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Stephen Colbert on Trump-Zelenskyy meeting: ‘Embarrassing, chilling and confusing’
Late-night hosts recap Donald Trump’s shocking rebuke of the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, during a disastrous White House press conference.Stephen ColbertStephen Colbert braced himself on Monday to recap Friday’s chaotic White House meeting between Trump, JD Vance and Zelenskyy that devolved into a shouting match between the two world leaders, with Trump as the aggressor, blaming Zelenskyy for continuing Russia’s war in his country.“In just 10 minutes, Donald Trump reversed 80 years of postwar US foreign policy,” the Late Show host explained. “A mere six weeks ago, America defended democracy against autocrats and promoted free and open societies all over the world. Now, we’re on the same pickleball team with Russia. And you don’t want to know who’s pickled balls we’re playing with.“So our friends are now our enemies, our enemy is now our friend, we’re breaking up with Europe, we’re friends with Russia,” he continued. “You could argue that’s a good thing, you could argue that’s a bad thing. But what you can’t argue with is that’s the thing.”The talks, nominally to sign a deal in which Ukraine promised the US 50% of its profits from rare earth minerals, collapsed within 10 minutes. “So things were looking promising, but then everything exploded and collapsed. It’s a phenomenon political scientists refer to as the Emilia Pérez Oscar campaign,” Colbert quipped.“Zelenskyy kept reminding these numbnuts that Putin breaks every single deal he ever signs,” he added. When a reporter then asked Trump what would happen if Putin broke any deal, the president responded: “What if anything? What if a bomb drops on your head right now.“Yeah, that’s how Putin’s going to break the ceasefire,” Colbert responded. “This meeting was embarrassing, chilling and confusing.”Seth MeyersOn Late Night, Seth Meyers also tore into Vance and Trump for their handling of the Zelenskyy meeting, starting with Vance’s insistence that Zelenskyy thank Trump personally for US aid. “JD Vance sounds like a boyfriend who just got caught cheating for the third time – ‘You keep asking where I was last night, but have you said thank you once for the bracelet I got you!’” said Meyers.“For the record, Zelenskyy has said thank you many times, directly to the American people, in English, a language he speaks more fluently than Donald Trump,” he added.Meyers went on to note: “Diplomacy is good, we should try to achieve a ceasefire to stop the killing and bring peace, but it is possible – in fact, it’s necessary – to do that while also remaining clear-eyed about who the aggressor is. Who violated sovereignty and international law and human rights by starting the war in the first place.“But Trump doesn’t give a shit about any of that,” he continued. “All he cares about is self-enrichment and raw power and territorial conquest. That’s why he’s doing a solid for Russian oligarchs by letting them keep their superyachts.”Meyers also blasted Democrats for their feckless response, referring to comments from Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, that “we’ll need to see some mature leadership from the Trump administration.”“What is wrong with all of you?” Meyers fumed. “You want to see some mature leadership from the Trump administration? Well, I want to see all the gold in Fort Knox. And guess what? Neither of us is getting what we fucking want!“Seriously, Democrats, show some spine,” he added. “Do you want to get primaried? Why do you guys keep acting like this is your first day on the job?”Jon StewartAnd on the Daily Show, Jon Stewart mulled an offer by Elon Musk to appear for an interview on the show, as long as it was unedited. “After thinking about his offer, I thought, you know, hey, that’s actually how the in-studio interviews normally are. It’s unedited,’” Stewart said. “So sure, we’d be delighted.”Stewart added that he would “sweeten the pot” and keep the cameras rolling for as long as Musk wanted their conversation to last. “The interview can be 15 minutes. It can be an hour. It can be two hours, whatever,” he said.Musk later appeared to renege on his offer, posting on X that “Jon Stewart is much more a propagandist than it would seem” and not “bipartisan”.“The guy who custom-made his own dark Maga hat that he wears to opine in the Oval Office with the president who he spent $270m to elect thinks I’m just too partisan,” Stewart laughed. “I’m really not sure what he thinks bipartisan means, but it’s generally not ‘I support Donald Trump and also Germany’s AFD party.’ That’s not bipartisan, that’s just the same shit.“Look, Elon, I do have some criticisms about Doge,” he continued. “I support, in general, the idea of efficiency and delivering better services to the American public in cheaper and more efficient ways. And if you want to come on and talk about it on the show, great. If you don’t want to, sure.“But can we just drop the pretense that you won’t do it because I don’t measure up to the standards of neutral discourse that you demand and display at all times? Because quite frankly, that’s bullshit.” More
