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    US judge orders Trump administration to return wrongly deported gay man

    A federal judge ordered the Trump administration late Friday night to facilitate the return of a Guatemalan man it deported to Mexico, in spite of his fears of being harmed there, and who has since been returned to Guatemala.The man, who is gay, had applied for asylum in the US last year after he was attacked twice in homophobic acts of violence in Guatemala. He was protected from being returned to his home country under a US immigration judge’s order at the time, but the Trump administration put him on a bus and sent him to Mexico instead.The US district judge Brian Murphy found the man’s deportation likely “lacked any semblance of due process”. In a declaration to the court, the man, identified by his initials OCG in legal filings, said that since he was returned to Guatemala two months ago, “I have been living in hiding, in constant panic and constant fear”.An earlier court proceeding determined that OCG risked persecution or torture if returned to Guatemala, but he also feared returning to Mexico. He presented evidence of being raped and held for ransom there while seeking asylum in the US.“No one has ever suggested that OCG poses any sort of security threat,” Murphy wrote in his order. “In general, this case presents no special facts or legal circumstances, only the banal horror of a man being wrongfully loaded onto a bus and sent back to a country where he was allegedly just raped and kidnapped.”Murphy’s order adds to a string of findings by federal courts against recent Trump administration deportations.Last week, Murphy, a Biden appointee, found that the Trump administration had violated an order he issued barring government officials from deporting people to countries not their own without first giving them sufficient time to object.In a hearing, the homeland security department said that seven immigrants had been deported Tuesday on a flight to a third country, but they refused to say where the men were going. It was later revealed that the men were told they were being sent to South Sudan.In that case, Murphy said that the government had given the seven men little more than 24 hours’ notice that they were being removed from the US, which he called “plainly insufficient”, and could result in a finding of criminal contempt.Other cases that have been spotlighted for rapid deportations include that of Kilmar Ábrego García, who was sent to El Salvador. The US supreme court ordered the government to “facilitate” Ábrego García’s return, but the White House has said it is not within its power to do so.That case sparked a legal joust over the supreme court’s practicable meaning of “facilitate”.In his ruling, Murphy noted the dispute over the use of the verb, saying that returning OCG to the US is not that complicated.“The Court notes that ‘facilitate’ in this context should carry less baggage than in several other notable cases,” he wrote. “OCG is not held by any foreign government. Defendants have declined to make any argument that facilitating his return would be costly, burdensome, or otherwise impede the government’s objectives.”The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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    Trump’s West Point graduation address veers from US-first doctrine to politics

    Donald Trump told graduating West Point military academy cadets on Saturday that they were entering the officer corps at a “defining moment in the army’s history”, in a commencement address that included political attacks and a discourse on the folly of older men marrying “trophy wives”.Referring to US political leaders of the past two decades who “had dragged our military into missions” that people questioned as “wasting our time, money and souls in some case”, Trump told the young leaders that “as much as you want to fight, I’d rather do it without having to fight”. He predicted that, through a policy of “peace through strength”, the US’s adversaries would back down. “I just want to look at them and have them fold,” he said.The president also said US soldiers had been sent “on nation-building crusades to nations that wanted nothing to do with us, led by leaders that didn’t have a clue about distant lands while abusing our soldiers with absurd ideological experiments here and at home”.“All of that’s ended, strongly ended. They’re not even allowed to think about it anymore,” Trump added.Making apparent reference to diversity, equity and inclusion programs that defense secretary Pete Hegseth has cancelled, Trump weaved together criticism of his predecessors with a new focus on curbing illegal immigration.“They subjected the armed forces to all manner of social projects and political causes, while leaving our borders undefended and depleting our arsenals to fight other countries’ wars. We fought for other countries’ borders but we didn’t fight for our own borders, but now we do like we have never fought before,” he said.He later said that “the job of the US armed forces is not to host drag shows or transform foreign cultures”, a reference to drag shows on military bases that his predecessor Joe Biden halted in 2023 after Republican criticism.Wearing a red “Make America great again” campaign hat throughout, the president told the 1,002 graduating cadets that the US is the “hottest country in the world”, and boasted of his administration’s achievements.The president also returned, once again, to a cautionary tale he often tells young people about the danger of losing momentum in life, illustrated by an anecdote about what he called the unhappy retirement of the post-war housing developer William Levitt, the creator of Levittowns, planned communities on Long Island, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.Repeating a story he told at a Boy Scout jamboree in 2017, and at the University of Alabama three weeks ago, the president said that Levitt was unsatisfied by life without work, even though he married “a trophy wife” and bought a yacht. “It didn’t work out too well, and that doesn’t work out too well, I must tell you, a lot of trophy wives, it doesn’t work out,” the president told the young women and men. “But it made him happy for a little while at least.”Trump also used the occasion to repeat an unfounded accusation he first made in 2020: the claim that Russia had stolen US hypersonic missile technology during Barack Obama’s presidency. “The Russians stole it, something bad happened. But we’re now building them, lots of them,” Trump said, praising eight cadets who had built their own. “We are building them right now. We had ours stolen. We are the designers of it. We had it stolen during the Obama administration.”Outside the gates of West Point, protesters gathered with drums, banners and signs to condemn what they called the president’s attack on American democracy.At points during Trump’s address, he veered between praising the graduating military cadets and maintaining political criticism of the Biden administration.The graduation address, which ran to almost an hour long, comes before an expansive military parade in Washington on 14 June to celebrate the 250th anniversary celebration of the nation. The date is also the president’s birthday.Alongside the military parade featuring more than 6,700 soldiers, it will include concerts, fireworks, NFL players, fitness competitions and displays all over the National Mall for daylong festivities. The army expects that as many as 200,000 people could attend and that putting on the celebration will cost an estimated $25m to $45m.The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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    US citizen detained by immigration officials who dismissed his Real ID as fake

