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Musk defends Doge role and rejects conflict of interest claims as he joins Trump for Oval Office ceremony – live
Speaking from the Oval Office, where he stood behind the Resolute Desk, but to the right of a seated Donald Trump, Elon Musk just defended his outsized role in the gutting of federal agencies, under the auspices of his “department of government efficiency”.Asked about critics who call his effective control over multiple federal agencies, and the cutting of funding for congressionally approved programs federal judges have ordered to halt, Musk said: “The people voted for major government reform and that’s what the people are going to get”.“That’s what democracy is all about”.He also dismissed concerns about his own clear conflicts of interest, since six of his businesses are dealing with investigations, complaints or regulatory actions from 11 of the federal agencies he has taken a leading role in drastically cutting back or reshaping.Musk told reporters he is trying to be as transparent as possible, even though his own financial disclosures will not be made public. “Transparency is what builds trust” he said.Trump backed Musk’s claim there was no problem with his role. Trump also claimed that he saw a lot of “kickbacks” with government contracts. The president said that he hoped the courts would allow him to pursue his agenda.Trump claimed that his administration, with Musk’s help, had already found billions in “fraud and abuse”, despite the fact that multiple examples they have previously offered to the public have been false or misleading. Trump cited no new evidence, but told reporters “and you know what we’re talking about”. This appears to be his new shorthand for the debunked claim that Musk’s team had uncovered $50 million in funding to send condoms to the besieged Gaza Strip.Here is photograph of the press availability in the Oval Office posted on Musk’s platform X by Katie Miller, the spokesperson for his “department of government efficiency”, which shows that Miller’s spouse, Stephen, was just out of the frame of wire photographs, to Trump and Musk’s right.The Associated Press was not allowed in to the Oval office to report on the Musk-Trump news conference, the not-for-profit news cooperative says, because it has declined to abide by a White House directive to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.The AP’s executive editor, Julie Pace, said in a statement:
As a global news organization, The Associated Press informs billions of people around the world every day with factual, nonpartisan journalism.
Today we were informed by the White House that if AP did not align its editorial standards with President Donald Trump’s executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, AP would be barred from accessing an event in the Oval Office. This afternoon AP’s reporter was blocked from attending an executive order signing.
It is alarming that the Trump administration would punish AP for its independent journalism. Limiting our access to the Oval Office based on the content of AP’s speech not only severely impedes the public’s access to independent news, it plainly violates the First Amendment.
The AP issued this style guidance note on 23 January on the renaming:
President Donald Trump has signed an executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. The body of water has shared borders between the U.S. and Mexico. Trump’s order only carries authority within the United States. Mexico, as well as other countries and international bodies, do not have to recognize the name change.
The Gulf of Mexico has carried that name for more than 400 years. The Associated Press will refer to it by its original name while acknowledging the new name Trump has chosen. As a global news agency that disseminates news around the world, the AP must ensure that place names and geography are easily recognizable to all audiences.
Speaking from the Oval Office, where he stood behind the Resolute Desk, but to the right of a seated Donald Trump, Elon Musk just defended his outsized role in the gutting of federal agencies, under the auspices of his “department of government efficiency”.Asked about critics who call his effective control over multiple federal agencies, and the cutting of funding for congressionally approved programs federal judges have ordered to halt, Musk said: “The people voted for major government reform and that’s what the people are going to get”.