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Why this is no time for Zelenskyy to grovel to Trump | Paul Taylor
For Volodymyr Zelenskyy, this is no time to grovel.After last Friday’s ambush in the Oval Office – where the Ukrainian president, who has led his country in resistance to three years of brutal Russian aggression, was beaten up in public by Donald Trump and JD Vance – some European leaders, including Keir Starmer and the Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, rushed to urge him to mend fences with Washington. It was bad advice – and Zelenskyy should ignore it. In any case he doesn’t have much choice.The US president and his team have since made it clear that they want his scalp as part of their plan to rush through a ceasefire deal with Moscow that would leave Ukraine partitioned, without US or Nato security guarantees, but with US companies pouring in to exploit its strategic minerals. In the mafia style that he wields so convincingly, Trump unleashed his attack dogs to call for Zelenskyy’s removal, and declared “this guy doesn’t want there to be Peace as long as he has America’s backing”. Then he pulled the plug on US military assistance to Kyiv in an attempt to force Ukraine to its knees and impose Vladimir Putin’s terms for an end to the fighting.It is now abundantly clear that the Trump administration isn’t interested in mending fences with Zelenskyy, so he would merely court more humiliation without gaining extra arms supplies or security guarantees if he went crawling to his tormentors now. The man who refused to surrender to Putin’s invasion should not yield now to Trump’s ultimatums and extortion.He would do better to pressure his European supporters to deliver fast on their promises, while dangling the same reward of access to Ukrainian rare earths if they do so. This could become part of a package for an accelerated EU accession process for Kyiv.If Trump goes further, as he may well do, and cuts off the US intelligence feed to Ukraine and access to Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite communications, European countries must step in fast to help Kyiv using the EU’s government satellite network to avoid being totally blinded. The US should beware of taking such steps, which would signal to allies around the world that neither its security partnership nor its tech companies can be relied on for dependable service in a crisis.The White House train wreck happened so fast that some European leaders are still struggling to catch up with the significance of the event. That’s understandable, since it upended their mental universe, in which the transatlantic bond was always the bedrock of European security, enabling them to live in prosperity for decades without spending too much on defence because they were under a protective US shield.Within hours of the Oval Office bust-up, Rutte said it was “important that President Zelenskyy finds a way to restore his relationship with the American president and with the senior American leadership team”. You can’t blame him for trying to hold together the alliance that pays his wages and that has kept the peace in Europe for 75 years. But Rutte is in denial about the new reality in Washington. It will take time to adjust, but we don’t have that time.Likewise, Starmer’s call for bridge-building and mending relationships with the US, even as he declared Britain’s full support for Ukraine, was an exercise in mental gymnastics at a time when the Trump administration has decided to throw Kyiv under the bus in the quest for a new bonanza in relations with Russia. The UK’s security is so intertwined with the US, including the closest of intelligence-sharing relationships and reliance on US components and targeting software for its nuclear deterrent, that no British leader ever wants to face the nightmare choice between loyalty to Ukraine’s just cause and the so-called special relationship with Washington.It’s now up to the Europeans, including the UK, to show they are willing to go on supporting Ukraine practically, by emptying their ammunition stocks to keep Kyiv supplied and ramping up industrial production to deliver a steady flow of shells. They must remove remaining self-imposed restrictions on allowing Ukraine to use medium-range missiles to strike Russian bases and supply lines. And they must draw up practical plans for a security force to support Ukraine after a ceasefire with the assumption of little or no US support, despite Starmer’s plea for a US backstop.Zelenskyy cuts both a heroic and a tragic figure. He embodied Ukrainian resistance to tyranny when Russia struck, he has been a brave war leader under fire, yet now he increasingly looks like a martyr, to be torn asunder between a vengeful Putin and an unscrupulous Trump.But Zelenskyy and Ukraine can still emerge from this war as the successful defenders of their own and Europe’s freedom, provided European countries now back him to the hilt. Even if they cannot recover every inch of stolen territory, Ukrainians should fight on under Zelenskyy’s leadership and with European support for a fairer peace.