    Authorities wrestled a US-born citizen to the ground, cuffed him and dismissed his so-called Real ID as “fake” during an arrest operation targeting undocumented people on Wednesday under the direction of the Trump administration, according to a viral video and reporting by Telemundo.Leonardo Garcia Venegas, 25, was at his construction job in Foley, Alabama, when officials arrived to arrest workers there. Garcia Venegas – who was born in Florida to Mexican parents – began filming the arrests with his mobile phone before officials reportedly knocked the device out of his hand and tried to arrest him as well.Video of the arrest shows three officials wrestling him to the ground, while he yells: “I’m a citizen!”According to an interview with the Spanish-language US news outlet Telemundo, officials took out his wallet, removed his ID – which complies with higher federal security standards for state-issued driver’s licenses as well as identification – and told him that it was fake.“They cuffed me,” he said. “They put the cuffs on quite hard.”Four people at the job site were arrested, including Garcia Venegas’s brother, who is undocumented.Officials removed the cuffs from Garcia Venegas hours later – after he gave them his social security number, verifying his US citizenship.“I feel really sad, honestly, and I feel a bit nervous for everything that’s happening,” said Garcia Venegas, referring to the Trump administration’s ongoing immigration-related crackdown.His cousin, also a US citizen, told Telemundo they both went through the process of acquiring the Real ID, undergoing “the protocols the administration is asking for”.“I feel sad because, even though we were born here, that doesn’t matter any more,” the cousin said. She added: “To have our skin color has, apparently, become a crime. And it has become a crime deserving of this type of treatment – as if we were real criminals.”In a statement to NBC News, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) accused Garcia Venegas of having “interfered” with the arrest during the operation.“Anyone who actively obstructs law enforcement in the performance of their sworn duties, including US citizens, will of course face consequences which include arrest,” the DHS’s statement to NBC said.It is unclear whether the officials who cuffed Garcia Venegas were local officials, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents or other members of federal law enforcement.Since Trump came into office, various federal agencies, including the Drug Enforcement Administration, the FBI and others, have been tasked with carrying out immigration enforcement operations. Some local police and sheriff’s departments have also been deputized to carry out federal immigration arrests.As the White House attempts to carry out a promise of “mass deportations” that vaulted Donald Trump to victory in November’s presidential election, a number of US citizens have been caught up in its dragnet.Some, such as Garcia Venegas, have been detained by officials, then released. But others, including children, have been deported.Although rare, the deportation of US citizens has also happened during prior administrations. More

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    Remote Wyoming vacation lodge emerges as haven for US ‘dissident’ right

