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    Trump’s ambush of South Africa’s president shows how low the US has fallen | Justice Malala

    Donald Trump should really try harder.When the US president unexpectedly and dramatically dimmed the lights inside the Oval Office on Wednesday and played a video clip of the alleged burial site of white victims of “genocide”, he meant to embarrass and humiliate his guest, Cyril Ramaphosa, the president of South Africa. It was his “gotcha!” moment after four months of relentless social media attacks, executive orders, boycotts, and threats of economic and diplomatic sanctions.As the video played, a smug Trump claimed it was proof of “white genocide” in South Africa and mumbled: “It’s a terrible sight, never seen anything like it.”It was all lies. The crosses in the video did not mark actual graves. It was a memorial made in September 2020 after two white people were killed on their farm a week earlier. The crosses were meant to represent farmers who had been killed over the years. The idea that it is “genocide” has been debunked so many times over the past 10 years that it is extraordinary that the US president is not ashamed to repeat it in public. The state department under Trump released a report in late 2020 pointing out that, according to official South African statistics for the 2018-2019 period, “farm killings represented only 0.2 percent of all killings in the country (47 of 21,022)”.So here we have a man who has the mighty US state department, the wily Central Intelligence Agency and numerous other resources at his beck and call to help him discern the truth, relying on a badly made propaganda video sourced from a racist, rightwing, anonymous South African X account. Instead of embarrassing Ramaphosa on Wednesday, Trump merely illustrated just how low the US has fallen.His poorly produced Oval Office show, taken with the 28 February attempt to humiliate Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, demonstrates that the country is now run by a man so steeped in discredited online conspiracy theories, so uncritical in his thinking, so poor in his grasp of global affairs, so careless in his exercise of power, that it is incredible that he is one of the most powerful figures in the world today. Such a figure’s power heralds instability and even danger for the world.The ambush of Ramaphosa is therefore not just spectacle. It is illumination. It underlines and emphasizes that Trump’s US is a fact-free, science-free, reality-television production lot whose leader daily defies court orders, alienates supporters of democracy, and tries to dismantle key practices such as the right to due process. It is an ugly place in which facts mean nothing and lies reign supreme.I was born under apartheid and lived under that heinous system until it was defeated in 1994. Those first 24 years were lived in Pretoria, in an impoverished village just an hour from Musk’s sumptuous family mansion in the suburb of Waterkloof. When I was teenager I walked the streets of Musk’s suburb, working as a “garden boy” or caddie, constantly harassed by police asking for my “pass book” – papers allowing me to be in the area designated “whites only”.I know apartheid. I grew up with it, breathed it and lived it every day. It is sickening to hear Trump compare the free, non-racist, democratic country that is South Africa today to the violent, murderous, hateful, system declared a “crime against humanity” by the United Nations in 1966.I know South Africa. I grew up in its brutal, cruel, divided past. I thrived in its hopeful democracy. I was one of the chroniclers of its political descent in the 2010s as its institutions came under assault from a leader with anti-democratic instincts. I visited my mother there last week. There is no genocide in South Africa. Yet, Trump recently posted on his Truth Social that he would not visit South Africa for the G20 summit when “white genocide” was happening there. Just more than 430,000 Americans visited South Africa in 2023, up 37.4% from 2022. I know of not a single one who can point to a genocide happening in the country.This is the president of the United States peddling lies.One is therefore not surprised by the numerous assaults on the American constitution by this administration. The kidnapping of student activists, the trampling upon of citizens’ constitutional rights, the assaults on institutions such as the judiciary, the shamelessness of politicians and their families and cronies enriching themselves – all this is typical of these kinds of corrupt regimes.What is going on in America? Kseniia Petrova, the Harvard Medical School researcher held for months in Louisiana for failing to declare samples of frog embryos she had carried from France at the request of her boss, told the New York Times: “I feel like something is happening generally in America … Something bad is happening. I don’t think everybody understands.”Petrova, who fled Putin’s murderous regime as darkness fell over Russia following the invasion of Ukraine, understands the profound cloud hanging over the US. Those of us who grew up in regimes such as apartheid understand this ominous period.Trump’s actions are scary enough. It is, however, the silence of the US as assaults on American constitutional principles unfold that is most disturbing.This is not a lament for South Africa and how badly it is being treated by the US. It is a lament for myself, for those of us who grew up under systems such as apartheid believing that the US would uphold the rule of law, stand up for truth and speak up for these principles, and for a better world. A monarchical Trump, defying the supreme court and abandoning fact-based decision-making, imperils it all. With every student bundled by masked men into a van, this vaunted republic becomes smaller, lesser. It becomes Putin’s Russia, it becomes something akin to the way I lived under apartheid – a place where a contrarian thought led to detention without trial, to disappearance and for many, to death.There was a telling moment in Wednesday’s interaction when Trump revealed himself. It was a moment which reminded one that corruption, or the smell of it, now sits in the White House. Trump had just referred to a reporter as a “jerk” and an “idiot” because he had confronted him about why he was accepting the “gift” of a jet from Qatar to use as Air Force One.“Why did a country give an airplane to the United States air force? So they could help us out, because we need an Air Force One,” Trump fumed.Ramaphosa quipped: “I’m sorry I don’t have a plane to give you.”Trump didn’t detect the disdain in Ramaphosa’s voice and doubled down on the corruption inherent in accepting such a gift.“I wish you did. I would take it. If your country offered the United States air force a plane, I would take it,” Trump said.And there was the emperor, naked: an unethical leader who worships the dollar and has no concept of how corrupt his actions look to the rest of the world. This is what Wednesday was all about: an America led by a man susceptible to lies and lacking in a moral centre.Wednesday was not about South Africa. It was all about America today.

