Evelyn Reynolds

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    US supreme court clears way for deportation of migrants to South Sudan

    The supreme court on Thursday cleared the way for the deportation of several immigrants who were put on a flight in May bound for South Sudan, a war-ravaged country where they have no ties.The decision comes after the court’s conservative majority found that immigration officials can quickly deport people to third countries. The majority halted an order that had allowed immigrants to challenge any removals to countries outside their homeland where they could be in danger.The court’s latest order makes clear that the South Sudan flight detoured weeks ago can now complete the trip. It reverses findings from federal Judge Brian Murphy in Massachusetts, who said his order on those migrants still stands even after the high court lifted his broader decision.The majority wrote that their decision on 23 June completely halted Murphy’s ruling and also rendered his decision on the South Sudan flight “unenforceable”. The court did not fully detail its legal reasoning on the underlying case, as is common on its emergency docket.Two liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented, saying the ruling gives the government special treatment. “Other litigants must follow the rules, but the administration has the supreme court on speed dial,” Sotomayor wrote.Attorneys for the eight migrants have said they could face “imprisonment, torture and even death” if sent to South Sudan, where escalating political tensions have threatened to devolve into another civil war.“We know they’ll face perilous conditions, and potentially immediate detention, upon arrival,” Trina Realmuto, executive director of the National Immigration Litigation Alliance, said Thursday.The push comes amid a sweeping immigration crackdown by Trump’s Republican administration, which has pledged to deport millions of people who are living in the United States illegally. The Trump administration has called Murphy’s finding “a lawless act of defiance.”The White House and Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.Authorities have reached agreements with other countries to house immigrants if authorities cannot quickly send them back to their homelands. The eight men sent to South Sudan in May had been convicted of serious crimes in the US.Murphy, who was nominated by Democratic president Joe Biden, did not prohibit deportations to third countries. But he found migrants must have a real chance to argue they could be in danger of torture if sent to another country. More

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    Twisted arms and late-night deals: how Trump’s sweeping policy bill was passed

    Just a few months ago, analysts predicted that Republicans in Congress – with their narrow majorities and fractured internal dynamics – would not be able to pass Donald Trump’s landmark legislation.On Thursday, the president’s commanding influence over his party was apparent once again: the bill passed just in time for Trump’s Fourth of July deadline.But while the GOP may call the budget bill big and beautiful, the road to passing the final legislation has been particularly ugly. Arm-twisting from Trump and last-minute benefits targeting specific states cajoled holdouts, despite conservative misgivings over transformative cuts to Medicaid and the ballooning deficit.Here’s the journey of the sprawling tax-and-spending bill.The first hurdleThe initial version of the mega-bill passed by the House in May extended tax cuts from 2017.It also increased the debt limit by about $4tn, and added billions in spending on immigration enforcement while adding work requirements to Medicaid and requiring states to contribute more to Snap nutrition assistance. The Budget Lab at Yale estimated the House bill would add $2.4tn to the debt over the 2025-34 period.Several conservative Republicans balked at several aspects of the bill during long debate sessions. Mike Lawler, a congressman representing New York, wanted a larger Salt deduction – which concerns offsetting state and local taxes – while the California congressman David Valadao was concerned about the Medicaid cuts, which his district heavily relies on for healthcare.Then Trump traveled to Capitol Hill in late May to help assuage the holdouts. At his meeting with lawmakers, “he was emphatic [that] we need to quit screwing around. That was the clear message. You all have tinkered enough – it is time to land the plane,” the South Dakota congressman Dusty Johnson told reporters.“Ninety-eight per cent of that conference is ready to go. They were enthused. They were pumped up by the president, and I think with the holdouts, he did move them. I don’t know that we are there yet, but that was a hugely impactful meeting.”In the end, there were only two House Republicans who voted against the bill: Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Warren Davidson of Ohio, both of whom are fiscal hawks concerned about the federal deficit. The bill moved on to the Senate.The bill lands in the SenateThe Senate version of the budget bill passed on a 50-50 vote with JD Vance, the vice-president, breaking the tie. Until the final stages, however, all eyes were on the Republican senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, both noted moderates, and Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Rand Paul of Kentucky, both noted fiscal conservatives.The bill’s authors added tax provisions to benefit Alaska’s whaling industry to win the support of Murkowski. They also tried to add provisions protecting rural hospitals from Medicaid cuts in “non-contiguous states”, but the Senate parliamentarian ruled that the amendments would violate restrictions on what the bill could contain without triggering the 60-vote filibuster.Murkowski acquiesced after winning new tax revenues from oil and gas drilling leases for Alaska, provisions protecting clean energy tax credits, and delays on Snap changes.View image in fullscreen“Do I like this bill? No,” Murkowski said as she stared down an NBC reporter who had just relayed a comment by the Kentucky Republican Rand Paul describing her vote as “a bailout for Alaska at the expense of the rest of the country”.Other changes to the Senate bill were made in the final days of negotiations, including the striking of a 10-year federal ban on state regulation of AI. A record number of amendments were proposed.Tillis, who announced he would not run again in his politically competitive state, gave a rousing speech about the perils of Medicaid cuts and voted against the bill. Collins and Paul remained in opposition.With few other options, Democrats tried to delay the vote by requiring the entire bill to be read out loud on the floor the night before the vote.But in the end, with Murkowski’s vote, the Senate had a tie, allowing Vance to cast the deciding vote.The last mileGiven the total opposition of Democrats to the bill’s passage, Republicans in the House could lose no more than three of their own to get the bill to the finish line.On Wednesday, the last push still felt dubious. Even the procedural vote that is required to move to an actual vote was delayed for hours, as some Republicans considering holding their vote.Ralph Norman of South Carolina told C-Span after voting against the bill in committee that he opposed the Senate version’s inclusion of tax credits for renewable energy and its failure to restrict Chinese investment in American property.“We have one chance, one moment to curb the spending that has plagued this country and will take this country down if we don’t get it under control,” he said. “What I see right now, I don’t like.”Victoria Spartz of Indiana had withheld support over concerns about increases in the federal debt.“I’ll vote for the bill, since we need to make it happen for our economy & there are some good provisions in it. However, I will vote against the rule due to broken commitments by Speaker Johnson to his own members,” she wrote on X on Wednesday. “I’m on Plan C now to deal with the looming fiscal catastrophe.”Spartz referred to a promise Johnson made to fiscal conservatives that he would not bring a budget bill to a vote if it increased the debt beyond a certain amount. Spartz said this bill exceeded the agreed-upon amount by about $500bn.Shortly before midnight there were five Republicans voting no on the procedural rule. But deals were still being made – executive orders promised and other negotiations done on the floor.Once again Trump stepped in, joining the speaker, Mike Johnson, in coaxing the party members to cast their final approval. The president called several House members and posted on his Truth Social account. “What are the Republicans waiting for??? What are you trying to prove??? MAGA IS NOT HAPPY, AND IT’S COSTING YOU VOTES!!!” he wrote early on Thursday morning.View image in fullscreenJohnson held the vote open for seven hours, the longest vote recorded. And it worked. On Thursday morning, Norman voted yes to advance the bill.So did Andrew Clyde of Georgia, a notable second amendment rights activist in Congress, who failed in his push for an amendment to the bill to remove the registration requirement for firearms suppressors, short-barreled rifles and short-barreled shotguns from the National Firearms Act, creating a path for legal civilian use without registration and paying a federal tax.The holdouts fell into line, and the House voted early on Thursday morning 219-213 in a procedural vote to move forward.There was still a way to go. Johnson had expected to open the vote at 8am. But the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, commandeered the dais for more than eight hours – setting a record previously held by the Republican Kevin McCarthy – in a marathon stemwinder of a speech attacking the perils of the legislation and delaying the vote.But Johnson remained confident after a night of promises and threats.Massie remained the face of conservative holdouts on the bill. He has faced withering personal attacks from Trump on social media, the creation of a Super Pac to fund a primary challenge and local advertisements attacking his stance on the bill.In the end it was only Massie and Brian Fitzpatrick, a congressman in Pennsylvania who voted for Kamala Harris last year, who voted against a bill that will now rewrite the American political landscape. More

