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      in US Politics

      Trump 100 days: ‘unpredictable’ US alienates allies and disrupts global trade

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      For US foreign policy, Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office were the weeks when decades happened.In just over three months, the US president has frayed alliances that stood since the second world war and alienated the US’s closest friends, cut off aid to Ukrainians on the frontlines against Vladimir Putin, emboldened US rivals around the world, brokered and then lost a crucial ceasefire in Gaza, launched strikes on the Houthis in Yemen and seesawed on key foreign policy and economic questions to the point where the US has been termed the “unpredictable ally”.The tariffs Trump has unleashed will, if effected, disrupt global trade and lead to supply chain shocks in the United States, with China’s Xi Jinping seeking to recruit US trade allies in the region.The pace of the developments in the past 100 days makes them difficult to list. Operating mainly through executive action, the Trump administration has affected nearly all facets of US foreign policy: from military might to soft power, from trade to immigration, reimagining the US’s place in the world according to an isolationist America First program.“The shake-up has been revolutionary, extraordinary. It’s upended 80-some years of American foreign policy,” said Ivo Daalder, president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and a former ambassador to Nato.The Trump presidency has ended the relative peace in the western hemisphere since the end of the second world war underwritten by US economic, military and diplomatic influence, Daalder said.“The foundation of the Pax Americana was trust, and once you break trust, it’s extraordinarily difficult to restore,” he said. “And restoring trust – trust in America, trust in American institutions, trust in American voters – it takes a long time to rebuild.”The US’s key foreign policy and national security making institutions are in crisis. The Pentagon is mid-meltdown under the leadership of Pete Hegseth, whose erratic and unsteady leadership has been reflected in score-settling among his senior staff, while a leaked Signal chat embroiled the national security adviser, Mike Waltz, and others in scandal. The state department under Marco Rubio is undergoing a vast shake-up, and the US’s diplomats are being sidelined in favour of envoys such as Steve Witkoff with little background in foreign policy. Critics say the gutting of USAID will cut back on US soft power for generations.“There’s no better way to get us into a war, perhaps a catastrophic war, than essentially poking out your eyes and numbing your brain, and you’re left with Donald Trump and a few people sitting in the White House winging it, and they’re not competent to wing it,” said Steven Cash, a former intelligence officer for the CIA and Department of Homeland Security, and the executive director of the Steady State, an advocacy group of former national security professionals. “And so we’ve seen that with the tariffs. We’ve seen that with Nato. We’ve seen that with Ukraine, and we’re gonna see a lot more of it.”After assuming office in 2021, Joe Biden declared: “America is back.”“The world now knows America is not back,” Daalder said. “America is gone again.”In a recent interview with the Zeit newspaper, Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, expressed similar sentiments, saying: “The west as we knew it no longer exists.”View image in fullscreenIn Munich, JD Vance delivered a landmark speech openly pandering to Europe’s far right, accusing European leaders of “running from their own voters” and saying: “America can do nothing to help you.”A backlash has begun. Last month the EU presented an €800bn ($913bn) plan on the future of European defense, a putative step in what would be a herculean task to overcome internal divisions and onshore European defense manufacturing. The UK and other US allies have considered other efforts, such as limiting intelligence-sharing with the US. “We still need America now, but there is a vision [of a time] when we won’t any more,” said one European diplomat.Meanwhile, the Trump effect is beginning to sway elections as well – though not as he might hope.In the western hemisphere, Trump has terrorised US neighbours and tacitly declared what some have compared to a new Monroe doctrine, saying the White House planned to “take back” the Panama canal and annex Greenland, while regularly calling Canada the future 51st state.In an extraordinary bit of election-day meddling, Trump wrote a social media post suggesting that he was on the ballot in Canada’s vote, repeating that Canada should become the 51st state in order to avoid tariffs and reap economic awards.Canadians responded by duly electing the liberal candidate Mark Carney, completing a 30% swing in polling that has largely been explained by opposition to Trump’s tariff war and territorial menaces.In Europe, populist parties seen as Trump’s ideological allies are also on the defensive. While Trump was popular in terms of his ideological and anti-woke agenda, the trade war has made him “quite toxic, just in the last month or two, with a lot of the populist voting bases”, said Jeremy Shapiro, the research director of the European Council on Foreign Relations and a former special adviser to the assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasia.Nowhere has the shift in US foreign policy been felt more acutely than in Ukraine, where the sudden cutoff in US military and intelligence sharing confirmed the Trump administration’s goals of pressuring Ukraine to accept a deal with the Kremlin, rather than the other way around. Those frustrations boiled over into an Oval Office meltdown fueled by Vice-President JD Vance that one former US official close to the talks called “disgraceful”.Trump has swung wildly on the war, on certain days targeting Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a “dictator” and then quickly pivoting to call out Putin for continuing to rain down missiles on Ukrainian cities. His theatrics have produced symbolic moments, including a sudden recognition that “maybe [Putin] doesn’t want to stop the war” after speaking with Zelenskyy this weekend in the baptistry of St Peter’s Basilica. But in terms of hard results, Trump has not fulfilled a promise to end the war within 24 hours or produced a clear path to peace many months later.View image in fullscreenThe Russians have said they largely tune out what he says in public.“We hear many things coming from President Trump,” said Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, during a television appearance this weekend. “We concentrate, as I said, on the real negotiations which President Trump supports and instructed his people to continue to engage in these negotiations.”Key among those people is Witkoff, a neophyte diplomat who has spent hours in conversation with Putin, often with no other adviser present. One person close to the Kremlin said that Witkoff was viewed as a reliable negotiator in Moscow with “a chance to make an agreement”, but added: “There is a chance it will pass by.”Much of the burden of international diplomacy now rests on Witkoff, who is also running point on other key negotiations. Trump has tasked him with reaching a deal to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, in effect renegotiating the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that he scuttled in 2018. Both the US and Iran have played up the talks, although “differences still exist both on major issues and on the details”, the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, told state television this week.And then there is the Middle East, where the Trump administration scored its greatest early success by negotiating a ceasefire in Gaza but then failed to prevent its collapse, with Israel cutting off new aid to Gaza as the fighting continues.“There now seems to be less focus on ending the devastating conflict,” wrote Stefanie Hausheer Ali, a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center and Middle East Programs. “Trump’s threat in February to Hamas to release the hostages or ‘all hell is going to break out’ has, in practice, meant Israel restarting the war and blocking humanitarian aid from entering Gaza. Without an alternative to Hamas rule, the militant group may hang on and continue to fight as an insurgency, replenishing its ranks by recruiting desperate people.”Trump’s most extreme remarks have turned out to be bluster: he stunned the world when he claimed that he would turn the Gaza Strip into beachfront condos and said that the local Palestinian population would be forcibly removed. Months later, the initiative is largely forgotten.While attempting to close three landmark negotiations at once, the Trump administration has also launched a trade war with the entire world, establishing sweeping tariffs on all foreign imports before abruptly reversing course and cutting tariffs to 10% save for those against China.With so many major efforts ongoing, observers say that the government is largely paralysed to deal with smaller but still crucial issues in foreign policy and national security. As part of a blanket ban on refugees, tens of thousands of Afghans who assisted US troops against the Taliban are left waiting for relocation to the United States, a promise that was extended by previous administrations.“The lack of clarity and the chaos are the things that are causing so much pain,” said Shawn VanDiver, the founder and president of #AfghanEvac, a group that works with the state department to help resettle Afghans.He said he was critical of both the Biden and Trump administrations for failing to relocate the tens of thousands of Afghans who were far enough along in the vetting program to be relocated before Trump came into office.“The truth is, is that when America makes a promise, you should be able to trust our word,” he said. “If our flag waving over an embassy in Tunisia or Baghdad or Kabul, or Kyiv doesn’t mean this is the place where there’s truth, where there’s justice … well, then what are we even doing here?” More

