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    2024 book review: the what-ifs of an election that took US closer to autocracy

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    Donald Trump is on a roll. The “big, beautiful bill” is law. Ice, his paramilitary immigration force, rivals foreign armies for size and funding. Democrats stand demoralized and divided. 2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America, by Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager and Isaac Arnsdorf, is a book for these times: aptly named, deeply sourced.Kamala Harris declined to speak. Joe Biden criticized his successor in a brief phone call, then balked. Trump talked, of course.“If that didn’t happen … I think I would’ve won, but it might have been a little bit closer,” he says of the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, which set the race alight.Yet 2024 is about more than the horse race. It also chronicles how the elites unintentionally made Trump’s restoration possible, despite a torrent of criminal charges against him, 34 resulting in convictions, and civil lawsuits that saw him fined hundreds of millions of dollars.“Trump always drew his strength from decades of pent-up frustration with the American democratic system’s failures to address the hardships and problems the people experienced in their daily lives,” Dawsey, Pager and Arnsdorf write.“In 2024, [Trump’s] supporters saw institutions stacked against them … leading them to identify viscerally with his legal ordeal, even though they had not experienced anything like it before.”Dawsey is a Pulitzer prize winner, working political investigations and enterprise for the Wall Street Journal. Pager covers the White House for the New York Times. Arnsdorf was part of the Washington Post team that won a Pulitzer for coverage of the assassination attempt.Dawsey and Pager are Post alumni. With Arnsdorf, they capture the aspirations and delusions of Trump and the pretenders to his Republican throne, of Biden and Harris too.“In the weeks after the election, Biden repeatedly told allies that he could have won if he’d stayed in the race,” 2024 reports, “even as he publicly questioned whether he could have served another four years.”Really? Biden’s approval rating fell below 50% in August 2021 and never recovered. From October 2023, he trailed Trump. A year out, the authors reveal, Barack Obama warned his former vice-president’s staff: “Your campaign is a mess.”Biden’s aides privately derided Obama as “a prick”.“They thought he and his inner circle had constantly disrespected and mistreated Biden, despite his loyal service as vice-president.”As for Harris, Dawsey, Pager and Arnsdorf report that she “knew that the race would be close, but she really thought she would win”.Despite that, David Plouffe, a senior Harris adviser, admitted post-election that internal polls never showed her leading.“I think it surprised people because there were these public polls that came out in late September, early October, showing us with leads that we never saw,” he said. Harris’s debate win never moved the needle.Dawsey, Pager and Arnsdorf contend that the outcome was not foreordained. Rather, they raise a series of plausible-enough “what-ifs”. One is: “If the Democrats got clobbered, as expected, in the 2022 midterms, and Joe Biden never ran for re-election.”Except, by early 2022, according to This Shall Not Pass, a campaign book published that year, Biden saw himself as a cross between FDR and Obama.A telephone conversation between Biden and Abigail Spanberger, a moderate congresswoman now the Democratic candidate for governor in Virginia, captures Biden’s self-perception.“This is President Roosevelt,” Biden begins, before thanking Spanberger for her sense of humor.She replies: “I’m glad you have a sense of humor, Mr President.”Back to 2024. Biden bristled at being challenged. Pushback risked being equated with disloyalty. His closest advisers were either family members or dependent on him for their livelihoods. He lacked social peers with incomes and personages of their own.Mike Donilon, a longtime aide, tells the authors: “It was an act of insanity by the Democratic leadership to have forced Biden out.“Tell me why you walked away from a guy with 81m votes … A native of [swing-state] Pennsylvania. Why do that?”Because Biden’s debate performance was a gobsmacking disaster. He also found navigating the stairs of Air Force One difficult and needed prompts to find the podium. In May 2025, Biden announced that he had been diagnosed with stage-four prostate cancer – a disclosure that came after 2024 went to press.The authors of 2024 pose Republican hypotheticals too. One: “If Trump never got indicted, or if Republicans didn’t respond by rallying to him, or if the prosecutions were more successful.”Ron DeSantis, Florida’s governor, demonstrated a lack of nerve. Glaringly, he failed to use the initial E Jean Carroll trial, over the writer’s allegation that Trump sexually assaulted her, to bolster his presidential ambitions. DeSantis didn’t dispatch his wife, Casey DeSantis, to Manhattan to offer daily thoughts and prayers for the plaintiff, or for Melania Trump. If you want to be the man, first you’ve got to beat the man.Another hypothetical: “If Trump and Biden didn’t agree to an early debate …”That question hangs over everything.Trump’s pronouncements leave Dawsey, Pager and Arnsdorf anxious. After the 2022 midterms, he mused about terminating the constitution. Later, on the campaign trail, he spoke openly of being a “dictator for a day”. When he was back in the West Wing, reporters asked: “Are you a dictator on day one?” “No,” he replied. “I can’t imagine even being called that.”Dawsey, Pager and Arnsdorf then catalog Trump’s unilateral actions on that first day, including stripping political opponents of security clearances. Later that month, he commenced his vendetta against law firms he deemed to be enemies. In February, Trump barred the Associated Press from the White House press pool unless the news agency referred to the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America”.2024 contains no mention of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán. Perhaps it should have made space. Hungary’s leader is an autocrat in all but name, an elected leader who has removed freedoms regardless. Republicans adore him.