“That’s what democracy is all about”.He also dismissed concerns about his own clear conflicts of interest, since six of his businesses are dealing with investigations, complaints or regulatory actions from 11 of the federal agencies he has taken a leading role in drastically cutting back or reshaping.Musk told reporters he is trying to be as transparent as possible, even though his own financial disclosures will not be made public. “Transparency is what builds trust” he said.Trump backed Musk’s claim there was no problem with his role. Trump also claimed that he saw a lot of “kickbacks” with government contracts. The president said that he hoped the courts would allow him to pursue his agenda.Trump claimed that his administration, with Musk’s help, had already found billions in “fraud and abuse”, despite the fact that multiple examples they have previously offered to the public have been false or misleading. Trump cited no new evidence, but told reporters “and you know what we’re talking about”. This appears to be his new shorthand for the debunked claim that Musk’s team had uncovered $50 million in funding to send condoms to the besieged Gaza Strip.Here is photograph of the press availability in the Oval Office posted on Musk’s platform X by Katie Miller, the spokesperson for his “department of government efficiency”, which shows that Miller’s spouse, Stephen, was just out of the frame of wire photographs, to Trump and Musk’s right.Elon Musk has joined Donald Trump in the Oval Office, as the president put his signature on an executive order that requires federal agencies to coordinate with the billionaire Tesla chief’s “department of government efficiency”.In comments to the press, Musk called the federal bureaucracy an “unelected” fourth branch of government, and also said the US budget deficit must be addressed. Trump, meanwhile, talked about the need to root out “corruption”.A coalition of labor unions yesterday filed a federal lawsuit alleging that Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) violated federal law by accessing secure systems in three government departments.“Elon Musk and his minions are stealing Americans’ private personal and financial data in one of the biggest data hacks in U.S. history,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, one of the plaintiffs in the suit.“I suspect no one who voted for Donald Trump thought he would allow Musk permission to invade their privacy. This is a breach of our fundamental freedoms. Right now, inside the Department of Education, the world’s richest man is rifling through 45 million people’s private student loan accounts and feeding the data into artificial intelligence.”The suit singles out Doge’s access of secure systems in the departments of Treasury and education, and the office of personnel management. Last week, a judge temporarily stopped Musk’s officials from accessing the Treasury’s payment system:Donald Trump’s nominee for FBI director Kash Patel coordinated with the White House and justice department on the firing of top bureau officials, then lied about it at his confirmation hearing, the top Democrat on the judiciary committee said.Dick Durbin made the allegation in a letter to justice department inspector general Michael Horowitz, and requested an investigation.“It is unacceptable for a nominee with no legal or current role in government to personally direct the unjustified and potentially illegal firings of dedicated, nonpartisan professionals at the FBI. If these allegations are true, then Mr. Patel may have committed perjury before the Senate Judiciary Committee,” Patel said.The Senate judiciary committee is expected to on Thursday vote on advancing Patel, who Democrats consider a concerning pick to lead the bureau because of his vows to use its powers to retaliate against Trump’s enemies.Shortly after Trump took office, a former personal lawyer to the president who is now a senior justice department official ordered the firing of several veteran FBI agents, and asked for the names of everyone at the bureau who worked on January 6-related cases. Here’s more on that:Officials from Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” are “actively dismantling” the department of education, a Democratic congresswoman told HuffPost.Donald Trump recently signaled that he would like to see the department abolished, and congresswoman Melanie Stansbury said Musk’s employees “are in the building, on the sixth floor, canceling grants and contracts.”She expects the department “to potentially be dissolved in the coming days.”“It’s not legal. They know it’s not legal. But they’re doing it anyway,” said Stansbury. “The only recourse we have right now is to … go the courts.”Here’s more on the Trump administration’s plans for the department:Donald Trump plans to today sign an executive order that will require heads of US government departments and agencies to cooperate with the Elon Musk-chaired “department of government efficiency” (Doge), Reuters reports.Citing a White House official, the president will also order agency heads to limit hiring to only essential staff. The order comes as Democrats warn that Trump is defying the law by allowing Musk and his staff to enter federal agencies and access secure systems, or shut them down altogether.The White House says Trump will signs executive orders at 3pm. Here’s more about the concerns surrounding Doge:Republican congressman Guy Reschenthaler has been an advocate for Marc Fogel during his detention, and had this to say about the news that he had been released:
Our prayers have been answered. Thanks to President Donald J. Trump’s leadership, Marc Fogel has been freed from Russia! Marc spent 1,255 days locked away in a Russian penal colony under the Biden Administration. President Trump freed Marc in just 22 days.