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      in US Politics

      Trump 100 days: Trump’s whirlwind start to his second presidency

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      Law-abiding migrants sent to foreign prisons. Sweeping tariffs disrupting global markets. Students detained for protest. Violent insurrectionists pardoned. Tens of thousands of federal workers fired. The supreme court ignored.The first 100 days of Donald Trump’s second term have shocked the United States and the world. On the eve of his inauguration, Trump promised the “most extraordinary first 100 days of any presidency in American history”, and what followed has been a whirlwind pace of extreme policies and actions that have reshaped the federal government and the US’s role in the world.Let’s look at what he has achieved and destroyed.Shattering alliancesView image in fullscreenThe end of the postwar orderTrump’s first 100 days has been marked by arguably the biggest shake-up in US foreign policy since 1945. He has feuded with Nato and turned on Ukraine, slapped tariffs on US allies around the globe, ignored international institutions and publicly admired dictators from Vladimir Putin to El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele.‘The EU was invented to screw us over’Trump has called European allies “freeloaders” who have relied on the US to pay for their defense and said he would not defend allies who didn’t meet a spending threshold of 2% of GDP. He has accused European allies of conspiring to “screw over” the US by forming the European Union. “The west as we knew it no longer exists,” the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said.Video-2: To view this video please download this article it in our appA new Monroe doctrine?As Trump has retreated from Europe, he has increasingly thrown the US’s weight around the western hemisphere. He said Canada should become the 51st state, threatened to annex Greenland, and proposed in his inaugural speech that the US “take back” the Panama canal. Some have compared his foreign policy to that of James Monroe, the former president who in 1823 declared a US sphere of influence in North and South America.View image in fullscreenTariffs and ChinaTrump’s haphazard imposition of tariffs has angered US allies from Europe to Asia, where longtime trade partners such as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan have scrambled to try to negotiate new deals to protect their economies from severe shocks. China’s Xi Jinping has toured south-east Asia, seeking to promote Beijing as the world’s protector of rules-based trade and calling on countries to “jointly oppose unilateral bullying”.View image in fullscreenJD Vance, Elon Musk and the court of TrumpIf Trump has seemed transactional toward Europe, then his top advisers have appeared downright hostile. JD Vance made waves in Munich when he portrayed European leaders as ideological tyrants and accused them of “running in fear of your own voters”. Musk has backed far-right movements from the UK’s Reform to Germany’s AfD.Attacking rule of lawPardoning January 6 protestersTrump issued more than 1,500 pardons or commutations to people convicted in connection to the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.View image in fullscreen‘He who saves his Country does not violate any Law’– Trump in a February post on X, underscoring that he believes he can justify breaking the lawView image in fullscreenDefying court ordersIn March, the Trump administration ignored an order from the US district judge James Boasberg to turn around a plane headed to El Salvador containing people alleged to be gang members. It was a staggering act of defiance.View image in fullscreenThreatening judgesTrump and allies have threatened judges who have ruled against them. “This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!,” Trump said in an 18 March post on Truth Social. Elon Musk, a top Trump adviser, has also called for impeaching judges and supported Republicans who champion doing so.View image in fullscreenAttacking lawyersTrump has used executive orders to punish law firms connected to rivals or that have taken on causes averse to his administration. Several firms have settled with Trump to avoid being punished. Others have successfully sued the administration.Trade
      warsView image in fullscreenThreatsTrump did not wait to return to the White House before threatening China, Canada and Mexico with sweeping tariffs. These would be implemented on the first day of his second term, he declared. This was the first of many times Trump would attempt to use the threat of an economic assault to force countries to bend to his will.View image in fullscreenDelaysFor Canada and Mexico, the supposed deadline for threatened tariffs shifted from January, to February, to March. When tariffs were imposed, it was barely 48 hours before all goods covered by a previous trilateral trade deal were spared. Companies caught in the crossfire struggled to keep up.Video-4: To view this video please download this article it in our app‘Liberation’Trump and his aides sought to bill 2 April 2025 – the day he presented sweeping tariffs on much of the world, including China – as “liberation day”. The plan lasted all of a week before it was watered down. All of the countries in the administration’s sights except China now face a blanket tariff of 10%, rather than the higher rates, after a global market sell-off and warnings of recession.Markets crashingView image in fullscreenTrade warWhile Trump has repeatedly pulled back from the brink of all-out economic war with most countries, China is the exception. When Beijing retaliated against US tariffs, Trump hiked them further – leaving the world’s two largest economies spiraling into a tit-for-tat dispute. US tariffs on Chinese goods stand at 145%.View image in fullscreenConfusion ​Amid mounting concern over the impact of Trump’s volatile trade strategy on the economy, and the risk of recession, businesses of all sizes are attempting to grab a moving target. “Nobody knows what’s coming next,” John Cochrane, an economist at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, observed recently.Government ‘efficiency’View image in fullscreenMusk ushered into governmentOn day one, Trump signed an executive order creating the “department of government efficiency” (Doge) – a novel initiative chaired by Elon Musk. In the weeks that followed, Doge staff, many of whom are former employees at Musk’s companies and lack government experience, embedded themselves in federal agencies large and small, directing sudden and disruptive cuts to programs and payrolls.View image in fullscreenFederal workers targetedThe Trump administration moved to dramatically shrink the federal workforce, first by proposing buyouts. About 75,000 employees opted to leave, as did thousands more in the weeks that followed. But the numbers were fewer than the White House hoped, so cabinet secretaries fired tens of thousands more, while Trump approved the termination of about 25,000 employees on their probationary periods. The supreme court refused to hear a challenge to the latter firings in April.View image in fullscreenAgencies shuttered, perhaps illegallyTrump moved to dismantle USAID, which has administered Washington’s foreign aid agenda for more than six decades, and fold it into the state department. He also directed the education secretary, Linda McMahon, to oversee the closure of her department. The offensives against these and other agencies quickly wound up in the courts.View image in fullscreenDoge rattles Trump’s cabinetDoge has left few corners of the federal government untouched. But reports have emerged that Musk’s initiative is grating some of Trump’s newly confirmed cabinet secretaries, who see him as unhelpfully disrupting their departments. In March, Trump reportedly stopped Musk from seeing the defense department’s secret plans for a potential war with China during his visit to the Pentagon, noting that the Tesla boss had extensive business interests in China.Musk takes a stand in Wisconsin – and losesMusk was a major financial supporter of Trump’s campaign to return to the