Paul Taylor is a senior visiting fellow at the European Policy Centre
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More
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Tariffs can help US workers. But Trump’s doing them all wrong | Dustin Guastella
In the run-up to the 2024 election, a lot of people were ringing alarms about Donald Trump’s tariffs. Kamala Harris called Trump’s policies a “tax on the American people” and warned of sky-high prices. According to the Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, they are “very bad for America and for the world”. His fellow Nobel laureate Paul Krugman called them “small, ugly, and stupid”. More recently, the whirlwind tariff drama of the past two months – first a 25% tariff on Mexico and Canada, then a 30-day “pause” on that policy, a plan to raise tariffs on steel, aluminum and agricultural goods, plus an across the board tariff hike on China – has generated yet more frenzied debate about the danger of tariffs.Observers aren’t wrong to criticize the US president’s policies. His proposed tariffs seem unlikely to improve what ails the US economy. Worse, applying tariffs as broadly as he’s proposed, and without any supplementary industrial strategy, does risk needlessly raising prices while acting like a big corporate giveaway. Yet, despite what elite economists say, tariffs can be sound, and progressive, economic policy.In fact, liberals might be surprised to learn that during his administration Joe Biden actually raised the highest tariffs in recent American history: a 100% tariff on Chinese electric vehicles. Why? Because tariffs work.Tariffs are, simply put, taxes on certain imported goods, paid by the importer. The goal is to make foreign products more expensive than their Made-In-USA counterparts. This is why people refer to tariffs as “walls” that help “protect” domestic industry from global competition. Right now, China quickly and efficiently produces fleets of electric vehicles that are – thanks to the low cost of Chinese labor – a lot cheaper than the EVs made in the United States. Without tariffs, it would be impossible for US-made models to compete. Since making electric cars was a big goal for Biden, his administration raised an eye-watering tariff that would double the price of any Chinese-made import.The EV example is useful because it demonstrates the difference between Biden’s tariff policies and Trump’s.Trump has, for the most part, not focused on raising tariffs on particular imported goods but instead on all goods coming from certain countries. Mexico and Canada face across-the-board tariffs; China was already facing 10% tariffs, doubling to 20%. But raising the prices of all products from these countries doesn’t help develop any particular line of US manufacturing. Tariffs like these are both too broad and too small to make a positive impact. A 20% tariff on all Chinese goods might make it more expensive for Americans to continue to buy certain things from China. But nothing in that policy encourages Americans to buy American-made products; they might just as well find a Vietnamese supplier to avoid the tariff while continuing to reap the benefits of cheap labor. Moreover, it’s possible that some Chinese manufacturers will simply eat the additional costs and sell their goods at slightly slimmer profit margins. Or, equally likely, they will try to avoid the tariffs by having other companies assemble their products in neighboring countries before sending them to the US. As is, Trump’s country-based tariffs seem more like a geopolitical tool than an economic one. Frankly, they don’t make much sense if the goal is to bring factories home.Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs are closer to the mark. By making all steel imports (regardless of national origin) subject to the same tariff, the policy could succeed in making US steel comparatively cheaper for domestic buyers.View image in fullscreenYet even this wouldn’t make US steel bigger or better, or make its production more efficient. Nor would it necessarily raise the wages of steel workers. Pure and simple protectionism will benefit existing US steel manufacturers, but no one much beyond that. Without the government stepping in to develop new manufacturing – encouraging the adoption of the latest techniques to make a superior product, actively building new demand for American steel, or providing social guarantees for steel workers – tariffs alone risk protecting a sick industry without much upside.So what would a labor-forward tariff program look like? It would combine tariffs with big investments in infrastructure to help steer industry, and the country, into better economic health.For steel, such a fix isn’t hard to imagine. The US benefits from being a continental-sized country, with hundreds of thousands of bridges, school buildings, libraries, miles of rail and highway. All of those things are made with steel. And all of them are falling apart. Major new investments in infrastructure upgrades would provide the tariff-protected steel industry the new demand needed to grow, and provide the requisite scale for industrial dynamism.In exchange, steel firms should be required to provide family-sustaining wages and benefits, and promise to stay neutral in union elections. Not only this, but the government should have some say in actually directing the production process. New steel plants should be built in places that need jobs, not isolated tax-free industrial parks, but in the very same areas that were obliterated by deindustrialization. That is, production should be directed, first and foremost, toward public use and social ends.Some might wonder: why bother with such an expensive experiment?Manufacturing is still a huge part of the US economy and it is among the only sectors that consistently provides high wages for a large base of workers. Protecting that industrial foundation is essential not only for those workers, but for the health of other sectors too. When a factory closes, it’s not just the high-wage blue-collar workers who are thrown out of jobs. So are all the middle-income truck drivers who deliver the goods. And all the high-skilled mechanics who fix the machines. Not to mention the servers and cooks who staff now empty local restaurants. The only businesses that grow in the wake of a factory closing are those related to opioids and alcohol.Since Nafta was signed, tens of thousands of factories have closed in the US. Millions of largely union jobs have been lost. This fact alone explains so much of the populist revolt against globalization. And while it’s unlikely that we could ever return to the industrial output of 1946, is it that hard to imagine returning to 1994? If Pearl Jam is still making albums, can’t the US still make steel?Rebuilding our manufacturing capacity will be a big part of building a better country. And tariffs – deployed wisely with big investments – are an indispensable tool for doing so.