    2024 is published in the US by Penguin Random House More

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      Donald Trump announces 30% tariffs on goods from the EU and Mexico

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      Donald Trump announced on Saturday that goods imported from both the European Union and Mexico will face a 30% US tariff rate starting 1 August, in letters posted on his social media platform, Truth Social.The tariff assault on the EU came as a shock to European capitals as the European Commission and the US trade representative Jamieson Greer had spent months hammering out a deal they believed was acceptable to both sides.The agreement in principle put on Trump’s table last Wednesday involved a 10% tariff, five times the pre-Trump tariff, which the bloc already described as “pain”.EU trade ministers will meet on Monday for a pre-arranged summit and will be under pressure from some countries to show a tough reaction by implementing €21bn ($24.6bn) in retaliatory measures, which they had paused until midnight the same day.In his letter to Mexico’s leader, Trump acknowledged that the country had been helpful in stemming the flow of undocumented immigrants and fentanyl into the United States.But, he said, the country had not done enough to stop North America from turning into a “Narco-Trafficking Playground”.“We have had years to discuss our Trading Relationship with The European Union, and we have concluded we must move away from these long-term, large, and persistent, Trade Deficits, engendered by your Tariff, and Non-Tariff, Policies, and Trade Barriers,” Trump wrote in the letter to the EU. “Our relationship has been, unfortunately, far from Reciprocal.”Claudia Sheinbaum said on Saturday she is sure an agreement can be reached before Trump’s threatened tariffs take effect on 1 August.Speaking during an event in the Mexican state of Sonora, the Mexican president added that Mexico’s sovereignty is never negotiable.The higher-than-expected rate has dealt a blow to the EU’s hopes of de-escalation and a trade deal and could risk a trade war with goods of low margins including Belgian chocolate, Irish butter and Italian olive oil.The EU was informed of the tariff hike before Trump’s declaration on social media.In a letter to the EU, Trump warned that the EU would pay a price if they retaliated: “If for any reason you decide to raise your Tariffs and retaliate, then, whatever the number you choose to raise them by, will be added onto the 30% that we charge.”The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said the 30% rate would “disrupt transatlantic supply chains, to the detriment of businesses, consumers and patients on both sides of the Atlantic”.She said the bloc was one of the more open trading places in the world, and still hoped to persuade Trump to climb down.“We remain ready to continue working towards an agreement by August 1. At the same time, we will take all necessary steps to safeguard EU interests, including the adoption of proportionate countermeasures if required,” she said.Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, called for “goodwill  … to reach a fair agreement that can strengthen the west as a whole. It would make no sense to trigger a trade war between the two sides of the Atlantic.” She added that both sides should avoid “polarisation”.The decision to hike the tariffs will also be another test of Trump’s ability to act in good faith in negotiations.Brussels will view the latest threat as a maneuver by Trump to extract more concessions from the EU, which he once described as “nastier” than China when it came to trade.Bernd Lange, head of the European Parliament’s trade committee, said on Saturday that Brussels should react immediately with countermeasures against Trump’s “outrageous” threat to hike tariffs on imports from the European Union.The EU had been negotiating intensively with Washington for more than three weeks and had made concessions, said Lange.“It is brazen and disrespectful to increase the tariffs on European goods announced on April 2 from 20% to 30%,” Lange told Reuters.“This is a slap in the face for the negotiations. This is no way to deal with a key trading partner.”While Trump indicated earlier this week that his new rates, also levelled against big economies including Japan, South Korea and Brazil, will not apply until 1 August, his latest tactic will create much distrust.Europe should make it clear that these “unfair trade practices” were unacceptable, Lange said.“We have postponed the first stage of our countermeasures for the time being, but I am firmly convinced that they must now be implemented immediately,” he said.“The first list of countermeasures must be activated on Monday as planned, and the second list should also follow quickly.”Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, downplayed the impact of the threatened 50% tariff. Trump and Lula have indicated a willingness to negotiate, though Lula also said: “Trump could’ve called, but instead posted the tariff news on his website – a complete lack of respect which is typical of his behavior towards everyone.”Even if Trump had agreed to the proposal put on his table on Wednesday, further negotiations would have been needed in any case to create a legal text that can be formally registered by the US government, a process that is itself laden with risk.The UK took seven weeks to get its agreement registered with a promise included to reduce tariffs on car exports from 27.5% to 10%, but the agreed zero tariff for the British steel industry was omitted.Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former congressional budget office director and president of the center-right American Action Forum, said the letters were evidence that serious trade talks had not been taking place over the past three months. He stressed that nations were instead talking among themselves about how to minimize their own exposure to the US economy and Trump.“They’re spending time talking to each other about what the future is going to look like, and we’re left out,” Holtz-Eakin said.He added that Trump was using the letters to demand attention, but, “in the end, these are letters to other countries about taxes he’s going to levy on his citizens”.The new tariff ends a turbulent week for the EU with Trump announcing an extension for talks until 1 August on Monday, then on Tuesday announcing the EU would “probably” receive a letter setting its new US tariff rate within 48 hours, claiming the bloc had shifted from being “very tough” to “very nice”.But diplomats viewed it as a mixed message as Trump stressed that he was still talking to negotiators from the bloc, but that he was displeased with European policies toward US tech firms. More