presidency. But his foray into the race for a Wisconsin supreme court seat in April was not as successful. Although he spent about $20m supporting the former Republican attorney general Brad Schimel, voters instead choose the Democratic-backed Susan Crawford, preserving the 4-3 liberal majority on the state’s highest court.Information warView image in fullscreenFlooding the zoneTrump has been everywhere all the time, dominating the “attention economy” like no other public figure. He takes questions from reporters far more often than his predecessor Joe Biden. He posts frequently on his Truth Social platform. He has attended the Super Bowl, Ultimate Fighting Championship and other sporting events.View image in fullscreenSidelining the ‘lamestream’ mediaThe White House banned the Associated Press from events in the Oval Office and Air Force One over the news agency’s refusal to obey Trump’s executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. The AP sued over access to presidential events and won a court ruling, though it was unclear if and when the White House would put it into effect.View image in fullscreenPlatforming Maga mediaThe White House took over deciding which outlets are allowed to take part in the press pool, a group that acts as the eyes and ears of the media covering the president up close, and included more fringe outlets. Rightwing journalists also became more prominent at press briefings.View image in fullscreenChallenging state fundingMore than 1,300 Voice of America journalists, producers and assistants were placed on leave, crippling a broadcaster that was founded in 1942 to counter Nazi propaganda and operates in almost 50 languages. Grants to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia were terminated. A judge recently ordered the restoration of Voice of America’s operations, but the administration is likely to appeal.Executive ordersTrump increasingly relies on executive ordersTrump has signed 140 executive orders in his first 100 days, including 36 in his first week in office. His use of the presidential pen is unprecedented in modern US history. Below are the number of executive orders presidents signed in their first 100 days.View image in fullscreen‘Invasion’ at the borderTrump’s day one border emergency declaration deployed 1,500 active-duty troops alongside 2,500 national guard members to the southern border. Framing migration as an “invasion”, the order militarized immigration enforcement and redirected defense resources to border control, raising serious legal and humanitarian concerns about the use of the military for domestic enforcement.View image in fullscreen‘Deep state’ purgeThe reinstated “Schedule F” executive order has stripped tens of thousands of federal employees of civil service protections, allowing the administration to fire career officials deemed disloyal.View image in fullscreenPro-Palestinian targetsA week after the Columbia graduate and green card holder Mahmoud Khalil was detained in March, Trump signed an order called “Securing American Values” to target visa holders who have participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations. The order directs immigration agencies to authorize visa revocations of demonstrators linked to organizations accused of hate speech, and detain and expedite deportations for those involved in activity the administration deems antisemitic.View image in fullscreenBirthright citizenship attackTrump’s unconstitutional day one executive order aimed to end automatic citizenship for babies born on US soil to undocumented immigrants or those on temporary visas – directly challenging the 14th amendment’s guarantee that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States” are citizens. The order remains blocked by courts pending litigation.View image in fullscreenGlobal aid freezeThe administration’s foreign aid freeze has halted thousands of humanitarian and development programs worldwide. The executive order targeting USAID has disrupted even life-saving health initiatives like HIV treatment in Africa, even though the administration says they have not been affected.Fortress AmericaVideo-1: To view this video please download this article in our appRefugee admission suspendedTrump has suspended all refugee resettlement into the United States, leaving tens of thousands of people in an overseas limbo. The indefinite pause on the resettlement program has made it nearly impossible for refugees fleeing war and violence to seek safe haven in the US. The order is subject to ongoing legal action.Arrests ramp upUS Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) arrests in February outstripped not just the same period under Biden but even the figures from Trump’s first term.View image in fullscreenAlien Enemies ActThe Trump administration used an 18th-century wartime law to deport scores of Venezuelans to El Salvador, where they are being held in a draconian mega-prison known as Cecot. Trump’s use of the law faces legal challenges. Onboard one of the deportation flights was a Maryland father with protected legal status mistakenly deported in what the administration called an “administrative error”. The supreme court has ordered the US to “facilitate” his return.View image in fullscreenFree speech crackdownIn an extraordinary crackdown on free speech, the Trump administration has tracked down and detained international students involved in pro-Palestinian protests, among them Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia graduate and lawful permanent resident.View image in fullscreenSchools and churches no longer out of boundsThe Trump administration now allows immigration authorities to make arrests in schools, healthcare facilities and places of worship. But on 7 April, federal agents were denied entry to two Los Angeles area elementary schools after they alleged the children entered the US without documentation.Opposition and protestView image in fullscreenProtesters take to the streetsAfter a slower start than Trump’s first term, protests have erupted across the country, including in small towns in Republican areas, standing up against his overreach. Established groups have joined together with a decentralized protest movement around broad messages against oligarchy and dismantling democracy.View image in fullscreenMusk is targetedElon Musk proved a potent target for the opposition, given his prominent role leading Doge as it slashed through the federal government. As Doge cut through agency after agency, people turned up outside federal offices in opposition. “Tesla Takedown” protests at local dealerships went after his publicly traded company, tanking the stock.View image in fullscreenDemocrats take a standAfter a bruising electoral loss, Democratic officials struggled to find their voices as an effective resistance to an emboldened Trump, but some have found a footing. Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez launched an anti-oligarchy tour, drawing huge crowds. Some Democrats, including Congressman Al Green, disrupted a joint session of Congress. Cory Booker gave a record-breaking 25-hour speech on the Senate floor. Meanwhile, the party announced a new effort to funnel money into critical state races.Video-3: To view this video please download this article in our appLawsuits put brake on Trump agendaA strategy that worked well in the first Trump term remained a major plank of the opposition: endless lawsuits. A coalition of Democratic attorneys general have brought handfuls of suits, often successful, to stop his actions. Outside groups have filed lawsuits over his unconstitutional plans. But his administration is defying court orders in some instances, a sign that the courts alone won’t be enough to stop him.Trump’s approval flippedNet approval ratingTrump’s first 100 days were largely designed to make a statement, and they achieved that goal. But it’s clear that within this time period there have been consequences to the executive orders, policy making and budget cuts that could continue to spiral out of the president’s control. The impacts will crystallize in the lives of the American public, and abroad, in the more than 1,300 days to come. More