Notice the reference to the Biden administration. Donald Trump and his allies have sought to cast themselves as more effective than his Democratic predecessor at every turn, and do have some diplomatic successes to promote, such as when Venezuela earlier this month agreed to release six detained Americans.Marc Fogel, an American teacher who was serving a 14 year prison sentence in Russia after getting caught with medically-prescribed marijuana “will be on American soil” by tonight, the Trump administration announced on Tuesday.“Today, President Donald J. Trump and his Special Envoy Steve Witkoff are able to announce that Mr. Witkoff is leaving Russian airspace with Marc Fogel, an American who was detained by Russia,” National Security Advisor Mike Waltz said in a statement. “President Trump, Steve Witkoff and the President’s advisors negotiated an exchange that serves as a show of good faith from the Russians and a sign we are moving in the right direction to end the brutal and terrible war in Ukraine. Since President Trump’s swearing-in, he has successfully secured the release of Americans detained around the world, and President Trump will continue until all Americans being held are returned to the United States.”Vice President JD Vance and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the Munich Security Conference on Friday.The Trump administration is pushing for the war with Russia to end, while Zelensky is hoping for more US military commitments, as well as NATO membership, the deployment of peacekeeping troops.Trump said in a Fox interview on Monday that Ukraine “may be part of Russia someday.”After Pope Francis rebuked mass deportation of migrants plan, US border czar Tom Homan has pushed back, saying Francis should leave border enforcement to his office.“I’ve got harsh words for the Pope: Pope ought to fix the Catholic Church,” Homan, a Catholic, told reporters at the White House on Tuesday.“I’m saying this as a lifelong Catholic — I was baptized Catholic, my first Communion as a Catholic, confirmation as a Catholic. He ought to fix the Catholic Church and concentrate on his work and leave border enforcement to us.”The criticism was in response to the pope’s public letter condemning the Trump administration’s efforts sent earlier on Tuesday.“I have followed closely the major crisis that is taking place in the United States with the initiation of a program of mass deportations,” Francis wrote in a letter sent on Tuesday. “The rightly formed conscience cannot fail to make a critical judgment and express its disagreement with any measure that tacitly or explicitly identifies the illegal status of some migrants with criminality.”Francis urged people “not to give in to narratives that discriminate against and cause unnecessary suffering to our migrant and refugee brothers and sisters.”Homan compared the wall surrounding the Vatican City to the US border wall.Federal judge John Bates on Tuesday ordered US health agencies to restore websites that were suddenly and unexpectedly taken offline after Trump signed an executive order to scrub websites of “gender ideology extremism.”The legal saga began after medical advocacy group Doctors for America sued US health agencies for taking down their websites.”Prior to the sudden, unannounced removal, these Defendants had maintained these or similar webpages and datasets on their websites for years,” the lawsuit says. “The removal of the webpages and datasets creates a dangerous gap in the scientific data available to monitor and respond to disease outbreaks, deprives physicians of resources that guide clinical practice, and takes away key resources for communicating and engaging with patients.”Donald Trump hit out at federal judges who have frustrated his efforts to transform the government, calling them “highly political” and arguing he is merely fighting fraud and waste. The president received an assist from his ally, House speaker Mike Johnson, who said he had met with Elon Musk and was “excited” about his work in the “department of government efficiency”. But the American Bar Association warned that the administration was flying in the face of the constitution, and that it “cannot choose which law it will follow or ignore”, while a Democratic senator said that if the White House begins ignoring court orders it does not like, it would be “maybe the greatest challenge to democracy in our lifetimes.” Meanwhile, an appeals court granted prosecutors’ request to drop charges against two of Trump’s co-defendants in the classified documents case, marking the end of the aborted federal effort to convict the president prior to his re-election.Here’s what else has been going on today:Steve Bannon pleaded guilty to a fraud charge connected to a fundraiser falsely billed as paying for a border wall, but will serve no jail time.
Two senior officials at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau have resigned, after a top White House official who also played a major role in Project 2025 ordered the watchdog to stop work.
Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, will go to Ukraine to meet with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, announced Trump, who also predicted the war with Russia would end “soon”.
