody in danger, not just our families, but their families as well. Some of this needs to be addressed and addressed immediately and reversed.”Kennedy, the US health secretary, said at a press availability Wednesday that administrative roles, not research, was the Doge target. But as healthcare workers piece together the scope of the cuts, it’s clear that the cuts struck bone, not fat.“The US had incredible research infrastructure and was doing incredible research to identify the next cure, to prevent the next disease, and that’s what’s being cut,” said Carmen Marsit, executive associate dean at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health.“I mean, the government has made enormous investments in many of these drugs, in many of the programs that have been developed, and now we’re ready to move them over the finish line and really get them to act. And that’s being stopped.”Widespread cuts impact health and safetyAs federal workers learn of the work that has been stalled and teams have been cut, the impact is slowly becoming clear.Among the cuts are almost everyone at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, which among other things, monitors air quality around fracking drill sites, tests personal protective technology and provides injury data to government agencies for recalling consumer products like defective baby cribs.The office of Smoking and Health at the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion saw its public health work disrupted. As did the division of violence prevention, injury prevention and informatics at the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. Among other things, the division researches gun violence and domestic violence, which both spiked during the pandemic, with the goal of reducing sexual assault and gun deaths.Cuts hit the laboratories researching viral hepatitis and sexually transmitted diseases at National Center for HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention, as well as the Division of HIV Prevention’s communication, surveillance and research branches.The Global Health Center at the CDC saw health informatics, scientific integrity and special initiatives for HIV and tuberculosis decimated.View image in fullscreenAnd amid a larger effort to dismantle environmental protection, workers were cut at the asthma and air quality monitoring and childhood lead prevention teams in the CDC’s environmental health division.Other CDC reductions include the technology branch of the Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics, housing the software engineers and computer scientists supporting a new center created amid the Covid-19 pandemic to help predict disease outbreaks.CDC staff had already been navigating the impact of a deluge of executive orders raining from Trump’s pen since January. At one point, research databases had been taken off line to comply with an order to replace all references to “gender” with “sex,” even in scientific research documentation.But at least then, the CDC had staff ready to fix a problem. Now workers say the problems will emerge and the people who understand how to solve those problems are gone.Insiders say only a skeleton staff remains in dozens of departments and branches, capable only of performative gestures toward the work mandated by law and congressional budgets.Looking forwardStanding across the street from the CDC headquarters on a busy street near Emory University, Atlanta drivers honked in support as congresswoman Williams stood with fired CDC workers at a press conference.Williams called the CDC the “pride of the fighting fifth”, a reference to Trump’s disrespect for the city that began with his conflict with the late congressman John Lewis and Georgia’s fifth congressional district.“It is in these moments of public transgressions against our communities that our reaction in the name of justice and prosperity must be loud and clear,” she said, describing the firings as illegal and unconstitutional. “We fight for the health and decency of our country.“We fight in our communities.” More

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    Cory Booker spoke for 25 hours and didn’t mention Gaza once. That’s no surprise | Judith Levine

