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    Trump administration reportedly orders Pentagon to plan for sweeping defense budget cuts – live

    The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth has ordered senior leaders at the Pentagon and throughout the US military to develop plans for cutting 8% from the defense budget in each of the next five years, according to a memo obtained by the Washington Post.Hegseth ordered the proposed cuts to be drawn up by 24 February, according to the memo, which includes a list of 17 categories that the Trump administration wants exempted. Among them: operations at the southern US border, modernization of nuclear weapons and missile defense and acquisition of one-way attack drones and other munitions. If adopted in full, the proposed cuts would include tens of billions of dollars in each of the next five years.According to the Post, the memo calls for continued “support agency” funding for several major regional headquarters, including Indo-Pacific command, northern command and space command. Notably absent from that list is European command, which has had a leading role in executing US strategy during the war in Ukraine; central command, which oversees operations in the Middle East; and Africa command, which manages the several thousand troops the Pentagon has spread across that continent.“President Trump’s charge to DoD is clear: achieve peace through strength,” Hegseth wrote in the memo, dated Tuesday.
    The time for preparation is over – we must act urgently to revive the warrior ethos, rebuild our military, and re-establish deterrence. Our budget will resource the fighting force we need, cease unnecessary defense spending, reject excessive bureaucracy, and drive actionable reform including progress on the audit.
    The White House has reshared a social media post from Donald Trump, calling the president a king and picturing him in a crown.This afternoon, Donald Trump wrote on the social media platform Truth Social, “CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD. Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED. LONG LIVE THE KING!”His post referenced a letter his transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, sent to New York governor Kathy Hochul today, ending the Department of Transportation’s agreement with the state over a toll policy for lower Manhattan.Shortly after, the White House shared the quote from Trump on social media, alongside a computer-generated image of a smiling Trump wearing a crown on a stylized version of a Time magazine cover, with the word “Time” replaced with “Trump”.In his address, Pritzker recalled in 1978 when a neo-Nazi group wanted to march through Skokie, Illinois, a Chicago suburb that he said was once home to the largest number of Holocaust survivors in the world. The ensuing legal battle and controversy ultimately led to a supreme court decision in favor of the group’s right to march. The demonstration was ultimately canceled days before and the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center was formed in Skokie.Pritzker credited the resistance and resilience of ordinary Illinoians for defusing the Nazis threat.“If we don’t want to repeat history then for god sake in this moment we better be strong enough to learn from it,” he said.Pritzker concluded the thirty-plus minute speech with a call to action.“Tyranny requires your fear and your silence and your compliance,” he said. “Democracy requires your courage. So gather your justice and humanity Illinois and do not let the tragic spirit of despair overcome us when our country needs us most.”Pritzker, who is seen as a possible 2028 presidential contender, has adopted a far more confrontational posture toward the Trump administration than other blue state governors.“We don’t have Kings in America and I don’t intend to bend the knee to one,” Pritzker vowed, as the official White House social media account posted a photo of Trump wearing a crown with the words “Long Live the King”.In his remarks, he defended the approach, arguing: “Going along to get along does not work.”Responding to scattered boos in the audience, the governor warned that Trump’s cuts to federal agencies would affect conservatives and liberals alike. “You can boo all you want until your constituents lose these services,” he said.“If you think I’m overreacting and sounding the alarm too soon, consider this,” he continued. “It took the Nazis 1 month, 3 weeks, 2 days, 8 hours and 40 minutes to dismantle a constitutional republic. And all I’m saying is when the 5-alarm fire starts to burn, every good person better be ready to man a post with a bucket of water if you want to stop it from raging out of control.”Illinois Governor JB Pritzker on Wednesday delivered a searing state-of-the-state address, likening Donald Trump’s stunning power grabs to the rise of Nazism in 1930’s Germany.“I do not invoke the specter of Nazis lightly,” Pritzker told a joint session of the Illinois House and Senate in Springfield, the state’s capital. Speaking as “an American and a Jew” who helped build the state’s Holocaust Museum, Pritzker said he was “watching with a foreboding dread what is happening in our country right now”.Trump’s attacks on DEI, LGBTQ people and immigrants was part of an “authoritarian playbook,” the Democratic governor said.“They point to a group of people who don’t look like you and tell you to blame them for your problems. I just have one question,” he said. “What comes next?”Good afternoon, thanks for joining our US politics coverage today – nearly one month into the second Trump administration. I’m Cecilia Nowell, taking over our coverage into the evening.Donald Trump’s first and second vice presidents have had markedly different reactions to the president’s comments on the war in Ukraine.In an interview published today by the conservative British tabloid, the Daily Mail, JD Vance warned Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy that “badmouthing” Trump is a bad idea.“The idea that Zelenskyy is going to change the president’s mind by bad mouthing him in public media, everyone who knows the President will tell you that is an atrocious way to deal with this administration,” Vance said.Meanwhile, former vice president Mike Pence – who notably fell out of favor with the president after the 6 January attack on the US Capitol and declined to endorse Trump in the 2024 election – struck a different tone.“Ukraine did not ‘start’ this war. Russia launched an unprovoked and brutal invasion claiming hundreds of thousands of lives. The Road to Peace must be built on the Truth,” Pence wrote on social media today.Both comments follow an escalating exchange between the US and Ukrainian presidents. After Trump implied Ukraine had started the war, which began after Russia invaded Ukraine, during a press conference yesterday, Zelenskyy said Trump was trapped in a Russian “disinformation bubble”. Today, Trump called Zelenskyy “a dictator” and warned that he “better move fast” or he “won’t have a country left”.Here are Pjotr Sauer and Luke Harding with more:Much of the day so far has been dominated by the fallout of Donald Trump’s unprecedented and extraordinary attack on the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, whom he called “a dictator without elections” who had “done a terrible job”. In the rant rife with falsehoods about the Ukrainian leader’s popularity among other things, Trump warned Zelenskyy that he “better move fast” or he “won’t have a country left”.Trump accused Zelenskyy (baselessly) of benefiting from continuing US financial and military support, suggesting he had an interest in prolonging the war rather than seeking its end. Trump’s latest comments, which parrot key talking points of Vladimir Putin’s regime, cast serious doubt on future US aid to Ukraine and mark the most explicit threat yet to end the war on terms favourable to Moscow. European leaders are scrambling to contain the crisis (German chancellor Olaf Scholz called Trump’s comments “wrong and dangerous”), while several Republican lawmakers in the US rushed to distance themselves from Trump’s remarks.Earlier in the day, Zelenskyy had said Trump was “living in a disinformation bubble”, in response to the US president last night blaming Ukraine for Russia’s illegal invasion. Trump made the comments in response to Zelenskyy’s concerns that Ukraine had not been invited to the talks between the US and Russia on Tuesday.Elsewhere:

