Evelyn Reynolds

“If they explain Nigeria to you and you understand it, they didn’t explain it well enough”. So goes the maxim for trying to parse Nigeria’s labyrinthine political dynamics. A security crisis has engulfed the country, catching the attention of the US president in the process. With the help of our West Africa correspondent, Eromo Egbejule, I’ll try to get to the bottom of what is happening. The marginalisation of Nigeria’s minoritiesView image in fullscreenOn Friday, more than 300 schoolchildren were kidnapped from a Catholic school in the country’s north-central Niger State. That was just the latest example of escalating violence, as the country has been plagued by crises including the killings of hundreds in Benue State and a recent live-streamed terrorist attack on worshippers at a church in Kwara State. Earlier this month, Donald Trump threatened to invade, citing an ongoing ‘‘Christian genocide”, while Trinidadian hip-hop star Nicki Minaj spoke at a UN event in New York spotlighting Christian persecution.After Minaj’s address at the UN, Rolling Stone published an article claiming that “Nicki’s claims of extremism against Nigerian Christians … aren’t backed by any data.” The article has not been received well by many Nigerians online, who have argued that westerners are weighing in with unwarranted authority. “To start, there is religious persecution in Nigeria,” Eromo says.“The dominant Islamic class, entrenched by the 18th-century Fulani scholar Usman dan Fodio, proposed a much stricter version of Islam, which is what influenced the implementation of Sharia Law in 12 states after Nigeria returned to democracy, from 1999 to the early 2000s. And so some of those who haven’t adhered to that have been killed and displaced.”This not only affects Christians – Muslim groups are also impacted if they are not seen as Muslim proper. In the north there are Sunni groups attacking Shia groups, who are viewed as heretics by extremists such as Boko Haram.The country’s middle belt, a site of much of this violence, has “a predominance of minorities”. “Many Nigerian crises are essentially about the marginalisation of political, ethnic and religious minorities. Such minorities feel whatever little resources they have left are being taken away by the majority or state-backed minorities,” Eromo says. “It’s just that the most colourful manifestation of this marginalisation is between Christians and Muslims, and most minorities in the middle belt are Christian.” While there are significant Muslim casualties, this does not undermine the reality of religious persecution against Christians in Nigerian states such as Benue and Kaduna; but it should be seen as one aspect in a broader quagmire of domination.The herder-farmer conflictView image in fullscreenNigeria’s security crisis differs significantly by region. The most notable thus far has been Boko Haram’s insurgency in the north-east, but it is the herder-farmer conflict, which has been especially prominent in the middle belt, that has largely been extrapolated into a narrative of “Christian genocide”. There is little cattle ranching in Nigeria, due to a resistance in uptake of ranches and the prevalence of nomadic cattle herds. The Fulani herdsmen historically had a more symbiotic relationship with non-Fulani farmers, but this has become strained by resource competition and exploitation by criminal groups.Climate change, desertification and deforestation have all exacerbated the problem, as Fulani herdsmen travel farther south. And there is the rapid development of former herding trails. “Abuja used to be part of the big grazing roads in the 1960s, but now it is the capital, there’s malls and complexes where you used to take your cows through.” What this has left is a series of grievances and conflicts, and with a lack of functioning state policing to calm the problems, the result is large graveyards. These herdsmen and militias also have access to more complicated and sophisticated weaponry, with conflicts in the Sahel region fuelling the proliferation of unsecured weapon stockpiles. This has led to an asymmetric conflict with Christian farmers, who often only have machetes.A centralised power with little federal oversightView image in fullscreenEromo says that Nigeria has repeatedly failed to get to grips with insurgent violence because of a centralised government. “Abuja has all of the power, and there’s a lot of ungoverned, or under governed, spaces.” He also points to the lack of state police. He says that “Nigeria’s big problem” is “ignoring the minorities and focusing on regime security. It’s Nigeria’s original sin.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionEromo continues: “Intelligence sharing is terrible. And so in all of these forests across the middle belt, north-east and into the north-west, there’s space for non-state actors to take over and to plan.” Indeed it was in Sambisa forest that the kidnapped Chibok schoolgirls were held by Boko Haram. “So you have ideological criminals who are persecuting the religious, political and ethnic minorities. Then you have commercial criminals looking for money. There’s just so many groups – which is why the catch-all term is ‘bandits’.” The problem is also obfuscated by non-herder Fulani-speaking criminals exploiting resource conflicts and stereotypes.***‘Data is a luxury in Nigeria’View image in fullscreenThere are significant blind spots in the country’s data collection, hence calls for a unified national database. “Data is a luxury in Nigeria,” Eromo says. “There’s never enough data, no one even truly knows the true size of the economy, it’s just inshallah and vibes. Nigeria is so big, there’s forests where there’s no network, so sometimes you hear of atrocities 10 days later when a person escapes. Nigeria doesn’t even know how many people it has, we see an estimated 220 million, it could be less, it could be more. It’s been a problem spanning more than 100 years, since the first British census of Nigeria in 1921.”So the real extent of the persecution is not clear. “What if the people on the ground are seeing things that the rest of us don’t see?” Eromo says. “We have to tread carefully.”Religious persecution also cannot always be neatly divided from other motives. For example, Eromo tells me that the targeted abduction of Nigerian priests amounts to religious persecution. But priests are “economically important in small communities” and attract a higher ransom from church attendants as well as the Christian diaspora. “Some Imams have also been targeted, but people are more likely to pay for a priest.”***Where now for Nigeria?View image in fullscreenThere is no singular resolution for a country whose problems are too intricate and myriad to ever be done justice in this analysis. Is American intervention the answer? Certainly not. But I am loth to criticise the Nigerians who have echoed calls for US intervention. At the very least, perhaps such international embarrassment might wake up the Nigerian government. The narrative might be isolated from nuance, but that is understandably not the concern of victims and survivors. Why would Nigeria’s ignored minorities not embrace a moment of global attention? More