    Justice Malala is a political commentator and author of The Plot To Save South Africa: The Week Mandela Averted Civil War and Forged a New Nation More

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    Trump’s barbarism is turning his biggest strength into a liability | Osita Nwanevu

    If you can bear to hear it, there are still more than 1,300 days remaining in the Trump administration. That’s an interminably long time given all the havoc the president has been able to wreak since January alone; the chaos and cruelty of the term so far also happen to have used up his political capital remarkably quickly. The New York Times average of polls, which found him at 52% approval on inauguration day, had him at 51% disapproval on Wednesday. That collapse is less a problem for Trump specifically ⁠– assuming, perhaps optimistically, that he won’t appear on a ballot again ⁠– than it is for the Republican party, which will have to answer for the mess he’s made in next year’s midterms and beyond. And one of the challenges they seem likely to face is a changed public opinion landscape on immigration ⁠– a strength that Trump’s barbarism, just as in his first term, seems to be turning into a liability.While it remains his strongest issue, polls have shown the public’s confidence in Trump on immigration declining steadily since January ⁠– averages suggest the public is newly and evenly split on his handling of it and some polls taken around the 100-day mark even found an outright majority of Americans disapproving. It’s no mystery why. The shock-and-awe campaign the administration is waging against immigrants legal and not has produced a steady stream of headlines that sound awful to all but Stephen Miller and the nativist fanatics driving Trump’s agenda. The deportation of a four-year-old citizen suffering from a rare form of cancer. The end of temporary protected status for 9,000 Afghan refugees even as the administration welcomes Afrikaners supposedly fleeing “white genocide”, a myth most voters who don’t frequent white supremacist forums are probably unfamiliar with. The use of the immigration enforcement apparatus to pursue and persecute critics of Israel’s war in Gaza. Even as voters succumbed to a panic over the migrant surge under Biden, moves like this under Trump and a public backlash to them were inevitable.What should be especially dismaying to the president’s supporters ⁠– and especially heartening to the rest of us ⁠– is the administration’s absolute failure to win over the public on the Kilmar Ábrego García case. That battle was probably lost as soon as it was conceded that he was deported by mistake, but it’s notable that none of the efforts to muddy the waters and obfuscate the main issues at hand with lies and character assassination have worked. The escalatory rhetoric ⁠– Ábrego García is not an innocent man but a member of MS-13, not merely a member of MS-13 but one of “the top MS-13 members”, not merely one of “the top MS-13 members” but a terrorist ⁠– has been almost comic. The complaints that the media has been stretching the facts of the case have been pathetic. “Based on the sensationalism of many of the people in this room,” the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, fumed last month, “you would think we deported a candidate for father of the year”.The administration was surely pleased when the domestic violence claims made by Ábrego García’s wife several years ago, which she dismisses now, began picking up traction in the press. And it is just as surely disappointed that a majority of Americans believe Ábrego García should be returned to America anyway ⁠– which suggests that the principles at stake in the case matter more and matter to more people than cynics might assume. Wholly irrespective of who Ábrego García is ⁠or what he might have done – and there remains no solid evidence at all that he belongs to MS-13 – he is entitled to due process under the law and fair treatment by our government. The fact that many Americans remain committed to this ideal here ⁠– despite the president’s best efforts to render Ábrego García unsympathetic, despite all that’s been done to frame undocumented immigration as an invasion and a society-breaking crisis ⁠– is one of the brightest glimmers of light against the pall Donald Trump and the right have cast over this country.Bright as it is, there are Democrats who are determined not to see it. Infamously in Axios last month, one anonymous House member ⁠– some nameless, brainless invertebrate, croaking from the bottom of a boot ⁠– warned the party against defending immigrants like Ábrego García or the makeup artist Andry Hernández Romero, also deported as a gang member for having tattoos. Trump, they said, was “setting a trap for the Democrats, and like usual we’re falling for it […] we’re going to go take the bait for one hairdresser”. In an appearance on Fox News Radio, the Democratic congressman Henry Cuellar argued that Ábrego García, in particular, was “not the right case” for Democrats to take up. “This is not the right issue to talk about due process,” he said. “This is not the right person to be saying that we need to bring him back to the United States.”Fortunately, most Americans disagree. And there is an opportunity here, for those with the good sense and courage to take it, to use the public’s dismay at the Ábrego García case and the realities of Trump’s immigration agenda to sell it on an alternative vision for our immigration policy and an alternative set of culprits for the problems immigrants have proven easy scapegoats for.Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents supposedly on the prowl for the thugs and thieves who’ve ruined communities and degraded our public infrastructure would be better off kicking down the doors of Congress than smashing the windows of asylum seekers. And, of course, if preserving law and order means that criminals who are sucking our public resources dry and who pose a danger to women ought to be dealt with harshly, we should insist on bringing the convict, grifter, and accused rapist in the White House to justice. The chief priority of his administration is terrorizing people for committing the crime of coming to this country and working harder for it than he ever has. His agenda here is corrosive to our values. It is degrading to our society. It materially profits no one. In important ways, it hurts us all.More and more Americans are wising up to this. Fewer and fewer are willing to stand for it.