    The Trump administration has ordered the Pentagon to plan for sweeping budget cuts, according to a memo obtained by the Washington Post. Defense secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered senior leaders at the Pentagon and throughout the US military to develop plans for cutting 8% from the defense budget in each of the next five years. He has given a deadline of 24 February.

    Senate majority leader John Thune said the upper chamber will still go ahead and begin vote-a-rama on the budget plan tomorrow, according to Fox News. This is despite Trump throwing his support behind the House’s competing version of the budget blueprint earlier on Wednesday.

    The Trump administration said it is not disbursing funds for thousands of foreign aid contracts and grants despite a federal judge’s order last week to lift a widespread freeze on foreign aid funding.

    A federal judge refused on Tuesday to immediately block Elon Musk and Doge from accessing government data systems or participating in worker layoffs. The US district judge Tanya Chutkan found that there were legitimate questions about the billionaire’s authority but said there was not enough evidence of grave legal harm to justify a temporary restraining order.

    Donald Trump signed an executive order making independent regulatory agencies established by Congress now accountable to the White House – a move that some experts said clashes with mainstream interpretations of the constitution. The order forces major regulators such as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to report new policy priorities to the executive branch for approval, which will also have a say over their budgets.

    The Trump administration’s planned cuts to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) not only threaten essential biomedical research in the US, but the livelihoods of researchers – and some are seriously considering leaving the country.
    Further to the news that Donald Trump has thrown his support behind the House’s budget plan, Fox News reports that Senate majority leader John Thune has said the upper chamber will still go ahead and begin vote-a-rama on the budget plan tomorrow.The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth has ordered senior leaders at the Pentagon and throughout the US military to develop plans for cutting 8% from the defense budget in each of the next five years, according to a memo obtained by the Washington Post.Hegseth ordered the proposed cuts to be drawn up by 24 February, according to the memo, which includes a list of 17 categories that the Trump administration wants exempted. Among them: operations at the southern US border, modernization of nuclear weapons and missile defense and acquisition of one-way attack drones and other munitions. If adopted in full, the proposed cuts would include tens of billions of dollars in each of the next five years.According to the Post, the memo calls for continued “support agency” funding for several major regional headquarters, including Indo-Pacific command, northern command and space command. Notably absent from that list is European command, which has had a leading role in executing US strategy during the war in Ukraine; central command, which oversees operations in the Middle East; and Africa command, which manages the several thousand troops the Pentagon has spread across that continent.“President Trump’s charge to DoD is clear: achieve peace through strength,” Hegseth wrote in the memo, dated Tuesday.
    The time for preparation is over – we must act urgently to revive the warrior ethos, rebuild our military, and re-establish deterrence. Our budget will resource the fighting force we need, cease unnecessary defense spending, reject excessive bureaucracy, and drive actionable reform including progress on the audit.
    All the effort Kyiv had expended in wooing the White House, combining flattery with bribery and a share of Ukraine’s mineral wealth, imploded in minutes when Volodymyr Zelenskyy broke the fundamental rule of the new global reality: he told the truth about Donald Trump.It is hardly surprising Zelenskyy lost his cool. Part of the reason he has a 57% confidence rating in the latest poll (13% above Trump’s own current standing) is because he has led his country through years of war with his heart vividly on his sleeve. Having been subjected to eight years of Russian aggression, followed by an entirely unprovoked full-on invasion which has killed tens of thousands of Ukrainian citizens, and then to be told on the world stage: “You should have never started it”, would be too much for most people.When slighted and sprayed with Trumpian falsehoods, other world leaders, with much less at stake, have resorted to a “smile-and-wave” default strategy, deflecting direct questions and changing the subject to some aspect of relations with Washington that is still functioning normally.Zelenskyy did not do this on Wednesday. Instead, he said out loud the bit that European leaders keep quiet. Trump, he observed, is “trapped in this disinformation bubble”. He was stating the obvious, but not even Zelenskyy could have known how fetid the air inside Trump’s bubble has become. Now we know.Trump’s tirade on his own app, Truth Social, is a distillation of the greatest hits of Russian disinformation from the past three years. He said Zelenskyy was “A Dictator without Elections” (something Trump has never said about Putin) who had hoodwinked the Biden administration into a $350bn war of choice, which only “TRUMP” could fix. The president’s repeated references to himself in the third person and all caps erased any lingering doubts about the single unifying compulsion now driving Trump foreign policy.Read Julian’s full analysis here:This is an extract from my colleague John Crace’s weekly UK politics sketch – and this week he’s focusing on Trump:Even by his recent standards, Tuesday night’s stream of unconsciousness from Donald Trump took some beating. Hot on the tail of excluding Ukraine from the first round of peace talks with Russia and in effect threatening to withdraw the US from Nato, the Donald has now suggested it was Kyiv who started the war with Moscow.More than that, he declared President Zelenskyy’s popularity ratings had slid to just 4% in his own country and that he had assumed the role of dictator by not holding elections. He ended by claiming that the US had given more than three times as much aid to Ukraine than the rest of Europe combined. You could almost hear Vladimir Putin cheering from the sidelines. He couldn’t have written the script any better. It was perfection.It goes without saying that everything the US president had said was complete doggy-bollox. Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2014 and seized Crimea. There was then a pause in hostilities before Putin invaded a second time almost exactly three years ago. Claiming Ukraine started the war was like believing that Poland invaded Germany to trigger the second world war.That was just the start. Trump’s claim that Zelenskyy’s approval ratings were 4% were just his delusional, senescent fantasies. The real figure is 57%: about 10% higher than the Donald’s own. And no one in their right mind is suggesting Ukraine holds elections while the war is ongoing. There again, Trump is clearly not in his right mind. His aid figures are also way off. Collectively, Europe has given Ukraine £132bn since the start of the war. America has given £114bn.While a shrink would have a field day trying to untangle the workings of the Trump psyche – is he a narcissist or solipsist? Does he actually believe what he says or do his words have an independent existence to his brain? – it’s left to the rest of us to pick up the pieces. Much as they might like not to, other world leaders have to find a way of engaging with him. The Donald is the most powerful man on the planet and whatever he says counts for something.You can read the full politics sketch here:The French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, will visit Washington next week amid other meetings aimed at bringing an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine, US national security advisor Mike Waltz said on Wednesday.Asked about the chances of reaching a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, Waltz told Fox News in an interview: “We’re engaging on all sides, and then the next step is we’re going to put technical teams forward to start talking more details.”It comes amid fears of an irreconcilable rift between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy after the former leader launched a war of false words on the Ukrainian president, whom he called “a dictator” and warned that he “better move fast” or he “won’t have a country left”. (We have factchecked Trump’s rant here).The unprecedented escalation of tensions between Kyiv and Washington came after senior US and Russian officials met in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday to discuss the war in Ukraine, as well as economic and political cooperation, indicating a fundamental shift in the US approach to Moscow.In the latest edition of This Week in Trumpland, my colleague Adam Gabbatt writes:
    What came of those talks? Well, on Tuesday Trump came out with a curiously Putin-centric view of the war, and of how to end it. Declaring himself ‘disappointed’ that Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president, had objected to not being part of talks which directly affect the future of his country, Trump blamed Ukraine for Russia’s invasion, and trotted out Kremlin talking points about Zelenskyy’s approval rating among Ukrainians.
    In a few days Trump has apparently swallowed whole Russia’s revisionist claims about how the war began, and potentially driven a rift between the US and Europe in how it should end. Could it be that the author of Think Big and Kick Ass, and Trump 101: The Way to Success (both books were actually ghostwritten, but you get the idea), doesn’t really know much about kicking ass or the route to success? It’s not for me to say.
    You can sign up for Adam’s weekly newsletter here.Following Donald Trump’s incendiary comments earlier today calling the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a “dictator” who had “done a terrible job”, Republicans have moved swiftly to distance themselves from Trump’s attacks.The North Carolina senator Thom Tillis, who has just come from a visit to Ukraine, said Putin does not want peace, he “wants to dictate the world”. “That invasion was the responsibility of one human being on the face of this planet: Vladimir Putin,” Tillis told NBC News. On Trump calling Zelenskyy a dictator: “It’s not a word I would use.”The Alaska senator Lisa Murkowski told CNN: “I would like to see that in context because I would certainly never refer to President Zelenskyy as a dictator.”Speaking to HuffPost, the South Dakota senator Mike Rounds called Zelenskyy “the duly elected” president of Ukraine. “I think he has been a key component in the fact that they’ve been able to withstand the Russian attacks,” Rounds said. He answered “no” when asked if US foreign policy was realigning with Russia.Don Bacon, a Representative for Nebraska, posted on X: “Putin started this war. Putin committed war crimes. Putin is the dictator who murdered his opponents. The EU nations have contributed more to Ukraine. Zelenskyy polls over 50%. Ukraine wants to be part of the West, Putin hates the West. I don’t accept George Orwell’s doublethink.”Donald Trump threw his support behind the House’s budget blueprint on Wednesday, throwing a curveball into the Senate’s plan to vote on a competing version this week, Politico reports.In a post on his Truth Social platform, the president said:
    The House and Senate are doing a SPECTACULAR job of working together as one unified, and unbeatable, TEAM, however, unlike the Lindsey Graham version of the very important Legislation currently being discussed, the House Resolution implements my FULL America First Agenda, EVERYTHING, not just parts of it! We need both Chambers to pass the House Budget to “kickstart” the Reconciliation process, and move all of our priorities to the concept of, “ONE BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL.” It will, without question, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
    The House Speaker, Mike Johnson, who quickly celebrated Trump’s endorsement on X, plans to bring the plan to the floor for a vote next week.Trump’s announcement comes as the Senate leadership has prepared their own budget plan, which would divide up the president’s policy priorities into two bills, for a floor vote in the coming days.“As they say, did not see that one coming,” said Senate majority leader John Thune, telling reporters that he hoped to gain further clarity on the future of the two-bill plan from a previously scheduled lunch meeting with vice-president JD Vance.“We’ve got a plan that we think makes sense,” Thune told reporters. “We’re planning to proceed. But you know, obviously, we are interested in and hoping to hear with more clarity where the White House is coming from.”Donald Trump’s efforts to influence US cultural institutions received more pushback on Tuesday, as a group of more than 400 artists sent a letter to the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) calling on the organization to resist the president’s restrictions on funding for projects promoting diversity or “gender ideology”.The letter, first reported by the New York Times, comes after the NEA declared that federal grant applicants – which include colleges and universities, non-profit groups, individual artists and more – must comply with regulations stipulated by Trump’s executive orders. The new measures bar federal funds from going toward programs focused on “diversity, equity and inclusion” or used to “promote gender ideology”.“While the arts community stands in solidarity with the NEA, we oppose this betrayal of the Endowment’s mission to ‘foster and sustain an environment in which the arts benefit everyone in the United States’,” the letter reads. “We ask that the NEA reverse those changes to the compliance requirements.”Here’s more on that story: More