Dustin Guastella is a research associate at the Center for Working Class Politics and the director of operations for Teamsters Local 623 More
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How Trump’s second term might affect the market and your finances
Ever since Donald Trump returned to the White House in January, stock market expectations have been volatile – driven in part by a healthy dose of motivated reasoning.
At first, markets surged on hopes of lower taxes and deregulation. But this enthusiasm soon faded as announcements about tariffs and stricter immigration policies dampened sentiment. Underscoring that point, on March 3, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell more than 600 points after Trump said that tariffs he had been threatening for weeks would indeed be imposed on Canada and Mexico the following day.
In all of these cases, investors weren’t just reacting to economic fundamentals. They were projecting their own assumptions onto them, helping shape market reality.
Financial forecasting is notoriously tricky, and it’s not easy to separate meaningful data from mere “noise.” But it’s still worth asking: Are American investors ready for a new period of economic and financial turbulence? Will Trump fuel another Wall Street rally? Or will uncertainty drag markets down?
As an economics expert with two decades of experience studying politics and finance, I believe that presidential rhetoric and policies can create uncertainty – and that uncertainty affects the market. Specifically, stock prices tend to rise when companies expect higher profitability and fall when uncertainty outweighs the gains.
Trump’s dramatic policy shifts are already sending mixed signals to the markets. And what happens in the next four years could reshape America’s financial future. Today, more than 60% of Americans are tied to the stock market through retirement and investment accounts, which means the repercussions will go far beyond Wall Street.
How do presidents affect the stock market?
Presidential elections have a well-documented impact on financial markets.
Stocks tend to rally in the weeks leading up to the vote, but risk jumps by about 15% as investors brace for uncertainty. This uncertainty hits some companies harder than others, especially those in politically sensitive industries. Businesses that spend big on lobbying and companies affected by trade or climate policies suffer the most.
Many analysts, particularly those in business or finance, may assume that stock markets would do better under Republican administrations, as their purportedly pro-business, market-friendly policies are bound to improve returns. But history suggests otherwise: Over the past 70 years, markets have delivered 9% higher returns under Democratic than Republican presidencies.
Does that mean Democrats are better at managing the economy? Not necessarily. Research suggests that timing is key. Democrats tend to take office during economic downturns, inheriting markets that are primed for recovery – essentially, to use the parlance of markets, they “buy low.” Following the 2008 financial crisis, for instance, the stock market saw significant gains as the economy gradually recovered under the Obama administration.
Republicans, on the other hand, often inherit strong economies with limited upside, as they tend to assume office during periods of economic growth. This leaves less room for gains, especially when the market is already stable.
Trump, uncertainty and the markets
Markets love stability and predictability. Yet when political shifts introduce volatility, investor confidence – and ultimately stock valuations – can be shaken. Fewer privately held businesses are willing to go public during election years, for example. This suggests that political uncertainty constrains business decisions. Companies that rely heavily on government contracts and international trade are especially susceptible to this effect.
Trump’s policies have already created significant uncertainty, which directly impacts market stability and performance. The recent announcements of tariffs on goods from Canada, Mexico and China led to big market swings, particularly in industries reliant on global supply chains such as tech and manufacturing. Trump temporarily postponed the new tariffs on Mexico and Canada, but the new tariffs on China went into effect as planned – an inconsistency that itself worsened uncertainty. If Trump continues down this path, U.S. companies relying on international trade will be faced with greater uncertainty in an already volatile market.
Immigration is another area in which Trump’s policies could cause uncertainty. Any moves that target illegal immigration or limit foreign workers are likely to hurt industries such as agriculture and tech that rely heavily on workers from abroad. Though some sectors may see benefits from reduced competition, the overall impact on the economy could be to increase market unpredictability.
