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      Will Donald Trump defy the US supreme court? | Steven Greenhouse

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      With the most authoritarian and lawless president in history sitting in the White House, the US supreme court is no doubt worried about looking weak in one of two ways. First, the court fears it will look pathetically weak if it becomes the first supreme court in history to have a president defy its rulings in a wholesale way. With that in mind, the court seems to be taking pains to avoid provoking Donald Trump’s defiance – it has issued several decisions upholding the president’s actions while in other cases, it has given him lots of wiggle room even as it objected to his administration’s moves.Then there’s the court’s second, big worry – that it will look pathetically weak if it doesn’t stand up to the most authoritarian president in US history. Many legal experts criticize the court for not standing up more to Trump, even though he has brazenly attacked the court and many lower-court judges, has defied several judicial orders and has, according to numerous judges, repeatedly violated the law – whether by deporting immigrants without due process or by freezing funds approved by Congress.The court’s six conservative justices have let themselves seem like Trump’s chumps because they’ve often bowed to him instead of standing up and ruling against him. The foremost example is last year’s supreme court ruling giving Trump astonishingly broad immunity from criminal prosecution.The image-conscious chief justice, John Roberts, and his court have to decide which of two paths to take. One path – which the court’s conservative supermajority seems to be following – is to issue pro-Trump rulings to avoid inciting his ire and defiance. That approach might spare the court the Maga movement’s anger, but historians will look dimly on the court for bending in Trump’s favor – they’ll accuse it of complicity and sacrificing principle for not blocking Trump moves that, many legal experts, conservative, centrist and progressive, say, violate federal law and the constitution.The court can choose a more courageous path: stick to principle and not shrink from ruling against Trump. That might spur the bull-headed president to defy the court, but under that scenario, historians would praise the justices for upholding the law and the court’s constitutional role and for not letting themselves become stooges for a power-hungry president.The Roberts court has given us some hope, but not much. In a surprise ruling at 1am one April night, it seemed to develop a few inches of backbone by ordering the Trump administration not to deport several dozen Venezuelan immigrants to El Salvador without first giving them due process.That was a promising ruling, but on the other side of the ledger, the court has often bowed to Trump, for instance, by overturning a lower court ruling and letting Trump fire 16,000 probationary federal employees and by letting his administration suspend $65m in teacher-training grants. Moreover, the rightwing supermajority did Trump a big favor by letting him provisionally remove the heads of two independent agencies, the National Labor Relations Board and the Merit Systems Protections Board. That hurried ruling, made without full briefing or arguments, indicated that the court’s conservatives are eager to overturn a unanimous, 90-year-old supreme court decision that limits presidents’ ability to fire officials at independent agencies. In this way, the Roberts court is giving more power to our dangerously authoritarian president.Let’s not forget how weak the court has looked for failing to act firmly to assure the return of Kilmar Ábrego García, an immigrant from El Salvador who even Trump administration officials acknowledged was deported illegally. On 10 April, the court issued a wimpy decision that called on the Trump administration to “facilitate” Ábrego Garcia’s return – it stopped short of using the district court’s more muscular language to “effectuate” his return. More than six weeks have passed since the high court called on Trump to bring back Ábrego García, but Trump hasn’t done so. His administration has sidestepped outright defiance by pretending that it is seeking to facilitate Ábrego García’s return.Not only that, Trump has smeared the justices by saying: “THE SUPREME COURT WON’T ALLOW US TO GET CRIMINALS OUT OF OUR COUNTRY!” Trump has also savaged several federal district court judges, calling one a “radical left lunatic” and denouncing others as “MONSTERS WHO WANT OUR COUNTRY TO GO TO HELL”.With their hard-right ideology, the court’s supermajority evidently sympathizes with many of Trump’s moves and has blessed such moves far more often than many legal scholars would like. In doing so, the court has emboldened Trump to take even more actions that push – and often overstep – the boundaries of what is legal. In a worrisome development, the court has, at least thus far, shown surprisingly little concern about Trump’s defiance of district court judges’ orders and his authoritarian effort to assert his dominance over the two, other theoretically co-equal branches of government: the judiciary and Congress.For its own good and for the nation’s good, the supreme court needs to step up and do its utmost to stop Trump’s lawlessness and his unprecedented efforts to defy district court rulings and lash out against the judiciary. Trump has called for impeaching judges who ruled against him, and as his tirades against judges have increased, the number of judges who have received threats has soared.The court needs to issue some strong, clarion decisions that make clear to the nation that Trump has shown repeated contempt for the constitution, the rule of law and the judiciary. The justices should move quickly to issue an outrage-filled ruling that finds that Trump violated law firms’ free speech rights by punishing several firms for taking cases he didn’t like or employing lawyers he didn’t like. The justices should also move swiftly to issue a strong ruling in favor of Harvard University and against Trump’s vindictive assault – an assault that violated Harvard’s first amendment rights by seeking to suppress speech and ideas that Trump doesn’t like and by trying to dictate much of Harvard’s hiring, curriculum and admissions policies.The court should also issue a forceful ruling that demolishes Trump’s arguments that he can invoke the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members en masse without due process. The court should trumpet the absurdity of Trump’s claim that Venezuelan immigrants constitute an invasion force the way, for instance, British troops constituted an invasion force during the war of 1812.The court should also shoot down Trump’s efforts to gut federal agencies and freeze funding by making it emphatically clear that those efforts violate Congress’s article I spending power. The conservative supermajority should also rethink its intention to overturn the 1935 ruling that limits presidents’ ability to fire members of independent agencies. That ruling sought to ensure that those agencies didn’t become partisan puppets that do whatever a president wants – something that no one should want when the nation has such a vengeful and capricious president.With the Roberts court slated to issue a flood of rulings by early July, the justices have an important choice: to bend to Trump or to grow a real backbone. Does the Roberts court want to be remembered as cowardly enablers who helped the most authoritarian and lawless president in history consolidate power? Or do the justices want to be remembered as determined defenders who stood up to an authoritarian bully to protect our laws, our constitution and our democracy?