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    Former CBS anchor slams Paramount settlement with Trump: ‘It was a sellout’

    A former CBS News anchor and 60 minutes correspondent, Dan Rather, has blasted the $16m settlement between Paramount, the parent company of CBS News, and Donald Trump, calling it a “sad day for journalism”.“It’s a sad day for 60 Minutes and CBS News,” Rather, a veteran journalist who was a CBS News anchor for over 20 years, told Variety in an interview published on Wednesday. “I hope people will read the details of this and understand what it was. It was distortion by the president and a kneeling down and saying, ‘yes, sir,’ by billionaire corporate owners.”Last November, Trump sued CBS News, claiming that the network’s interview with the Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, had been doctored to portray her in a favorable light – which he alleged amounted to “election interference”.Many legal experts had widely dismissed the lawsuit as “meritless” and unlikely to hold up under the first amendment, but on Wednesday Paramount announced that it had agreed to pay Trump $16m to settle the case over the interview that was broadcast on the CBS News program 60 Minutes.The settlement comes as Paramount is preparing for a $8bn merger with Skydance Media, which requires approval from the US Federal Communications Commission. Paramount has said that the lawsuit is separate from the company’s merger.A spokesperson for Trump’s legal team said in a statement to the Guardian that “With this record settlement, President Donald J. Trump delivers another win for the American people as he, once again, holds the Fake News media accountable for their wrongdoing and deceit.“CBS and Paramount Global realized the strength of this historic case and had no choice but to settle,” the spokesperson added.According to Wednesday’s announcement, the settlement funds will not be paid to Trump directly, but instead would be allocated to Trump’s future presidential library. The settlement did not include an apology.Rather told Variety on Wednesday that in his opinion “you settle a lawsuit when you’ve done something wrong” and “60 minutes did nothing wrong, it followed accepted journalistic practices”.“Lawyers almost unanimously said the case wouldn’t stand up in court,” he said.Ultimately though, Rather said he was disappointed but not surprised by the settlement.“Big billionaire businesspeople make decisions about money,” he said. “We could always hope that they will make an exception when it comes to freedom of the press, but it wasn’t to be.“Trump knew if he put the pressure on and threatened and just held that they would fold, because there’s too much money on the table,” Rather said. “Trump is now forcing a whole news organization to pay millions of dollars for doing something protected by the constitution – which is, of course, free and independent reporting. Now, you take today’s sellout. And that’s what it was: It was a sellout to extortion by the president. Who can now say where all this ends?”He continued: “It has to do with not just journalism, but more importantly, with the country as a whole. What kind of country we’re going to have, what kind of country we’re going to be. If major news organizations continue to kneel before power and stop trying to hold the powerful accountable, then we all lose.”In his more than 60 years in journalism, Rather told Variety he had never seen the profession face the kind of challenges as those it faces today.“Journalism has had its trials and tribulations before, and it takes courage to just soldier on,” Rather said. “Keep trying, keep fighting. It takes guts to do that. And I know the people at CBS News, and particularly those at 60 Minutes, they’ll do their dead level best under these circumstances. But the question is what [is] this development and the message it sends to us. And that’s what I’m trying to concentrate on.” More