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      Elon Musk claims his America party will change US politics. Experts disagree

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      “You want a new political party and you shall have it!” Elon Musk declared in early July.The world’s richest man is never one to shy away from grandiose statements, and he continued: “When it comes to bankrupting our country with waste & graft, we live in a one-party system, not a democracy. Today, the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom.”The America party, Musk hopes, will be a viable alternative to the Democratic and Republican parties: a political organization that can influence the future of US politics. He has mooted running candidates for two to three Senate seats and up to 10 House districts. Given the tight divide between Republicans and Democrats in Congress, Musk believes capturing the small number of seats “would be enough to serve as the deciding vote on contentious laws”.Given there is consistently strong support for an alternative to the Big Two parties, it should be a good idea, right?Wrong, said Bernard Tamas, professor of political science at Valdosta State University and author of The Demise and Rebirth of American Third Parties.“At this moment in American politics, I see no evidence that you’re going to get another party winning seats in Congress and actually being able to have an impact in the government,” Tamas said.“It’s not just the money that Democrats and Republicans have. They have all the resources. They have the money. They have 150 years of structure. They have all the professional politicians, and they have all the consultants, and they have all the Madison Avenue ad companies working for them.”The whole concept of the America party seemingly came together in a matter of weeks, following the famous row between Musk and Donald Trump. And as with many ideas born out of spite and fury, certain elements appear to have not been fully thought through. Americaparty.com, for example, is already registered to someone else, who now appears to be trying to sell the domain name for $6.9m. On X, which Musk owns, @AmericaParty was already taken, so the new venture had to opt for @AmericaPartyX.It’s not yet clear what the party will stand for, beyond opposition to Republicans’ ballooning of the national debt. Musk has yet to elaborate on the “contentious laws” his politicians would challenge, and there is no party platform or manifesto.In any case, third parties have rarely, if ever, been successful in the way Musk envisages. But where they can make a difference is in highlighting issues and pressuring the main two parties to act.“In terms of the parties that really had a big impact, they didn’t win seats,” Tamas said. “The job of third parties is disruption. It’s to sting like a bee. It’s to cause pain.”Tamas pointed to the Progressive party in Wisconsin and the Minnesota Farmer-Labor party, which managed to win key victories over relief for unemployed constituents and banking reform in the state, as examples of political groups that have managed to inflict such a bee sting. That doesn’t appear to be what Musk is going for, however, despite there being an opportunity for a stinging insect.“Here you have the Republican party moving farther and farther to the right, and farther and farther in this kind of Maga direction, with nobody in the Republican party in Congress willing to stand up at all to Trump or this movement,” Tamas said.“It’s a perfect opening for a third party. This is what it looks like historically. But you’re not going to replace them. What you do is you attack them for this. You’re trying to pull them back towards the center.“This is how the third parties have always succeeded. The idea is you cause them pain, and what they do, if it works, is they shift back towards something that reflects more what the public wants, or deals with the issues that the third party is bringing up.”Parties that have pursued the getting-people-elected approach have fared less well than the pain-inflictors. Forward party was founded by Andrew Yang, who had previously run for the Democratic presidential nomination, in 2022, with the slightly call-to-arms style slogan of “Not left. Not right. Forward.” These days the party barely features on the national political landscape, although it does continue to bleat out social media content – a recent 4 July post on Instagram attracted almost 40 likes.At its inception, Forward party figures claimed both the Republican and Democratic parties had become too radical, and said their new venture “can’t be pegged to the traditional left-right spectrum because we aren’t built like the existing parties”.Somehow, a promise to not really have a firm ideological stance on anything isn’t a very sexy pitch to voters. Among the “elected affiliates” named on Forward’s website are the former mayor of Newberry, Florida, a town of 7,300 people, and a man who “is responsible for sanitation and utilities” in the Connecticut borough of Stonington – population 976 people.There is widespread support for a third party. Polls have repeatedly shown that people want a third party. But what that looks like remains to be seen. In Musk’s own survey on social media asking if people wanted him to start a new party, only 65% said yes, and 34% said no, although a poll in early July showed that 14% of voters said they would be very likely to support the party, with 26% somewhat likely.There are already issues with the America party becoming a viable third choice. Musk is approaching eccentric political advisers, including Curtis Yarvin, a rightwing tech blogger who has argued American democracy has run its course and the country should instead be run by a dictator-esque CEO.A more fundamental problem with the America party is unique to Musk: people really don’t like him. A poll last week found that 60% of Americans have an unfavorable view of Musk, compared with 32% in favor.America shall have a third party, Musk declared at the start of his new venture. But does America want this kind of third party, with these kind of aims, run by this kind of man? More

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      Obama’s former press secretary recalls ‘emotional’ mood in White House after Trump win