Besides the president’s policy agenda, another big factor influencing the stock market is the unpredictability of Trump’s statements and actions. A single social media post can send shock waves through industries such as tech, pharma and defense. Similarly, unexpected shifts in policy can lead to rapid stock price declines.
With the beginning of the second Trump term, many Americans – especially those nearing retirement age – are watching closely as the president’s policy agenda takes shape. What it all means for their lives, and how it will affect investments, market stability and broader economic trends, is an open question.
But for investors weighing risk and reward, understanding the interplay between uncertainty, economic policy and market dynamics is essential. A second Trump term has the potential for significant shifts – not just for Wall Street but for the economy as a whole. More
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Federal layoffs hit the deep-red, rural US west: ‘Our public lands are under threat’
Republican representative McKay Erickson walked through the halls of the Wyoming capitol with a Trump 2024 pin on the front of his suit jacket. Much of Erickson’s home district in Lincoln county falls under the jurisdiction of the Bridger-Teton national forest and Grand Teton national park.With that federal land, comes federal workers. While it appears districts in Wyoming crucial to US energy dominance have been spared the brunt of the layoffs, McKay said his forest-heavy district has not been so fortunate. He’s hearing from his constituents about the layoffs, and he’s troubled about the implications for his district’s future.“These people have a face to me,” Erickson said. “They have a face and a place in either Star Valley or Jackson that I know quite well.”Erickson is a small-government conservative, laments bureaucracy and stands by his belief that there’s a need to “cut the fat” at the federal level. But in his district, he foresees a lack of trail maintenance hurting local outfitting companies and understaffed parks with closed gates.“This way is so indiscriminate, and it doesn’t really drill down on the real issue as to where those cuts need to be,” Erickson said. “I’m afraid that probably all we’re going to lose is services.”Erickson’s district is in a bind that’s playing out across the American west.Wyoming, for the third presidential election in a row, voted for Donald Trump by a wider margin than any other state in the country. Neighboring states Idaho and Montana also swung red with mile-wide margins. All three have high proportions of federal land (Idaho – 62%, Wyoming – 48%, Montana – 29%), and thriving outdoor recreation industries dependent on public lands.Erickson, while watching cuts with apprehension, said that he is still supportive of the president, who won more than 81% of presidential votes cast in Lincoln county in 2024.“It hasn’t really shaken me. It’s concerned me, but not shaken me in my support,” Erickson said.As layoffs under Trump and billionaire Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) bleed out of the Beltway and across the country, local business owners, politicians and federal employees in the rural Mountain West told the Guardian that they feared devastating consequences for their communities.The Guardian reached out to US senators from Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, some of whom have publicly praised Doge’s work, about their constituents’ concerns. None responded to a request for comment.Few towns represent the ties between small town economies and public lands better than Salmon, Idaho. With a population of just over 3,000, Salmon is cradled by a nest of federal lands, including the Salmon-Challis national forest, the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness and a smattering of Bureau of Land Management holdings.Dustin Aherin calls Salmon home, and is the president of Middle Fork Outfitters Association, which represents 27 local businesses. He said that the day-to-day duties of forestry service employees, from river patrol to permitting to conservation, keep businesses like his alive. Recent layoffs put their future in jeopardy.“The team in the field that manages the Middle Fork and Main Salmon river, all but two were terminated. And the two that were left have been reassigned,” Aherin said. “We have no on-the-ground management as of right now.”The urgency caused by the layoffs sent Aherin to Capitol Hill, where he spoke with the Guardian between meetings with federal officials. He held cautious optimism that Idaho’s federal delegation would be able to help craft a solution.A hundred miles south-west of Salmon, in Stanley, Idaho, Hannah, a terminated employee from the Sawtooth national forest who requested anonymity, has a grim outlook for the future of the small mountain town. She said that about 40% of staff was cut, including the entire wilderness and trail crew. She wonders who will handle the public-facing jobs, from cleaning toilets and campgrounds to providing visitor information, and worries about the effects on Stanley, which took a major hit in the 2024 wildfire season.“In a small town like this where you only have a couple good months of a summer season, one hard year and another hard-ish year could be really bad for some local businesses,” Hannah said.Hannah said the termination cost her her health insurance just weeks before a costly surgery, and she expects to have to relocate. In the early stages of her career, she said the experience will likely sour her, and other young civil servants, on public service.