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      Trump news at a glance: children targeted in immigration crackdown

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      As part of President Donald Trump’s sweeping immigration crackdown, unaccompanied minors are now being targeted for deportation, with the Department of Homeland Security engaging in “welfare checks” on children who arrived in the US alone, usually across the US-Mexican border.The moves have sparked fears of a crackdown and prompted alarm about what one critic called “backdoor family separation”.The president has also signed two executive orders related to immigration, including one targeting so-called “sanctuary cities” that “obstruct the enforcement of federal immigration laws”.Here are the key stories at a glance:Unaccompanied immigrant children could be deported or prosecutedImmigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officials are seeking out unaccompanied immigrant children in operations nationwide with a view to deporting them or pursuing criminal cases against them or adult sponsors sheltering them legally in the US, according to sources and an Ice document.Read the full storyTrump signs executive order requiring list of sanctuary cities and statesDonald Trump signed two new executive orders on Monday afternoon related to immigration, according to the White House, including one targeting so-called “sanctuary cities” and another the administration says will strengthen law enforcement.Read the full storyPeace Corps to undergo ‘significant’ cuts after Doge reviewThe Peace Corps is offering staff a second “fork in the road” buyout, according to a source familiar with the matter. Allison Greene, the chief executive of Peace Corps, sent an email to staff on Monday with an update about the “department of government efficiency” (Doge) assessment of the agency.Read the full story Doge conflicts of interest worth $2.37bn, Senate report saysElon Musk and his companies face at least $2.37bn in legal exposure from federal investigations, litigation and regulatory oversight, according to a new report from Senate Democrats. The report attempts to put a number to Musk’s many conflicts of interest through his work with his so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), warning that he may seek to use his influence to avoid legal liability.Read the full storyTrump’s justice department appointees remove leadership of voting unitDonald Trump’s appointees at the Department of Justice have removed all of the senior civil servants working as managers in the department’s voting section and directed attorneys to dismiss all active cases, according to people familiar with the matter, part of a broader attack on the department’s civil rights division.Read the full storyDemocrats warn cuts at top US labor watchdog will be ‘catastrophic’Democrats have warned that cuts to the US’s top labor watchdog threaten to render the organization “basically ineffectual” and will be “catastrophic” for workers’ rights. Elon Musk’s Doge has targeted the National Labor Relations Board for cuts and ended its leases in several states.Read the full storyJB Pritzker’s fiery speech urging mass protests sparks talk of 2028 runIllinois’s Democratic governor, JB Pritzker, scorched Donald Trump’s administration, calling for “mass protests” and declaring that Republicans “cannot know a moment of peace” during a fiery speech in New Hampshire that immediately sparked presidential speculation.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      An Irish woman who has lived legally in the US for four decades has been detained by immigration officials because of a criminal record dating back almost 20 years.