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      The hardest day on the job for the White House press secretary for most of Barack Obama’s second term was right after Donald Trump was first elected president, he recently revealed during a fireside chat at a journalism convention.Speaking at the 2025 National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ) conference in Chicago, Josh Earnest said it was grueling for the Obama administration to realize it would have to follow through on promises of a peaceful transfer of power despite spending the 2016 election cycle offering dire warnings “about what could or would happen if Donald Trump were given the keys to the Oval Office”.Those warnings stemmed in part from intelligence assessments that the US’s longtime geopolitical adversary Russia had interfered in the race in which Trump defeated former secretary of state Hillary Clinton. Earnest said the Obama administration suddenly found itself needing to defend the validity of those assessments while saying it would peacefully transfer over the nuclear launch codes – and other levers of power – to Trump.“Did [Obama] not mean how dangerous [Trump] could be?” Earnest asked rhetorically, referring to some of the questions he and fellow administration officials faced while briefing journalists at the time. “It was a tough message.”The remarks on Wednesday from Earnest – who was Obama’s press secretary from 2014 to 2017 – also offered a first-hand peek into the somber mood at the White House after Trump defeated Clinton. Like many, Earnest “was very surprised”. “I did not think he was going to win,” he said.Many Obama communications staffers were visibly demoralized, and Earnest said he and his aides decided to convene them, talk about Trump’s victory and try to refocus them for the final two months in office.During that conversation, Obama summoned Earnest to go over the logistics of a nationally televised speech he was planning to give in the White House’s Rose Garden. Earnest recalled Obama asking how it was going with the staff that morning – to which he replied that they were “emotional”.Obama then asked an assistant to call the staff into the Oval Office. He stood in front of the Resolute Desk near his vice-president, Joe Biden, who would later succeed Trump in the White House – and gave them an early version of the speech he ultimately delivered that day.“We have to remember that we’re actually all on one team,” part of that speech read. “We are Americans first. We’re patriots first. We all want what’s best for this country.”As Earnest noted, Obama’s official White House photographer, Pete Souza, captured the scene with his camera. He recalled how it was the first time many people in the room that day had been in the Oval Office.“It was very poignant,” Earnest told the chat’s host, the ABC7 Chicago news anchor Tanja Babich.One of Earnest’s most vocal critics in the aftermath of Trump’s victory was the president-elect himself. Trump called Earnest a “foolish guy” at a December 2016 rally.“He is so bad – the way he delivers a message,” Trump said of Earnest after the latter defended the US intelligence community’s assessment of Russia’s interference.Earnest has been a top spokesperson for United Airlines at the company’s Chicago headquarters since 2018. He spent some time being a media pundit early during the first of Trump’s two presidencies. But Earnest told Babich he did not find it “particularly fulfilling” given the way Trump’s unpredictable, chaotic style of governing can often disorient news outlets.“The questions could all be boiled down to, ‘Isn’t this outrageous what Trump is doing?” Earnest said. “And it became about finding different ways to say, ‘Yes.’“I wasn’t doing journalism. I was doing commentary. And it was pretty close to entertainment.” More

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      ‘Tremendous uncertainty’ for cancer research as US officials target mRNA vaccines