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    Department of Education workers brace for Trump to shut agency down: ‘Everybody is distraught’

    Workers inside the US Department of Education have described a “horrible, intimidating and unnerving” atmosphere among the rank-and-file as Donald Trump vows to shut it down.Widespread panic and confusion over the department’s future led to an “incomplete and chaotic” staff meeting on Wednesday, according to sources, as managers tried to explain new policies.The US president’s efforts to gut and dismantle the US Department of Education has left federal employees in fear of losing their jobs, with much of their work already halted.“We’re called parasites in the press. There’s a lot of fearmongering about what we do. What we do is ensure states are protecting children with disabilities,” one employee at the department, who requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, told the Guardian. “This used to be a bipartisan issue. I don’t understand why it still isn’t a bipartisan issue.“I’m struggling. I don’t know what to do because there are imminent threats we face everyday. We can’t talk anymore during meetings freely, and I was told [Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency”] Doge is listening in on our Teams meetings. How do you have a free flow of ideas? It’s a really unsustainable way to work.”Around 3,100 employees at the department work in the Washington DC area, with more than 1,100 additional employees working out of 10 regional offices around the US. The department supports and funds 7.5 million students across the US with disabilities with special education services; supports Title I schools, representing 26 million children living in poverty; and oversees federal student loans and grants for higher education.“We have been kept in the dark completely about our co-workers who have been on administrative leave for attending a diversity training, about rumored reduction in forces, the future of our work and their return to work plan assuming we aren’t reduced in force,” said the employee.Staff were invited to a meeting on Wednesday on plans to summon all staff back to the office. A lack of space at regional offices in New York, Boston and San Francisco means staff there will be exempted, it was explained, and remote work for “reasonable accommodations” will still be honored – but arrangements must be re-certified, and approved by the assistant secretary of education.Many attendees were not reassured. “This was an extremely poorly planned meeting that seems to have caused even more confusion,” the employee said. “The process has been so inefficient and time-consuming. The entire department is working on rushing into the office in the middle of several regional offices downsizing real estate.”Another said many employees were not able to hear the audio from the meeting, the Q&A had been disabled for it and no one addressed the audio issues. “Folks are fairly anxious and panicked,” they said. “The meeting technology has been malfunctioning and they didn’t schedule enough time for questions.”Remote participants expressed their frustration in that chat, according to screenshots seen by the Guardian. The meeting was “more confusing than helpful”, one commenter said. “You confused us more,” added another.The department and the White House did not immediately respond to invitations for comment.During Trump’s first term in office, his proposed cuts to the Department of Education were rejected by Congress, with sources in the current Trump administration claiming the president plans to issue an executive order abolishing the Department of Education.Trump has cited a desire to return education to the states, but funding and decision-making for public education already resides at state and local levels. Elon Musk, whose businesses have received over $20bn in federal contracts, has posted on social media claiming the department “no longer exists”.Another longtime employee at the US Department of Education explained that this presidential transition has carried with it an open hostility to civil servants in the form of bullying, harassment and intimidation.“We get regular emails, to the point where it’s excessive, about the ‘fork in the road’ resignation offer. We get petty emails about signature blocks,” they said. “I was here for the last Trump administration. I carried [on with] work through that, but I’m not super optimistic about this work continuing under this administration.”The targeting of diversity, equity and inclusion-related positions and work is concerning, the source said, given the department of education’s mission and its tie to equity. The department was created by Congress in 1979 “to strengthen the Federal commitment to ensuring access to equal educational opportunity for every individual”.Under Trump’s first term, his appointed secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, encouraged diversity training. Under Trump’s second term, employees who participated in those trainings have been placed on administrative leave.“All of our programs are centered on equity and underserved populations, helping to bridge the gap. Federal education funding is a small fraction of education funding overall, but it’s designed to level the field, so it’s primarily targeted toward urban, rural, Title I schools, and special education,” the employee explained. “There’s a lot of fear.“Everybody is abusing melatonin right now to get some sleep. Everybody is distraught, worried about the state of our country. Whenever there is a crisis of some type, our country really relies on civil service for so many functions.”The administration is trying to “create the conditions for people to want to depart”, they claimed. “I believe they intentionally leaked info on the push to abolish the Department of Education to push people toward taking the fork in the road deal. It would be catastrophic for our country, especially the impacts to title one schools and special education.”Another departmental employee said employees working remotely are expected to be back in offices by 24 February.“It’s very obviously being done in order to make people miserable,” they said. “People should know that they have no idea how much what the federal government does actually touches their lives every day, but they’ll notice it when it’s gone.”Send us a tipIf you have information you’d like to share securely with the Guardian about the impact of cuts to federal programs or the federal workforce, please use a non-work device to contact us via the Signal messaging app at (646) 886-8761. More