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    Trump’s tax-and-spending bill passes Congress in major win for president

    The US House of Representatives passed Donald Trump’s sweeping tax and spending bill on Thursday, handing the president the first major legislative victory of his second term and sending to his desk wide-ranging legislation expected to supercharge immigration enforcement and slash federal safety net programs.The 218-214 vote came after weeks of wrangling over the measure that Trump demanded be ready for his signature by Friday, the Independence Day holiday. Written by his Republican allies in Congress and unanimously rejected by Democrats, the bill traveled an uncertain road to passage that saw multiple all-night votes in the House and Senate and negotiations that lasted until the final hours before passage. Ultimately, Republicans who had objected to its cost and contents folded, and the bill passed with just two GOP defections: Thomas Massie, a rightwing Kentucky lawmaker, and Brian Fitzpatrick, who represents a Pennsylvania district that voted for Kamala Harris in last year’s election.“We’ve waited long enough, some of us have literally been up for days now, but this day – this day – is a hugely important one in the history of our nation,” the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, said, just before voting began.“With one big, beautiful bill, we are going to make this country stronger, safer and more prosperous than ever before, and every American is going to benefit from that.”The legislation is expected to speed up and expand Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportations, and will probably make Trump’s longstanding desire for a wall along the border with Mexico a reality.It also strikes a blow against the US government’s efforts to fight the climate crisis by phasing out tax incentives created under Joe Biden that were intended to spur investments in electric cars, wind and solar power and other green energy technologies.The bill’s centerpiece is a permanent extension of tax cuts made in 2017, during Trump’s first term, as well as the creation of new, temporary exemptions for tips, overtime pay and car loan interest that the president promised voters during last year’s campaign.The government will lose trillions of dollars in revenue from those provisions, and to offset their costs, Republicans approved an array of cuts to Medicaid, the federal program providing health insurance coverage to poor and disabled Americans, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap).Those changes are expected to cost millions of people their benefits, but the bill remains expensive, with the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) saying it will add $3.3tn to the country’s debt through 2034.Massie explained his decision to vote against the bill in a post on X, writing that “it will significantly increase U.S. budget deficits in the near term, negatively impacting all Americans through sustained inflation and high interest rates”.Fitzpatrick issued a statement saying “it was the Senate’s amendments to Medicaid, in addition to several other Senate provisions, that altered the analysis” for his district and made him vote no.Democrats blasted the proposal as “one big, ugly bill” that dismantles anti-poverty programs to fund tax breaks for the wealthy. Analyses have shown that high earners benefited most from Trump’s tax policies.The Democratic House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, made a last-ditch effort to halt the bill’s passage by delivering a floor speech that lasted eight hours and 44 minutes, the longest ever.“This is extraordinary. This assault on everyday Americans, assault on children, veterans, seniors, people with disabilities. It’s incredible to me, all of this in this one, big, ugly bill,” Jeffries said.“Ripping food out of the mouths of vulnerable Americans – that’s extraordinary that that’s what we’re doing, extraordinary. And all of this is being done, this unprecedented assault on everyday Americans, is being unleashed on the American people, Mr Speaker, on the most vulnerable among us, all of this is being done to provide massive tax breaks to billionaire donors. Shame on this institution. If this bill passes, that’s not America. We’re better than this.”Trump has described the bill as crucial to the success of his second term, and congressional Republicans made its passage their top priority. It was a tall task – the GOP won small majorities in both the House and Senate in last November’s election, and could afford no more than three defections in either chamber.The party’s lawmakers broadly support Trump but were divided on a host of other issues. There were lawmakers who wanted big spending cuts, rapid phase-outs of green energy incentives and an expanded deduction that would mostly benefit taxpayers in Democratic-led states. Their demands butted against others who sought to moderate the bill, but over the course of weeks, Republicans leaders managed to forge a compromise.Trump appears to have also offered some concessions to hard-line holdouts from the Republican House freedom caucus at a meeting at the White House on Wednesday and in subsequent discussions, as his advisers rushed to ensure the bill passed without returning to the Senate.The details of Trump’s concessions – possibly coming in the form of executive actions at a later date – were not immediately clear, and House freedom caucus chair Andy Harris declined to describe their discussions with Trump.“When we looked at this entire package, the significant agreements we got with the administration in the last 24 hours made this package a much, much better package,” Harris told reporters after the vote. “The agreement is with the president. If you want to know, ask the president.”The bill is only able to affect revenue, spending and the debt limit, under the rules of budget reconciliation that allowed the GOP to avoid a filibuster by Democrats in the Senate. Under Biden, Congress’s then Democratic majority had used the same procedure to pass legislation to spur the economy’s recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic and curb US carbon emissions.Trump’s bill allocates $45bn for Ice detention facilities, $14bn for deportation operations and billions of dollars more to hire 10,000 new agents by 2029. An additional $50bn will go towards the border wall and other fortifications.Enrollees of Medicaid and Snap will face new work requirements, and states will be forced to share part of the cost of the latter program for the first time ever. The CBO estimates the bill’s Medicaid changes could cost as many as 11.8 million people their healthcare, and the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities forecasts about 8 million people, or one in five recipients, may lose their Snap benefits.The legislation also forces changes to provider taxes, which states use to finance their share of Medicaid spending. That is expected to further increase the financial stress of hospitals in rural areas, and when the bill was in the Senate, a $50bn fund was added to support those facilities.Some in the GOP were openly nervous about the cuts to safety net programs that their constituents rely on. Thom Tillis, a senator who represents swing state North Carolina, refused to support the bill for those reasons, leading Trump to announce he would support a primary challenger when he stands for re-election next year. Tillis then made public his plans to retire, a potential boost for Democrats’ hopes of claiming his seat.“It is inescapable this bill will betray the promise Donald Trump made,” Tillis said on the Senate floor.“What do I tell 663,000 people in two years or three years when President Trump breaks his promise by pushing them off of Medicaid because the funding’s not there any more, guys?” More