As the extraordinary Oval Office meeting between Donald Trump and Zohran Mamdani shows, there’s a new bellwether in American politics.For years, Ohio played that role. In every election from 1964 to 2016, the state voted for the winning presidential candidate, and every four years journalists would travel there to interview voters in Columbus and Cincinnati, Dayton and Youngstown. But in 2020 Biden won without carrying the state, and today Ohio is deeply red, costing it its bellwether status. Several other states once considered battlegrounds – Iowa, Missouri, and Florida – have also turned firmly Republican.But now a new bellwether has emerged: Queens. This humble New York borough contains multitudes. With a population of 2.3 million, it would be the nation’s fifth largest city if it stood alone. And in diversity it is without peer. Nearly half of Queens residents are foreign born. It is about a quarter white, a quarter Latino, nearly a quarter Asian and 17% Black, and 140 languages are spoken there. It’s home to Citi Field and the USTA Tennis Center, LaGuardia and John F Kennedy airports, MoMA PS1 and Aqueduct Racetrack, Archie Bunker of All in the Family and Awkwafina of Nora from Queens.Flushing is home to so many Asians that its downtown is known as the Chinese Times Square. Astoria has one of the largest Greek populations outside of Greece; Jackson Heights is known as “Little Colombia”; Woodside has a “Little Manila”. Jamaica is home to large African American, Caribbean and Central American populations, while Long Island City has become a magnet for the hip and arty. Queens also has New York’s largest Muslim population as well as 150,000 Jews. Overall, it is thoroughly middle and working class – a swath of heartland America set down in pulsating, cosmopolitan New York.Like all other New York boroughs except Staten Island, Queens reliably votes Democratic, but in November 2024 it moved decisively toward Trump. Where Joe Biden in 2020 won Queens by 72% to 27% – a 45-point margin – Kamala Harris in 2024 won it by only 24 points. Trump’s gains were especially large in heavily Latino, Chinese and south Asian neighborhoods.Many of those voting for him were propelled by the rise in disorder that had occurred in the wake of the pandemic and then exacerbated by the sudden influx of migrants. The placement of the migrants in makeshift shelters in residential neighborhoods without adequate support services led to a wave of complaints about crime and loitering as well as resentment over the diversion of resources from longtime residents. As in many other districts, the rise in rents and the cost of groceries contributed to a sense among many that the path to the middle class was becoming increasingly narrow. A political realignment seemed under way.Yet even as Trump was making such inroads, the democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was winning 69% of the vote in her congressional district, which straddles northern Queens and the South Bronx. And, as dissatisfaction with the status quo surged and concerns over affordability mounted, support grew for another young insurgent – Zohran Mamdani.A state assemblyman whose district includes parts of Astoria and Long Island City, Mamdani in the 24 June Democratic primary won support from a mixed salad of leftish young professionals, working-class Latinos, and recently arrived south Asians – all drawn to his bread-and-butter platform of universal childcare, free buses and a rent freeze. Groups like Drum Beats (Desis Rising Up & Moving) canvassed tens of thousands of residents, including a Bangladeshi population that has tripled over the last decade.In the general election, Mamdani got 47.3% of the votes in Queens. “Some of the areas that have been trending towards Trump went for Mamdani,” observed John Mollenkopf, a professor of political science at the Cuny Graduate Center.Trump concurred. “A lot of my voters voted for him,” the president said during his 21 November meeting with Mamdani. The session seemed to seal Queens’s political arrival. For Trump, too, is a product of the borough. He grew up in Jamaica Estates, a leafy upper-middle-class section located about 10 miles from Mamdani’s Astoria home. Both are anti-establishment figures with a knack for understanding and addressing the needs of those with “fingers bruised from lifting boxes on the warehouse floor, palms calloused from delivery by handlebars, [and] knuckles scarred with kitchen burns”, as Mamdani put it in his victory speech.With Ocasio-Cortez contemplating a run for higher office, Queens is proving an important seedbed for national politics, and New York-based journalists – rather than have to book flights to the midwest – can now hop on the 7 train to Jackson Heights or Flushing.Yet national news organizations have treated the borough like flyover country. The New York Times in particular has been a step behind. Back in the 90s, the paper had a sizable metro section that thoroughly covered the outer boroughs and the tristate region. But as the Times mushroomed into a global paper – it now has more readers in California than in New York – it has shortchanged the city’s blue-collar precincts. Today, driverless cars in San Francisco get as much coverage in the paper as taxi drivers in Corona.As a result, the Times, during the mayoral race, failed to grasp the groundswell developing behind Mamdani. And, when his strength did become evident, it was strangely dismissive and even hostile toward him, sniffing in an editorial that because of his lack of experience and concern about the disorder in the city, “we do not believe that Mr. Mamdani deserves a spot on New Yorkers’ ballots.”It followed with an “exposé” about how as a high school senior Mamdani (who was born in Uganda) had checked multiple boxes on his college application to Columbia about his race, purportedly to gain an advantage. Mamdani explained that he considered himself “an American who was born in Africa” and that his answers were an attempt to represent his complex background given the limited choices before him. The piece fed the perception that the Times was “on a crusade against Mamdani”, as Margaret Sullivan put it in the Guardian.After his victory, the paper, noting his ascension and Ocasio-Cortez’s continuing strength, ran a piece about how Queens “is having its moment”. With the borough claiming three of the top four spots in a survey of city-neighborhoods-to-watch in 2025; with Astoria emerging as a favorite among young professionals; and with the Rockaways becoming a summer staple, the Times observed, “Could Queens become the new Brooklyn?”It already is the new Ohio.