    A vacation lodge known as the Wagon Box Inn in the tiny town of Story, Wyoming, has emerged as an unlikely hub of rightwing ambitions to reorient US politics and culture.Events held there since it opened, and others planned for this spring, have brought together figures from the so-called “dissident right”, political figures backed by reactionary currents in Silicon Valley, and proponents of the “network state” movement.The dissident right is a term that describes rightwing intellectual currents that go beyond and even attack mainstream conservatives for their perceived concessions to liberals on issues like race, feminism and LGBTQ+ rights. Network state proponents envision a network of extra-national communities that exist beyond the control of nation-states.The Guardian contacted the Wagon Box founder and owner Paul McNiel for comment. He did not respond directly but instead posted a screenshot of the request to X appended with commentary.There, McNiel said he was driven by “good-faith curiosity” that events there had been “largely focused on a suspicion of ‘the machine’” and boasted of the “breadth of the politics represented”, citing appearances by the likes of Patrick Deneen and Seneca Scott.Deneen is a Notre Dame professor and conservative political theorist whose 2023 book Regime Change “offered a preview of the Trump administration’s intention to breathe fire on America’s cultural institutions” whose fans include JD Vance, the vice-president.Scott, who McNiel described as a “90s Democrat who wants a safe community for his family and goats”, is a former union organizer based in Oakland, California, whose activism, political campaigning and social media output have targeted transgender people, homeless encampments, local media organizations, progressive politicians and city employees.‘Liberalism is crumbling’Sheridan county property records indicate that Paul McNiel bought the property that includes the Wagon Box – formerly a holiday destination and RV park – in August 2022.Property records, satellite imagery, and media posted on social media platforms and on the Wagon Box website indicate a semi-rural location on the western fringes of Story.Since McNiel took control of the property, it has played host to a string of events, many of them featuring figures associated with overlapping rightwing movements.The project has drawn concerns in local media, but garnered a laudatory write-up in the Bari Weiss-founded Free Press. Free Press investors include rightwing tech figures like Marc Andreessen and Trump administration “crytpo czar” David Sacks.McNiel – billed as a millionaire in an appearance on a real estate investment podcast in 2021 – is the principal of a legion of LLCs, according to company records in Alaska, Wyoming, Montana and North Carolina.View image in fullscreenProperty records and data brokers indicate that McNiel or LLCs controlled by him have bought and sold dozens of properties – many of them trailer parks or similar sites for low-cost housing – in at least three states.According to founding documents on its website, Wagon Box is run as a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), a term for organizations managed in part via decentralized technologies like blockchains and smart contracts.A 2021 Wyoming law allows DAOs to incorporate in the state, despite their often anonymous ownership structure. The sparsely populated state is notorious for a “cowboy cocktail” of loose financial regulations and opaque company ownership.“We’re not northern Idaho or even Montana. We’ve so far managed to not attract the crazy far right to our state,” said Elizabeth Storer, a Democratic state representative from Jackson who has spoken critically of Wyoming’s libertarian financial laws and opacity.“We’ve allowed just about anyone to come into Wyoming because of our low tax environment, our limited liability corporation laws and the use of registered agents all over the state – it allows people to offshore funds in Wyoming with a great deal of secrecy,” she added.The current version of a document explaining the DAO aligns the project with the network state movement, claiming that “the grand project of liberalism is crumbling, and that in its wake people are looking for new avenues of allegiance and interdependence”.The document continues “Balaji Srinivasan, among others, has identified this shift and suggested a process for uniting modern technologies with ancient human trends of association to createnetwork states”, providing a link to Srinivasan’s self-published 2022 book of the same name.Reverse diasporasSrinavisan is an entrepreneur and investor formerly associated with companies including Andreessen-Horowitz and Coinbase. (That company’s current CEO, Brian Armstrong, is another outspoken booster of network states).For more than a decade, Srinivasan has advocated a radical anarcho-capitalist vision in which like-minded people can “exit” and place themselves beyond the legal and economic reach of nation-states in parallel, networked special economic zones.His ideas are often couched in vituperative attacks on his perceived enemies, including academics, government employees and the media.As early as 2013, Srinavisan was advocating a “reverse diaspora” in which people enabled by technology could assemble in “cloud cities … outside the United States”. These “could be floating cities in international waters as put forth by Peter Thiel, or one of the more ambitious 80,000 person colonies on Mars desired by Elon Musk”.Soon after, in response to reporting linking Silicon Valley figures to the anti-democratic neo-reactionary movement and its leading light, Curtis Yarvin, Srinavasan reportedly emailed Yarvin with the suggestion that “it may be interesting to sic the Dark Enlightenment audience on a single vulnerable hostile reporter to dox them and turn them inside out”.He later cited Yarvin in The Network State, writing: “As Yarvin in particular has documented at length, the most important left-authoritarians are not formally part of the elected state at all. They are the professors, activists, bureaucrats, and journalists.”He describes people in these fields as constituting “the control circuitry for the US government”.Last September, he opened a residential network school for would-be builders of network nations, reportedly located in Malaysia’s Forest City, whose “requirements include an admiration of ‘western values’, seeing Bitcoin as the successor to the US Federal Reserve, and trusting AI over human courts and judges”.View image in fullscreenThe network state vision has already inspired an attempt to build a city, California Forever, in rural Solano county, with investors including Andreessen and the LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman. Network state advocates also reportedly want to construct a similar “charter city” in Greenland if it is annexed by the United States.Donald Trump has floated the idea of creating 10 such “freedom cities” on federal land, including San Francisco’s Presidio.The movement also overlaps with efforts to mount a rightwing takeover of city governments in San Francisco and Oakland, with the likes of the Y Combinator CEO, Garry Tan, backing both projects.Srinivasan has offered lurid fantasies of what a tech-controlled San Francisco might look like. In an October 2023 podcast interview, he envisioned a city controlled by tech-aligned “grays” enjoying privileged access to large parts of the city, bribing a pliant police department, and with “blues” – San Francisco’s liberals – subject to exclusion and hostile propaganda.Devin Burghart, the executive director of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Righs and a longtime observer of far-right organizing in the mountain west, told the Guardian in an interview that the Wagon Box was significant for being one of the first real-world attempts at constructing a “network state” hub beyond California.“They’ve tipped their hand a bit with the constant references to [accelerationist theorist] Nick Land and Italian futurism. This is a different veneer of the apocalyptic, post-democratic world view that is also quite common with militia and prepper types.”The Wagon Box reportedly attracted immediate scepticism from residents of tiny unincorporated Story in the months following its establishment.Attenders at a 2023 public meeting reportedly expressed concerns both about the draft DAO document’s vision of “‘capital seed for a nascent network state’ and … a place for either gatherings or apocalyptic retreat”, and McNiel’s association with the notorious anti-government activist Ryan Payne.In 2018, Payne was sentenced to federal prison on conspiracy charges after playing the role of, according to a federal judge, “an architect” of the 2016 Malheur national wildlife refuge occupation, in which he participated alongside the likes of the current fugitive Ammon Bundy.