King Abdullah of Jordan has arrived at the White House to meet with Donald Trump, and the fate of the ceasefire in Gaza is expected to be high on their agenda.The two leaders may also discuss Trump’s proposal for the United States to take over the territory and for its population to be displaced to countries neighboring Israel – such as Jordan.We have a separate live blog covering the meeting, and you can follow it here: More - in US Politics
Trump continues clearout of top US labor officials with fresh firing
Donald Trump has fired a top official at the independent agency responsible for labor relations with the federal government.Susan Tsui Grundmann, one of three board members at the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA), has been dismissed, a White House official told the Guardian. She served as the agency’s chair.Trump is “committed to building a team fully committed to advancing his America-First agenda”, the White House official said.Her profile page on the agency’s website has already been removed, and an organizational chart of its leadership states that the chair role is now vacant.Tsui Grudmann’s firing was first revealed by a Washington Post reporter on social media.The FLRA is responsible for overseeing management and labor relations for some 2.1 million federal employees. Tsui Grundmann was nominated to its board by Joe Biden in 2021, and approved by the Senate in 2022, before her designation as chair in 2023. Her term was set to end on 1 JulyTrump has already been sued after firing a board member of the National Labor Relations Board, Gwynne Wilcox, last week.Wilcox has argued that the president only has authority to remove board members for negligence or misconduct, which were not alleged by the Trump administration during her termination.In 1935 the US supreme court ruled in Humphrey’s Executor v United States that the US constitution did not grant “illimitable power of removal” to the president.The FLRA has identical stipulations, with a statute that states a president can remove a member “only upon notice and hearing and only for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office”.The FLRA was contacted for comment.As chair, Tsui Grundmann argued against stagnant funding and understaffing at the agency amid increases in unfair labor practice charge filings, saying the agency would have to engage in furloughs if funding remained flat.Last year, Biden nominated Colleen Duffy Kiko and Anne Wagner to serve on the three-member board. Duffy Kiko had previously served as a Republican appointee to the board under Trump. Wagner is a former counsel for the American Federation of Government Employees.Send us a tipIf you have information you’d like to share securely with the Guardian about the impact of cuts to federal programs or the federal workforce, please use a non-work device to contact us via the Signal messaging app at (646) 886-8761. More
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Danes offer to buy California to spite Trump’s Greenland aims: ‘We’ll bring hygge to Hollywood’
Since returning to the presidency last month, Donald Trump has called for Canada to become the 51st US state, suggested he might take over the Panama Canal, floated US ownership of Gaza – and tried to buy Greenland.Now, Denmark – which owns Greenland – is clapping back.More than 200,000 Danes have signed a satirical petition to buy California from the US.“Have you ever looked at a map and thought, ‘You know what Denmark needs? More sunshine, palm trees, and roller skates.’ Well, we have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make that dream a reality,” the petition reads. “Let’s buy California from Donald Trump!”Across the top of the petition’s website, a slogan calls to “Måke Califørnia Great Ægain” and imaginary supporters like Lars Ulrich of Metallica and Viggo Mortensen of Lord of the Rings fame offer their reasons for making California “New Denmark”.“We’ll bring hygge to Hollywood, bike lanes to Beverly Hills and organic smørrebrød to every street corner. Rule of law, universal healthcare and fact-based politics might apply,” the petition continues.“Let’s be honest – Trump isn’t exactly California’s biggest fan. He’s called it ‘the most ruined state in the union’ and has feuded with its leaders for years. We’re pretty sure he’d be willing to part with it for the right price.”Trump and California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, have been locked in tense relations since the president retook office – with Newsom recently directing $50m to fight the Trump administration and its deportation efforts and Trump threatening to condition federal disaster aid to the state in wake of the Los Angeles wildfires.The petition aims to crowdfund $1tn (“give or take a few billion”) and receive 500,000 signatures.Trump began floating the idea of purchasing Greenland in 2019, saying the US needs to control the autonomous territory “for economic security”. The Arctic island is believed to be rich in oil and gas, and other raw materials essential to green technology – that are becoming available as massive ice sheets and glaciers melt as a result of the climate crisis. The same melting ice is also opening up new shipping routes.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSpeaking on Danish television in January, Mette Frederiksen, the prime minister, said Greenland was “not for sale”, adding: “Seen through the eyes of the Danish government, Greenland belongs to the Greenlanders.”Similarly, following a visit from Donald Trump Jr earlier this year, Greenland’s prime minister, Múte Egede, said: “We are Greenlanders. We don’t want to be Americans. We don’t want to be Danish either. Greenland’s future will be decided by Greenland.”Although the Danish petition to purchase California may be a joke, the US’s bid to purchase Greenland appears quite serious. Buddy Carter, a Republican representative of Georgia, announced that he had introduced a bill to authorize the purchase of Greenland and rename it “Red, White and Blueland”. More