Michael Massing is an American writer based in New York City. He is a former executive editor of the Columbia Journalism Review More

Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff told a senior Kremlin official last month that achieving peace in Ukraine would require Russia gaining control of Donetsk and potentially a separate territorial exchange, according to a recording of their conversation obtained by Bloomberg.In the 14 October phone call with Yuri Ushakov, the top foreign policy aide to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, Witkoff said he believed the land concessions were necessary all while advising Ushakov to congratulate Trump and frame discussions more optimistically.“Now, me to you, I know what it’s going to take to get a peace deal done: Donetsk and maybe a land swap somewhere,” Witkoff told Ushakov during the five-minute conversation, according to Bloomberg’s transcript. “But I’m saying instead of talking like that, let’s talk more hopefully because I think we’re going to get to a deal here.”The envoy also offered tactical guidance on how Putin should raise the subject with Trump, including suggestions about scheduling a Trump-Putin telephone conversation before Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s White House visit later that week.On Wednesday, Ushakov appeared to confirm the authenticity of the phone conversation, telling Russian state TV that the leak was probably an attempt to “hinder” the talks.“As for Witkoff, I can say that a preliminary agreement has been reached that he will come to Moscow next week,” Ushakov said.The White House did not dispute the veracity of the transcript, and Trump described Witkoff’s reported approach to the Russians in the call as “standard” negotiating procedure.“He’s got to sell this to Ukraine. He’s got to sell Ukraine to Russia,” Trump told reporters onboard Air Force One as he flew to his home in Florida on Tuesday night. “That’s what a dealmaker does.”The recording offers a direct insight into Witkoff’s negotiating approach and appears to reveal the origins of the controversial 28-point peace proposal that emerged earlier in November.On the call, Witkoff, who recently helped broker the Gaza ceasefire agreement, suggested Moscow and Washington develop a joint peace framework modelled on that deal. “We put a 20-point Trump plan together that was 20 points for peace and I’m thinking maybe we do the same thing with you,” he said.Ushakov appeared to take some of the advice onboard. Putin “will congratulate” and will say: “Mr Trump is a real peace man,” he said.The heavily criticised 28-point proposal would require Ukraine to cede the entire Donetsk region to Russia, including areas under Ukrainian control. Russia has not fully captured Donetsk.Those territories would become a demilitarized buffer zone recognised internationally as Russian, and the plan would also grant Russia control of Luhansk and Crimea while freezing battle lines in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.Putin said this month he believed the US plan could serve as the “basis for a final peaceful settlement”, though the Kremlin maintains it has not discussed the proposal in detail with Washington.The revelations come as Trump said on Tuesday he was sending Witkoff to meet Putin in Moscow, and the US army secretary, Dan Driscoll, to meet with the Ukrainians – ahead of a possible White House meeting between Trump and Zelenskyy on Friday.“I look forward to hopefully meeting with President Zelenskyy and President Putin soon, but ONLY when the deal to end this War is FINAL or, in its final stages,” Trump said in a Truth Social post.The US has pushed Ukraine to accept the framework as the foundation for ending the nearly four-year conflict, though Ukrainian officials have insisted they will not recognise Russian control of occupied territories or accept limits on their military forces.The phone conversation took place as Trump’s stance toward Moscow appeared to be hardening. On the same day as the Witkoff-Ushakov call, Trump voiced frustration with Putin’s unwillingness to end the war, saying: “I don’t know why he continues with this war. He just doesn’t want to end that war. And I think it’s making him look very bad.”The Associated Press contributed to this report More