‘A criminal regime’Wagon Box has hosted a series of events since McNiel’s acquisition, many with guests and themes associated with the far right.The 27 April event, Dawn in the West: A Futurist Serata (DitW) was subtitled “An UncleTed Talk”, a reference both to Ted talks and a nickname for the so-called Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynski.Advertising materials highlighted themes including the work of Land, who, alongside Yarvin, is one of the progenitors of the neo-reactionary movement, whose anti-democratic ideas have been cited as an inspiration for the Trump administration’s gutting of the federal government.Another advertised speaker at that event was Jonathan Keeperman. The Guardian identified Keeperman in 2024 as the man behind the L0m3z X account and rightwing publisher Passage Press.Keeperman-founded Passage Press is also listed as a participant in Wagon Box’s 31 May roundtable Coalition for Cultural Renewal (CCR).The schedule for a Wagon Box event last August promised a conversation between Keeperman and the journalist James Pogue on “the failure of liberalism and globalization”.Pogue has written extensively about the new right for media outlets including the New York Times and Vanity Fair.In a post at the Wagon Box’s Substack newsletter, Pogue and McNiel are pictured together in a photograph purportedly taken inside the Passage-Press-sponsored Coronation Ball in Washington this January, and described in a caption as “Wagon Box brothers”.Keeperman is one of the overlaps between Wagon Box and a broader far-right milieu.Keeperman, for example, spoke last month at a pro-natalist conference in Austin, Texas, whose speaker roster included self-described eugenicists and promoters of race science.At the event, in response to a small protest on site, Keeperman took to X, posting: “NATALISM IS NAZISM Say it loud say it proud.”Balaji Srinivasan spoke at the same conference in 2023.The Natalism conference founder, Kevin Dolan, is listed in Texas company records as the principal of a natalism.org non-profit; a newly incorporated Eternal Capital Texas Inc; and Exit, a men-only organization which he characterized in a Substack newsletter as a rightwing business network which is “not just about making life in the regime more tolerable … setting ourselves up to succeed as it declines”.He founded that organization following Guardian reporting in 2021 that identified him as the man behind an influential “DezNat” account, “@extradeadjcb”.Exit is billed as a participant in Wagon Box’s CCR event, which will include other far-right publishers , along with Murphy’s Other Life and hard-right online magazine IM-1776.The Guardian previously reported on IM-1776’s support of authoritarian leaders such as Vladimir Putin and El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele; its enthusiasm for extremist political figures such as Gabriele D’Annunzio and Kaczynski; and its close links with contemporary hard-right activists like the culture warrior Christopher Rufo, Erik Prince and would-be “warlord” Charles Haywood.IM-1776’s literary editor, Daniel Miller, is a speaker at DitW, and in YouTube videos posted to Wagon Box’s channel he is characterized as a writer-in-residence.In a January article for IM-1776, Miller called for Donald Trump to overthrow the government of the UK led by Keir Starmer and “liberate” the country, saying it was run by “a criminal regime” dominated by “a mafia-like organization of pathological personalities”, a necessity “as clear as the imperative of the Vietnamese to invade Cambodia and remove the Khmer Rouge from power in 1979”.Miller did not respond to a request for comment.The Oakland connectionEvents this spring also bill speakers associated with a tech-backed hard-right political movement in California’s Bay Area.Scott – who has run both for city council and mayor in Oakland – is set to appear at the Doomer Optimism Campout in June.Scott’s political activities in Oakland – including the candidacies and his advocacy for the recall of former mayor Sheng Thao last year – have been punctuated by scandals.During his 2022 campaign media reports revealed a 2021 arrest on charges of brandishing a firearm, in an incident that took place not far from the community garden he founded in West Oakland. Those charges were later dismissed.Last December, the city of Oakland applied for a restraining order against Scott over his alleged harassment of a city worker during the recall campaign. Among other things, Scott reportedly claimed that the employee was a pedophile on social media and posted their address publicly. In a February settlement, Scott agreed to stop posting personal information about the employee online.View image in fullscreenScott has received backing from rightwing tech figures including Tan, who, like Scott, has agitated against progressive approaches to homelessness and law and order, and employed bareknuckle social-media posting to promote his views.“If you want Oakland to be great then you will follow and support Seneca,” Tan wrote on X last year.In Oakland, Scott has drawn scrutiny for anti-transgender commentary and attacks on progressive voices in politics and media.Scott appeared at another Wagon Box event in summer 2024 in conversation about “Cities: urban agriculture, crime, and criminal justice reform”.Pogue also appeared alongside Scott at his community garden in a 2023 event hosted by a Scott-run non-profit, Neighbors Together Oakland, that was last year shuttered by California’s attorney general last year for conducting fundraising without a non-profit license.In an interview with Free Press in 2023, Scott had said he planned to use that non-profit as a platform to support “100 nontraditional candidates” for city councils, school boards, and potentially higher offices across the US.Another Doomer Optimism Campout speaker is Andrew Hock, a Tennessee political consultant who was reportedly involved with an alleged attempt to facilitate anonymous donations in support of the recall of Mayor Thao.Questions about Foundational Oakland Unite’s fundraising came amid a flood of campaign money into pro-recall groups, much of it from big-money donors. As previously reported in the Guardian, deep-pocketed tech figures have been involved in attempts to drag politics to the right in Oakland and San Francisco.In April, 2024 the Thao recall campaign sent an email to prospective donors offering “options for donors to remain private if you prefer”. Oakland city law forbids anonymous donations to political candidates. The message included an email address for Andrew Hock at Foundational Oakland Unites, a political action committee founded by Scott, as the main point of contact for donations.According to 2024 reporting by the Oaklandside, Scott previously employed Hock as a paid campaign consultant during his 2022 mayoral campaign.Scott claims to be a part-owner of Hock’s campaign consultant group, Laschian Consulting. In an April 17 post to X, Scott claimed that Laschian Consulting “has planted its flag and is already in talks to help other major US cities fight back against the soggies and their anti-human agenda”, using a self-coined derogatory term to refer to social democrats.“If your city is spiraling due to failed progressive policies and a coordinated NGO + public sector union takeover, give us a call. Maybe we can help you save your city too.”In January, Thao, the recalled mayor, was herself federally indicted over allegations including that she solicited political donations in violation of campaign finance laws.The alleged straw donor campaign for Thao was uncovered by Oakland’s Public Ethics Commission in an investigation that began half a decade ago. Though the PEC did not make a criminal referral, FBI white-collar crime investigators in Oakland picked up the thread and built their own criminal case independently.The PEC’s budget was slashed earlier this year amid a citywide fiscal crisis, severely impacting its ability to complete ongoing investigations.Hock did not respond to requests for comment. More