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    US deportees moved from Panama City to Darién jungle region, lawyer says

    A group of immigrants deported from the US to Panama last week have been moved from a hotel in the capital to the Darién jungle region in the south of the country, according to a lawyer representing an immigrant family.Susana Sabalza, a Panamanian immigration lawyer, said a family she represents was transferred to Metetí, a town in the Darién, along with other deported people. La Estrella de Panamá, a local daily, reported on Wednesday that 170 of the 299 people who had been in the hotel had been moved to the Darién.Panama’s government did not respond to a request for comment.The 299 immigrants had been staying at a hotel in Panama City under the protection of local authorities and with the financial support of the United States through the UN-related International Organization for Migration and the UN refugee agency, according to the Panamanian government.Immigrants in the hotel were not allowed to leave, and at least one person tried to kill themselves, while another broke his leg trying to escape, according to media reports.Panama’s migration service said on Wednesday that a Chinese woman had escaped from the hotel. It asked her to return and accused unspecified people outside the hotel of aiding his escape.On Wednesday afternoon there were still migrants on the hotel. One family came to a window and gestured to a journalist outside they had no phone. Police later came to move reporters away from the hotel.The group includes people from Afghanistan, China, India, Iran, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Turkey, Uzbekistan and Vietnam, according to Panama’s president, José Raúl Mulino, who has agreed with the US to receive non-Panamanian deportees. The deportation of non-Panamanian immigrants to Panama is part of the Trump administration’s attempt to ramp up deportations of people living in the US illegally.One of the challenges to Trump’s plan is that some people come from countries that refuse to accept US deportation flights, due to strained diplomatic relations or other reasons. The arrangement with Panama allows the US to deport people of these nationalities and makes it Panama’s responsibility to organize their onward repatriation. Human rights groups have warned that immigrants risk mistreatment and may be endangered if they are ultimately returned to violent or war-torn countries of origin, such as Afghanistan.Sabalza said she had not been able to see her clients while they were held at the hotel in Panama City and she is seeking permission to visit them at their new location. She declined to identify their nationality, but said they were a Muslim family who “could be decapitated” if they returned home.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSabalza said the family would be requesting asylum in Panama or “any country that will receive them other than their own”.Mulino said previously the immigrants would be moved to a shelter in the Darién region, which includes the dense and lawless jungle separating Central America from South America that has in recent years become a corridor for hundreds of thousands of people aiming to reach the United States. Panama’s security minister said on Tuesday that more than half of the people deported from the United States in recent days had accepted voluntary repatriations to their home countries.With reporting by Reuters More

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    Trump administration rescinds congestion pricing for New York City

    The Trump administration announced on Wednesday it intends to rescind approval of New York City’s congestion pricing program that is designed to reduce traffic in the heart of busy Manhattan and, in the process, raise billions to upgrade New York’s subway train and bus systems.The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), the public-private entity that provides public transportation services in the New York metro area, immediately sued the government in an effort to block its move.The system – the first of its kind in a US city – has only been in operation for a few weeks, starting on 5 January after previously being blocked last year. But Sean Duffy, the US transportation secretary, said the federal government’s move will now halt the program. Donald Trump pledged on the campaign trail to use federal power to revoke approval for the program that was approved in the final months of the Biden administration.On Wednesday, Trump wrote on Truth Social: “CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD. Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED. LONG LIVE THE KING!”Kathy Hochul, the New York governor and a Democrat, who has been strongly behind the scheme, said earlier that the money raised from charging tolls to drivers would underpin $15bn in debt financing for mass transit capital improvements.But in a letter addressed to Hochul on Wednesday, Duffy said: “I share the president’s concerns about the impact to working class Americans who now have an additional financial burden to account for in their daily lives. Users of the highway network within the CBD [central business district] tolling area have already financed the construction and improvement of these highways through the payment of gas taxes and other taxes.”He added: “The recent imposition of this [congestion pricing program] upon residents, businesses, and commuters left highway users without any free highway alternative on which to travel within the relevant area. Moreover, the revenues generated under this pilot program are directed toward the transit system as opposed to the highways. I do not believe that this is a fair deal.”Duffy also cited concerns expressed by New Jersey’s governor, Phil Murphy, also a Democrat, and the state’s transportation commissioner, Francis O’Connor.On 20 January, the day of Trump’s inauguration, Murphy sent a letter to Trump in which he asked him to re-examine New York’s congestion pricing program. “The resulting congestion pricing plan is a disaster for working and middle-class New Jersey commuters and residents,” Murphy wrote.In Wednesday’s letter, Duffy also said that he believes the “imposition of tolls under the [congestion pricing program] appears to be driven primarily by the need to raise revenue for the Metropolitan Transit Authority system as opposed to the need to reduce congestion”.“I recognize that preliminary project data published by the MTA reports a congestion reduction benefit, but the toll rate that is set … should not be driven primarily by revenue targets, particularly revenue targets that have nothing to do with the highway infrastructure,” he continued.The US transportation department’s decision to rescind approval of the program will put a halt to the city initiative, which imposes a $9 fee on drivers who enter Manhattan below 60th Street between 5am and 9pm on weekdays and 9am to 9pm on weekends.Last May, Trump vowed to end the program, writing on his Truth Social platform: “I will TERMINATE Congestion Pricing in my FIRST WEEK back in Office!!!”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Guardian has reached out to Hochul’s office for comment.In response to the transportation department’s decision, Jerry Nadler, the US representative of New York, said that the arguments are “utterly baseless and frankly, laughable”.“The notion of revoking approval for a federal initiative of this magnitude is nearly without precedent. I firmly believe that there is no legal basis for the President to unilaterally halt this program,” he wrote, adding: “Mr President, we’ll see you in court.”Duffy gave no date to end the program, and his announcement could bring other legal challenges. New Yorkers had mixed views about the scheme, but proponents of public transport and a cleaner environment were behind it and in the early days there were indications from MTA data that street congestion had eased in central Manhattan, the New York Times reported.The MTA and a New York bridge authority filed a lawsuit in Manhattan against Duffy, saying the department’s decision to withdraw approval of the program is “for blatantly political reasons” to uphold Trump’s campaign promise.“The administration’s efforts to summarily and unilaterally overturn the considered determinations of the political branches – federal, state, and city – are unlawful, and the court should declare that they are null and void,” the suit said.Reuters contributed reporting More