The interior department announced today new “America-first” entrance fees for national parks, commemorative annual passes featuring Donald Trump and “resident-only patriotic fee-free days for 2026” including Trump’s birthday.Starting next year, entrance fees for international visitors will more than triple.According to a department press release, non-residents will be able to choose between purchasing a $250 annual pass or paying $100 per person “to enter 11 of the most visited national parks, in addition to the standard entrance fee”.In a video posted to his X account, interior secretary Doug Burgum said: “This year we’re making it easier and more affordable for every American to experience the beauty and freedom of our public lands.”“Starting in 2026, United States residents will be able to purchase an annual interagency pass for just $80,” he added. The current, annual interagency America the Beautiful pass is already $80.The aim of raising prices for international visitors is to ensure “they contribute their fair share to help preserve and maintain these treasured places”, Burgum said.Burgum also announced commemorative new designs for annual passes issued in 2026. The annual pass features portraits of George Washington and Donald Trump side-by-side, while the military pass includes a photograph of Trump saluting troops.The interior department announced five new “fee free days” that will go into effect in 2026, bringing the total number of fee free days – for US residents only – to 10.The new fee-free days include 3, 4 and 5 July – in celebration of the 250th anniversary of the United States Declaration of Independence. They also include 17 September, which is Constitution Day, and 27 October, the birthday of conservationist and former president Theodore Roosevelt. The final fee-free day is 14 June, which Burgum noted is “Flag Day, which is also fittingly President Trump’s birthday”.In his video, Burgum noted that plans to increase fees for international visitors were focused on conservation. “As Theodore Roosevelt once said, there can be no greater issue than that of conservation in this country,” he said. Under Burgum and Trump’s leadership, the interior department has lost nearly a quarter of national parks staff, proposed billions of dollars in cuts to public lands, opened logging in national forests, defunded conservation organizations and proposed allowing oil and gas drilling off California’s coast. More