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    Record number of Americans seeking UK residency, says Home Office

    During the 12 months leading up to March, more than 6,000 US citizens have applied to either become British subjects or to live and work in the country indefinitely – the highest number since comparable records began in 2004, according to data released on Thursday by the UK’s Home Office.Over the period, 6,618 Americans applied for British citizenship – with more than 1,900 of the applications received between January and March, most of which has been during the beginning of Donald Trump’s second US presidency.The surge in applications at the start of 2025 made that the highest number for any quarter on record.The figures come as British authorities under a Labour government are trying to reduce immigration to the UK, with Britain’s prime minister, Keir Starmer, vowing to take “back control of our borders” and warning that uncontrolled immigration could result in the country “becoming an island of strangers, not a nation that walks forward together”.UK figures show net migration dropped by almost half in 2024 – to 431,000 – compared with 2023.The surge in US applications for UK residency comes as American immigration lawyers say they are receiving an increasing number of inquiries. Some are pointing to the polarized political climate in the Trump-led country, which itself is mounting an aggressive immigration-related crackdown.Muhunthan Paramesvaran, an immigration lawyer at Wilsons Solicitors in London, told the New York Times that inquiries had risen “in the immediate aftermath of the election and the various pronouncements that were made”.“There’s definitely been an uptick in inquiries from US nationals,” Paramesvaran told the outlet. “People who were already here may have been thinking: ‘I want the option of dual citizenship in the event that I don’t want to go back to the US.’”Zeena Luchowa, a partner at Laura Devine Immigration, which specializes in US migration to the UK, was more explicit in pointing to the “political landscape” amid Trump’s government. Luchowa told the outlet that the rise was not limited to US nationals – but also other nationalities living there.“The queries we’re seeing are not necessarily about British citizenship – it’s more about seeking to relocate,” Luchowa said to the Times.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHowever, the increase in US applications to the UK may not necessarily reflect political conditions in either country. Of the 5,521 settlement applications from US citizens last year, most were from people who were eligible via spousal or family links.Paramesvaran said such applications were likely to climb because the UK government had extended the qualification period from five years to 10 before they could apply for settlement. But Labour government politicians have hinted that some applicants may be able to skirt those requirements.That echoes one aspect of Trump’s thinking in the US, where he has floated the idea of an immigration “gold card” – in essence, an extension of the EB-5 program that extends green cards to foreign investors and their families.The UK home secretary, Yvette Cooper, told parliament earlier in May that “there will be provisions to qualify more swiftly that take account of the contribution people have made” and said the British government “will introduce new, higher language requirements” because “the ability to speak English is integral to everyone’s ability to contribute and integrate”. More