“We’re losing the next generation of public land stewards,” Hannah said. “And our public lands are under threat.”Similar anxiety is creeping into communities surrounding the Mountain West’s marquee national parks, which are economic engines for the region. A 2023 report estimated that National Parks generated more than $55bn in economic impact off of a budget of $3.6bn. Many of these dollars went to gateway towns in red states, such as those framing the entrances to Grand Teton national park or Yellowstone national park.Dale Sexton, owner of Dan Bailey’s fly shop in Livingston, Montana, is helping push the revival of the Yellowstone Business Coalition, whose 400-plus members are lobbying Montana’s federal delegation to work to address the effects of federal layoffs. Sexton is pragmatic about the national political climate and is betting that an economics-based argument will move the needle.“I’m envisioning that our delegation currently doesn’t want to abandon the Doge ship,” Sexton said. “But I’m also hopeful that outcry becomes so loud that it garners their attention and affects change.”Livingston city commissioner Karrie Kahle envisions a trickle-down effect from the layoffs.“As we lose federal workers first, if one of them is lost, we’re potentially losing a whole family from our community,” Kahle said. “If that federal worker has a partner, is that partner a teacher or doing other work in our community? Are we going to lose kids out of our school systems?”Andrea Shiverdecker, an archaeologist in Montana’s Custer-Gallatin national forest, lost her job on Valentine’s Day. Along with the impact on her personal life and community, Shiverdecker dwells on potential consequences for Yellowstone.“I don’t think people understand the sheer volume and amount of people that come through our ecosystem every year and the amount of manpower it takes to keep cleaned up,” Shiverdecker said. “This is what we fear with our public lands … We need to be stewards and foster them for future generations.”Shiverdecker said the layoff process has been disorienting. She said she was terminated 25 days before the end of her probationary period, while paperwork was being run for her promotion. She said she believes in “good people” and hopes to somehow return to her job, but right now, she has a lot of frustration.“How am I getting laid off for performance issues when you were processing my promotion?” Shiverdecker said. “It’s heartbreaking as a dedicated public servant, as a disabled veteran, as somebody who loves the fact that they’ve served. That’s the biggest honor you can give.” More
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How Texas’s bankruptcy courts are used to shield a prison healthcare provider
When late last year the largest provider of healthcare to inmates in jails and prisons in the US found itself facing an avalanche of medical malpractice lawsuits, its path forward was seemingly obvious.By filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Texas’s increasingly popular bankruptcy courts, Wellpath Holdings could restructure itself, in the process staying the 1,500 lawsuits it had been facing and limiting its exposure to more than $100m in potential liabilities.Last month, a bankruptcy judge for the southern district of Texas in Houston extended those stays to give Wellpath additional time to propose how it might exit bankruptcy and continue operating.But critics say that the move is a cynical attempt to avoid paying out to the families of people devastated by the company’s actions in a state increasingly seen as a safe haven for big corporations looking to avoid paying out to people and families their actions have harmed.Among the cases stayed for Wellpath was one brought by Teesha Graham of Albuquerque. Her father Frankie died in 2022 after spending almost a week slumped in his San Juan county jail cell, covered in vomit and excrement as medical staff and prison guards refused his requests for help, an inmate in the jail told the Guardian.Also stayed was a claim brought by Nicole Poppell of Colorado Springs. Her daughter Savannah died aged 24 just three days after she was booked into El Paso county jail in Colorado. Incessant vomiting caused by opiate withdrawal tore her esophagus and she bled to death in her cell.“Now they’re filing bankruptcy the chances are I could get next to nothing but really I don’t even give a shit about the money,” said Nicole. “I just want to be heard.”Poppell and Graham are just two grieving family members wanting the bankruptcy court to consider their claims against Wellpath but as “unsecured creditors”, they are at the bottom of the hierarchy when it comes to who gets paid from the limited funds that remain.Last week they enjoyed a small victory as Wellpath dropped its request that the court approve some $5m in bonuses for 12 of its executives. “I’ll never understand it,” said Graham.Attorneys representing claimants against Wellpath say its bankruptcy was a long time coming, and part of a cynical strategy that would see it minimize costs with reduced staff and improper insurance coverage. Malpractice lawsuits would inevitably accumulate but using the Texas courts it could largely shed itself of those liabilities and exit from it all relatively unscathed.