The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, escalated attacks by Trump administration chiefs on Arizona senator Mark Kelly on Tuesday by ordering the secretary of the US navy to investigate “potentially unlawful comments” made by Kelly in a social media video with other lawmakers.Hegseth’s order came in the form of a memorandum to John Phelan asking the Navy secretary to review Kelly and a group of fellow Democrats’ comments in the video last week that sought to remind serving soldiers and intelligence officers that they have the right to refuse unlawful orders.Hegseth said in the memo that he wanted a brief from Phelan that he could review by 10 December.Pete Hegseth orders US navy to investigate Mark Kelly’s commentsThe Pentagon had issued a statement on Monday that it was investigating Kelly for possible breaches of military law.Kelly and the other Democrats have been accused by Donald Trump of “seditious behavior”, to which Kelly has responded that the US president is using the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) against them as a “tool to intimidate and harass members of Congress”.The latest statement from the group, released by congressional lawmakers Jason Crow of Colorado, Chris Deluzio and Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania and Maggie Goodlander of New Hampshire, confirmed that the FBI had contacted the House and Senate sergeants at arms requesting interviews with them.Read the full storyTrump may have inadvertently issued mass pardon for 2020 voter fraud, experts sayDonald Trump may have inadvertently pardoned any citizen who committed voter fraud in 2020 when he granted a pardon to Rudy Giuliani and other allies for their efforts to overturn the election, legal experts say.The pardons of Giuliani and others who participated in the fake elector scheme earlier this month were largely symbolic since the federal government dismissed its criminal cases once Trump was elected. Many of those pardoned have faced criminal charges at the state level.Read the full storyUS to send envoy to Moscow to discuss proposals to end Ukraine warDonald Trump said he would send special envoy Steve Witkoff to meet Vladimir Putin in Moscow to discuss developing proposals to end the Ukraine war, but despite White House optimism there was little sign of progress on core sticking points.The US president said negotiations had left “only a few remaining points of disagreement” but there was no breakthrough on the issues of territorial control and security guarantees and he dampened expectations of immediate peace summits.Read the full storyAnti-fascist groups named as US terror threats ‘barely exist’, experts sayExperts have told the Guardian the same anti-fascist groups the US state department recently named as foreign terrorist organizations and accused of “conspiring to undermine foundations of western civilization” barely qualify as groups, let alone terrorist organizations, and pose no active threat to Americans.“The whole thing is a bit ridiculous,” said Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, which tracks extremist movements worldwide, “because the groups designated by the administration barely exist and certainly aren’t terrorists.”Read the full storyMajority of Latino voters disapprove of Trump, Pew study findsAfter receiving support from nearly half of Latino voters in the 2024 election, Trump had lost the backing of a majority surveyed in October. Pew found that 70% of Latinos “disapprove of the way Trump is handling his job as president”, while 65% disapprove of his administration’s approach to immigration and 61% believe his economic policies have worsened economic conditions.Trump won 48% of the Latino vote in 2024, up from 28% in 2016. Latinos, one of the fastest-growing demographics in the United States, account for one in five Americans.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

The Trump administration’s ICE raids across southern California have had disastrous effects on the region’s immigrants and swept up US citizens in the process, community leaders and residents said at a congressional hearing in Los Angeles on Monday.

Jim Justice, the Republican US senator, and his wife have agreed to pay more than $5m that the couple owes in back taxes shortly after they were sued over the 16-year-old debt by the federal government.

The BBC has been plunged into a new row over its treatment of Donald Trump, after an academic accused it of censoring his remarks about alleged corruption by the US president.

Ralph Abraham, a top Louisiana health official who stopped promoting mass vaccination policies and once described Covid-19 vaccines as “dangerous”, has been appointed deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), it was revealed on Tuesday.

Investigators have identified the source of a leak in the Olympic pipeline two weeks after fuel was first spotted in a ditch near an Everett, Washington, blueberry farm.
Catching up? Here’s what happened on 24 November 2025. More

A federal judge has ruled that Donald Trump’s administration cannot impose mandatory detention on thousands of migrants held by US immigration authorities without first giving them an opportunity to seek release on bond.US district judge Sunshine Sykes in Riverside, California, certified a nationwide class of individuals who were already living in the United States when they were detained and are legally entitled to a hearing to determine whether they can be released on bond while their deportation cases proceed.Sykes ruled last week that the Trump administration’s policy adopted in July of denying bond hearings to migrants detained during domestic enforcement operations in the US was illegal, joining dozens of other federal judges. While those decisions involved individual migrants or small groups, Sykes on Tuesday extended her ruling nationwide.About 65,000 people were in immigration detention in the US as of last week, according to government data.The Trump administration has argued that individuals’ differing circumstances required the issue to be reviewed on a case-by-case basis, but Sykes said that being deprived of the right to a bond hearing was an injury common to the class.“Such common injury can be resolved in a single stroke upon the determination that the new policy is in violation of (migrants’) due process rights,” wrote Sykes, an appointee of Joe Biden.The US Department of Justice and lawyers for the four migrants who filed the lawsuit did not immediately respond to requests for comment.Under federal immigration law, “applicants for admission” to the United States are subject to mandatory detention while their cases proceed in immigration courts.Bucking a longstanding interpretation of the law, the Trump administration in July said that non-citizens already residing in the United States, and not only those who arrive at a port of entry at the border, qualify as applicants for admission.Sykes in her ruling last week disagreed, saying the law makes a clear distinction between existing US residents and new arrivals. More