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    Trump news at a glance: judge puts a stop to ban on Harvard’s foreign students – for now

    Harvard University’s foreign students have described an atmosphere of “fear on campus” after an attempt by the Trump administration to ban international scholars at the oldest university in the US.On Friday, a US federal judge put a temporary hold on the government’s order revoking the university’s right to enrol foreign students.But it is likely to have done little to quell “mass panic” among international students after Thursday’s shock announcement by the Department of Homeland Security.Here is the key Trump news of the day:Court blocks ban on Harvard accepting international studentsA federal judge on Friday blocked the government from revoking Harvard University’s ability to enrol foreign students just hours after the elite college sued the Trump administration over its abrupt ban the day before on enrolling foreign students.US district judge Allison Burroughs in Boston issued the temporary restraining order late on Friday morning, freezing the policy that had been abruptly imposed on the university, based in nearby Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Thursday.Read the full storyUS accused of trying to deport MS-13 leader as favour to El Salvador’s president Donald Trump’s administration is attempting to dismiss criminal charges against a top MS-13 leader in order to deport him to El Salvador, according to newly unsealed court records – igniting accusations from critics and the defendant’s legal team that the US president is trying to do a favour for his Salvadorian counterpart, who struck a deal with the gang in 2019.Read the full storyTrump to make drastic cuts to National Security Council – reportA large restructuring of the US national security council (NSC) got under way on Friday as Donald Trump moved to reduce the size and scope of the once-powerful agency, five sources briefed on the matter said.Staff dealing with a variety of major geopolitical issues were sent termination notices on Friday, said the sources, who requested anonymity as they were not permitted to speak to the media. The move comes just weeks after the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, took over from Mike Waltz as national security adviser. The NSC declined to comment.Read the full storyTrump says he is hitting EU with 50% tariffThe president has said he will impose a 50% tariff on all European Union imports to the US from 1 June after saying trade talks between the two trading blocs were “going nowhere”. In a surprise announcement, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that his long-running battle to secure concessions from the EU had run aground.Read the full storyPresident threatens 25% tariff on iPhonesTrump has threatened to impose a 25% tariff on iPhones if they are not made in the US, as he steps up the pressure on Apple to build its signature product in America.Read the full storyTrump backs ‘partnership’ of US Steel with Nippon SteelThe president has thrown his weight behind a “partnership” between US Steel and Nippon Steel, months after insisting he was “totally against” a $14.9bn bid by the Japanese firm for its US rival.While Trump stopped short of an all-out endorsement of the takeover, he announced a deal between the two businesses on social media on Friday.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

    The future queen of Belgium has completed her first year at Harvard, but a Trump administration ban on foreign students could threaten her return.