    Osita Nwanevu is a Guardian US columnist More

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    This doctor calls LGBTQ+ rights ‘satanic’. He could now undo healthcare for millions

    Steven Hotze, a Republican donor from Texas, has spent decades fighting against LGBTQ+ rights, with campaigns seeking to roll back protections for people he has deemed “termites”, “morally degenerate” and “satanic”.The Houston-area physician is not well-known in mainstream politics, and his efforts targeting queer and trans people have generally been local, with limited impact.His latest cause could be different. Hotze, 74, has sued the federal government to roll back healthcare coverage for pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), the HIV prevention medication. The case is now before the US supreme court, which is expected to rule in the coming weeks. A decision in his favor could upend healthcare access for LGBTQ+ people across the country – and derail a wide array of preventive treatments for tens of millions in the process.“People will die,” said Kae Greenberg, staff attorney with the Center for HIV Law and Policy, which filed a brief in the case. “Preventive healthcare saves lives, and this case is about whose lives we consider worth protecting. It’s about cutting off people’s care based on them being gay or substance users or living their lives in a way the plaintiffs do not approve of. It’s using the law to legitimize bigotry.”The case, Kennedy v Braidwood, originated with Hotze’s Christian healthcare firm, Braidwood Management, which filed a lawsuit in 2020 objecting to the federal requirement that his company’s insurance plan cover PrEP. Braidwood, another Christian business and two individuals argued the daily PrEP medications “facilitate and encourage homosexual behavior”, saying the government violated their religious beliefs by making them support “sexual promiscuity”.Braidwood challenged the requirement under the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, that insurers and group health plans cover preventive services, a provision that includes diabetes and cancer screenings, medications to reduce heart disease risks, contraception and vaccinations. Along with opposing PrEP, Hotze explicitly objected to STI screenings, counseling for alcohol use and childhood obesity interventions.A Texas district court sided with Braidwood, saying the US violated the firm’s religious freedom. The ruling also found that a taskforce of medical experts that recommended the preventive services covered by the ACA was unconstitutional because the experts hadn’t been confirmed by the Senate, and therefore health plans should not be required to cover the care.The US government appealed the ruling on the taskforce, which is the issue now before the supreme court. The coverage mandates have remained in effect as the case has progressed, though the individual plaintiffs have been shielded from covering the services. The Trump administration has continued to defend the taskforce’s constitutionality, and the supreme court is not weighing religious objections.If the supreme court sides with Braidwood, it could lead to widespread loss of access to free preventive healthcare, with one study finding 39 million people received the threatened services. A 2023 Yale study estimated the loss of free PrEP could result in more than 2,000 preventable HIV infections within one year.The outcome of the case could threaten coverage for every service recommended by the taskforce, not just the provisions opposed by the right. “We’re talking about people who cannot afford this care, who will have to choose between a mammogram and rent,” added Susan Polan, associate executive director of the American Public Health Association.A decades-long missionThe high-stakes case, and Hotze’s role in it, have flown under the radar. But research from the progressive watchdog organization Accountable.US, which shared its findings with the Guardian, reveal the rightwing activist’s long history of pushing fringe ideologies before getting a signature cause before the supreme court.Hotze and his lawyers did not respond to requests for comment.In 1982, 31-year-old Hotze launched a petition in the city of Austin to legalize housing discrimination against gay people, the AP reported at the time. Heading a group called Austin Citizens for Decency, Hotze called gay residents “criminals” and “sodomites”, saying: “The issue is not housing. The issue is whether we allow our city council to grant public sanction to homosexual activity.” He said protecting LGBTQ+ people from discrimination is “like thieves or murderers trying to gain political power”. Hotze said in one interview he was less concerned about “property rights” and more worried about the “deviant, perverted lifestyle”. Voters overwhelmingly rejected his referendum.In 1985, Hotze backed a group of eight “anti-homosexual” Houston city council candidates identified as the “straight slate”. On ABC News, he stated, “We’re intolerant of those who participate in homosexual activity.” All eight candidates lost.Hotze runs the Hotze Health & Wellness Center, which has been in operation since 1989; Braidwood is his management firm that employs the center’s staff. He has marketed hormone therapies to treat a wide range of conditions and sold a vitamin product called Skinny Pak, the New York Times reported. Over the years, he has donated extensively to the Republican party and Texas politicians, including Senator Ted Cruz.Hotze’s public anti-LGBTQ+ activism picked up after the supreme court legalized gay marriage nationwide in 2015, with Hotze launching