Four Democratic members of the US House, who appeared in a video telling service members to “refuse illegal orders”, confirmed that the FBI has requested interviews with them. All of the lawmakers in the video are former members of the military or intelligence community.Today, the representatives issued statements, saying that Donald Trump is using the FBI “as a tool to intimidate and harass” them.“We swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. That oath lasts a lifetime, and we intend to keep it. We will not be bullied. We will never give up the ship,” representatives Maggie Goodlander, Jason Crow, Chrissy Houlahan, and Chris Deluzio wrote.In a lengthy social media post, Donald Trump wrote on Thuesday that his attempt to hold on to the House through gerrymandering ahead of the 2026 midterms is not yet done.“It looks like the Indiana Senate Republicans will be coming back in two weeks to take up Redistricting,” Trump reported.He went on to threaten any state lawmakers who fail not support the effort to tilt the electoral map in Indiana more in favor of Republicans with primary challenges.“I am glad to hear the Indiana House is stepping up to do the right thing, and I hope the Senate finds the Votes. If they do, I will make sure that all of those people supporting me win their Primaries, and go on to Greatness but, if they don’t, I will partner with the incredibly powerful MAGA Grassroots Republicans to elect STRONG Republicans,” the president wrote on his social media platform.Interior secretary Doug Burgum announced today the new cost of an annual national parks pass for international tourists.For US residents, the cost of a yearly pass (which grants access to 63 of America’s national parks) will stay at $80. But for those visiting, they’ll have to fork out $250.When visiting any of the 11 most visited parks, non-residents will also pay a new $100 per person fee (in addition to the usual entry fee). There will also be five extra “fee free days” for US residents.Washington DC’s mayor, Muriel Bowser, said today she would not seek re-election. Instead, she will finish out the remainder of her third term and leave office in January 2027.Bowser, once a vocal critic of Donald Trump, found herself complying when he returned to the White House in January, launched a federal takeover of the Metropolitan Police Department, and deployed national guard troops to the district earlier this year. While critics blamed Bowser for acquiescing to the administration, supporters felt she exercised tactical soft-power given the legal limitations of leading the nation’s capital.In a video posted to social media, Bowser noted that her administration “brought our city back from the ravages of a global pandemic, and summoned our collective strength to stand tall against police who threaten our very autonomy while preserving home rule that is our North Star.”Bowser added that she’s “cherished the opportunity” to serve her hometown for 10 years, and has “happily given all my passion and energy to the job that I love”. Notably, she did not say which candidate she would endorse to succeed her.In September, I reported on how Bowser had to navigate her political summer stand-off with Trump.Donald Trump may have inadvertently pardoned any citizen who committed voter fraud in 2020 when he granted a pardon to Rudy Giuliani and other allies for their efforts to overturn the election, legal experts say.The pardons of Giuliani and others who participated in the fake elector scheme earlier this month were largely symbolic since the federal government dismissed its criminal cases once Trump was elected. Many of those pardoned have faced criminal charges at the state level.But, the federal pardon could wind up having a big effect on people like Matthew Alan Laiss, who is accused of voting in both Pennsylvania and Florida in the 2020 election. According to a federal indictment handed down in September, Laiss moved from Pennsylvania to Florida in August of 2020 and voted first with a mail-in ballot in Pennsylvania and then in person in Florida on election day. Both votes were for Trump, Laiss’ lawyers wrote in court documents. He has pleaded not guilty.The case is still in its early stages. Last week, Laiss’ lawyers, public defenders Katrina Young and Elizabeth Toplin, argued that the charges should be thrown out because Trump had pardoned him.They argued that Trump’s 7 November pardon was sweeping. It applies to any US citizen for conduct relating to the advice, creation, organization, execution, submission, support, voting, activities, participation in, or advocacy for or of any slate or proposed slate of presidential electors, whether or not recognized by any state or state official, in connection with the 2020 presidential election.” And while it lists a number of people the pardon specifically applies to, it also says the pardon is not limited to those named.That language is so broad, lawyers for Laiss wrote, it also applies to their client.Elissa Slotkin, one of the two Democratic senators in the video to troops, said today she was aware that the FBI’s counterterrorism division “appeared to open an inquiry” into her.She wrote:
The President directing the FBI to target us is exactly why we made this video in the first place. He believes in weaponizing the federal government against his perceived enemies and does not believe laws apply to him or his Cabinet. He uses legal harassment as an intimidation tactic to scare people out of speaking up.
A reminder that after the video was published online, Donald Trump accused the lawmakers of “seditious behavior, punishable by death” in a post on Truth Social. He also re-shared several comments from other users calling for the arrest, trial and execution of the Democratic members of Congress.For her part, Slotkin remained resolute today. “This isn’t just about a video,” she said in her statement. “This is not the America I know, and I’m not going to let this next step from the FBI stop me from speaking up for my country and our Constitution.”Four Democratic members of the US House, who appeared in a video telling service members to “refuse illegal orders”, confirmed that the FBI has requested interviews with them. All of the lawmakers in the video are former members of the military or intelligence community.Today, the representatives issued statements, saying that Donald Trump is using the FBI “as a tool to intimidate and harass” them.“We swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. That oath lasts a lifetime, and we intend to keep it. We will not be bullied. We will never give up the ship,” representatives Maggie Goodlander, Jason Crow, Chrissy Houlahan, and Chris Deluzio wrote.Mitch McConnell, the Republican senator from Kentucky and former majority leader, has critiqued a possible US co-authored peace plan to end the war in Ukraine, which might require land concessions.“The most basic reality on the ground is that the price of peace matters. A deal that rewards aggression wouldn’t be worth the paper it’s written on,” he lawmaker wrote in a post on X. “America isn’t a neutral arbiter, and we shouldn’t act like one.”Last week, McConnell said that Vladimir Putin has “spent the entire year trying to play President Trump for a fool”. He added that the president “ought to find new advisors” if administration officials are “more concerned with appeasing Putin than securing real peace”. In response, vice-president JD Vance said that every criticism of the peace deal “either misunderstands the framework or misstates some critical reality on the ground”.It’s almost 1:30pm in Washington, and here’s were things stand today.