“These companies keep their costs as low as possible and then rely on the bankruptcy courts in Houston to bail them out once they hit a critical mass of lawsuits,” said Adam Flores, a New Mexico attorney representing Graham.Wellpath is a for-profit business headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee, and owned by the private equity firm HIG Capital. It operates in jails and prisons across almost 40 states and is responsible for the care of hundreds of thousands of inmates.Although bankruptcy is governed by federal code, jurisdictions will enforce it with varying lenience, and typically if a company has enough assets in a given state they can make use of its courts.In recent years, the southern district of Texas has become a go-to bankruptcy venue, displacing the southern district of New York as the second most popular in the country behind Delaware.“The southern district of Texas really blew up four or five years ago,” said RJ Shannon, a bankruptcy attorney in Houston who is representing almost 100 claimants in the Wellpath case. “It’s a debtor-friendly court, so it’s where all the big cases will be filed.”Last year, the southern district of Texas saw 31 filings for bankruptcy by companies with assets greater than $100m, whereas the southern district of New York saw just 11, according to figures from Bankruptcy Data.Wellpath’s filing in November made it the second prison contractor to have used the court’s Houston division in just two years after the prison healthcare firm Corizon filed for Chapter 11 in early 2023. The maneuver it attempted has been referred to as “the Texas Two-Step” and sees a company split itself into two, placing valuable assets in one and its liabilities in the other.Although Wellpath is pursuing a simpler and more traditional Chapter 11 restructuring, its critics say the move is intended to have precisely the same effect.“I think the reason Wellpath filed here [in Texas] is that they saw Corizon do it and they saw good things came of it,” said Shannon. He said that not only was the Houston court friendly to debtors, it was also “user-friendly”, meaning proceedings can take place fast.Anna Holland Edwards, a civil rights attorney in Denver who has brought a handful of cases against Wellpath over her career, said she saw its bankruptcy coming from a mile away. In early November her office asked a state court to issue sanctions on the company ahead of its expected bankruptcy.Holland Edwards and other critics of Wellpath paint its use of Chapter 11 as a “business model” – both inevitable and symptomatic of the increasing extent to which America’s corporate assets have come under the ownership of private equity funds.They argue that Wellpath, under private equity ownership, borrowed money to buy up regional facilities across the country and then underbid rivals and county services in order to win taxpayer-funded government contracts. Underbidding meant cost-cutting.“If they don’t have enough money, maybe instead of having 10 nurses working in jail they’d only get five,” said Shannon.According to Graham, it was a lack of staff in San Juan county jail that led to her father’s death: “They feel like they can send two people in there to care for over 500 humans?”Another cost-cutting measure that may have brought Wellpath to its knees was its purchase of liability insurance policies that appeared to meet state and local government requirements but failed to establish any “true risk transfer”. As revealed in the ongoing bankruptcy proceedings, these policies only pay out if Wellpath covers a share of the damages, otherwise, no insurance kicks in.And so tight were Wellpath’s purse strings that at the time of its bankruptcy it had left about 15 EMS providers in Michigan with more than $6m worth of unpaid bills, according to the Michigan Association of Ambulance Services.Where the chips will now land remains uncertain, according to Shannon. As it stands, the ball is in Wellpath’s court, as it prepares to issue a revised plan for how it will restructure and emerge out of Chapter 11 operational.A recent ruling by the bankruptcy judge Alfredo R Perez of the southern district of Texas extended the stay on the pending lawsuits until at least 30 April.In the meantime, unsecured creditors will fight to have as much money as possible set aside for their settlements. In many cases, especially those involving personal injury, once the stays are lifted plaintiffs’ right to seek damages will be restored, but the pool of funds from which to collect will be limited.For Wellpath, the plan after Chapter 11 is to continue business as usual, and with Trump in office, there has never been a better climate for it to emerge from bankruptcy, according to Andy McNulty, another civil rights attorney based in Colorado.“We saw when Donald Trump was elected that private prison company stocks soared to all-time highs so there’s no reason to believe that if Wellpath is allowed to continue operating it will not continue to profit off the suffering of inmates across the country,” he said.A spokesperson for Wellpath said in a statement to the Guardian that it had filed for Chapter 11 in order to “strengthen our financial foundation without compromising our ability to deliver high-quality patient care”.“We remain committed to providing vital healthcare services to underserved populations and are confident this process will allow us to continue to do so for years to come,” they added.The company declined to say why it chose to file in the southern district of Texas or to answer questions about its liability insurance.Savannah’s mother Nicole said she wanted to see Wellpath dissolved for good. “For three days she was in there and she was begging for help, she was crying for help, and she was alone,” she said. “I want these people shut down.” More