a “Faith Family Freedom Tour” and using the same homophobic language from his activism decades prior. Hotze said he was fighting a “wicked, evil movement” that celebrates anal sex, telling the Houston Chronicle: “Kids will be encouraged to practice sodomy in kindergarten.”View image in fullscreenDuring the tour, he said “satanic cults” were behind gay rights, brandished a sword during a speech, and likened his fight to battling Nazis, the Texas Observer reported. That year, he and other rightwing activists successfully campaigned to repeal an equal rights Houston ordinance.At a 2016 evangelical conference, Hotze was filmed describing the LGBTQ+ rights movement as “termites [that] get into the wood of the house and … eat away at the moral fabric”. In 2017, Hotze rallied for Roy Moore, the failed Alabama senate candidate accused of sexually coercing teenagers in the 1970s.Hotze has also recently promoted anti-trans causes, testifying in 2023 in favor of a school district policy requiring staff to notify parents if students change their names or pronouns. Trans people, he said, “have a reprobate, perverted and morally degenerate mind”.His ACA case was not his first effort to undo federal civil rights protections. In a case that began in 2018, Braidwood sued the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), challenging a ban on anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination in the workforce. Braidwood said it enforces a “sex-specific dress code that disallows gender-non-conforming behavior”, the courts summarized, prohibiting women from wearing ties and men from wearing nail polish. Hotze said he would not employ candidates engaged in “sexually immoral” behaviors.In 2023, an appeals court ruled that a religious freedom law protected Hotze’s rights to enforce dress codes and refuse to hire LGBTQ+ people.In that case, and in the one now before the supreme court, Hotze has been represented by America First Legal, the rightwing legal group co-founded by Stephen Miller, Donald Trump’s influential adviser. The organization has brought a string of lawsuits, including efforts to undo trans rights and complaints accusing companies of discriminating against white men.Hotze has also been represented by Jonathan Mitchell, an anti-abortion lawyer behind Texas’s so-called “bounty hunter law” that allows private citizens to sue providers or people who “aid or abet” the procedure.America First Legal and Mitchell did not respond to inquiries.Gabbi Shilcusky, Accountable.US senior investigative specialist, noted that Hotze’s supreme court case was founded on hypotheticals: “He’s not hiring men who wear nail polish or are asking for PrEP. This is manufactured to build upon his most fringe beliefs and not about actual issues he’s being confronted with in his company.”Hotze has in recent years made headlines outside of anti-LGBTQ+ advocacy. In 2020, during George Floyd protests, he left a voicemail for the Texas governor urging that he “kill the son of a bitches”, referring to demonstrators. Later that year, the Food and Drug Administration sent his company a warning advising it was promoting “unapproved and misbranded products” for Covid.In 2022, Hotze was charged with unlawful restraint and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon in an elections dispute. Hotze hired a contractor who claimed a local air conditioner repairman was holding fraudulent ballots in his truck. The contractor ran his vehicle into the man’s car and held him at gunpoint, according to prosecutors, who said the voter fraud claims were false. Hotze was later charged with aggravated robbery and organized criminal activity from the incident.View image in fullscreenHotze pleaded not guilty, and this week, a newly elected DA dropped the charges, accusing his predecessor of bringing a politically motivated case. The criminal case did not stop his attacks on voting rights; in October, just before the election, he filed a lawsuit against the local registrar seeking to invalidate tens of thousands of voters.It’s unclear if Hotze will succeed at the supreme court. In oral arguments last month, some justices, including conservatives, appeared skeptical of the arguments by Hotze’s lawyers. The case hinges on whether the taskforce members who make ACA recommendations are akin to department heads requiring Senate approval or are “inferior” officers. Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett at times appeared sympathetic to the notion that the experts are not sufficiently independent so as to merit a congressional vote.The case is part of longstanding attacks against the ACA, with legal strategies focused on religious claims as well as objections to how the law was crafted. Hotze previously challenged the ACA in a failed lawsuit that began in 2013, an effort he promoted with a bizarre original song called God Fearing Texans Stop Obamacare.Even if Hotze fails, the threats to PrEP and LGBTQ+ healthcare will continue, said Jeremiah Johnson, executive director of advocacy group PrEP4All, noting the Trump administration’s continued funding cuts and dismantling of HIV prevention, and ongoing rightwing efforts to attack civil rights under the guise of religious liberty.The case also comes as the FDA is considering a new injectable PrEP considered a major prevention breakthrough, he said. “We’re at the precipice of science delivering real pathways to ending this epidemic, but if we turn our backs now on all these protections, including private insurance through the ACA, we’re not just going to backtrack on progress, we’re going to lose out on that promise for the future.” More