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    Emil Bove’s confirmation hearing was a travesty | Sidney Blumenthal

    In The Godfather, a Mafia turncoat appears before a Senate committee in order to testify as a protected witness about its operations. Frank Pentangeli, “Frankie Five Angels”, a capo allied with the old godfather, Vito Corleone, has had a falling out with the new one, his son Michael Corleone, who attempted to assassinate him. As Pentangeli is about to speak at the hearing, he notices his brother Vincenzo, a mafioso from Sicily, seated behind him. Michael has arranged his grim looming presence. Pentangeli is suddenly reminded of his oath of omerta, the code of silence. He recants on the spot, saying that he just told the FBI “what they wanted to hear”.On 25 June, Emil Bove, Donald Trump’s former personal attorney, whom he had named associate deputy attorney general, and now after five months seeks to elevate as a federal judge on the US third circuit court of appeals, appeared before the Senate judiciary committee for his confirmation hearing. He faced, at least potentially, a far-ranging inquiry into his checkered career.There were charges of abusive behavior as an assistant US attorney. There was his role as enforcer of the alleged extortion of New York City Mayor Eric Adams to cooperate in the Trump administration’s migrant roundups in exchange for dropping the federal corruption case against him. There was Bove’s dismissal of FBI agents and prosecutors who investigated the January 6 insurrection. And there was more.On the eve of the hearing, the committee received a shocking letter from a whistleblower, a Department of Justice attorney, who claimed that Bove said, in response to a federal court ruling against the administration’s immigration deportation policy: “DoJ would need to consider telling the courts ‘fuck you’ and ignore any such order.”Senator Charles Grassley, Republican of Iowa, the committee chairperson, the ancient mariner of the right wing at 91 years old, gaveled the session to order by invoking new rules never before used with a nominee in a confirmation hearing. Instead of opening the questioning to examine the nominee’s past, he would thwart it. Grassley announced that Bove would be shielded by the “deliberative-process privilege and attorney-client privilege” from “an intense opposition campaign by my Democratic colleagues and by their media allies”. This was the unique imposition of a code of omerta.“My understanding is that Congress has never accepted the constitutional validity of either such privilege,” objected Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island. “This witness has no right to invoke that privilege,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut. But Grassley stonewalled.Prominently seated in the audience behind Bove were the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, and the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche. Never before had such top officials been present at a confirmation hearing for a judicial nominee. The federal government through the justice department would inevitably appear in cases before his court. The attorney general and her deputy created an immediate perception of conflict of interest, an ethical travesty.But Bondi and Blanche were not there to silence Bove. They were there to intimidate the Republican senators. If there were any dissenters among them, they knew that they would suffer retribution. “Their being here is for one reason – to whip the Republicans into shape,” said Blumenthal. “To make sure that they toe the line. They are watching.”The rise of Emil Bove is the story of how a lawyer from the ranks associated himself with Donald Trump, proved his unswerving loyalty to become a made man, and has been richly rewarded with a nomination for a lifetime federal judgeship, presumably to continue his service. In his opening statement, Bove said: “I want to be clear about one thing up front: there is a wildly inaccurate caricature of me in the mainstream media. I’m not anybody’s henchman. I’m not an enforcer.”Bove began his career as a paralegal and then a prosecutor in the US attorney’s office for the southern district of New York. He was known for his attention to detail, relentlessness and sharp elbows. Seeking a promotion to supervisor, a group of defense attorneys including some who had been prosecutors in his office wrote a letter claiming he had “deployed questionable tactics, including threatening defendants with increasingly severe charges the lawyers believed he couldn’t prove”, according to Politico. Bove posted the letter in his office to display his contempt. He was denied the promotion, but eventually received it.As a supervisor, Bove was known as angry, belittling and difficult. He developed an abrasive relationship with FBI agents. After complaints, an executive committee in the US attorney’s office investigated and suggested he be demoted. He pleaded he would exercise more self-control and was allowed to remain in his post. “You are aware of this inquiry and their recommendation?” Senator Mazie Hirono, Democrat of Hawaii, asked Bove about the incident. Bove replied: “As well as the fact that I was not removed.”In 2021, in the prosecution of an individual accused of evading sanctions on Iran, a team Bove supervised as the unit chief won a jury verdict. But then the US attorney’s office discovered the case was “marred by repeated failures to disclose exculpatory evidence and misuse of search-warrant returns” by the prosecutors handling the case, according to the judge. Declaring that “errors and ethical lapses in this case are pervasive”, she vacated the verdict and dismissed the charges as well as chastising those prosecutors for falling short of their “constitutional and ethical obligations” in “this unfortunate chapter” and criticizing Bove for providing sufficient supervision to prevent those failures.Bove became a private attorney, joining the law firm of Todd Blanche, whom Trump hired in 2023 to defend him in the New York case involving his payment of hush-money to the adult film actor Stormy Daniels. Blanche brought Bove along as his second chair. The qualities that made him a black sheep in the US attorney’s office recommended him to Blanche and his client. In Bove’s questioning of David Pecker, publisher of the National Enquirer, about his payments to women in his “catch-and-kill” scheme to protect Trump, Bove twice botched the presentation of evidence, was admonished by the judge and apologized. Trump was convicted of 34 felonies of financial fraud to subvert an election.Upon Trump’s election, he appointed Bove as acting deputy attorney general and then associate deputy once Todd Blanche was confirmed as deputy, reuniting the law partners, both Trump defense attorneys now resuming that role in an official capacity.On 31 January, Bove sent two memos, the first firing dozens of justice department prosecutors and the second firing FBI agents who had worked on the cases of January 6 insurrectionists, whom Trump pardoned on his inauguration day. Bove quoted Trump that their convictions were “a grave national injustice”. He also had his own history of conflict with fellow prosecutors and FBI agents.Asked about his actions by Senator Dick Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, Bove presented himself as even-handed. “I did and continue to condemn unlawful behavior, particularly violence against law enforcement,” he said. “At the same time, I condemn heavy-handed and unnecessary tactics by prosecutors and agents.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn February, Bove played a principal role in filing criminal charges claiming corruption in the Environmental Protection Agency’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. The head of the criminal division at the US attorney’s office of the District of Columbia, Denise Cheung, believing there was no factual basis to the accusation, resigned with a statement praising those who are “following the facts and the law and complying with our moral, ethical and legal obligations”.When Whitehouse sought to ask Bove about the episode, Bove replied: “My answer is limited to: ‘I participated in the matter.’” Whitehouse turned to Grassley. “Do you see my point now?” he said. The code of omerta was working to frustrate questioning.Bove also deflected questions about his central role in the dropping of charges against Eric Adams. The acting US attorney for the southern district of New York, Danielle Sassoon, had resigned in protest, writing in a letter that Bove’s memo directing her to dismiss the charges had “nothing to do with the strength of the case”. She noted that in the meeting to fix “what amounted to a quid pro quo … Mr Bove admonished a member of my team who took notes during that meeting and directed the collection of those notes at the meeting’s conclusion.”Questioned about the Adams scandal, Bove denied any wrongdoing. Senator John A Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, played his helpmate. He asked Bove to “swear to your higher being” that there was no quid pro quo. “Absolutely not,” Bove said. “Do you swear on your higher being?” “On every bone in my body,” Bove replied. Hallelujah!Then Bove was asked about the letter sent by former justice department lawyer Erez Reuveni alleging that Bove planned the defiance of court rulings against the administration’s deportation policy. “I have never advised a Department of Justice attorney to violate a court order,” Bove said.Senator Adam Schiff, Democrat of California, repeatedly asked him if it was true he had said “fuck you” as his suggested plan of action against adverse court decisions. Bove hemmed and hawed, and finally said: “I don’t recall.” Senator Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey, remarked: “I am hoping more evidence is going to come out that shows that you lied before this committee.”Grassley, however, succeeded in protecting Bove. Bondi and Blanche stared down the Republican senators whose majority can put Bove on the bench. He is Trump’s model appointment of what he wants in a judge. In announcing his nomination, Trump tweeted: “Emil Bove will never let you down!”In another scene in The Godfather, Virgil “The Turk” Sollozzo, another Mafia boss, comes to Vito Corleone, offering a deal to cut him in on the narcotics trade. “I need, Don Corleone,” he says, “those judges that you carry in your pockets like so many nickels and dimes.” It was an offer that the Godfather refused. He left the drugs, but kept the judges.