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      As US regulators restrict Covid mRNA vaccines and as independent vaccine advisers re-examine the shots, scientists fear that an unlikely target could be next: cancer research.Messenger RNA, or mRNA, vaccines have shown promise in treating and preventing cancers that have often been difficult to address, such as pancreatic cancer, brain tumors and others.But groundbreaking research could stall as federal and state officials target mRNA shots, including ending federal funding for bird flu mRNA vaccines, restricting who may receive existing mRNA vaccines and, in some places, proposing laws against the vaccines.The Trump administration has also implemented unprecedented cuts to cancer research, among other research cuts and widespread layoffs at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).At least 16 grants involving the word “mRNA” have been terminated or frozen, according to the crowdsourced project Grant Watch, and scientists have been told to remove mentions of mRNA vaccines from their research applications, KFF Health News reported in March.Researchers fear that therapeutic cancer vaccines will get “swept up in that tidal wave” against mRNA vaccines, Aaron Sasson, chief of surgical oncology at Stony Brook University, said in April.When it comes to mRNA breakthroughs, “the next couple of years are the most critical”, Elias Sayour, a professor for pediatric oncology research at the University of Florida, said.“If the progress we’ve made to date – which has been prodigious – if that is just stopped or stymied, it can absolutely affect the trajectory and the arc,” he said.The uncertainty around mRNA specifically, and research broadly, could also discourage researchers and institutions from beginning new projects, he said.“If we continue to seize on these gains in the next 10, 20 years, I do see a scenario where we’ve completely transformed how we take care of a large swath of human disease,” he said.Research on mRNA cancer vaccines has been under way for more than a decade, with more than 120 clinical trials on treating and preventing cancers. mRNA shots have shown promise for preventing the return of head and neck cancer; lymphoma; breast cancer, which accounts for 11.6% of all cancer deaths in the US; colorectal cancer; lung cancer; and kidney cancer, among others.Pancreatic cancer has a 10% survival rate and is the second leading cause of cancer deaths in the US, but in a small study, about half of the patients who received an mRNA vaccine did not see their cancer return, and they still had strong immune responses three years later.Early mRNA vaccine trials also indicated the recurrence of melanoma could be cut in half. And a small study co-authored by Sayour on glioblastoma showed the vaccines started affecting the tumors within 48 hours.Like any vaccine, mRNA cancer vaccines train the body to recognize and destroy harmful cells.Unlike foreign pathogens, such as infectious diseases, cancer is caused by the growth of the patient’s own cells.Some cancer vaccines are highly personalized, using a patient’s own cancer cells to treat their tumors or train their immune system to kill off those dangerous cells if they recur.“The ability to create specific vaccines for patients has tremendous, tremendous promise, but that was technology not possible five or 10 years ago,” said Sasson. “It really is a shift in the paradigm of how we treat cancers.”Researchers are also investigating vaccines that would target cancer cells more broadly by identifying “fingerprints” of certain cancers, said Sayour.Additionally, the vaccines could be created for other conditions, such as type 1 diabetes and multiple sclerosis, he said.“It has potential to get rid of a lot of the chronic morbidity we see from disease, to cure diseases that are degenerative, to overcome cancer evolution and cure patients,” Sayour said. “mRNA could be the healthcare that the movable-type printing press was for human knowledge.”Yet federal and state decision-makers have targeted mRNA vaccines in recent months.Vinay Prasad, director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), reportedly overrode scientists at the agency to limit some Covid vaccines, including a new mRNA shot from Moderna, to children older than 12. Prasad also introduced similar limitations on the Covid shot from Novavax, which does not use mRNA.On Thursday, the FDA approved the original Covid mRNA vaccine from Moderna for children between the ages of six months and 11 years – but they narrowed its use to children with at least one underlying condition. (The vaccine for people older than 12 was approved in 2022.)Prasad argued, in two memos recently released by the FDA, that the risks of Covid had dropped, while “known and unknown” side-effects could outweigh the benefits of getting vaccinated.Covid remains a leading cause of death in the US, with 178 deaths in the week ending 7 June, the last week for which the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) offers complete data.At the meeting of the CDC’s advisory committee on immunization practices (ACIP) in June, two of the new vaccine advisers – appointed by the health and human services (HHS) secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, after he fired the previous 17 advisers – broached the safety of Covid mRNA vaccines, indicating future scrutiny of these shots.Vicky Pebsworth, a registered nurse who has volunteered for years with the National Vaccine Information Center, said she was “very concerned” about side-effects from the Covid mRNA shots and asked for more data on safety, including “reproductive toxicity”.Shortly before being appointed to the ACIP, Pebsworth and the founder of the National Vaccine Information Center argued that the FDA should not recommend mRNA Covid-19 shots for anyone “until adequate scientific evidence demonstrates safety and effectiveness for both the healthy and those who are elderly or chronically ill”.At the June ACIP meeting, Retsef Levi, a professor of operations management at the MIT Sloan School of Management, said he believed mRNA side-effects were “being reported at rates that are far exceeding other vaccines even when you normalize to the number of doses, which does suggest something, I think”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionPreviously, Levi argued: “The evidence is mounting and indisputable that mRNA vaccines cause serious harm including death, especially among young people. We have to stop giving them immediately!”Another new ACIP adviser, Robert Malone, has also repeatedly argued against mRNA vaccines.In 2021, Kennedy, then chair of the anti-vaccine organization Children’s Health Defense, petitioned the FDA to revoke all approvals, and ban future approvals, of all Covid vaccines. He has called Covid shots the “deadliest vaccine ever made”.In May, Kennedy changed Covid vaccine recommendations from “should” to “may” for children, and eliminated the recommendation for pregnant women entirely.Also in May, the US canceled $766m in contracts for research on mRNA vaccines against H5N1 bird flu. Investment in the mRNA vaccine was not “scientifically or ethically justifiable”, Andrew Nixon, the HHS communications director, said in statements to the media, adding that the “mRNA technology remains under-tested”.Millions of mRNA vaccines have been given around the world, and the vaccines have been shown to be safe and effective in multiple studies.Bans or limitations on mRNA vaccinations have been introduced in seven states. One such bill in Idaho sought to pause “gene therapy immunizations” for 10 years – a category in which they incorrectly place Covid vaccines, and which could affect other therapeutics.Similarly, in Washington state, commissioners in Franklin county passed a resolution urging the local health facility to stop providing and promoting gene-therapy vaccines; they also incorrectly included Covid mRNA shots in this category.“There’s this scorched-earth mentality now, but I’m hopeful that once the dust settles, we’ll be able to reinstate or allow vaccine work for cancer purposes to proceed,” Sasson said.Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the US, and two in five people will be diagnosed with some form of cancer in their lifetime.There are currently only two FDA-approved vaccines that prevent cancer – hepatitis B and human papillomavirus (HPV) – and both have been targeted by anti-vaccine activists.In January, Trump hosted the launch of Stargate AI at the White House. The project could eventually identify cancers and develop mRNA vaccines in days, Larry Ellison, the chair of the tech company Oracle who is involved with the project, said at the launch.The project will be funded by private, not federal, dollars, but the work on cancer would draw upon research on cancer and mRNA, among other fields.Yet the Trump administration has slashed other critical funding for cancer research, prevention and treatment.The administration canceled more than $180m in grants through the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in the first three months of its term, and proposed cutting $2.7bn from the cancer center in the next NIH budget.The administration has cut back funding for some family planning providers, which frequently offer screenings for HPV and other cancer markers.Lawmakers have also made enormous cuts to Medicaid and insurance through the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which could mean uninsured and underinsured people wait longer for cancer treatment – or forgo it entirely.“There’s the potential for great harm, for massive public health issues to be set aside during this really broad approach of canceling research,” said Sasson. “There’s significant harm that’s going to happen by these sweeping changes.”For scientists who still have funding or those who are entering the field, “there’s tremendous uncertainty as to what the future will look like”, Sasson said.But he is optimistic that mRNA vaccines for cancer and other illnesses will be able to move forward.Scientists are often portrayed as “just trying to survive” funding cuts, but that’s not entirely accurate, said Sayour, before adding: “I don’t think many people in my field do this because they’re just trying to survive. I would want nothing more, honest to God, than to put myself out of business. We do this because we want to make a difference.”Sayour echoed concerns about both indirect and direct forces shaping progress on mRNA vaccines.“But I also want to be optimistic that our best days are ahead of us,” he said. More