    Seven and three-quarters hours into his 25-hour speech on the Senate floor, the New Jersey Democrat Cory Booker uttered the word “Gaza”. He was not talking about the war. He stepped nowhere near the 50,000 Palestinians killed by the Israeli armed forces since 8 October 2023, or the US’s military and political support of the genocide.Rather, Booker was searching for a particularly ludicrous lie from a presidential administration that has told thousands. “There are lies about USAID, like, I don’t know, 5 million condoms going to Gaza or something outrageous,” he said. Considering the other outrageous things Trump has said about Gaza – such as his plan to “clean out” the strip to make room for luxury resorts – the remark felt trivializing.The word “Gaza” came up once more, when the senator mentioned his “humanitarian and peace-building work” with the UN there.It was not until hour 13, more than halfway through his oratorial marathon, that Booker engaged at any length with the subject of Israel and Palestine. This time it was not about the war, either. Instead, he was condemning the Trump administration’s attacks on free speech at universities and its summary deportation of legally resident foreign students who “espouse certain views on topics like Israel and Palestine”.The senator recounted the abduction of Rumeysa Ozturk, the Turkish Tufts University graduate student who was surrounded on the street by masked plainclothes agents, handcuffed and hustled into an unmarked vehicle, then shipped to a hellish Louisiana detention center, where she faces deportation – all apparently because she co-wrote an op-ed in the student newspaper urging the college to divest from Israel. “Her arrest,” said Booker, “looks like a kidnapping that you might expect to see in Moscow rather than in the streets of Boston.” True.Denouncing censorship, the senator self-censored. “Certain views on topics”: he neglected to specify which views. He didn’t say that punishment is being meted out exclusively to critics of Israel and never to its supporters, or that those supporters are supplying homeland security with the names of the critics – in other words, collaborating in the very violations of constitutional rights that he decries.The atrocities Israel has been committing in Gaza since the temporary ceasefire collapsed are arguably the worst yet. Trump is cheering Bibi on like a fan at a wrestling match. His support of Israel’s policies is not only unconsciously racist, like Biden’s, but blatantly racist. Yet few Democrats are saying – or, more importantly, doing – anything to stop him. In fact, a few days after the speech, Booker voted against Bernie Sanders’ resolutions to block $8.8bn in arms sales to the Netanyahu government. Only 14 of his colleagues voted in favor.Perhaps senators are hoping their constituents won’t notice their inaction. Indeed, as the mudslide of executive orders buries immigrants, federal workers, transgender people, science, regulation, the economy, the rule of law and US democracy, it is hard for the press, or anyone else, to take their eyes off what is going on at home. Even when horrors are taking place abroad. Especially if they’re taking place in Palestine.For example: senior national security officials discussed classified military operations on the commercial message app Signal and inadvertently included a reporter on the call. The super-blunder got a name, and Signalgate was all over the news. But on the subject of that discussion – US airstrikes on Houthi militants in Yemen – virtual silence.Only the most tuned-in of US news hounds know who the Houthis are, let alone why we might bomb them: their attacks on ships in the Red Sea, perpetrated in support of the Palestinians. Was the US strike a good idea? Was it consonant with the US’s Middle East strategy – if there is a Middle East strategy? Do the Houthis pose a threat to national security? Is the Yemen bombing an escalation of US involvement in the Gaza war? Don’t ask the mainstream media. Fixated on the incompetence of Trump’s cabinet and the president’s laid-back attitude toward classified information, Signalgate turned a military aggression in a country against which we have not declared war into a domestic story – about Trump.As in Booker’s speech, as last spring, when university administrators called in the police to break up student Palestine-solidarity encampments, the press focused narrowly on individual Americans’ acts in relation to a response to the war in Gaza, rather than on the war itself.Antiwar activists are having a hard time catching anyone’s eyes – including the eyes of those who are sympathetic to their cause. This Saturday, at opposite ends of the National Mall in Washington, two demonstrations occurred simultaneously: the Emergency March for Palestine and the much larger Hands Off rally, one of about 1,500 taking place nationwide.At the former event, a ribbon-like white banner inscribed with the names of the Palestinian dead flowed from hand to hand above the heads of the participants, drawing the crowd together like a seam stretching into the distance. Solemn, elegant, a symbol of the interminable war and the immensity of its damage, it was the kind of mediagenic political spectacle that deserved to be broadcast widely, at least at the end of the newscast. But it can be viewed only on social media.Why did these two events happen at the same time anyway? Was there no communication between Indivisible and the other Hands Off organizers and the groups, including Jewish Voice for Peace and the Palestinian Youth Movement, that planned the Palestine action? Did Indivisible consider the war too divisive for an action seeking to attract everyone from socialists to Republicans worried about their 401ks? Or was Trump’s stance on Israel not on the bill of indictments against him?What the Trump administration is doing to the US and what he is eagerly helping Netanyahu to do to the Palestinians are of a piece. Both are criminal, immoral campaigns against domestic and international law, causing immense suffering. Yes, it’s exhausting to contend with two major catastrophes at once. But we don’t have the time or the privilege to put either one aside.