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Judge blocks Trump from cutting billions in medical research funding
A federal judge in Massachusetts blocked Donald Trump’s administration from cutting scientific research grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) after 22 mostly Democratic-leaning states sued.The Trump administration sought to impose a 15% cap on “indirect costs” for grants – money that goes toward overhead, such as keeping the lights on in labs or maintaining advanced equipment. On Tuesday, major universities filed a second lawsuit, calling the administration’s actions “flagrantly unlawful” in a complaint.“A cut to [indirect costs] for NIH grants is a cut to the medical research that helps countless American families whose loved ones face incurable diseases or untreatable debilitating conditions,” a group of university associations said in a statement.Indirect costs, “are the real and necessary costs of conducting the groundbreaking research that has led to so many medical breakthroughs over the past decades”, they said.Speedy court action to block the proposed cuts comes at a time when the Trump administration is teasing the idea of ignoring courts, prompting fears of a constitutional crisis.“To hand his billionaire backers another tax cut, Trump tried to slash funding for critical disease prevention research, including for pediatric cancer,” Ken Martin, Democratic National Committee chair, said in a statement.“We aren’t going to sit back as Trump goes after America’s kids.”The NIH is an arm of the Department of Health and Human Services. With a budget of $48bn, it is the world’s largest public funder of biomedical and behavioral research, with impacts that ripple across the scientific world.NIH grants fund a vast array of science, especially including early stage research that leads to blockbuster drugs. The agency’s grants have contributed to many of the drugs Americans are now familiar with, including statins such as Lipitor and curative hepatitis C drugs such as Harvoni.NIH-funded basic or applied research has also contributed to 386 of the 387 drugs the Food and Drug Administration approved between 2000 and 2019, and more than 100 Nobel prizes have been awarded to scientists based on NIH-funded work.In one of the first social media posts since Trump’s inauguration, the NIH said that the 15% cap on indirect costs would save $4bn per year, and singled out Harvard, Yale and Johns Hopkins as spending too much on overhead.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAlthough the NIH’s budget is less than 1% of all federal spending, the scientific agency has become a target of the Trump administration, and cutting the NIH serves multiple aims.The move comes ahead of an expected debate to extend Trump’s 2017 tax cuts. The cuts helped billionaires pay less in taxes than the working class for the first time. An extension is expected to add to a huge budget deficit.Many of Trump’s supporters also criticized the NIH following the Covid-19 pandemic, and laid out plans to dramatically reorganize it in Project 2025. Additionally, cutting NIH grants hits American universities, including many elite research institutions, in their pocketbooks. The administration has repeatedly attacked such universities as bastions of liberalism.This is not the first time Trump proposed cutting scientific research. In 2017, his budget attempted to slash scientific research funding.Within scientific circles, many agree the NIH could benefit from reform. However, many also argue the process needs to be transparent and involve stakeholders. More
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Judge orders CDC and FDA to restore webpages removed after Trump order
A federal judge has ordered that the Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) restore several of the webpages that they took down following Donald Trump’s executive order attacking diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).On Tuesday, the US district judge John Bates gave the health agencies until midnight to reinstate public medical information that had been scrubbed from the websites.The orders came after the group Doctors of America said the removal of webpages at the CDC was detrimental to patient care because doctors rely on such pages for information about treating different conditions. Bates ordered the webpages to be restored to their previous condition as of 30 January.The judge wrote: “It bears emphasizing who ultimately bears the harm of defendants’ actions: everyday Americans, and most acutely, underprivileged Americans, seeking healthcare.”Citing declarations from two doctors filed in the case, Bates said if “those doctors cannot provide these individuals the care they need (and deserve) within the scheduled and often limited time frame, there is a chance that some individuals will not receive treatment, including for severe, life-threatening conditions”.“The public thus has a strong interest in avoiding these serious injuries to the public health,” he added.Donald Trump signed several controversial executive orders on his first day in office, including orders that stated that the US recognizes only two sexes, male and female. He directed all federal agencies to remove “all statements, policies, regulations, forms, communications, or other internal and external messages that promote or otherwise inculcate gender ideology”.Following the orders, the CDC and FDA took down numerous webpages, including research, datasets and recommendations on how physicians should treat sexually transmitted infections, as well as immunization guidance for adults.Trump’s moves resulted in some webpages having their wording altered to fit the new admiration’s orders, but certain datasets, such as from the CDC’s youth risk behavior surveillance system (YRBSS), were removed entirely, according to reporting from CBS News.The CDC website currently shows a banner that says the website “is being modified to comply with President Trump’s executive orders”.Zachary Shelley, a lawyer for the advocacy group Public Citizen, which represented the group of 27,000 doctors and medical trainees, told USA Today that “there is immense harm to the public” and “there is increased risk of disease outbreak” if the webpages are not restored. More