      Senior British government officials have asked golf bosses to host the 2028 Open championship at Donald Trump’s Turnberry course after repeated requests from the US president, sources have said.

      A host of CBS’s 60 Minutes rebuked the show’s corporate owners as part of a dispute over journalists’ independence amid a lawsuit from Trump and attempted sale.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 27 April 2025. More

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      Jalen Hurts stays away as Eagles visit White House to celebrate Super Bowl victory

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      Donald Trump feted the Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles at the White House on Monday, but several players, including quarterback Jalen Hurts, decided to skip the celebration.Hurts and other players cited scheduling conflicts as the reasons for their absences, according to a White House official who spoke on condition of anonymity.Despite the quarterback’s absence, Trump called Hurts a “terrific guy and terrific player” who turned in “one stellar performance after another” during the Eagles’ run to the championship.“The Eagles have turned out to be an incredible team, an incredible group,” Trump said.In April, Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie said attending the White House was not compulsory for players. “Our culture is that these are optional things,” Lurie said. “If you want to enjoy this, come along and we’ll have a great time and if you don’t, it is totally an optional thing.”NBC Sports Philadelphia reported that other Eagles players who did not attend Monday’s ceremony included AJ Brown, DeVonta Smith, Jalen Carter, Jordan Davis and Brandon Graham.The Eagles were disinvited to the White House in 2018, the last time they won the Super Bowl, after a number of players said they would drop out amid tensions over the anthem protests that had swept the NFL. Trump, then in his first term as president, had attacked players who knelt during the anthem to protest against racial inequality. At the time, Trump wrote on social media that the Eagles were in dispute “with their President because he insists that they proudly stand for the National Anthem, hand on heart, in honor of the great men and women of our military and the people of our country.”Asked by a reporter on the red carpet of the Time magazine gala last week whether he would take part in the White House visit, Hurts responded with an awkward “um” and long silence before walking away.The Eagles’ star running back, Saquon Barkley, visited Trump over the weekend at Trump National Golf Club in New Jersey, and caught a ride with the president to Washington on Air Force One.“He loved it,” Trump said of Barkley’s flight on the presidential airplane. “He’s a great young guy and an incredible football player. Saquon had a season for the ages, running behind the most powerful offensive line in the NFL,” Trump said.Barkley, meanwhile, pushed back on social media criticism earlier Monday for spending time with Trump. He noted that he has golfed with Barack Obama too.“Maybe I just respect the office, not a hard concept to understand,” Barkley posted on X.While Trump’s first term in office led to a number of athletes, such as LeBron James and Megan Rapinoe, criticizing the president, there has been little pushback from the sports world so far in his second term. In February, Trump became the first sitting US president to attend the Super Bowl, and his presence was welcomed by several players, including the Kansas City Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce.Teams who have won a major championship are traditionally invited to the White House to celebrate their victory with the president. However, during Trump’s first-term several teams were not invited or made it clear they would not attend if they were. Those teams included the NBA’s Golden State Warriors, and the United States Women’s National Team after their victory at the 2019 Women’s World Cup. More

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      Peace Corps to undergo ‘significant’ cuts after Doge review

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      The Peace Corps is offering staff a second “fork in the road” buyout, according to a source familiar with the matter. Allison Greene, the chief executive of Peace Corps, sent an email to staff on Monday with an update about the “department of government efficiency” (Doge) assessment of the agency.Greene said to expect “significant restructuring efforts” at Peace Corps headquarters, according to the email seen by the Guardian. Starting on 28 April and going through 6 May, direct hire and expert staff are being offered a second deferred resignation program, what Elon Musk’s Doge has referred to as a “fork in the road” buyout. Greene referred to this offer as “DRP 2.0”.Eligible staff will hear from human resources and “are strongly encouraged to consider this option”, Greene wrote. The offer applies to employees both domestically and overseas.Peace Corps will “continue to recruit, place, and train volunteers”, Greene said, indicating that the cuts are specifically for agency staff and will not affect volunteers.A Peace Corps spokesperson confirmed that Doge began the cuts on Monday.“The agency will remain operational and continue to recruit, place, and train volunteers, while continuing to support their health, safety and security, and effective service,” the spokesperson said.Since Donald Trump was inaugurated and tapped Musk to head the unofficial government agency Doge, the secretive group has steadily worked to slash budgets and lay off workers in federal agencies.With the mission to identify “waste, fraud and abuse”, it has targeted nearly two dozen agencies and fired hundreds of workers. Doge has especially focused on agencies involved in foreign aid and development, such as the US Agency for International Development (USAID).Doge started its work at Peace Corps headquarters in the beginning of April, according to two people familiar with the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity. A Doge representative, Bridget Youngs, visited the agency headquarters at that time and asked for access to the agency’s financial records. Doge workers have continued to work in the building over the following weeks.Peace Corps staffers were told to cooperate with Doge and “if data from the system is requested, confirm what is required to meet their needs (data, format, etc)”. Staff were additionally told that “under all circumstances, ensure that clear records are kept on what is requested and provided”.It’s unclear how many Peace Corps jobs will be cut or if Doge will direct the agency to do more than this new round of buyouts. In a separate email sent by the Peace Corps office of human resources on Monday and seen by the Guardian, the agency wrote: “At this time, we cannot give you full assurance which positions will remain – or where they will be located – after an anticipated workforce restructuring.”The Peace Corps sends volunteers to countries around the world to work for two years on public health, economic development and education projects. It was created in 1961 by John F Kennedy and has sent more than 240,000 volunteers abroad. It currently has around 3,000 volunteers working in 60 different countries. More