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      Trump news at a glance: Trump tours Texas disaster zone as administration dodges questions over future of Fema

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      Donald Trump has defended the state and federal response to deadly flooding in Texas, while administration officials continue to dodge questions about his plans to abolish the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema).Speaking at a round table in Kerrville, Texas, Trump said Fema deployed multiple emergency response units and praised all the officials involved in what he said was an effective and swift response.“Every American should be inspired by what has taken place,” Trump said. He called a reporter a “bad person” for asking a question about families of the dead who are saying that their loved ones could have been saved had emergency warnings gone out before the flooding. Trump said: “I think this has been heroism. This has been incredible, the job you’ve all done.”Here are the key US politics stories at a glance:Trump defends Texas flood handling as disaster tests vow to shutter FemaDuring a trip on Friday to look at the devastation caused by the catastrophic flooding in Texas, Donald Trump claimed that state and federal officials had done an “incredible job”, saying of the disaster that he had “never seen anything like this”.The trip comes as he has remained conspicuously quiet about his previous promises to do away with the federal agency in charge of disaster relief.Read the full storyState department issues first termination orders to staffThe US state department has begun issuing the first of more than 1,350 termination notices as part of a huge reorganisation of US’s diplomatic corps under the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, according to internal documents and US diplomats at the state department on Friday.Career diplomats and other staff began to receive the notices on Friday morning, days after the supreme court lifted a ban on the Trump administration moving forward with mass firings of government employees that will affect hundreds of thousands of federal workers.“Hearing ‘I got mine!’ around the floor,” one current state department employee told the Guardian.Read the full storyWorker dies after chaotic immigration raid at California farmA farm worker died on Friday from injuries sustained a day earlier in raids on two California cannabis farm sites as US immigration authorities confirmed they arrested 200 workers after a tense standoff with authorities.Jaime Alanis’s death was confirmed in a social media post by the United Farm Workers advocacy group. “We tragically can confirm that a farm worker has died of injuries they sustained as a result of yesterday’s immigration enforcement action,” the post read.Read the full storyUS border czar doesn’t know fate of men deported to South SudanTom Homan, the US border czar, has said he does not know what happened to the eight men deported to South Sudan after the Trump administration resumed sending migrants to countries that are not their place of origin, known as third countries.“They’re free as far as we’re concerned. They’re free, they’re no longer in our custody, they’re in Sudan,” Homan told Politico on Friday. “Will they stay in Sudan? I don’t know.”Read the full storyTrump to resume weapons deliveries to Ukraine through Nato alliesDonald Trump appears poised to deliver weapons to Ukraine by selling them first to Nato allies in a major policy shift for his administration amid frustrations with Vladimir Putin over stalling negotiations to end the war in Ukraine.Read the full storyTrump yanks $15m in research into Pfas on US farmsThe Trump administration has killed nearly $15m in research into Pfas contamination of US farmland, bringing to a close studies that public health advocates say are essential for understanding a worrying source of widespread food contamination.The administration’s move is “not just stupid, it’s evil”, a former EPA attorney said.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      Myanmar’s military leader praised Trump and asked him to lift sanctions, as the junta sought to capitalize on a tariff letter from the US president believed to be Washington’s first public recognition of its rule.

      Trans teenagers who say gender-affirming care saved their lives are protesting as two leading US hospitals halt their treatments.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 10 July 2025. More

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      Trump tours Texas flood damage as disaster tests vow to shutter Fema