    Judith Levine is a Brooklyn journalist and essayist, a contributing writer to the Intercept and the author of five books. Her Substack, Today in Fascism, is at judithlevine.substack.com More

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    Trump’s very beautiful tariffs will fix America, masculinity and the family. It said so on Fox News | Arwa Mahdawi

    There’s been a lot of doom-mongering about tariffs recently, hasn’t there? Oh no, my life savings are going to get wiped out and I’m never going to be able to retire! Oh no, grocery prices are going to triple! Oh no, it looks suspiciously as if Donald Trump has used ChatGPT to guide his fiscal policy and now we’re going to see another Great Depression! Moan, moan, moan.While it might be true that much of these predictions are coming from highly credentialed economists and people who tend to know what they’re talking about, I’d like to remind you that there are two sides to every story – and it’s always worth looking at both of them. You’ve already heard from voices who reckon Trump’s tariffs are misguided and dangerous. Now it’s time to focus on the people who support the president’s assessment that tariffs are a “very beautiful thing” that will usher in a new golden age.Where do we find such people? Fox News, of course. The place where up is down, left is right, and Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia if King Trump says that’s the case. As the stock market plunges, Fox News has wheeled out a bunch of pundits and anchors to explain how your savings getting obliterated is a good thing, actually.First, there’s Fox News host Jesse Watters, who is known for making thoughtful and nuanced statements such as: “When a man votes for a woman, he actually transitions into a woman”; and announcing that men shouldn’t eat soup in public because it isn’t “manly”. In a recent segment, Watters said that these tariffs – which will make life more expensive – are actually “going to make it easier for people to start families”. He added: “These tariffs are for the children.” I polled my own child, who is three, on this, and she would rather have an Elsa doll than a tariff, but what does she know, eh?While Watters believes the children are our future, and tariffs will help them lead the way, Free Press columnist Batya Ungar-Sargon reckons Trump’s economic policy is going to fix the “crisis of masculinity”. On Sunday, Ungar-Sargon told Fox News that the US had “shipped jobs that gave men who work with their hands for a living, and rely on brawn and physicality, off to other countries … and imported millions and millions of illegals to work in construction, manufacturing, landscaping, janitorial services – jobs that used to give men access to the American dream.”Ah yes, as the old adage goes: if you’ve got nothing intelligent to say, go on Fox News and demonise immigrants. There are in fact plenty of jobs available in the US that rely on “brawn and physicality”; the problem is many of them wreck your body and don’t pay a living wage. You know the workers who cut quartz slabs for kitchen countertops, for example? They’re predominantly young Latino men who are said to be suffering from lung disease because of the silica dust created by cutting said slabs. Meanwhile, construction workers are more likely to die of a drug overdose than those in any other occupation because the physical nature of the work results in an increased likelihood of injury and the subsequent prescription of addictive opioids. Romanticising these sorts of jobs – particularly when your own job consists of typing on a computer – does absolutely nothing to help men.As I said, it’s always important to look at both sides, even if one side of an argument appears completely demented. Still, I’m squinting very hard and I’m afraid that, despite Ungar-Sagon and Watters’s very persuasive arguments, I can’t see an upside to tariffs. Let’s say that more manufacturing jobs do open up in the US (a process that would take years). It seems unlikely Trump would fight for them to come with decent wages – he recently rescinded one of Joe Biden’s executive orders that raised the minimum wage for federal contractors. I’m not sure doing hard labour for a low salary gives you access to the American dream, unless your dream is going bankrupt from medical bills.But look at me: moan, moan, moan. You know what I’ve just realised my problem is? I think I need to watch more Fox News. And, if you’re feeling down about the state of the world, then you may need to, too. Now that Trump has started posturing over Iran, I can’t wait for Fox pundits to explain how accidentally inviting a nuclear war is going to be great, actually. Nothing like a little bit of radiation poisoning to fix the crisis of masculinity. More