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    Republicans are dodging fired federal staff: ‘They will not even look in our direction’

    Workers hit by the Trump administration’s sweeping cuts of federal government jobs, programs and services turned to congressional Republicans for help. But Republicans don’t want to talk about it, according to people who have tried to reach the politicians.Sabrina Valenti, a former budget analyst for the Coastal Wetland Planning, Protection, and Restoration Act at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), was fired in February, then reinstated, and fired again weeks later.She started contacting Republicans in the Senate and the House of Representatives to express concern. “They represent hundreds of thousands or millions of people and those people deserve a safe and healthy life,” said Valenti. “They are allowing the people who create that safe and healthy life to be fired.”But as she worked with other fired federal workers in the Fork Off Coalition to reach members of Congress, the responses ranged “from indifference and being ignored to outright hostility”, Valenti claimed.Senators Josh Hawley and Chuck Grassley “just will not even look in our direction” in the hallways, she said. Hawley and Grassley’s offices did not respond to requests for comment.The House of Representatives narrowly passed Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful” budget bill on Thursday, which would extend tax cuts for individuals and corporations; sunset clean energy incentives enacted under Joe Biden; relieve taxes on tips, overtime and car loan interest; and fund construction of a wall along the border with Mexico, and facilities for mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.To offset its costs, the GOP has approved funding cuts and new work requirements for Medicaid, which provides healthcare for poor and disabled Americans, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as Snap, which provides food benefits to low-income families. Analysts fear these changes will bar millions from these benefits.Jeanne Weaver worked as an aide for 35 years at the Ebensburg Center in Ebensburg, Pennsylvania, one of two state-operated facilities for adults with intellectual disabilities, and is worried about the facility’s future .But when Weaver, now president of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Retiree Chapter 13, tried to reach her representative in Congress, the Republican John Joyce, she had no luck. Even when she traveled to Washington, she was unable to get a meeting.View image in fullscreen“I’ve called, I’ve left him messages,” Weaver told the Guardian. “If he votes for cuts for Medicaid, I will make sure everyone knows him, because they don’t know him now. He’s hiding out, not doing what his constituents want him to do.”After the Guardian went to Joyce for comment, Weaver heard from a member of his staff. His office declined to comment. On Sunday, after House Republicans advanced Trump’s tax cut and spending package out of a key committee, Joyce claimed the legislation would “strengthen, secure, and preserve” Medicaid for “future generations of Americans who need and deserve these benefits”.John Kennedy, senator for Louisiana, did speak with Valenti – a graduate of Louisiana State University – about her program at Noaa, and its impact on Louisiana’s coast.“He seemed really certain that if there was any, if any mistakes were made in the past, that they would be able to go back and reverse them,” Valenti said. Kennedy’s office did not respond to requests for comment.Other workers reliant on federal funds that have been cut, or are facing cuts, have also been pressuring their elected officials to address their worries.Jesse Martinez, a teacher and co-president of the La Crosse Education Association in La Crosse, Wisconsin, expressed concern about cuts to education, Medicaid and Snap benefits to staff working for the Republican representative Derrick Van Orden.The staff claimed Van Orden would not vote for cuts to Medicaid or Snap benefits, according to Martinez – but he voted for a budget blueprint that included cuts.“In the school district of La Crosse, we receive approximately $500,000 per year in Medicaid funding. We use that to pay for speech and language pathologists in our schools, occupational and physical therapists across the district and school nurses in our schools,” said Martinez. “Losing that funding would be devastating to our kids.”Van Orden argued in a statement that “being fiscally responsible and protecting benefits for vulnerable Americans can exist in the same universe”, and a spokesperson for Van Orden denied the budget bill cuts Medicaid.Stephanie Teachman, an administrative assistant at the State University of New York at Fredonia, and president of Suny Fredonia Local 607, an affiliate union of AFSCME, fears that cuts could threaten the future of the only hospital in her rural area, Brooks Memorial, and the university, which is one of the largest employers in the area.But attempts to speak with her congressional representative, the Republican representative Nick Langworthy, have not elicited any responses, she said.“I’ve been to Langworthy’s office and he’s never there. We’ve written letters to him, and he doesn’t respond,” she added. “All of us deserve to have a voice and be heard. It’s unfortunate the people we vote for aren’t listening to us and they don’t seem to care what people of their districts are up to or what life is like for us.”View image in fullscreenA spokesperson for Langworthy claimed his office did not hear from Teachman until a few hours before a debate on the budget bill. “Not one penny is being cut from eligible Americans who rely on Medicaid,” the spokesperson claimed in an email, accusing Democrats of “dishonest fearmongering”.In Washington, those urging Republicans to resist cuts to key services have struggled to make headway. Senator Bill Cassidy’s office “kicked us out”, said Valenti, who noted the senator Katie Britt of Alabama called Capitol police on some fired federal workers, and that the Indiana Republican senator Jim Banks called a fired health and human services worker, Mack Schroeder, a “clown” who “probably deserved it”.Senators Britt, Cassidy and Banks’s respective offices did not respond to requests for comment. Senator Banks declined to apologize for his remarks following the incident and said he “won’t back down”.Four of the largest public sector unions in the US – AFSCME, the National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the Service Employees International Union, collectively representing 8.3 million workers – have launched a new campaign to target GOP representatives over the cuts.The drive includes a $2m ad campaign across 18 congressional districts held by Republicans, including in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa and Arizona.“Their goal is the gutting of the schools and hospitals that help working Americans have a shot at a better life. And for what? To pay for tax cuts for billionaires,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the AFT. “These ads send a message to Congress about the human toll of the administration’s attacks.” More