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US schoolteacher held in Russia since 2021 released, White House says
A US teacher who has been held in Russia since 2021 was released on Tuesday following an unannounced visit to Moscow by Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff.The White House said in a statement that Marc Fogel, a Pennsylvania schoolteacher sentenced in Russia to 14 years on drug-trafficking charges, had left the country aboard Witkoff’s plane.“Today, President Donald J. Trump and his Special Envoy Steve Witkoff are able to announce that Mr. Witkoff is leaving Russian airspace with Marc Fogel, an American who was detained by Russia,” Mike Waltz, Trump’s national security adviser, said in a statement.Fogel had worked as a teacher at the Anglo-American School of Moscow since 2012 and taught overseas in countries like Oman and Malaysia. He was arrested in 2021 at a Moscow airport after Russian officials found less than an ounce of marijuana in his luggage.In his statement, Waltz said that the US and Russia “negotiated an exchange that serves as a show of good faith from the Russians and a sign we are moving in the right direction to end the brutal and terrible war in Ukraine”.He did not say what the US side of the bargain entailed. Previous negotiations have occasionally involved reciprocal releases of detainees and prisoners.Trump later said he hoped the release could mark the start of fresh ties with Moscow.“We were treated very nicely by Russia,” Trump told reporters. “Actually, I hope that’s the beginning of a relationship where we can end that war.”The deal was negotiated in secret, but rumors began circulating about Witkoff’s presence in Russia when his private jet was spotted landing in Moscow.The Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters earlier in the day that he had “no information” about the reported arrival of Witkoff’s plane.View image in fullscreenThe surprise release of Fogel highlights the ongoing backchannel negotiations between the US and Russia and signals Putin’s intent to cultivate ties with the Trump administration ahead of expected peace talks over the war in Ukraine.Putin has showered Trump with compliments since his inauguration, repeatedly praising him as “brave” for surviving an assassination attempt while also signaling his readiness to meet with the US leader.Trump has said that he has spoken with Putin but has been vague on the details other than to say he was making “progress” to secure a negotiated end to the war in Ukraine which began with Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.In an interview with Fox News broadcast on Monday, Trump suggested that Ukraine “may be Russian some day”, as his vice-president JD Vance gears up to meet the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy later this week at the Munich security council.Russia’s latest engagement with the US will set off alarm bells in Kyiv, where Zelenskyy must navigate the new reality of a US administration that has opened dialogue with Moscow while at times displaying open hostility toward Ukraine.Fogel and his family had hoped he would be included in the historic prisoner exchange in August that freed the Wall Street journalist Evan Gershkovich and the US marine Paul Whelan. At the time, Fogel was not yet designated as “wrongfully detained” by the US government, a label he only received late last year.In a statement, Fogel’s family said they were “beyond grateful, relieved and overwhelmed” that he was coming home. “This has been the darkest and most painful period of our lives, but today, we begin to heal,” they said. “For the first time in years, our family can look forward to the future with hope.”Fogel is expected to arrive in the US later on Tuesday. More
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Robert F Kennedy Jr has mass appeal despite his extreme ideas. This theory explains why | Darren Loucaides
“Back at home in the United States, the newspapers are saying that I came here today to speak to about 5,000 Nazis,” Robert F Kennedy Jr told a large crowd in Berlin. Estimated at 38,000 people, the crowd was a mix of hippies, anti-war types, Green party voters and anti-vaxxers, rubbing shoulders with a smattering of skinheads. It was late August 2020 and a group called Querdenken had rallied this motley crew together in defiance of Covid-19 restrictions.