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      MLB commissioner Manfred to rule on Pete Rose ban after Trump meeting

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      MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said he discussed Pete Rose with Donald Trump at a meeting two weeks ago and he plans to rule on a request to end the sport’s permanent ban of the career hits leader, who died in September.Speaking Monday at a meeting of the Associated Press Sports Editors, Manfred said he and Trump have discussed several issues, including Manfred’s concerns over how Trump’s immigration policies could impact players from Cuba, Venezuela and other foreign countries.Manfred is considering a petition to have Rose posthumously removed from MLB’s permanently ineligible list. The petition was filed in January by Jeffrey Lenkov, a Southern California lawyer who represented Rose prior to the 17-time All-Star’s death at age 83.“I met with President Trump two weeks ago, I guess now, and one of the topics was Pete Rose, but I’m not going beyond that,” Manfred said. “He’s said what he said publicly, I’m not going beyond that in terms of what the back and forth was.”Trump posted on social media in February that he plans to issue “a complete PARDON of Pete Rose.” Trump posted on Truth Social that Rose “shouldn’t have been gambling on baseball, but only bet on HIS TEAM WINNING.” It’s unclear what a presidential pardon might include – Trump did not specifically mention a tax case in which Rose pleaded guilty in 1990 to two counts of filing false tax returns and served a five-month prison sentence. The president said he would sign a pardon for Rose “over the next few weeks” but has not addressed the matter since.Rose had 4,256 hits and also holds records for games (3,562) and plate appearances (15,890). He was the 1973 National League MVP and played on three World Series winners.An investigation for MLB by lawyer John M Dowd found Rose placed numerous bets on the Cincinnati Reds to win from 1985-87 while playing for and managing the team. Rose agreed with MLB on a permanent ban in 1989.Lenkov is seeking Rose’s reinstatement so that he can be considered for the Hall of Fame. Under a rule adopted by the Hall’s board of directors in 1991, anyone on the permanently ineligible list can’t be considered for election to the Hall. Rose applied for reinstatement in 1997 and met with Commissioner Bud Selig in November 2002, but Selig never ruled on Rose’s request. Manfred in 2015 denied Rose’s application for reinstatement.Manfred said reinstating Rose now was “a little more complicated than it might appear on the outside” and did not commit to a timeline except that “I want to get it done promptly as soon as we get the work done. I’m not going to give this the pocket veto. I will in fact issue a ruling.”Rose’s reinstatement doesn’t mean he would automatically appear on a Hall of Fame ballot. He would first have to be nominated by the Hall’s Historical Overview Committee, which is picked by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America and approved by the Hall’s board. Manfred is an ex-officio member of that board and says he has been in regular contact with chairman Jane Forbes Clark.“I mean, believe me, a lot of Hall of Fame dialogue on this one,” Manfred said.If reinstated, Rose potentially would be eligible for consideration to be placed on a ballot to be considered by the 16-member Classic Baseball Era committee in December 2027.Manfred added he doesn’t think baseball’s current ties to legal sports betting should color views on Rose’s case.“There is and always has been a clear demarcation between what Rob Manfred, ordinary citizen, can do on the one hand, and what someone who has the privilege to play or work in Major League Baseball can do on the other in respect to gambling,” he said. “The fact that the law changed, and we sell data and/or sponsorships, which is essentially all we do, to sports betting enterprises, I don’t think changes that. It’s a privilege to play Major League Baseball. As with every privilege, there comes responsibilities. One of those responsibilities is that they not bet on the game.”Manfred did not go into details on his discussion with Trump over foreign-born players other than to say he expressed worry.“Given the number of foreign-born players we have, we’re always concerned about ingress and egress,” Manfred said. “We have had dialogue with the administration about this topic. And, you know, they’re very interested in sports. They understand the unique need to be able to go back and forth, and I’m going to leave it at that.” More

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      Elon Musk’s Doge conflicts of interest worth $2.37bn, Senate report says

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      Elon Musk and his companies face at least $2.37bn in legal exposure from federal investigations, litigation and regulatory oversight, according to a new report from Senate Democrats. The report attempts to put a number to Musk’s many conflicts of interest through his work with his so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), warning that he may seek to use his influence to avoid legal liability.The report, which was published on Monday by Democratic members of the Senate homeland security committee’s permanent subcommittee on investigations, looked at 65 actual or potential actions against Musk across 11 separate agencies. Investigators calculated the financial liabilities Musk and his companies, such as Tesla, SpaceX and Neuralink, may face in 45 of those actions.Since Donald Trump won re-election last year and Musk took on the role of de facto head of Doge in January, ethics watchdogs and Democratic officials have warned that the Tesla CEO could use his power to oust regulators and quash investigations into his companies. In the role, Musk, the richest man in the world, holds sway over agencies that regulate or contract with his companies. The subcommittee report outlines the extent of Musk’s liabilities, which include potentially facing $1.19bn in fines to Tesla alone over allegations it made false or misleading statements about its autopilot and self-driving features.Although the report gives a total estimated amount, it also states that the $2bn-plus figure does not include how much Musk could avoid from investigations that the Trump administration declines to launch. It also excludes the potential contracts, such as communications deals with his Starlink satellite internet service, that Musk’s companies could gain because of his role in the administration.“While the $2.37 billion figure represents a credible, conservative estimate, it drastically understates the true benefit Mr Musk may gain from legal risk avoidance alone as a result of his position in government,” the report states.The Trump administration has downplayed concerns over Musk’s conflicts of interest in recent months, with the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, stating in early February that he would “excuse himself” if there was any issue. Democrats have pressed the administration for answers on how Musk is addressing these conflicts, while also seeking to put the increasingly unpopular billionaire at the forefront of their attacks against the Trump administration. The Democratic senator Jeanne Shaheen introduced a bill earlier this month targeting Musk that would prohibit awarding government contracts to companies owned by special government employees.“Despite numerous requests from members of Congress, the Trump Administration has failed to provide any relevant documents or information, the authorities relied upon for these actions, or an explanation of how Mr Musk is navigating the conflicts they inherently pose,” the report states.Musk’s conflicts span multiple agencies, including the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) which oversees SpaceX rocket launches and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), which has multiple open investigations into Tesla’s operations. In February, Doge fired workers at the NHTSA that were experts in self-driving car technology.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe permanent subcommittee on investigations is a bipartisan subcommittee with a Republican majority and Democratic minority, the latter of which is chaired by the Connecticut senator Richard Blumenthal. The subcommittee’s report issues a series of demands to Trump, executive departments and regulatory agencies to take stronger oversight action against Musk, including allowing for independent audits of major contracts given to Musk-affiliated companies.“No one individual, no matter how prominent or wealthy, is above the law,” the report states in its conclusion. “Anything less than decisive, immediate, and collective action risks America becoming a bystander to the surrender to modern oligarchy.” More