- in US Politics
Yes, Trump is a hypocrite. But is pointing that out an effective attack? | Jan-Werner Mueller
Historians and psychologists will study when exactly the meeting between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy started to descend into political disaster. A plausible contender for an answer is the – in itself trivial – moment when Brian Glenn, representative of the far-right outlet Real America’s Voice (newly admitted to the press pool) asked the Ukrainian president why he was not wearing a suit.That framing – the wartime president was somehow “disrespecting” America – was then picked up in the vile attack on Zelenskyy by JD Vance and repeated by a chorus of sycophants in the Republican party (including Glenn’s girlfriend Marjorie Taylor Greene). Critics immediately pointed out the hypocrisy: if Elon Musk can appear in a T-shirt and a baseball cap at a cabinet meeting, what is wrong with someone wearing fatigues? That gotcha might provide momentary psychological satisfaction – but it’s important to understand why the charges of hypocrisy achieve little with the Maga-world and why, as a matter of political psychology, something different is needed.According to a much-repeated maxim from a 17th-century French moralist, hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue. According to this logic, hypocrisy actually contributes to moral standards being upheld, as no one wants to be seen flaunting them openly. Wearing a suit is obviously not an important “norm” – part of the problem with the whole debate about aspiring authoritarians breaking norms and crashing through guardrails has been that those diagnosing violations of norms have not always distinguished between different kinds of norms. They have also not made it clear why some norms matter for democracy much more than others (Trump was criticized for breaking the “norm” of having a pet in the White House).The larger issue, though, is that charges of hypocrisy do not land if the supposed hypocrite is not committed to any kind of consistency in the first place. They can simply assert that that the inconsistency happens to be justified: Musk de facto presiding over the cabinet meeting is OK because, hey, he’s a genius who can see more clearly than the rest of us why stopping cancer research and making hurricanes more deadly are actually making America greater in the long run. Zelenskyy, by contrast, is a Democrat in disguise who just does “propaganda”, according to Vance.An even better option for seeming hypocrites is to assert their superiority over those making the charge: Viktor Orbán is frequently accused of having betrayed his original liberal convictions; after all, he had been financed by George Soros to spend time at Oxford, his political party had a liberal, even outright anti-clerical, and pro-European program – before Orbán transformed himself into a cheerleader for the international far right. The response easily available to the authoritarian prime minister is that he has actually learnt something over the course of his career – to wit, that liberalism doesn’t work in his country – whereas the liberal critics, contrary to their self-image as sophisticated thinkers, cling to dogmas. Vance has kept pulling the same trick: he has learnt to stop worrying about Trump being Hitler and simply come to love the good felon, always emphasizing that he was able to see something in Trump that lesser mortals fail to get.A final reason why the accusation of hypocrisy is hardly a knock-down argument – and the one most applicable to Maga – is that those always ready to lie can hardly be caught out by claims about inconsistency. It is now clear that the Trump campaign was based on deceptions – starting with strident denials of any association with the Project 2025 Christian nationalists-cum-authoritarians. By the same token, Trump’s nominees were not exactly truthful in their confirmation hearings; and the entire Republican party is now evidently lying about their intended spending cuts.Pointing out the inconsistencies between what Maga Republicans – it’s not clear at this point whether there are any others – say one day and do the next will not be seen as a cause for moral introspection; rather, the inconsistency is proof of Maga’s power. What observers call performative lying is part of authoritarianism – think of Vladimir Putin lying to his interlocutor’s’ face, smiling, knowing that they know that he is lying, but cannot do anything about it.What about broader audiences? Do they not care about hypocrisy? True, some might; but, given the self-enclosed rightwing media ecosphere which has been created in the United States over decades – and the attention deficit of the public more broadly, to put it bluntly – it is unlikely that finer points about inconsistencies will get much of a hearing.The challenge is to devise rhetoric – and powerful gestures – that do not rely on complicated comparisons but stress how Trump and Musk are sabotaging the country. Democrats might simply boycott the Trump address to Congress next week and instead hold rallies and town halls establishing meaningful connections with citizens who Republicans are now refusing to listen to – and, yes, on those occasions, also slip in a point about hypocrisy: that the party that blathers about “giving power to the people” is afraid of any contact with the people.
Jan-Werner Müller is a professor of politics at Princeton University and is a Guardian US columnist More