“Governments love pandemics,” Kennedy said. “They love pandemics for the same reason they love war – it gives them the ability to impose controls that the population would otherwise never accept.”Last month, in Senate confirmation hearings for his appointment as the US secretary of health and human services, Kennedy was questioned on having previously compared the Center for Disease Control’s work to that of “Nazi death camps”, calling Covid-19 a bioweapon genetically engineered to target black and white people while sparing Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people, and blaming school shootings on antidepressants. “He has made it his life’s work to sow doubt and discourage parents from getting their kids life-saving vaccines,” said the Democratic senator Ron Wyden. “It has been lucrative for him and put him on the verge of immense power.”Kennedy has gone from courting the conspiratorial fringes of the internet to the halls of the White House. He could be confirmed within days. With hindsight, the Berlin speech he gave five years ago was the moment a dangerous new political phenomenon went global. It’s called diagonalism.Coined by the political theorist William Callison and the historian Quinn Slobodian, diagonalism describes the union of disparate groups across the political spectrum around a suspicion of all power being involved in conspiracy. Diagonal movements see big tech, big pharma, banks, climate science and traditional media as accomplices in totalitarianism, evidenced by Covid mandates through to innocuous intergovernmental proposals such as the “great reset” and 15-minute cities.For diagonalists, the control of electoral processes by powerful interests means that governments are de facto illegitimate. And so they advocate for distributed power – not to empower any community, but the individual. By definition they are susceptible to far-right radicalisation. Callison and Slobodian trace their use of the term back to Querdenken – which roughly translates as “lateral thinkers” – the group that organised the Berlin rally addressed by Kennedy.Kennedy recalled his uncle’s visit to the same city decades earlier, even repeating the historic line “Ich bin ein Berliner”. “And today again, Berlin is the frontline against global totalitarianism,” he said, before working through a bingo card of conspiracy theories. An extended “quote” Kennedy read from Hermann Göring’s testimony at the Nuremberg trials, including that “the only thing a government needs to make people into slaves is fear”, was copy and pasted across social media for months afterwards – even though there is no record of Göring saying those words.But Kennedy’s Berlin speech and the Querdenken rally itself were not merely notable for the controversy they caused. In drawing together veterans of anti-war and anti-globalist groups alongside health influencers, environmentalists and the far right, Querdenken became the blueprint for diagonal movements. Through its anti-power conspiratorial framing and the mirroring of methods used by decentralised grassroots movements, Querdenken was able to draw diagonal lines across pre-existing political allegiances, cultural divides and single issues, such as the climate or vaccines, to forge a mass coalition of support. Kennedy himself epitomises this new coalition – one that was nascent at the time, but is now at the heart of Trumpism.As a former environmental lawyer, Kennedy spoke with eloquence and passion in the past about corporations contaminating rivers and polluting the skies, the plight of asthma especially afflicting black people, and the existential threat of the climate crisis. In the Berlin speech, Kennedy mingled conspiracy theories with genuine concerns and anxieties held by the public. He said he saw “people who want leaders who are not going to lie to them, people who want leaders who will not make up arbitrary rules and regulations to orchestrate the obedience of the population. We want health officials who don’t have financial entanglements with the pharmaceutical industry, who are working for us and not big pharma.”In her book Doppelganger, Naomi Klein writes powerfully on how diagonal movements and influencers often identify real issues that progressives had grown timid about – the sway of oligarchical wealth over politics, the rise of digital surveillance, the impact of rampant capitalism on our mental and physical health. But instead of articulating the actual causes or plausible solutions, they have constructed bogus metanarratives. Rather than increasingly antidemocratic billionaires, it was an organised cabal of global elites, unaccountable deep-state bureaucrats who secretly ran the world – or, at the furthest end, blood-sucking satanists, as QAnon followers believed. A mirrorworld had emerged. And it is demagogues such as Trump who have benefited.“Despite claims of post-partisanship, it is right-wing, often far-right, political parties around the world that have managed to absorb the unruly passions and energy of diagonalism,” says Klein, “folding its Covid-era grievances into preexisting projects opposing ‘wokeness’ and drumming up fears of migrant ‘invasions’. Still, it is important for these movements to present themselves (and to believe themselves to be) ruptures with politics-as-usual; to claim to be something new, beyond traditional left-right poles.”While the crowd that listened to Kennedy’s speech that day in 2020 was a heterogeneous mix, a few miles away, a mob of far-right activists and QAnon supporters tried to storm the Reichstag, home to Germany’s parliament, after one of their number falsely announced Trump was in Berlin to liberate the country. The violent scenes would be replicated in the more deadly assault on the Capitol on 6 January 2021. This was the extreme end of diagonalism exploding into life. (An investigation I led into Covid-sceptic groups found that by then, Querdenken and others had become obsessed with Trump – and gravely radicalised.)If Robert F Kennedy Jr is confirmed to Trump’s cabinet, a once-staunch environmentalist and defender of women’s reproductive rights turned conspiracy theorist and super-spreader of health misinformation will dictate health policy in the US. Diagonalism has ascended to the pinnacle of global power. The mirrorworld is becoming our reality.
Darren Loucaides is a writer based in Barcelona and London
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