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    Trump blindsides Senate Republicans by endorsing rival House budget plan

    Donald Trump has derailed Senate Republicans’ budget strategy by endorsing a competing House option, leaving GOP leaders scrambling to save their agenda just weeks before a potential government shutdown.The president’s surprise intervention came just hours after Senate Republicans moved to advance their own two-track proposal, as he declared instead that he wants “ONE BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL” through the House’s reconciliation process.“Unlike the Lindsey Graham version of the very important Legislation currently being discussed, the House Resolution implements my FULL America First Agenda,” Trump posted on Truth Social.The announcement forces Senate Republicans to reconsider their carefully planned schedule of votes this week on a slimmer package that was meant to cover defense, border security and energy provisions.While the Senate majority leader, John Thune, admitted being blindsided, he told reporters his side was still full steam ahead on a Thursday vote for its version of a bill.“If the House can produce one big, beautiful bill, we’re prepared to work with them to get that across the finish line,” Thune said. “But we believe that the president also likes optionality.”The House proposal Trump is backing would add $4.5tn to the deficit through tax cuts while demanding enormous cuts to federal benefits programs. Under the plan’s strict rules, Republicans must either slash $2tn from mandatory programs (which could include Medicare, Medicaid and food assistance) or scale back their proposed tax breaks by an equal amount.The timing is already tight, as Congress is barreling down a 14 March deadline to pass the bill that would avoid a shutdown forcing hundreds of thousands of federal employees to go without pay. Although Republicans control both chambers, the majorities are so thin they will need Democratic votes to pass any funding measure.In the Senate, where Republicans hold 53 seats, at least 60 votes are needed to overcome a filibuster. The House speaker, Mike Johnson, working with a slim 218-215 majority, faces similar math problems and internal drama.Johnson immediately claimed victory over Trump’s endorsement of the House plan, saying on X that House Republicans are “working to deliver President Trump’s FULL agenda – not just a small part of it”.But his proposal faces resistance from Republicans worried about proposed entitlement cuts – cuts Trump himself rejected on Tuesday on Fox News, saying: “Medicare, Medicaid – none of that stuff is going to be touched.”“If a bill is put in front of me that guts the benefits my neighbors rely on, I will not vote for it,” the freshman Republican congressman Rob Bresnahan said on X.The White House dispatched the vice-president, JD Vance, to meet Senate Republicans on Wednesday afternoon, attempting to smooth tensions as both chambers grapple with how to advance Trump’s agenda. But it’s clear that some senators will be hard to convince.“I’m not sure [the House budget could] pass the House or that it could pass the Senate,” the Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson told reporters.The House remains in recess until next week, leaving Senate Republicans alone on Capitol Hill to plot their next move. More

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    Kyiv’s White House wooing implodes as Zelenskyy tells the truth about Trump | Julian Borger