    A US judge on Friday overturned Donald Trump’s executive order targeting Jenner & Block, a big law firm that employed a lawyer who investigated him.

    The Pentagon announced on Friday that it had a new press secretary, Kingsley Wilson, who has repeatedly shared an antisemitic conspiracy theory promoted by neo-Nazis.

    Trump signed a series of executive orders on Friday intended to spur a “nuclear energy renaissance” through the construction of new reactors he said would satisfy the electricity demands of datacentres for artificial intelligence and other emerging industries.
    Catching up? Here’s what happened on 22 May 2025. More

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    Drastic cuts under way bending US national security council to Trump’s will

    The Trump administration started to dramatically overhaul the White House national security council on Friday, preparing to reassign hundreds of staff and consolidating power with aides trusted by the president, according to people familiar with the matter.The changes involved downsizing the NSC to about 150 from 300 staff and cutting a number of committees. Most NSC staff are drawn from other parts of the administration including the Pentagon and the state department, and were expected to be sent back to their home agencies.At the leadership level, the administration appointed the vice-president’s national security adviser Andy Baker and Donald Trump’s longtime policy aide Robert Gabriel to become dual-hatted as deputy national security advisers for the NSC, sources said.The restructuring of the NSC marked the first set of major changes to the White House’s national security coordinating body since Donald Trump last month replaced Mike Waltz as national security adviser with the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, who is serving in both roles.It underscored how the NSC is set to be changed from a body that traditionally helped presidents formulate an overarching national security policy into one that implements ideas already held by the president.Trump advisers familiar with the dynamics noted that the addition of Baker and Gabriel, senior aides to JD Vance and Trump respectively, is likely to ensure the White House maintains significant control of the NSC even with Rubio as its titular head.They also suggested it would end the NSC’s traditional bottom-to-the-top approach, where staff filtered policy recommendations through multiple layers before they reached the cabinet level, since Baker and Gabriel are set to use the NSC to focus more on execution of their bosses’ views.In doing so, the new leadership may help solve the lingering problem of Trump’s second term NSC being left without an overarching strategy in the wake of Mike Waltz’s removal.The US strategy for the Russia-Ukraine conflict in particular had remained a work in progress, because Waltz wanted Trump to hit Vladimir Putin with deep, punitive sanctions if the Russian president failed to agree to a peace deal brokered by Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff.That recommendation from Waltz put him at odds with Trump and Vance, who have been more interested in finding ways to normalize relations with Moscow. With Vance’s top national security aide embedded into NSC leadership, implementing policy may be more straightforward.The abrupt nature of the personnel changes, which were communicated in a 4.20pm email sent by the NSC chief of staff, Brian McCormack, before the long Memorial Day weekend, means that some of the dismissals and restructurings are expected to drag on until next week, the sources said.Senior staff leaving the NSC include Alex Wong, who was the principal deputy to Mike Waltz; Eric Trager, who had been handling Middle East affairs; Andrew Peek, who had been handling Europe; and the communications team.The changes come three weeks after Waltz was pushed out in the wake of a series of controversies including mistakenly adding a journalist to a Signal group chat that shared sensitive information about US missile strikes in Yemen before they took place. More

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    Trump administration trying to dismiss MS-13 leader’s charges to deport him