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    ‘What if we didn’t suck?’: the leftist influencer who wants to campaign for Congress differently

    Kat Abughazaleh, a 26-year-old progressive TikTok star, wants to do campaigns differently. So the very online candidate for a solid blue congressional seat in Illinois is channeling her energy into in-person events.The entry fee for her campaign’s kick-off event was a box of tampons or pads to be donated to The Period Collective, a Chicago-based non-profit that distributes free menstrual products to low-income communities in the area. The debut was such a success, she said, they filled her campaign manager’s SUV with donations. (“I want him to get pulled over so bad,” Abughazaleh quipped in a video for her YouTube series How to Run for Congress.) It’s part of her pledge to disrupt politics as usual and run a campaign that promotes mutual aid and community organizing rather than a candidate-centered “vanity project” that relies on expensive TV ads and “grifty” fundraising texts.“This is about trying a new type of campaign,” Abughazaleh said in an interview with the Guardian shortly after launching her campaign, with a video that asked: “What if we didn’t suck?”Abughazaleh’s campaign arrives at a moment when Democrats are furious with their party’s leadership and demanding change to a political status quo long dominated by septuagenarians and octogenarians. Despite a string of recent electoral gains, polls show the party is demoralized: their popularity is at an all-time low and, according to one survey, the overwhelming majority of Democratic voters say elderly leaders should pass the torch to the next generation of leaders. The party is also desperate to expand their presence – and influence – on social media where their carefully crafted messaging often falls flat.Her pitch seems to have struck a chord. In the week after Abughazaleh launched her campaign, she said it had raised more than $300,000 and received more than 1,000 volunteer sign-ups.“I am sick of waiting around for someone to do something,” she said, speaking via videoconference from her apartment in Chicago, where she has a set-up for recordings and interviews. “There is no mythical, perfect candidate that’s coming out of the woodwork to save us.”After Democrats’ devastating 2024 defeat, Abughazaleh has criticized what she describes as the party’s lack of a post-Trump vision and its attachment to political norms and bipartisanship that Republicans have long abandoned.“This is [the result of] just continually not listening to voters, not considering any other solutions, even if they might be different,” she said. “There’s a lot of talk about being a big tent, but it feels like they’re only extending that tent to the right, and they’re kicking the rest of us out.”Abughazaleh, who boasts more than 200,000 followers on TikTok, flatly rejects the view that Democrats’ losses are the result of the party becoming “too woke” or too supportive of trans rights and pro-Palestinian protests. A Texas native and the daughter of a Palestinian immigrant, Abughazaleh displays her keffiyeh – the black and white checkered headscarf that has long symbolized Palestinian rights – prominently in her campaign video. Last year, she was one of the more than 200 content creators credentialed to cover the Democratic national convention in Chicago, where pleas to include a Palestinian American speaker were dismissed.“The Democratic party ignored us during 2024,” she said. “I kept saying, like, talk to one Arab person to just show, like, some empathy on the issue of Gaza, which now we know impacted a lot of voters staying home.”Having worked as an extremism researcher at the liberal watchdog group Media Matters, she warns that authoritarian regimes often begin their power grab by cracking down on LGBTQ+ rights and implored Democrats not to be complicit in the Trump administration’s attacks on trans people.“Democrats deciding that trans people are the reason they lost the election in 2024 – it’s ridiculous. It’s offensive, and frankly, they are contributing to Trump’s authoritarianism,” she said in a recent CNN interview that her campaign clipped and promoted. “A far bigger issue is that we aren’t giving people something to vote for.”Illinois’s ninth district, anchored in Chicago’s North Side and stretching west, is one of the most reliably blue congressional districts in the state and has been represented by Jan Schakowsky since 1999 – the year Abughazaleh was born. In the interview, Abughazaleh said her candidacy was not intended as a “referendum” on the 80-year-old Democrat who has not said yet whether she intends to seek re-election. Nor is it a leftwing challenge, she said, acknowledging Schakowsky’s progressive record.“This is about: we need to try something different,” Abughazaleh said, arguing that the party has lost touch with many of its voters, especially young people. “A lot of these people in Congress never had to go through school shooting drills at school. I did. A lot of them haven’t had to worry about insurance ever in their lives. I don’t have insurance. I use GoodRx as my insurance. These are things that are very common for young people and just not for most people in Congress.”In a statement, Schakowsky said she planned to make a decision on her re-election “soon” but she welcomed “new faces getting involved as we stand up against the Trump administration”.Abughazaleh’s candidacy has also piqued interest on the right. “Now, even longtime liberals are facing the wrath of their own movement,” Mike Marinella, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Campaign said in a statement that claimed Democrats were so astray that they were now “eating their own”.Asked by a reporter whether Abughazaleh’s entry into the race was a worrying sign for Democratic incumbents, Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, said at the time that he was unaware of her campaign and hailed Schakowsky as a “longstanding, stalwart progressive member”.But he also acknowledged that Democrats were confronting “a lot of energy, a lot of angst, a lot of anxiety” in response to Trump’s return to power.Sharing a clip of Jeffries’ response, Abughazaleh replied: “Nice to meet you, Hakeem! It’s time to get familiar.”Despite her desire to campaign differently, there are some old rules of politics that may be harder to break.Abughazaleh is a recent Chicago transplant who doesn’t technically live in the district, at least not yet, a status that has generated accusations of “carpetbagging”. Addressing the criticism in a YouTube video, Abughazaleh said she and her partner moved to the city abruptly last year and took the first furnished apartment they could find – a place “literally one bus stop” away from the ninth district. The move had nothing to do with her desire to run for office, a decision she said she made after Kamala Harris lost the election and she felt the urge to get involved. Abughazaleh said she intends to move in-district, but cited the cost of breaking her lease as part of the reason she hasn’t done so yet.Supporters also raised concerns about her pledge not to spend money on TV ads, which some argued would put her at a disadvantage in a competitive contest. She said her campaign would re-evaluate the policy.Before entering politics, Abughazaleh spent years monitoring Fox News and other rightwing media at Media Matters. She was laid off last year after legal battles with Musk sapped the progressive group of its resources, in a move that the Freedom of the Press Foundation warned at the time was a worrying example of “billionaires and pandering politicians abusing the legal system to retaliate against their critics”. Musk celebrated her job loss on X: “Karma is real.”In that sense, Abughazaleh can empathize with the tens of thousands of government employees who have lost their jobs as part of Musk’s chainsaw-approach to downsizing the federal workforce.“People are pissed off for good reason. They’re losing their jobs, they’re losing their healthcare, they’re losing the people in their community who are being deported without any due process. Of course, they’re mad, and we should be matching that with anger.”After watching Fox News nearly every day for four years, Abughazaleh said there were some lessons Democrats could learn from the right.“Throwing some metaphorical punches, not reacting to everything,” she said. “What if we didn’t just let them set the agenda all the time? What if we came out strong?” More