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      The Christian Right is taking over America, according to Talia Lavin – but what is the best response?

      by

      Talia Lavin’s Wild Faith: How the Christian Right is Taking Over America is an angry response to the rise of American Christianity’s far-right fringe, which she depicts as a theocratic menace to secular government and liberal freedoms.

      As Lavin shows in abundant detail, the US Christian Right adheres to a worldview based around supernatural struggle between good and evil, where “demons make war every day with the better angels of the human spirit”. This is the same mentality as motivated the Satanic Panic of the 1980s, with its hysterical tales of ritual child abuse in service of the Devil. It continues to influence America’s “politics, punditry, and policy”.

      Review: Wild Faith: How the Christian Right is Taking Over America – Talia Lavin (Hachette)

      Lavin exposes the Christian Right’s political ambitions and social harms, amassing examples to illustrate the point. She cites case after case of apocalyptic fervour, domestic terrorism, patriarchal tyranny, systematic child abuse, anti-science kookiness, and connections with white supremacism.

      Her central claim is that significant elements within American evangelicalism want to use state power to impose their version of a Christian social order grounded in ideas of faith, obedience and bodily purity. The Christian Right rejects any spirit of mutual tolerance between religious and secular worldviews, pursuing instead absolute political and cultural dominance.

      This absolutism drives efforts to suppress ways of life viewed as rootless and degenerate, dismantle the separation of church and state, and reframe the United States as an inherently Christian nation requiring an explicitly Christian government.

      Opposition options

      The US is a religious outlier among Western liberal democracies. Australia and many other democratic nations are increasingly, though not entirely, post-Christian societies. Still, the US is militarily and culturally hegemonic. Events there never the leave the rest of us untouched. As its culture wars play out, we should all feel nervous about the outcomes. As Lavin warns, the Christian Right is on the march. So what is the best response?

      Lavin calls for an impassioned “cacophony” of resistance to the Christian Right. “In response,” she exhorts, “we must take up a countermarch, thrill to its cacophonic strains, and rise to spurn a faith that has overrun its banks and spilled out into wild and untrammelled hate.”

      This prompts a question: is such rhetoric, which has something of its own cacophonous and even fanatical sound, really the best response to America’s would-be theocrats?

      Perspectives might vary. There is room for books stuffed with invective against powerful oppressors and with calls to mobilise against them. Responding to the oppressive religiosity of another time, Voltaire urged his readers to “écrasez l’infâme! – crush the infamy!

      Such battle cries can fit the moment. Inevitably, however, they call to the already-converted. They have limited persuasive scope.

      Pragmatically, it might be crucial to ensure the election of the Democratic Party to political office wherever possible. This would require the party to distance itself from illiberal and unpopular practices, such as identity ideology and cancel culture, which disaffect large portions of the electorate, undermine broad coalition-building, and ultimately weaken the party’s electoral prospects.

      A more unifying approach on the American centre-left would prioritise traditional liberal freedoms, alongside a focus on the material welfare of everyday people: jobs, healthcare and economic security. Nothing in the text of Wild Faith suggests that Lavin understands such strategic issues or is able to imagine a more relatable brand of American liberalism.

      Nor does she attempt to refute the doctrines of Christianity head-on. In that sense, Wild Faith is not a work of atheistic philosophy or a New Atheist tract. It doesn’t try to nudge along the decline of Christian religious adherence in the US in recent decades (which has possibly levelled off in the last few years).

      Nor does Lavin spend much time disputing Christianity’s specific tenets: its doctrine of spiritual salvation through Christ and its stark portrayals of death, judgement, heaven and hell. These core Christian doctrines suggest that we are all in danger of eternal hellfire, but have a chance of eternal bliss. The word “eternal” here conveys the stakes for every soul. In the past, a sense of such huge consequences prompted inquisitors to burn books and heretics.

      Lavin expects her readers to treat all such doctrines as absurd. She never explores Christianity’s deeper logic or opposes the religion itself. Instead, she frames members of the Christian Right as something of a rogue outgrowth.

      Another obvious response to the Christian Right would be renewed defence of secularism: the once-revolutionary idea that religious authority and state power should be kept apart. Here, there is a rich tradition of thought to draw upon, much of it originating from Christian thinkers in the early centuries of European modernity during a time of religious wars. Indeed, the US as a political construct was shaped, in part, by theories of church and state separation.