    All the effort Kyiv had expended in wooing the White House, combining flattery with bribery and a share of Ukraine’s mineral wealth, imploded in minutes when Volodymyr Zelenskyy broke the fundamental rule of the new global reality: he told the truth about Donald Trump.All America’s allies, the great majority of Republican leaders who have bowed to him, and a good number of his own cabinet, know full well that Trump is trapped in a disinformation bubble, but Zelenskyy said it out loud at a press conference on Wednesday.In this new world where the foreign policy of the most powerful country on Earth has been rapidly reorganised around the fragile ego of a sullen and resentful old man, you might as well launch missiles at America’s eastern seaboard as utter a few words of rebuke.Zelenskyy was aware of this. On Tuesday, he had complained that his country was being excluded from talks about its fate between the US and Russia in Riyadh. They were “about Ukraine but without Ukraine”, he said.It was a fair point. What happened in Riyadh was an upending of western policy towards Ukraine, but none of that matters any more. This is year zero as far as Trump, Elon Musk and their supporters are concerned. The Ukrainian president’s gripe triggered a meltdown in Mar-a-Lago, where Trump told stunned reporters that Ukraine had started the war, and that Zelenskyy had a 4% approval rating.It is hardly surprising Zelenskyy lost his cool. Part of the reason he has a 57% confidence rating in the latest poll (13% above Trump’s own current standing) is because he has led his country through years of war with his heart vividly on his sleeve. Having been subjected to eight years of Russian aggression, followed by an entirely unprovoked full-on invasion which has killed tens of thousands of Ukrainian citizens, and then to be told on the world stage that: “You should have never started it”, would be too much for most people.When slighted and sprayed with Trumpian falsehoods, other world leaders, with much less at stake, have resorted to a “smile-and-wave” default strategy, deflecting direct questions and changing the subject to some aspect of relations with Washington that is still functioning normally.Zelenskyy did not do this on Wednesday. Instead, he said out loud the bit that European leaders keep quiet. Trump, he observed, is “trapped in this disinformation bubble”. He was stating the obvious, but not even Zelenskyy could have known how fetid the air inside Trump’s bubble has become. Now we know.Trump’s tirade on his own app, Truth Social, is a distillation of the greatest hits of Russian disinformation from the past three years. He said Zelenskyy was “A Dictator without Elections” (something Trump has never said about Putin) who had hoodwinked the Biden administration into a $350bn war of choice, which only “TRUMP” could fix. The president’s repeated references to himself in the third person and all caps erased any lingering doubts about the single unifying compulsion now driving Trump foreign policy.The child who guilelessly points out the emperor has no clothes is the hero of the folk tale, but the emperor in Hans Christian Andersen’s story did not have a vast nuclear arsenal and the world’s mightiest army. Telling the truth is cathartic, but getting into a personal spat with Trump amid the dizzying euphoria of his restoration to the Oval Office risks serious damage to your country.That begs the question: what will work with Trump now? He admires autocrats and is eager to please them, but that is not really an option for the world’s remaining democracies. The hope in western European capitals, based on patchy evidence from the first Trump term, is that if they can make discreet common cause with the calmer heads around Trump he can be gently steered away from his more extreme whims.In that regard, they have some faith in Marco Rubio and Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff. They may be able to talk the president out of his stated plan to own and ethnically cleanse Gaza, if only because it would be so disastrous for the US. But from the evidence of Trump’s rants, the poison about Ukraine has seeped deeper into the president’s nervous system.Zelenskyy’s best option might be to persevere with the offer of an American share in Ukraine’s rare earths. Trump’s first offer was to take half of the spoils with no security guarantees in return. But the absurd opening offer is likely to be just part of his “art of the deal” brinkmanship. Further negotiations may distract him, like a dog with a bone, from his profound pro-Putin impulses.It is a long shot. It is also an act of faith to believe this Trump episode in American history will eventually pass. But we are not even one month into his chaotic second term. For a country like Ukraine, facing an existential threat, it is going to be a very long four years. More

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    Love, rockets and media attacks: Trump and Musk bring their toxic bromance to Fox News

    The British dancer Debbie McGee was once asked in an interview: “What first ever attracted you to the millionaire Paul Daniels?” Hopefully some day Donald Trump will be asked in an interview: “What first ever attracted you to the billionaire far-right sympathizer Elon Musk?”Alas, the question was not put by the Fox News host Sean Hannity when he conducted a joint interview with the world’s most powerful man and Trump at the White House on Tuesday.Even so, viewers were treated to a treacly display of the toxic bromance currently wrecking America and large swathes of the world. Who can resist three Maga men shooting the breeze about the size of Elon’s space rockets?The commander-in-chief and oligarch-in-chief sat side by side like a breathless young couple announcing their engagement on live TV. Trump wore a blue suit, white shirt and blue tie; Musk wore a T-shirt saying “tech support” under a black jacket. The orangeness of Trump’s face threw the paleness of Musk’s complexion into sharp relief and vice versa.Musk, the Tesla, SpaceX and X supremo who recently tweeted he loves Trump “as much as a straight man can love another man”, confirmed he is indeed mad about the boy. “Well, I love the president,” he said. “I just want to be clear about that.”Sounding like he empathises, Hannity asked: “You love the president?”Musk said: “I think President Trump is a good man.”Trump was moved, like a man whose wife has not said that in many a long year. He interjected: “That’s the way he said that. You know, there’s something nice about.”Musk went on: “The president has been so unfairly attacked in the media. It’s truly outrageous. And I’ve spent a lot of time with the president and not once have I seen him do something that was mean or cruel or – or wrong. Not once.”Last month Trump exploited a deadly plane crash to blame his predecessors’s efforts to include people of colour in the federal workforce, but OK. Hannity took his chance to outdo Musk by boasting that he has known the president for 30 years and never known anyone deal with so much adversity, culminating in two assassination attempts.Musk acknowledged that the first shooting, when a bullet grazed Trump’s ear at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, accelerated his decision to endorse Trump’s re-election bid. The president sounded like a fiancee learning a sweet secret about their first date.“Nice”, Trump said: “I didn’t know that.”Musk added: “Yeah, it just – it sped it up, but I was going to do it anyway.”Like Romeo and Juliet, these star-crossed lovers are tragically misunderstood, in this case by vile media. “They want a divorce,” Hannity declared. “They want you two to start hating each other. And they try – ‘Oh, President Elon Musk’, for example. You do know that they’re doing that to you?”Trump concurred. “Actually, Elon called me. He said: ‘You know they’re trying to drive us apart.’ I said: ‘Absolutely’.”Then Hannity sounded like Oprah Winfrey interviewing Meghan and Harry. He said: “I want people to know the relationship and know more about you. What is the relationship, Mr President?”Trump replied: “Well, I respect him. I’ve always respected him. I never knew that he was right on certain things, and I’m usually pretty good at this stuff. He did Starlink. He did things that were so advanced and nobody knew what the hell they were.”He went on: “I think, you know, something that had an effect on me was when I saw the rocket ship come back and get grabbed like you grab a beautiful little baby. You grab your baby.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMusk chimed in: “Just hug the rocket.”Hannity too: “You hug the rocket. You hug the rocket.”Steady on!Speaking of space, Trump and Musk seized their chance to lie about Joe Biden, blaming him for astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams having been stuck on the International Space Station for eight months.Musk said: “Yes, they were left up there for political reasons, which is not good.”Trump added that Biden “was going to leave them in space … Yeah, he didn’t want the publicity. Can you believe it?”Can we believe that Biden was as ruthless and calculating as Hal 9000, casting astronauts into the cold abyss of space? No, we can’t.Musk went on to mock “Trump derangement syndrome”, recalling how, at a friend’s birthday party in Los Angeles, he mentioned the president’s name, “and it was like they got shot with a dart in the jugular that contained, like, the methamphetamine and rabies”.Some would say that fate is preferable to the hour of television that Fox News served up in prime time, a desperate attempt to justify Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency”, currently laying waste to the federal government. It is as if Trump said: ‘You had me at dismantling the administrative state.’ More