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    Mahmoud Khalil finally allowed to hold one-month-old son for the first time

    Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate and detained Palestinian activist, was finally allowed to hold his infant son for the first time Thursday – one month after he was born – thanks to a federal judge who blocked the Trump administration’s efforts to keep the father and infant separated by a Plexiglass barrier.The visit came before a scheduled immigration hearing for Khalil, a legal permanent resident who has been detained in a Louisiana jail since 8 March.The question of whether Khalil would be permitted to hold his newborn child, Deen, or forced to meet him through a barrier had sparked days of legal fighting, triggering claims by Khalil’s attorneys that he is being subject to political retaliation by the government.On Wednesday night, a federal judge in New Jersey, Michael Farbiarz, intervened, allowing the meeting to go forward Thursday morning, according to Khalil’s attorneys.The judge’s order came after federal officials said this week they would oppose his attorney’s effort to secure what’s known as a “contact visit” among Khalil; his wife, Noor Abdalla; and their son.Instead, they said Khalil could be allowed a “non-contact” visit, meaning he would be separated from his wife and son by a plastic divider and not allowed to touch them.“Granting Khalil this relief of family visitation would effectively grant him a privilege that no other detainee receives,” justice department officials wrote in a court filing on Wednesday. “Allowing Dr Abdalla and a newborn to attend a legal meeting would turn a legal visitation into a family one.”Brian Acuna, acting director of the Ice field office in New Orleans, said in an accompanying affidavit that it would be “unsafe to allow Mr Khalil’s wife and newborn child into a secured part of the facility”.In their own legal filings, Khalil’s attorneys described the government’s refusal to grant the visit as “further evidence of the retaliatory motive behind Mr Khalil’s arrest and faraway detention”, adding that his wife and son were “the farthest thing from a security risk”.They noted that Abdalla had traveled nearly 1,500 miles (2,400km) to the remote detention center in hopes of introducing their son to his father.“This is not just heartless,” Abdalla said of the government’s position. “It is deliberate violence, the calculated cruelty of a government that tears families apart without remorse. And I cannot ignore the echoes of this pain in the stories of Palestinian families, torn apart by Israeli military prisons and bombs, denied dignity, denied life.”Khalil was the first person to be arrested under Donald Trump’s promised crackdown on protesters against the war in Gaza and is one of the few who have remained in custody as his case winds its way through both immigration and federal court.Federal authorities have not accused Khalil of a crime, but they have sought to deport him on the basis that his prominent role in protests against Israel’s war in Gaza may have undermined US foreign policy interests.His request to attend his son’s 21 April birth was denied last month by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.In a letter to his son published in the Guardian, Khalil wrote after the birth: “My heart aches that I could not hold you in my arms and hear your first cry, that I could not unfurl your clenched fists or change your first diaper.“My absence is not unique,” Khalil added. “Like other Palestinian fathers, I was separated from you by racist regimes and distant prisons. In Palestine, this pain is part of daily life … The grief your mother and I feel is but one drop in a sea of sorrow that Palestinian families have drowned in for generations.”Farbiarz is currently considering Khalil’s petition for release as he appeals a Louisiana immigration judge’s ruling that he can be deported from the country.On Thursday, Khalil appeared before that immigration judge, Jamee Comans, as his attorneys presented testimony about the risks he would face if he were to be deported to Syria, where he grew up in a refugee camp, or Algeria, where he maintains citizenship through a distant relative.His attorneys submitted testimony from Columbia University faculty and students attesting to Khalil’s character.In one declaration, Joseph Howley, a classics professor, said he had first introduced Khalil to a university administrator to serve as a spokesperson on behalf of campus protesters, describing him as an “upstanding, principled and well-respected member of our community.