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    Donald Trump threatens additional 50% tariffs on China over retaliatory levies – US politics live

    Good morning and welcome to the US politics live blog. My name is Tom Ambrose and I’ll be bringing you all the top news lines over the next few hours.We start with news that Donald Trump has threatened to impose an additional 50% tariff on imports from China on Wednesday unless the country rescinds its retaliatory tariffs on the United States by Tuesday.The news comes on the third day of catastrophic market falls around the globe since Trump announced his trade war last Wednesday with tariffs on the US’s trading partners.As part of that move the White House announced it would impose a 34% tariff on Chinese imports. In response, Beijing announced a 34% tariff on US imports.In a statement on Truth Social on Monday morning, the US president said that China enacted the retaliatory tariffs despite his “warning that any country that Retaliates against the U.S. by issuing additional Tariffs” would be “immediately met with new and substantially higher Tariffs, over and above those initially set”.“If China does not withdraw its 34% increase above their already long term trading abuses by tomorrow, April 8th, 2025, the United States will impose ADDITIONAL Tariffs on China of 50%, effective April 9th,” Trump wrote.“Additionally, all talks with China concerning their requested meetings with us will be terminated!” he added. “Negotiations with other countries, which have also requested meetings, will begin taking place immediately.”China’s US embassy said on Monday it would not cave to pressure or threats over the additional 50% tariffs. “We have stressed more than once that pressuring or threatening China is not a right way to engage with us. China will firmly safeguard its legitimate rights and interests,” Liu Pengyu, an embassy spokesperson, told Agence France-Presse.Read the full report here:In other news:

    Donald Trump took questions from reporters during an Oval Office meeting with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu today. In it, Trump indicated that he would attend “direct talks” with Iran on Saturday, that it “would be a good thing” to have the United States “controlling and owning the Gaza Strip”, and that European Union “rules and regulations” are “non-monetary barriers” on trade.

    Shortly after Trump’s meeting with Netanyahu, Iranian officials and state media disputed Trump’s claims that the US is scheduled to participate in “direct talks” with the country this weekend, indicating that the country understood it was entering indirect talks moderated by Omani officials.

    In a 5-4 decision, the US supreme court will allow the Trump administration to continue deporting Venezuelan migrants under an 18th-century wartime law.

    After a phone call with Japanese prime minister Shigeru Ishiba this morning, Trump directed US treasury secretary Scott Bessent to open negotiations with the Japanese government.

    During speeches this afternoon, Democratic leadership in the House and Senate warned that Trump’s tariffs are teeing up “a nationwide recession”.

    After US stock markets opened this morning on bear market territory, the Cboe Volatility Index, also known as Wall Street’s “fear gauge”, reached “crisis levels” as it skyrocketed to its highest level since the Covid-19 pandemic.

    Canada has requested World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute consultations with the US over Trump’s decision to impose a 25% duty on cars and car parts from Canada, the WTO said today.

    Mexico is seeking to avoid retaliatory tariffs against the US but is not ruling them out, Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum said.

    The US Conference of Catholic Bishops is ending a half century of partnerships with the federal government to serve refugees and children, saying the “heartbreaking” decision follows the Trump administration’s abrupt halt to funding for refugee resettlement.

    Health secretary Robert Kennedy Jr will direct the CDC to stop recommending states add fluoride to their drinking water.