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    We are on the road for democracy and justice | Bernie Sanders

    I will be doing town meetings in Omaha, Nebraska, this Friday night and Iowa City, Iowa, on Saturday morning. Further, in the coming weeks and months, I and other progressives will be holding grassroots events from coast to coast.Why, at this moment, are we doing town meetings around the country – especially in conservative areas? The answer is obvious.Trumpism will not be defeated by politicians inside the DC beltway. It will only be defeated by millions of Americans, in every state in this country, coming together in a strong, grassroots movement which says no to oligarchy, no to authoritarianism, no to kleptocracy, no to massive cuts in programs that working people desperately need, no to huge tax breaks for the richest people in our country. And that’s what these events are about.Further, there are a number of congressional districts where Republicans won by only a small number of votes. With the Republican party in the House having only a three-vote majority we can defeat draconian, anti-working-class legislation if just two Republican members of Congress vote no. And they will vote no if we rally their constituents to demand that they vote no.Can Trumpism be defeated? Absolutely! But, if we’re going to make that happen, we need to know exactly what we’re up against and how we can best go forward. Here’s just some of what we need to know:Trumpism has an unlimited amount of money to throw into its efforts. Elon Musk, the wealthiest man on earth, put more than $270m into Trump’s campaign, a tiny portion of his fortune. Other multibillionaires will join Musk in spending whatever it takes.Trumpism has significant control over large parts of the media from which millions of Americans get their information. Fox and Musk’s platform X, among others, are not normal media outlets. Their basic function is not to cover the “news” but to spread rightwing extremist ideology.Trumpism is utilizing the concept of the “big lie” in a way that has never, in this country, been seen. Day after day, blatantly dishonest statements and conspiracy theories are propagated – and repeated over and over and over again.Trumpism does not believe in democracy or the rule of law. Trump recently posted: “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.” In other words, Trump believes that he can do anything he wants for any reason. He can ignore Congress or the courts. He is above the law.But, while Trump consolidates power into his own hands, there is another reality going on.Today, 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck; millions are earning starvation wages; 85 million are uninsured or under-insured; young people are unable to afford the cost of college; 25% of seniors live on $15,000 a year or less; we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major country on earth, and we have a major shortage in low-income and affordable housing.Oh, and by the way, we’re losing the struggle against the climate crisis – an existential threat to the future of the planet.And here’s the kicker. While Trump moves us away from democracy, while the middle class continues to decline, the wealthiest people in the country have never ever had it so good. Today, the three major oligarchs, Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, are worth $905bn – that is more wealth than the bottom half of American society – 170 million people. And, incredibly, since Trump’s election their wealth has grown by $217bn.Our struggle, the American people’s struggle, is to protect democracy and the rule of law. Equally important, we must end oligarchy and create an economy that works for all, not just the few. We are the wealthiest country on earth and AI, robotics and other new technologies will only make our country wealthier. It is absurd, unjust and inhumane that virtually all of that new wealth being created goes to the people who need it the least.While Trump now “floods the zone” and occupies most of the political oxygen, it is imperative that we never lose sight of the progressive vision – a nation and world based on human cooperation and compassion, not greed and a “survival of the fittest” mentality. What we are fighting for is not “utopian”, or unachievable. Much of it already exists in other countries, and poll after poll shows that it is exactly what the American people want.In the richest country in the history of the world we must establish that:

    Healthcare is a human right and must be available to all regardless of income.

    Every worker in America is entitled to earn a decent income. We must raise the minimum wage to a living wage and make it easier for workers to join unions.

    We must have the best public educational system in the world, from childcare to vocational training, to graduate school – available to all.

    We must address the housing crisis and build the millions of units of low-income and affordable housing that we desperately need.

    We must create millions of good paying jobs as we lead the world in combating the existential threat of climate change.

    We must abolish all forms of bigotry.
    Not only must we continue to fight for a nation based on the principles of economic, social, racial and environmental justice, we must also lead the effort against Trump‘s reactionary legislative agenda.In the coming weeks the Republicans in Congress will be bringing forward a major piece of legislation, a “reconciliation” bill, that encapsulates the value system of greed and their obedience to oligarchy. It is the economic essence of Trumpism.At a time of unprecedented income and wealth inequality, this legislation will provide trillions of dollars in tax breaks to the richest people in our country. It will make the rich even richer. At a time when the working class of this country is struggling to put food on the table and pay for housing, this legislation will make savage cuts to Medicaid, housing, nutrition, education and other basic needs. It will make the poor even poorer.We cannot allow this to happen. This legislation is enormously unpopular. It is exactly what the American people do not want. It must not be passed by Congress.It must be defeated and we can defeat it.This is a perilous moment in American history. Let us go forward together.

    Bernie Sanders is a US senator, and chair of the health education labor and pensions committee. He represents the state of Vermont and is the longest-serving independent in the history of Congress More