“I have never known Mahmoud to espouse any anti-Jewish sentiments or prejudices, and have heard him forcefully reject antisemitism on multiple occasions,” Howley wrote.No ruling regarding the appeal was made on Thursday. Comans gave lawyers in the case until 5pm 2 June to submit written closing arguments.Columbia’s interim president, Claire Shipman, acknowledged Mahmoud’s absence from Wednesday’s commencement ceremony and said many students were “mourning” that he couldn’t be present. Her speech drew loud boos from some graduates, along with chants of “free Mahmoud”.Abdalla accepted a diploma for Khalil on his behalf at an alternative graduation ceremony on Sunday.In the 75 days since his arrest, at least three other international college students have been released from detention after weeks of legal action by their attorneys. They include Rümeysa Öztürk, Mohsen Mahdawi and Badar Khan Suri.All three have been targeted for deportation by the Trump administration, and have challenged the legality of their detentions with a string of motions and legal briefs in federal district courts. The judges in all of their cases agreed to release them while their immigration court cases played out. More

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    Trump’s evidence of South Africa ‘white genocide’ contains images from Democratic Republic of Congo

    The evidence of supposed mass killings of white South Africans presented by Donald Trump in a tense White House meeting on Wednesday were in some cases images from the Democratic Republic of Congo, while footage shown during the meeting was falsely portrayed as depicting “burial sites”.“These are all white farmers that are being buried,” said Trump, holding up a print-out of an article accompanied by a picture during the contentious Oval Office meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.The picture accompanying the article was in fact a screengrab of a video published by Reuters on 3 February and subsequently verified by the news agency’s fact check team, showing humanitarian workers lifting body bags in the Congolese city of Goma. The image was pulled from Reuters footage shot after deadly battles with Rwanda-backed M23 rebels.The White House did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.At another point in the meeting, Trump ambushed Ramaphosa by playing a video that he claimed proved genocide is being committed against white people in South Africa. Within it was footage that Trump claimed showed the graves of more than a thousand white farmers, marked by white crosses.The footage – taken at a highway connecting the small towns of Newcastle and Normandein in South Africa – in fact showed a memorial site, and not graves.Rob Hoatson, who set up the memorial to capture public attention, told the BBC it was not a burial site.“It was a memorial. It was not a permanent memorial that was erected. It was a temporary memorial,” he said. The memorial was setup in the aftermath of a murder of two Afrikaner farmers in the local community.The video played by Trump on Wednesday contained several falsehoods and inaccuracies, but was intended to back the president’s offer of “refuge” to persecuted white farmers, which has angered the South African government which disputes the allegations. The White House claimed it showed evidence of genocide of white farmers in South Africa. This conspiracy theory, which has circulated among the far-right for years, is based on false claims.The video prominently featured Julius Malema, a firebrand politician known for his radical rhetoric. He was seen in several clips wearing the red beret of his populist, Marxist-inspired Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party and chanting calls to “cut the throat of whiteness” as well as a controversial anti-apartheid song “Kill the Boer, kill the farmer”.Trump falsely said he was a government official, insinuating his inflammatory slogans reflected an official policy against South Africa’s white minority.Malema is an opposition politician who gained prominence advocating radical reforms including land redistribution and nationalising key economic sectors.The party only came fourth in last year’s elections, with 9.5% of the vote. During the Oval Office meeting, Ramaphosa and his delegation distanced themselves from Malema’s rhetoric.Agriculture minister John Steenhuisen, a member of the centre-right Democratic Alliance, told Trump he joined Ramaphosa’s multiparty coalition “precisely to keep these people out of power”.Ramaphosa visited Washington this week to try to mend ties with the United States after persistent criticism from Trump in recent months over South Africa’s land laws, foreign policy, and alleged bad treatment of its white minority, which South Africa denies.With Reuters and Agence France-Presse More