    Sidney Blumenthal, a former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth. He is a Guardian US columnist and co-host of The Court of History podcast More

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    I’m no fan of Elon Musk. But Trump’s threat to deport him is sickening | Justice Malala

    Elon Musk is an utterly deplorable human being. He has unashamedly flashed an apparent Nazi salute; encouraged rightwing extremists in Germany and elsewhere; falsely claimed there is a “genocide” in South Africa against white farmers; callously celebrated the dismantling of USAID, whose shuttering will lead to the deaths of millions, according to a study published in the Lancet this week; and increased misinformation and empowered extremists on his Twitter/X platform while advancing his sham “I am a free speech absolutist” claims. And so much more.So the news that Donald Trump “will take a look” at deporting his billionaire former “first buddy” Musk has many smirking and shrugging: “Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.”I like a good comeuppance, but this doesn’t please me at all. It sends a chill down the spine. It is the use of law enforcement agencies as a tool to chill debate, to silence disagreement and dissent, and to punish political opposition. Democracy is dimming fast in the United States, but threats to deport US citizens for disagreeing with the governing administration’s policies are the domain of authoritarian regimes such as Belarus or Cameroon.Coming just hours after his officials raised the possibility of stripping Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic mayoral candidate for New York who was naturalised in 2018, of his US citizenship, Trump’s threat should have all of America – a country of immigrants – appalled, afraid and up in arms. As the Guardian reported on Tuesday, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, appeared to pave the way for an investigation into Mamdani’s status after Andy Ogles, a rightwing Republican congressman for Tennessee, called for his citizenship to be revoked on the grounds that he might have concealed his support for “terrorism” during the naturalization process. Trump has branded Mamdani “a pure communist” and said “we don’t need a communist in this country”.Mamdani has not broken any laws. His sin? Running for office.In his threats against Mamdani and Musk, the president comes across like the notorious Republican senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s. McCarthy was, according to the Harvard law dean Ervin Griswold, “judge, jury, prosecutor, castigator, and press agent, all in one”. Trump’s threats to Musk and Mamdani are a departure from the administration’s modus operandi of targeting foreign students involved in pro-Palestinian organizing on US college campuses. It is now targeting people it disagrees with on any issue. The threats are not based on any generally applicable laws but on the whim of the president or other administration leaders. It is an escalation of the assault on civil liberties using government entities to arbitrarily investigate and potentially punish critics.Over the past four weeks Musk’s sin has been to vehemently oppose Trump’s sweeping spending bill, calling it a “disgusting abomination”. Musk is of course not concerned about the bill’s slashing of health insurance, food stamps and other aid for the poor, but that it does not slash enough and that its cuts to green energy tax credits may cost his company, Tesla, about $1.2bn.But Musk is a US citizen with the right to oppose a piece of legislation without threats from the highest office in the land and the fear of deportation. When Musk poured $288m of his money into Trump and other Republicans’ 2024 candidacies, no one raised a hand to question his credentials as an American. Instead, the administration gave him the run of the White House including midnight ice cream binges and a job as a glorified bean counter at the so-called department of government efficiency (Doge).The hypocrisy and the corruption embedded within Trump’s deportation threats is mind-boggling but unsurprising given his track record. The consequence, like the McCarthyism of the 1950s, is a climate of fear and a chilling of political discourse and action. Proud Americans who arrived here recently, such as Mamdani, are fearful of running for office, of speaking their minds in true American tradition, despite having the same responsibilities and privileges as every other American conferred on them. Trump’s threat does to Musk what it does to every immigrant: it shuts them up, it holds over their head the possibility of made-up charges and deportation to El Salvador or some other country.Musk and his like were chortling when the Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil was cruelly detained for months. It is in the nature of those who like to tweet about freedom but do not think about it deeply enough, such as Musk, to not realize that their silence when the rights of a Khalil or a Mamdani are trampled upon will come back to haunt them. The Republican rump is silent today as Musk is threatened with deportation, just as it has been when masked men have come for Khalil and others who dared exercise their first amendment rights.There will be silence when they come for the Republicans. That’s because we will all be gone by then, after no one else said a thing.

    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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    ‘It’s harsh. It’s mean, brutal’: Trump bill to cause most harm to America’s poorest