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      During a trip on Friday to look at the devastation caused by the catastrophic flooding in Texas, Donald Trump claimed that state and federal officials had done an “incredible job”, saying of the disaster that he had “never seen anything like this”.The trip comes as he has remained conspicuously quiet about his previous promises to do away with the federal agency in charge of disaster relief.The Washington Post reported on Friday that the Trump administration has backed away from plans to abolish the Federal Emergency Management Agency, but administration officials continue to dodge questions about the agency’s future and many are still calling for serious reforms, potentially sending much of its work to the states.Since the 4 July disaster, which has killed at least 120 people, the president and his top aides have focused on the once-in-a-lifetime nature of what occurred and the human tragedy involved rather than the government-slashing crusade that has been popular with Trump’s core supporters.Speaking at a roundtable in Kerrville, Texas, Trump said that Fema deployed multiple emergency response units and he praised all the officials involved in what he said was an effective and swift response.“Every American should be inspired by what has taken place,” Trump said. He likened the flooding to “a giant, giant wave in the Pacific Ocean that the best surfers in the world would be afraid to surf”.Trump called a reporter a “bad person” for asking a question about families of the dead who are saying that their loved ones could have been saved had emergency warnings gone out before the flooding. Trump said: “I think this has been heroism. This has been incredible, the job you’ve all done.”In an NBC News interview on Thursday, Trump said: “Nobody ever saw a thing like this coming.” He added: “This is a once-in-every-200-years deal.” He has also suggested he would have been ready to visit Texas within hours but did not want to burden authorities still searching for the more than 170 people who are still missing.Trump’s shift in focus underscores how tragedy can complicate political calculations, even though the president has made slashing the federal workforce and charging ally turned antagonist Elon Musk with dramatically shrinking the size of government centerpieces of his administration’s opening months.The president traveled to Texas on Air Force One with Melania Trump, the first lady; Brooke Rollins, the agriculture secretary; Scott Turner, the housing secretary; the small business administrator, Kelly Loeffler; and senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz of Texas, among others. Trump is expected to do an aerial tour of some of the hard-hit areas.Before arriving at the Happy State Bank Expo Hall in Kerrville, where he delivered remarks, the president and his motorcade stopped at an area near the Guadalupe River in Kerrville next to an overturned tractor-trailer and downed trees. Damage appeared to be more extensive near the riverbank. Trump, his wife and the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, took a briefing about flooding there from local officials.Trump has used past disaster response efforts to launch political attacks. While still a candidate trying to win back the presidency, Trump made his own visit to North Carolina after Hurricane Helene last year and accused the Biden administration of blocking disaster aid to victims in Republican-heavy areas.During his first weekend back in the White House, Trump again visited North Carolina to survey Helene damage and toured the aftermath of devastating wildfires in Los Angeles. But he also used those trips to sharply criticize the Biden administration and California officials.During Tuesday’s cabinet meeting, Trump praised the federal flooding response. Turning to Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security, which oversees Fema, he said: “You had people there as fast as anybody’s ever seen.”Noem described traveling to Texas and seeing heartbreaking scenes, including around Camp Mystic, the century-old all-girls Christian summer camp where at least 27 people were killed.“The parents that were looking for their children and picking up their daughter’s stuffed animals out of the mud and finding their daughter’s shoe that might be laying in the cabin,” she said.Noem said that “just hugging and comforting people matters a lot” and “this is a time for all of us in this country to remember that we were created to serve each other”.But the secretary is also co-chairing a Fema review council charged with submitting suggestions for how to overhaul the agency in coming months.“We as a federal government don’t manage these disasters. The state does,” Noem told Trump on Tuesday.She also referenced the administration’s government-reducing efforts, saying: ”We’re cutting through the paperwork of the old Fema. Streamlining it, much like your vision of how Fema should operate.”Pressed this week on whether the White House will continue to work to shutter Fema, Karoline Leavitt would not say.“The president wants to ensure American citizens always have what they need during times of need,” the White House press secretary said. “Whether that assistance comes from states or the federal government, that is a policy discussion that will continue.”Before Trump left on Friday, Russell Vought, director of the office of management and budget, similarly dodged questions from reporters at the the White House about Fema’s future – instead noting that the agency had billions of dollars in its reserves “to continue to pay for necessary expenses” and that the president has promised Texas: “Anything it needs, it will get.”“We also want Fema to be reformed,” Vought added. “The president is going to continue to be asking tough questions of all of us agencies, no different than any other opportunity to have better government.” More

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      Georgia Republican’s Ponzi scheme defrauded people of $140m, say officials