As he prepared to pardon two lucky turkeys, Waddle and Gobble, the president said he thought a peace deal on Russia’s war in Ukraine was getting very close but gave no other details. “We’re going to get there,” Donald Trump said. Earlier, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that “tremendous progress” had been made towards a deal. In a post on X, she added that “a few delicate, but not insurmountable” details remain and “will require further talks between Ukraine, Russia, and the United States”.

The FBI has requested interviews with the six Democratic members of Congress who took part in a video where they told members of the military to “refuse illegal orders”, according to Reuters. Citing an unnamed justice department official, Reuters reports that the FBI is asking for interviews with senators Mark Kelly and Elissa Slotkin, as well as House representatives Maggie Goodlander, Jason Crow, Chrissy Houlahan, and Chris Deluzio. The FBI declined to comment when the Guardian reached out about the latest report.

For his part, senator Kelly called the Pentagon’s announcement that it is investigating the him for possible breaches of military law for taking part in the video as an act of “intimidation”. In an interview with Rachel Maddow on MS NOW, Kelly added: “I don’t think there’s anything more patriotic than standing up for the constitution. And right here, right now, this week, the president clearly is not doing that.”
In his remarks before the pardoning just then, Trump also said he thought a deal on Russia’s war in Ukraine was getting “very close” but gave no other details. “We’re going to get there,” he said.“I think we’re getting very close to a deal, we’ll find out … I think we’re making progress,” he added.My colleagues over on the Europe blog report that a short while ago Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Kyiv was ready to move forward with a US-backed peace deal, and that he was prepared to discuss its sensitive points with Trump in talks he said should include European allies.In a speech to the ‘coalition of the willing’, a copy of which was seen by Reuters, the Ukrainian president urged European leaders to hash out a framework for deploying a “reassurance force” to Ukraine and to continue supporting Kyiv for as long as Moscow shows no willingness to end its war.Gobble is officially pardoned. Along with Waddle, he’ll live out the rest of his days in North Carolina. More