    Last November, Donald Trump made a solemn vow to all Americans: “Every citizen, I will fight for you, your family and your future every single day.” Eight months later, Trump is vigorously backing many policies that will mean pain for millions.Trump has pushed to enact the Republican budget bill, which would make significant cuts to Medicaid, Obamacare, and food assistance, and would do the greatest damage to those Americans struggling hardest to make ends meet – the 30% of the US population that lives in households earning under $50,000 a year.Even as Trump and Republican lawmakers are rushing to cut over $1.4tn in health and food assistance for non-affluent Americans, Trump continues to pressure Congress to extend over $3tn in tax cuts that disproportionately help the wealthy and corporations.Trump has embraced these Robin-Hood-in-reverse policies, even though it was voters earning less than $50,000 a year who delivered victory to him last November. They favored him over Kamala Harris by 50% to 48%, according to exit polls, while Trump and Harris tied among voters earning $50,000 or more a year.Several social policy experts said Trump has engaged in hypocrisy at best and betrayal at worst when it comes to the working-class and blue-collar Americans he promised to fight for. Speaking about the Republicans’ “big, beautiful” budget bill, Sharon Parrott, president of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, said: “Who’s getting hit, who’s bearing the cost? It’s people with low and middle incomes, people that the president and many Republican policymakers promised to serve and support in the last election.”View image in fullscreenThe budget bill would mean a net financial loss for the bottom 30% of American households by income – after factoring in its tax provisions and cuts in benefits. The House bill would hit the lowest-earning 10% of Americans hardest: for them, it would mean a painful $1,600 cut in income on average (a 3.9% drop), according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). At the same time, the Trump-backed bill would be a boon to wealthy households – it would mean a $12,000 increase in net income, on average, for households in the top 10%, those earning above $692,000 a year. According to the Yale Budget Lab, the top 0.1% – those with income over $3.3m – would receive tax cuts of $103,500 on average.The CBO says the income of the bottom 10% tops off at $22,868 (before factoring in government transfers). The second lowest decile earns from $22,868 to $43,137; the third decile earns up to $55,628; and the fourth up to $68,601.The Yale Budget Lab found that the bottom 20% of US households would see their incomes drop by 2.9% on average over the next decade, and the second lowest quintile – moderate-income households – would suffer a 0.4% loss of income on average. But the richest 20% would see their incomes rise by 2.3%. Those in the top 1% would see their incomes climb by $29,585 on average.Trump is demanding these big tax cuts for the rich even though the CBO says the budget bill will increase the federal debt by $3.3tn – a move that will push up interest rates and make mortgages and home-buying more expensive.According to the Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy, a left-leaning thinktank, the $121bn tax cuts that would go just to the richest 1% next year are significantly more than all the tax cuts that would go to the bottom 60% of Americans in terms of income.The poorest 20% of Americans would receive just 1% of the bill’s tax cuts next year, while the highest earning 5% would receive 44% of the cuts.Last week, Trump urged lawmakers to enact the bill, saying: “There are hundreds of things in there. It is so good.” At a news conference, the president said the more than $1tn in Medicaid and food assistance cuts wouldn’t hurt anyone.“It won’t affect anybody,” he said. “It is just fraud, waste and abuse.”But Parrott took a sharply different view: “The bill stands alone historically for its unique upside-down mix of large tax cuts for the top, deep cuts that affect low- and middle-income people, and massive increases in deficits and debt.”John Ricco, the Yale Budget Lab’s associate director of policy analysis, said: “It’s unambiguous that low- and moderate-income Americans will be worse off on average under the budget bill, and that’s principally because the cuts in Medicaid and Snap [the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program] would by definition fall most heavily on these groups,” Ricco said.Jeanne Lambrew, the Century Foundation’s director of health policy reform, estimates that at least 16 million Americans will lose health coverage because of the budget bill – refuting White House claims that “no one will lose coverage”. Lambrew said the bill would cause a more than 50% increase in the number of uninsured nationwide, to nearly 45 million people.What’s more, the Trump-backed plan sharply reduces Affordable Care Act subsidies, and that will force millions of Americans to either drop coverage or pay far more for coverage. Millions of Americans will find it harder to obtain healthcare, with many forced to take on far more medical debt.While Trump and many Republicans say the Medicaid cuts are all about reducing “waste, fraud and abuse”, Lambrew calculates that a mere 3.5% of the $1tn in healthcare cuts come from cutting waste and abuse. “What Trump has been saying is, ‘We’re not cutting Medicaid. We’re just cutting fraud.’ That’s gaslighting.” Lambrew said.Archbishop Timothy Broglio, president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, sent the Senate a letter that harshly criticized the budget bill. “As Pope Leo XIV recently stated, it is the responsibility of politicians to promote and protect the common good, including by working to overcome great wealth inequality,” he wrote. “This bill does not answer this call. It takes from the poor to give to the wealthy.”According to a Quinnipiac University poll, only 27% of registered voters support the GOP budget bill, while 53% oppose it. A Fox News poll found that 38% support the bill, while 59% oppose it.The House bill’s deep cuts in food benefits will cause 7 million people, including over 2 million children, to lose food aid or have their food aid cut significantly. The Trump-supported bill also makes sharp cuts in Pell grant awards. The Center for American Progress says this means 4.4 million students from low- and moderate-income families could lose some or all of their federal grant aid.In another blow to Americans earning under $50,000, Trump pushed to have the budget bill eliminate the “Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program”, which, as one website put it, “keeps poor people from freezing to death at home”. Killing the program would end heating subsidies for 6 million Americans, but so far congressional Republicans have spared the program and not bowed to Trump on this.View image in fullscreenIn another blow to blue-collar Americans, the bill would undo much of Joe Biden’s efforts to speed the creation of clean-energy industries, and that could put hundreds of thousands of potential jobs at risk, many of them factory jobs.“In this bill, folks in Congress went out of their way not to give anything to low-income people,” said Chuck Marr, vice-president for federal tax policy at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. He noted that in previous tax cut bills that favored the rich, GOP lawmakers made sure to include some sweeteners for low- and moderate-income Americans.“But in this bill,” Marr said, “folks in Congress said: no, we’re going to go after these people. They’re going after healthcare and food, and these are the people who are also going to get hammered by Trump’s tariffs.” Lower-income people spend a higher percentage of their income on goods.“This bill is a major shift,” Marr added. “They’re taking away from poor people and working-class people and channeling it to very high-income people. I think it’s punitive. It’s harsh. It’s mean, brutal.”Trump’s tariffs would also hit less affluent Americans hardest. One study found that Trump’s planned tariffs would cause the bottom 20% of households to pay up to 5.5% of their income toward tariff-caused higher prices. That’s more than two and a half times the percentage that those in the top 20% would pay (2.1% of income).Trump has repeatedly boasted that the bill contains several provisions he championed to help working-class Americans. At a White House event to promote the bill, he pointed to a DoorDash driver from Wisconsin who was on hand to help make his case that the “no tax on tips” provision would help workers.But tax experts say that provision will help only a tiny fraction of those earning under $50,000. Only 4% of workers in the bottom half by income are in tipped jobs. Moreover, nearly two-fifths of tipped workers are already earning so little that they don’t pay federal income taxes.“Given how the current income tax system works, this provision will provide little or no benefit to those workers,” said Ricco. “Those workers tend to have low incomes, and the US system doesn’t basically tax their incomes, and this won’t offer them any additional tax reduction.” In other words, the server making $100,000 a year at a high-end restaurant will benefit substantially from no tax on tips, while the hotel housekeeper or 20-hour-a-week waiter at a diner making $25,000 a year will be helped little or not at all.As for Trump’s much-ballyhooed “no tax on overtime” provision, that, too, will do little for those earning under $50,000, Ricco said. “That provision is really geared to middle- and upper-middle groups,” he said. “People in the bottom 50% aren’t paying much income tax, and so no tax on overtime wouldn’t benefit them much. People in the bottom 40%, they’re often in a precarious employment situation. They’re generally not working 45 or 50 hours a week.”Ricco estimated that for Americans in the bottom 40% by income, the no tax on overtime provision will mean “less than a $10 tax cut per year”. “It’s essentially a rounding error,” he said.Republicans boast that increasing the child-tax credit will help millions of struggling families – the House bill would increase that credit, now $2,000, to $2,500, while the Senate raises it to $2,200. Under current law, one in four children – about 17 million – are ineligible to qualify for the full $2,000 credit because their family’s income is too low to qualify for the full credit. A two-parent family with two children needs to earn over $48,000 to obtain the full credit.Under the House bill, a single parent with two children who earns $16,000 a year would get no additional tax credit, while a married couple with two kids and a $400,000 income would see their tax credit jump by $1,000.With their eagerness to cut the social safety net, Republicans seem to be treating millions of Americans who earn less than $50,000 as undeserving takers. “People earning under $50,000 are major targets of the Republican agenda. Their health coverage is targeted. Their food security is targeted,” said Marr. “They are left out of key provisions expanding tax cuts, like the child tax credit. They are most at risk from the Republican tariffs. They’ll be hurt across the board.”Marr said the budget bill treats “these people very harshly”.“It’s the harshest bill we’ve ever seen since budget deficits became an issue 40 years ago,” he said. “This is the first bill that simultaneously targets programs for poor people and working-class people to pay for it, and then takes that money to pay for tax cuts for very wealthy people. It makes poor and working-class people worse off. That’s not been done before.” More