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    in US Politics

    Trump news at a glance: administration escalates Harvard feud; supreme court blocks religious school

    The Trump administration escalated its feud with Harvard on Thursday, halting the university’s ability to enrol international students and ordering existing international students at the university to transfer or lose their legal status.Homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, accused Harvard of “fostering violence, antisemitism and coordinating with the Chinese Communist party on its campus”.Pippa Norris, a lecturer at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, told the Guardian the move would “benefit Oxford and Cambridge and many other academic institutions … America, again, is going to have problems as a result.”Previously, the Trump administration terminated a further $450m in grants to the university in May, after an earlier cancellation of $2.2bn in federal funding. In response to the federal cuts, the university – with an endowment of more than $53bn – filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration.Trump halts Harvard’s ability to enrol international studentsUS media reported that the White House notified Harvard about its decision after ongoing correspondence regarding the “legality of a sprawling records request”.Kristi Noem justified the decision by saying: “This action … is the unfortunate result of Harvard’s failure to comply with simple reporting requirements.” A Harvard spokesperson called the government’s action “unlawful” in a statement to the Guardian on Thursday.Read the full storyUS supreme court blocks religious charter school in split rulingThe US supreme court blocked a bid led by two Catholic dioceses to establish in Oklahoma the nation’s first taxpayer-funded religious charter school in a major case involving religious rights in American education that challenged the constitutional separation of church and state.Read the full storyHouse passes Trump’s sweeping tax-cut billHouse Republicans won passage of a major bill in a 215-214 vote to enact Donald Trump’s tax and spending priorities while adding trillions of dollars to the US debt and potentially preventing millions of Americans from accessing federal safety net benefits. Trump cheered the vote passage and encouraged the Senate to pass the measure quickly.The bill threatens to reverberate across the US by costing more than 830,000 jobs, raising energy bills for US households and threatening to unleash millions more tonnes of the planet-heating pollution that is causing the climate crisis, experts have warned.Read the full storyRFK’s health report omits key facts A new report led by the health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, lays out a dark vision of American children’s health and calls for agencies to examine vaccines, ultra-processed foods, environmental chemicals, lack of exercise and “overmedicalization”. But the report ignores leading causes of death for children: firearms and motor vehicle crashes.Read the full storyTrump administration seeks to end basic rights and protections for child immigrants in its custodyThe Trump administration is trying to end a cornerstone immigration policy that limits the amount of time children can be detained by immigration officials. It also requires the government to provide children in its custody with adequate food, water and clean clothes.In a court motion filed Thursday, the justice department argued that the Flores agreement should be “completely” terminated, claiming it has incentivized unauthorized border crossings and “prevented the federal government from effectively detaining and removing families”.Read the full storyWhistleblower tried to warn Musk he was a Russia targetA former FBI counterintelligence agent turned whistleblower has claimed he tried to gain access to Elon Musk in 2022 to warn the billionaire that he was the target of a covert Russian campaign seeking to infiltrate his inner circle, possibly to gain access to sensitive information.Johnathan Buma, who was arrested in March and is out on bail, claims in a new interview that efforts to target Musk were “intense.”Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

    Iran warned it would hold the US responsible for any Israeli attack on its nuclear sites, setting a tense backdrop for the fifth round of US-Iran nuclear talks.

    The FDA’s advisory committee unanimously recommended that the newest vaccines for Covid should be updated to target a variant of strains currently on the rise, during a meeting on Thursday – the first since the Trump administration took office.
    Catching up? Here’s what happened on 21 May 2025. More