    Donald Trump’s administration is attempting to dismiss criminal charges against a top MS-13 leader in order to deport him to El Salvador, according to newly unsealed court records – igniting accusations from critics and the defendant’s legal team that the US president is trying to do a favor for his Salvadorian counterpart, who struck a deal with the gang in 2019.According to justice department records, the MS-13 figure in question, Vladimir Antonio Arevalo-Chavez, has intimate knowledge of that secretive pact, which – before eventually falling apart – involved Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele’s government ceding money and territory to the gang, who in return promised to reduce violence from its side and provide Bukele’s party with electoral support.Attempts by the Trump administration to expel Arevalo-Chavez are part of its own deal with Bukele to allow for the US to incarcerate immigrants in a maximum security Salvadoran prison. CNN reported in April that Bukele’s government had specifically asked for nine top MS-13 leaders to be brought back to El Salvador from the US.Critics of Trump who are defending Arevalo-Chavez’s rights see the move to deport him as a way to prevent him from testifying in a US court, or becoming a federal government cooperator, to limit disclosures about Bukele’s past ties to the gang as much as possible.Arevalo-Chavez is a member of the “Ranfla Nacional”, which is considered to be a directors’ board of sorts for the MS-13 gang. Federal charges pending against him in New York include racketeering, terrorism and conspiring to commit narco-terrorism.A filing from the US justice department – dated 1 April but not unsealed until Thursday – said federal prosecutors want to dismiss charges against Arevalo-Chavez for “sensitive and important foreign policy considerations”.Prosecutors added that “geopolitical and national security concerns of the United States” and said permitting “the prosecution of the defendant to proceed in the first instance in El Salvador” was also a factor.Arevalo-Chavez is still in the US, with his attorneys requesting more information about the reasons behind the dismissal of charges and the intended deportation.The judge ruled in April to not relocate him anywhere, preventing his being placed into the custody of the US’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), which would lead to his deportation.“The ‘geopolitical and national security concerns’ appear to be an effort by the government to support a ‘deal’ with El Salvador to assist Bukele in suppressing the truth about a secret negotiation he had with MS-13 leaders in return for our government using El Salvador prisons,” Arevalo-Chavez’s attorneys said in a separate filing also unsealed on Thursday. That filing in particular mentioned the notorious Cecot prison built to house alleged gang members.The US attorney’s office for New York’s eastern federal district, where Arevalo-Chavez is being prosecuted, declined to comment Friday when asked by the Guardian. Arevalo-Chavez’s attorneys did not immediately respond to a request for comment.In mid-March, the US justice department quietly dismissed charges against another top Ranfla Nacional member and expelled him to El Salvador to be detained at Cecot, an acronym whose full name in Spanish means “the terrorism confinement center”. That other Ranfla leader, Cesar Humberto López-Larios, was facing similar charges in New York and also reportedly had insight about the deal Bukele previously struck with the gang.“This is collusion between two governments, the US and El Salvador, to cover up a gang pact by dropping charges on known gangsters in order to disappear them before they can testify,” said political science professor Michael Ahn Paarlberg at Virginia Commonwealth University. “It’s a criminal conspiracy between the Trump and Bukele administrations.“The irony is both of them claim to be tough on crime.”According to a justice department indictment, in 2019, the MS-13 leadership forged a pact with top Bukele administration officials. El Faro, a Salvadoran news organization, first reported on secretive meetings during which Bukele officials would enter prisons in El Salvador to negotiate directly with the Ranfla leaders.As part of the deal, MS-13 would receive certain money- and land-related concessions while agreeing to reduce the amount of violence they inflicted in El Salvador. Additionally, some top MS-13 leaders were released from prison – and the gang promised to leverage its networks to support Bukele’s political party in the 2021 legislative elections, according to prosecutors.The pact purportedly collapsed in 2022, leading Bukele to engage in a massive offensive against gangs in the country. Critics say that so-called state of exception crackdown led to a trampling of due process and human rights in the Central American nation – while also allowing Bukele to further consolidate power there.For years, Bukele has attempted to suppress any evidence of his ties to MS-13 by either attempting to recapture Ranfla leaders or by ignoring US extradition requests.US federal law enforcement agencies have long pursued MS-13’s criminal networks. In 2020 and in 2022, two separate federal indictments in New York charging 27 leaders of the gang were handed up and unsealed.In 2021, the US treasury department sanctioned two top Bukele officials for their alleged “corruption”, saying they engaged in “covert negotiations between government officials and the criminal organization” in order to secure the secret pact with MS-13. The treasury department also alleged that Bukele’s administration in 2020 provided financial incentives to MS-13 to reduce gang violence in exchange for “political support”.Arevalo-Chavez, one of the co-defendants in the 2022 indictment, had “participated in negotiations with the government of El Salvador on behalf of MS-13”, said the justice department, then controlled by Joe Biden’s presidential administration. Arevalo-Chavez left El Salvador and went to Mexico, where he helped run the gang’s operations there.The Mexican government arrested Arevalo-Chavez in February 2023 and quickly transferred him to the US, where the FBI and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) took custody. He is in custody in a federal detention facility while his case proceeds.Relations between El Salvador and the US have improved since Trump took office. In 2021, tensions between Biden officials and the Bukele government flared when, despite an international arrest warrant and extradition request, Salvadoran officials quietly released Ranfla Nacional leader Elmer Canales-Rivera from prison. US prosecutors alleged in a 2023 letter that he was personally escorted out of prison by a high-level Bukele official, given a firearm and driven to the Guatemalan border for his escape.The Bukele administration then attempted to recapture Canales-Rivera. According to reporting from El Faro, Bukele’s government discussed a plan to pay a Mexican cartel to find Canales-Rivera and return him to El Salvador. The Mexican government found him first, arrested him, and expelled him to the US in November 2023.Eight Ranfla Nacional leaders remained in US custody after López-Larios one was expelled in March. Two of them pleaded guilty earlier this year. More