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    in US Politics

    After 47 years in the US, Ice took this Iranian mother from her yard. Her family just wants her home

    Kaitlynn Milne says her mother is usually always up first thing in the morning, hours before the rest of the family. She enjoys being productive in the quiet hours around sunrise. It’s an especially optimal time to do yard work, when the rest of her New Orleans neighborhood still sleeps and she can count on peacefully completing chores.Gardening and rearranging the shed is how an average morning would go for Mandonna “Donna” Kashanian, a 64-year-old Iranian mother, wife, home cook, parent-teacher association (PTA) member and lifelong community service volunteer.“She always says: ‘I’ve already done most of my day before y’all even wake up,’ complaining at us,” said Kaitlynn, 32. It was always done with love, she says, as her mother adores taking care of others and would wake up every morning excited to do just that.But the morning of Sunday, 22 June, didn’t go like every other morning. In the early hours, while her husband, Russell Milne, slept inside the house, Kashanian was approached in her yard by plainclothes men who identified themselves as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents.She was quickly arrested without her family being told anything. They only found out after a neighbor who happened to be awake witnessed the arrest and notified them.According to the neighbor, Kashanian was handcuffed before being taken away by multiple agents, details Kashanian herself was later able to confirm to her family. Her arrest involved three unmarked cars, including one that appeared to be a lookout, which her neighbor and family believe had been watching for a moment when Kashanian was outside and alone.“Had the neighbors not walked out at the same time they were pushing her into the car, we would not have known she was taken,” said Russell.Kashanian was able to call her family about an hour later, when she relayed to them what had happened and where she was. Ice officers told her that she was being taken to a holding center in Mississippi, before eventually being transferred back to a detention center in Louisiana. After that Sunday morning call, her husband and daughter didn’t hear from her again until Tuesday.She remains in Ice custody in Basile, Louisiana, despite having no criminal record.The timing of Kashanian’s detention was just hours after US airstrikes in Iran, a move that has coincided with the ramping-up of deportations of Iranians by the Trump administration. It also comes amid a nationwide crackdown by Ice, which has seen tens of thousands of immigrants detained, often by masked agents, plunged many communities into fear and outraged civil liberties advocates.View image in fullscreenKashanian arrived in the US in 1978 on a student visa and has lived in the country ever since. She later applied for asylum, citing fears of persecution due to her father’s ties to the US-backed Shah of Iran.Her asylum request was ultimately denied, but she was granted a stay of removal on the condition she comply with immigration requirements, a condition her family says she always met. Kashanian was so careful about regularly attending her meetings with immigration officials that she once checked in from South Carolina during Hurricane Katrina.Despite having to juggle constant immigration checks, Kashanian remained devoted to community service work. She volunteered with Habitat for Humanity, helping rebuild homes after Katrina. She worked with Nola Tree Project, a local non-profit that replants trees after disasters. She served on a PTA, volunteering at her daughter’s elementary school, middle school and high school.“She was constantly around,” said Kaitlynn. “She was constantly helping with upkeep of the schools. She was always there, always helping the teachers and custodial staff, anything to be supportive. Everyone knew Kaitlynn’s mom.”She also found the time to become a skilled home cook. Her YouTube channel, titled Mandonna in the Kitchen, is dedicated to sharing her favorite Persian recipes with aspiring cooks.According to her daughter and husband, Kashanian is an optimist who is almost impossible to upset. But there is one thing that never fails to unsettle her, and that’s improperly cooked rice.Now that she has been moved to a facility in Louisiana, her family has been able to set up a line of communication, speaking to her once a day. But she is given a limited amount of time to call or message, so communication is restricted. She says she has still not been assigned a case worker.“She’s in pretty good spirits,” said Russell. “She’s more worried about us, and about the lack of communication she’s getting about her situation. They’re not really giving her any information, and that’s what’s scary.”Russell and Kaitlynn have been working tirelessly to find legal help, but it has been challenging due in part to the complexity of Donna’s case, with some of her documents seeming to have been lost over decades of changing hands in the immigration offices.View image in fullscreenBut the other big challenge is the limited availability of immigration lawyers. As the Trump administration has escalated the number of Ice arrests, there is a shortage of legal counsel for immigrants and their families to go to for help.“We have been on the phone nonstop from 8am to 10pm almost every day the last week trying to find help, and it’s proving difficult because all the immigration lawyers are all dealing with everyone else’s crises as well,” said Kaitlynn. “So far, we haven’t gotten a lot of optimistic responses.”Like her mother, Kaitlynn remains in good spirits despite the constant obstacles, staying focused on helping someone else who currently needs it. But there is one moment in her show of resilience when her voice falters, as she recalls a memory from her childhood when her mother created a French book section in her New Orleans elementary school library.“I had forgotten that until just now,” Kaitlynn said, through tears. “Because there were no French books in the library. She organized that and got it together and painted this little tiny nook.”Russell says the focus currently is just to get his wife out of detention. “We’re working on a grassroots campaign and a letter-writing campaign on her behalf, that will hopefully be able to at least gain her release from the detention center,” he said.“After that, we can move forward with next steps through the immigration offices,” he added. “But right now, just getting her home is the challenge.” More