      On such accounts, the legitimate role of secular rulers is to protect life, liberty and property – and more generally our interests in things of this empirical world – rather than concern themselves with matters of spiritual salvation or enforce any religious moral system for its own sake. Indeed, this idea has inspired many American evangelicals. But in-principle defence of secular government is not within Lavin’s approach.

      American Christians in the evangelical Protestant tradition belong to a broad spectrum of churches with varied beliefs and practices. Lavin focuses on a radical fringe, giving an impression that it is typical of the whole.

      She details much horrendous conduct, including brutal forms of corporal punishment inspired by manuals such as Michael and Debi Pearl’s To Train Up a Child. She reveals survivors’ memories of “biblical discipline” to dramatic effect. Her samples are drawn from self-selecting ex-evangelicals, whose experiences may not be the norm, though even a small percentage of evangelical Protestants with vicious ideas about child-rearing could disfigure the lives of many helpless children.

      ‘Many individuals encounter genuine acts of kindness through their churches and find a sense of meaning and belonging.’
      Paul Shuang/Shutterstock

      Wild Faith could, however, bewilder more typical megachurch families in America’s suburbs, who are loving towards their children and do not recognise themselves in Lavin’s descriptions of torment and abuse. More broadly, the one-sidedness of Lavin’s narrative risks leaving us with a caricature of evangelicals. Even within strict evangelical communities, there is doubtless more at play than she recognises. Many individuals encounter genuine acts of kindness through their churches and find a sense of meaning and belonging.

      All these people are exhibited in Wild Faith not as merely wrong, nor as merely dogmatic and hence beyond the reach of rational persuasion (which, indeed, some of them might be). They are shown as alien and monstrous. We needn’t adopt an attitude of what atheist Daniel Dennett called “belief in belief” – that is, rejecting religion for ourselves while commending its virtues to others – to sense that Lavin misses part of the human story.

      Clash of dogmatisms

      Stylistically, Wild Faith is repetitive and frequently marred by rhetorical excesses. Too often, it seems more like an apoplectic rant than a serious exposé. It’s one thing to denounce child abuse, theocracy, and other such evils. But Lavin goes much further.

      For a start, she pervasively ridicules her opponents’ physical looks. Her worst flourishes along these lines – labelling former Donald Trump advisor Steve Bannon a “human yeast infection” or Kristi Noem (who has since been made Trump’s secretary of homeland security) as “South Dakota’s hard-right haircut of a governor” – veer into juvenile mockery. Again, this may appeal to the already-converted, but for anyone else a shorter, tighter, fairer book might have been more persuasive.

      Lavin does not seem to recognise any of her own political commitments as being matters of genuine controversy, which gives the impression of an author who is something of an ideologue herself. It suggests that we are witnessing a clash of dogmatisms. There are numerous examples of this, but for the sake of brevity I will confine myself to issues related to abortion.

      Lavin does not contemplate that some of her opponents might sincerely view abortion as murder. Yet abortion involves killing an entity that is biologically human. It does not follow automatically that embryos and fetuses are good candidates for our moral consideration – but if not, why not? This at least suggests a need for serious philosophical engagement with abortion’s critics and opponents.

      Understandably enough, Lavin mourns the downfall of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court case that interpreted the US Constitution as granting extensive abortion rights. Roe v. Wade was followed by a line of cases that largely preserved its authority. It was eventually overturned by Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022), leaving individual state legislatures to decide what criminal restrictions, if any, they might wish to impose.

      Disastrous as this was for many women and girls in America’s red states, it is also a reminder that rights built on shaky constitutional foundations might not last forever. Roe v. Wade was always vulnerable to potential challenges, because abortion rights have no direct textual support in the US Constitution, but were established by building inferences on inferences. Indeed, Roe v. Wade encountered criticism even in the 1970s, and even from many supporters of abortion rights.

      Lavin does not acknowledge any of this. Finally, she faults Democrats for failing to codify Roe v. Wade in statutory form when they were in office, but she glosses over the formidable (perhaps insurmountable) constitutional and procedural obstacles to any such move.

      Activists mark the first anniversary of the US Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, June 23, 2023, Washington DC.
      Nathan Howard/AAP

      The verdict

      Lavin raises a legitimate alarm: a theocratic faction in the US wields disproportionate influence to the point of threatening liberal democracy itself. To bolster that point, she could have cited a wave of recent Supreme Court cases that demonstrate a weakening of constitutional barriers to state-endorsed religion.

      Some of these cases might be individually defensible, given their particular facts, but as they accumulate they erode the separation of church and state. By now, little remains of freedom from religion in the US – perhaps no more than protection against the most explicit forms of coercion, such as state-mandated participation in particular religious observances. This leaves unchecked subtler encroachments by religion on secular life.

      That situation has been a long time coming and other authors have traversed similar ground to Lavin’s book. One might, for example, compare Michelle Goldberg’s Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism or Susan Jacoby’s The Age of American Unreason in a Culture of Lies.

      Goldberg, to her credit, explicitly defends the liberal freedoms of the fundamentalists she exposes and critiques, recognising their rights even as she challenges their theocratic aims. Thus, she states that we can take “a much more vocal stand in defense of evangelical rights when they are unfairly curtailed” – a nuance absent in Lavin’s effort to fire-up supporters and vanquish enemies. Jacoby’s book, meanwhile, situates religious excesses and theocratic temptations within a broader decline of reason in American society.

      Both works, though less current than Wild Faith, model a fairness that strengthens their arguments. Lavin’s book benefits from its timeliness, addressing a contemporary landscape of heightened evangelical influence, but it sacrifices objectivity and scholarly depth. It will resonate with Americans who are already frightened by the Christian Right, while alienating many conservatives, or even moderates, who might have been open to concerns about theocracy. More