    In a social media post, Trump backed the Senate’s budget proposal – lending his support to the plan as House speaker Mike Johnson tees up a vote on the budget later this week despite still not having enough votes to guarantee its passage.
    President Donald Trump’s administration is considering drone strikes on drug cartels in Mexico to combat trafficking across the southern border, NBC News reported on Tuesday.It cited six current and former US military, law enforcement and intelligence officials with knowledge of the matter.The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, met with Donald Trump on Monday for the second time since the US president’s return to office, marking the first effort by a foreign leader to negotiate a deal after Trump announced sweeping tariffs last week.Speaking alongside Trump in the Oval Office, Netanyahu said Israel would eliminate the trade deficit with the US. “We intend to do it very quickly,” he told reporters, adding that he believed Israel could “serve as a model for many countries who ought to do the same”.Trump said the pair had a “great discussion” but did not indicate whether he would reduce the tariffs on Israeli goods. “Maybe not,” he said. “Don’t forget we help Israel a lot. We give Israel $4bn a year. That’s a lot.”Trump denied reports that he was considering a 90-day pause on his tariff rollout. “We’re not looking at that,” he told reporters. “We have many, many countries that are coming to negotiate deals with us, and there are going to be fair deals.”European stock markets have risen on Tuesday in early signs of a rebound from the punishing global sell-off triggered by US trade tariffs.Stock markets in the UK and across the EU were in positive territory in early trading on Tuesday, as some investor optimism returned after heavy falls as a result of Donald Trump’s “liberation day’” tariff announcements last Wednesday.London’s FTSE 100 index of blue-chip stocks was 106 points higher, up 1.4%, at 7811. In Frankfurt, Germany’s Dax was 1.5% higher while France’s CAC jumped by 1.4%. The pan-European Stoxx 600 index rose 1.4%.On the FTSE, theindustrial companies Rolls-Royce and BAE Systems were the biggest risers, up 5% and 4% respectively, followed by miners, oil companies and banks.Investors are hoping that the market could stabilise as reports have emerged that the US Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, will lead trade talks with Tokyo, in a sign that the Trump administration will be open to negotiate on tariffs.The news drove a modest rebound in Asian markets overnight, led by Japanese stocks. Tokyo’s Nikkei index recovered by 5.6%, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index rose by 1.6% after its steepest drop since the 1997 Asian financial crisis on Monday.Good morning and welcome to the US politics live blog. My name is Tom Ambrose and I’ll be bringing you all the top news lines over the next few hours.We start with news that Donald Trump has threatened to impose an additional 50% tariff on imports from China on Wednesday unless the country rescinds its retaliatory tariffs on the United States by Tuesday.The news comes on the third day of catastrophic market falls around the globe since Trump announced his trade war last Wednesday with tariffs on the US’s trading partners.As part of that move the White House announced it would impose a 34% tariff on Chinese imports. In response, Beijing announced a 34% tariff on US imports.In a statement on Truth Social on Monday morning, the US president said that China enacted the retaliatory tariffs despite his “warning that any country that Retaliates against the U.S. by issuing additional Tariffs” would be “immediately met with new and substantially higher Tariffs, over and above those initially set”.“If China does not withdraw its 34% increase above their already long term trading abuses by tomorrow, April 8th, 2025, the United States will impose ADDITIONAL Tariffs on China of 50%, effective April 9th,” Trump wrote.“Additionally, all talks with China concerning their requested meetings with us will be terminated!” he added. “Negotiations with other countries, which have also requested meetings, will begin taking place immediately.”China’s US embassy said on Monday it would not cave to pressure or threats over the additional 50% tariffs. “We have stressed more than once that pressuring or threatening China is not a right way to engage with us. China will firmly safeguard its legitimate rights and interests,” Liu Pengyu, an embassy spokesperson, told Agence France-Presse.Read the full report here:In other news:

    Donald Trump took questions from reporters during an Oval Office meeting with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu today. In it, Trump indicated that he would attend “direct talks” with Iran on Saturday, that it “would be a good thing” to have the United States “controlling and owning the Gaza Strip”, and that European Union “rules and regulations” are “non-monetary barriers” on trade.

    Shortly after Trump’s meeting with Netanyahu, Iranian officials and state media disputed Trump’s claims that the US is scheduled to participate in “direct talks” with the country this weekend, indicating that the country understood it was entering indirect talks moderated by Omani officials.

    In a 5-4 decision, the US supreme court will allow the Trump administration to continue deporting Venezuelan migrants under an 18th-century wartime law.

    After a phone call with Japanese prime minister Shigeru Ishiba this morning, Trump directed US treasury secretary Scott Bessent to open negotiations with the Japanese government.

    During speeches this afternoon, Democratic leadership in the House and Senate warned that Trump’s tariffs are teeing up “a nationwide recession”.

    After US stock markets opened this morning on bear market territory, the Cboe Volatility Index, also known as Wall Street’s “fear gauge”, reached “crisis levels” as it skyrocketed to its highest level since the Covid-19 pandemic.

    Canada has requested World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute consultations with the US over Trump’s decision to impose a 25% duty on cars and car parts from Canada, the WTO said today.

    Mexico is seeking to avoid retaliatory tariffs against the US but is not ruling them out, Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum said.

    The US Conference of Catholic Bishops is ending a half century of partnerships with the federal government to serve refugees and children, saying the “heartbreaking” decision follows the Trump administration’s abrupt halt to funding for refugee resettlement.

    Health secretary Robert Kennedy Jr will direct the CDC to stop recommending states add fluoride to their drinking water.

    In a social media post, Trump backed the Senate’s budget proposal – lending his support to the plan as House speaker Mike Johnson tees up a vote on the budget later this week despite still not having enough votes to guarantee its passage. More