Don’t give up the day job. On Tuesday, Donald Trump came to the annual Thanksgiving turkey pardoning ceremony at the White House ready to serve up some political satire. It went about as well as you would expect.Like a startled turkey flapping in zigzags, the US president’s speech ricocheted bafflingly from topic to topic. He told jokes in the worst possible taste and watched them arc through the Rose Garden sky before landing with a thud. And on a day intended for charity and good cheer, he described a state governor as “a big, fat slob”.Trump has never met a presidential tradition he did not want to trash. For nearly eight decades, the turkey presentation has been a silly but reassuring ritual in which presidents offer a few bad puns and uplifting words about the state of the nation. They are not meant to make news.But this year, of course, things were different. Normally, two turkeys are in attendance following a public vote on which should be pardoned. On Tuesday, however, Gobble was present but Waddle was “missing in action”, as Trump put it – evidently a bird of the same feather as Marjorie Taylor Greene.The Rose Garden was transformed, its grass paved over with Mar-a-Lago-style slabs, while nearby was the presidential walk of fame, featuring tacky gold and framed portraits of Trump’s predecessors save for Joe Biden, replaced by an auto pen. Behind the president was a framed mirror in which a yellow crane could be seen at the site of the former East Wing.“I hope you like our new beautiful patio with matching stones at the White House,” said Trump after emerging from the Oval Office with the first lady, Melania, in light rain. “If it were grass today, you’d be sinking into the mud like they’ve done for many years, and you would be very unhappy.”It’s hard for Trump’s critics to accept that the man can be funny. At election campaign rallies, he can cut through the pretentiousness of politicians with a down-to-earth comment that strikes a chord with his audience. On this occasion, however, he lacked spontaneity, his wit was less rapier than baseball bat. The gags felt sour a day after a judge tossed out his justice department’s prosecution of political opponents.Trump rambled about a thorough investigation by Bondi and a host of departments “into a terrible situation caused by a man named Sleepy Joe Biden. He used an auto pen last year for the turkey’s pardon.”If the president was expecting riotous laughter from an audience that included JD Vance and his wife, Usha, as well as attorney general Pam Bondi and “secretary of war” Pete Hegseth, he was disappointed. There was barely a chuckle.Nevertheless, he persisted. “I have the official duty to determine, and I have determined, that last year’s turkey pardons are totally invalid,” he said.Finally, some polite chuckles from the gathering. What a relief! But then Trump went and spoiled it by riffing on the pardon for Biden’s son Hunter and taking another dark turn.“The turkeys known as Peach and Blossom last year have been located, and they were on their way to be processed – in other words, to be killed. But I’ve stopped that journey, and I am officially pardoning them, and they will not be served for Thanksgiving dinner. We saved them in the nick of time,” he said.In his dark coat, suit and red tie, Trump was bombing. Would Melania or someone wield a hook to yank him off stage? The privilege of the presidency is that no one dares.Trump was doing “the weave”, drifting from nuclear power plants to border security, from car factories to AI, from tax cuts to the price of eggs. It was the biggest tonal misjudgment since he tried to tell military generals how to be tough guys.Finally, he got back to the turkeys. “When I first saw their pictures, I thought we should send them – well, I shouldn’t say this – I was going to call them Chuck and Nancy,” he said – a reference to Democrats Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi that earned gentle mirth from the sycophants’ corner.“But then I realised I wouldn’t be pardoning them, I would never pardon those two people. I wouldn’t pardon them. I wouldn’t care what Melania told me: ‘Darling, I think it would be a nice thing to do.’ I won’t do it, darling.”Will next year’s pardoned turkeys be called Maxwell and Mountbatten?Trump boasted that, at more than 50lbs, his turkeys were bigger than those of his predecessors. He claimed that Robert Kennedy Jr, the health secretary, had certified them as the first-ever “Maha” [Make America Healthy Again] turkeys. He worried that Gobble might attack him and then, randomly, talked about immigration again.That led to the sickest witticism of the day: “Instead of pardoning, some of my more enthusiastic staffers were already drafting the paperwork to ship Gobble and Waddle straight to the terrorist confinement centre in El Salvador. And even those birds don’t want to be there. You know what I mean.”It was unfunny because it’s all too believable that Stephen Miller would try to send turkeys to the El Salvador mega-prison, along with kittens, puppies and cute rabbits. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt must have regretted bringing her infant son Nicholas to work.Indeed, Trump moved on to his draconian crackdown on crime in Chicago and Washington DC. “They burned this beautiful woman riding in a train,” was another phrase jarringly at odds with this once jovial occasion. Anger rising in his voice, he ditched a prewritten line about Illinois governor JB Pritzker’s weight and called him a “big, fat slob” before admitting that he could afford to lose a few pounds too.Then Trump walked over to Gobble, made his characteristically theatrical hand gestures and declared: “Gobble, I just want to tell you this – very important – you are hereby unconditionally pardoned!” He even appeared to do a turkey impression for a moment, then reached over to run his hand over the feathers, asking: “Who would want to harm this beautiful bird?”The future lame-duck president had delivered a box-office turkey. Had the nation of Mark Twain come to this? But no one in this audience of enablers was going to object. First they laugh at you, then they fight you, then they pretend to laugh at your authoritarian jokes. More