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      A prominent Georgia Republican was running a Ponzi scheme that defrauded 300 investors of at least $140m, federal officials alleged in a complaint filed on Thursday.The civil lawsuit by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said First Liberty Building and Loan, controlled by Brant Frost IV, lied to investors about its business of making high-interest loans to companies. Instead, investigators said, it raised more money to repay earlier investors.Frost is alleged to have taken more than $19m of investor funds for himself, his family and affiliated companies even as the business was going broke, spending $160,000 on jewelry and $335,000 with a rare coin dealer. Frost is also said to have spent $320,000 to rent a vacation home over multiple years in Kennebunkport, Maine, the town where the family of late president George HW Bush spent summers.The SEC said Frost kept writing checks even after the commission began its investigation.First Liberty said in June that it would stop making loans and paying interest and principal to investors in those loans. The company said it was not answering phone calls or emails.First Liberty has not responded to an email seeking comment, and no one was present at its office on Thursday evening in Newnan, a suburb south-west of Atlanta. A lawyer who acts as the company’s registered agent for corporate purposes said earlier that he had no information.The collapse rocked the religious and political networks that the business drew investors from. It also could have ramifications in state Republican politics, cutting off funding to the far-right candidates that Frost and his family have favored. Investigators said Frost spent $570,000 from investor funds on political contributions.The SEC said the business had only $2.67m in cash as of 30 May, although regulators are also seeking to claw back money from Frost and associated companies. With 300 investors out $140m, that means the average investor put in nearly $500,000.First Liberty said it made loans to companies that needed cash while they waited for more conventional loans from the US Small Business Administration (SBA). It charged high rates of interest – 18% on some loans, according to a document obtained by the Associated Press. First Liberty promised investors equally high rates of return – 16% on the 18% loans.In recent months, the business advertised heavily on conservative radio shows promising “Wall Street returns for Main Street investors”.“The promise of a high rate of return on an investment is a red flag that should make all potential investors think twice or maybe even three times before investing their money,” Justin C Jeffries, associate director of enforcement for the SEC’s Atlanta regional office, said in a statement.The company has represented that it is “cooperating with federal authorities as part of an effort to accomplish an orderly wind-up of the business”. The SEC said Frost and his companies agreed to the SEC’s enforcement actions “with monetary remedies to be determined by the court at a later date”.While the SEC says there were loans to companies, as many as 90% of those companies have defaulted. By 2021, the company was running as a Ponzi scheme, the complaint said, even as Frost withdrew increasing amounts of money.The business is being investigated by the Georgia secretary of state for possible violations of securities law, said Robert Sinners, a spokesperson for the office.A 2023 document obtained by the AP is titled as a “promissory note”, and Sinners said anyone issuing promissory notes is supposed to be registered with Georgia securities officials.Sinners encouraged any victims to contact the state securities division.Federal prosecutors have declined to comment on whether they are considering criminal charges. Sometimes both an SEC civil case and a federal criminal case are filed over investment frauds.Frost has been an important player in Georgia politics since 1988, when he coordinated televangelist Pat Robertson’s Republican presidential bid in the state. His son, Brant Frost V, is chairperson of the Coweta county Republican party, where the company is based – and is a former second vice-chairperson of the state Republican party. Daughter Katie Frost is Republican chairperson of the third congressional district, which includes Coweta county and other areas south-west of Atlanta.At June’s state Republican convention, Katie chaired a nominating committee that recommended delegates re-elect state party chairperson Josh McKoon. Delegates followed that recommendation, rejecting a number of insurgent candidates. More

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      Missouri’s governor signs repeal of state’s guaranteed paid sick leave law

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      Eight months after voters approved it, Missouri’s governor, Mike Kehoe, signed the repeal of a law on Thursday that had guaranteed paid sick leave to workers and inflation-linked adjustments to the minimum wage.The move marked a major victory for the state’s largest business group and a frustrating defeat for workers’ rights advocates, who had spent years – and millions of dollars – building support for the successful ballot measure. The repeal will take effect on 28 August.Kehoe, who also signed a package of tax breaks on Thursday, described the paid sick leave law as an onerous mandate that imposed burdensome record-keeping.“Today, we are protecting the people who make Missouri work – families, job creators and small business owners – by cutting taxes, rolling back overreach and eliminating costly mandates,” Kehoe, a Republican, said in a statement released after a private bill-signing ceremony.The new tax law excludes capital gains from individual state income taxes, expands tax breaks for seniors and disabled residents, and exempts diapers and feminine hygiene products from sales taxes.Richard von Glahn, who sponsored the worker benefit ballot initiative, said many parents felt forced to go to work instead of staying home to care for a sick child in order to pay for their rent or utilities.“The governor signing this bill is an absolute betrayal to those families, and it hurts my heart,” said Von Glahn, policy director for Missouri Jobs With Justice.About one-third of states mandate paid sick leave, but many businesses voluntarily provide it. Nationwide, 79% of private-sector employees received paid sick leave last year, though part-time workers were significantly less likely to receive the benefit than full-time employees, according to US labor department data.Voters in Alaska, Missouri and Nebraska all approved paid sick leave measures last November. Only Alaska’s, which kicked in on 1 July, has remained unchanged by state lawmakers.Before Nebraska’s measure could take effect on 1 October, the state’s Republican governor, Jim Pillen, signed a measure last month exempting businesses with 10 or fewer employees from the paid sick leave requirements. The revision also allows businesses to withhold paid sick leave from seasonal agricultural workers and 14- and 15-year-olds.Missouri’s law allowed employees to earn one hour of paid sick time for every 30 hours worked, starting 1 May. By the time it’s repealed, 17 weeks will have elapsed. That means someone working 40 hours a week could have earned 22 hours of paid sick leave.If workers don’t use their paid sick leave before 28 August, there is no legal guarantee they can do so afterward.The Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry had made repealing the law its top legislative priority.The “paid leave and minimum wage policies were a job killer”, the chamber’s president and chief executive officer, Kara Corches, said.But Missouri voters could get a second chance at mandating paid sick leave.Von Glahn has submitted a proposed ballot initiative to the secretary of state that would reinstate the repealed provisions. Because the new measure is a constitutional amendment, the state legislature would be unable to revise or repeal it without another vote of the people. Supporters have not decided whether to launch a petition drive to try to qualify the measure for the 2026 ballot. More