      Steven Greenhouse is a journalist and author focusing on labor and the workplace, as well as economic and legal issues More

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      Sanctuary cities can’t protect people from ICE immigration raids − but they don’t actually violate federal law

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      The Trump administration plans to send special response teams of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to conduct immigration raids in four cities run by Democratic mayors, NBC news reported on June 11, 2025, citing two unnamed sources familiar with the planning process.

      NBC reports that New York City, Philadelphia, Chicago and Seattle are four of the five places that would be affected by this deployment, as well as northern Virginia. These cities are also among the other major metropolitan hubs – as well as more than 200 small towns and counties and a dozen states – that over the past 40 years have adopted what are often known as sanctuary policies.

      Special response teams are tactical units under ICE that are trained to respond to extreme situations such as drug and arms smugglers. These units have been used to respond to recent immigration protests in Los Angeles in response to ICE raids. President Donald Trump has also deployed 4,000 National Guard troops, as well as about 700 Marines, to quell protests in that city. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and California Gov. Gavin Newsom have said the presence of troops is exacerbating the situation and are challenging the legality of these deployments in court.

      While sanctuary policies often prohibit local participation in immigration enforcement or cooperation with ICE, if large-scale raids take place in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and Seattle, their designation as sanctuary cities offers little protection to immigrants living without legal authorization from deportation.

      There is not a single definition of a sanctuary policy. But it often involves local authorities not asking about a resident’s immigration status, or not sharing that personal information with federal immigration authorities.

      So when a San Francisco police officer pulls someone over for a traffic violation, the officer will not ask if the person is living in the country legally.

      American presidents, from Ronald Reagan to Joe Biden, have chosen to leave sanctuary policies largely unchallenged since different places first adopted them in the 1970s. This changed in 2017, when President Donald Trump first tried to cut federal funding to sanctuary places, claiming that their policies “willfully violate Federal law.” Legal challenges during his first term stopped him from actually withholding the money.

      At the start of his second term, Trump signed two executive orders in January and April 2025 which again state that his administration will withhold federal money from areas with sanctuary policies.

      “Working on papers to withhold all Federal Funding for any City or State that allows these Death Traps to exist!!!” Trump said, according to an April White House statement. This statement was immediately followed by his April executive order.

      These two executive orders task the attorney general and secretary of homeland security with publishing a list of all sanctuary places and notifying local and state officials of “non-compliance, providing an opportunity to correct it.” Those that do not comply with federal law, according to the orders, may lose federal funding.

      San Francisco and 14 other sanctuary cities, including New Haven, Connecticut, and Portland, Oregon, sued the Trump administration in February on the grounds that it was illegally trying to coerce cities to comply with its policies. A U.S. district court judge in California issued an injunction on April 24 preventing the administration – at least for the time being – from cutting funding from places with sanctuary policies.

      However, as researchers who have studied sanctuary policies for over a decade, we know that Trump’s claim that sanctuary policies violate federal immigration law is not correct.

      It’s true that the federal government has exclusive jurisdiction over immigration. Yet there is no federal requirement that state or local governments participate or cooperate in federal immigration enforcement, which would require an act of Congress.

      A sign is seen at the Nogales, Ariz., and Mariposa, Mexico, border crossing.
      Jan Sonnenmair/Getty Images

      What’s behind sanctuary policies

      In 1979, the Los Angeles Police Department was the first to announce a prohibition on local officials asking about a resident’s immigration status.

      However, it was not until the 1980s that the sanctuary movement took off, when hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans, Guatemalans and Nicaraguans fled civil war and violence in their home countries and migrated to the U.S. This prompted a number of cities to declare solidarity with the faith-based sanctuary movement that offered refuge to Salvadoran, Guatemalan and Nicaraguan asylum seekers facing deportation.

      In 1985, Berkeley, Calif., and San Francisco pledged that city officials, including police officers, would not report Central Americans to immigration authorities as long as they were law abiding.

      Berkeley also banned officials from using local money to work with federal immigration authorities.

      “We are not asking anyone to do anything illegal,” Nancy Walker, a supervisor for San Francisco, said in 1985, according to The New York Times. “We have got to extend our hand to these people. If these people go home, they die. They are asking us to let them stay.”

      Today, there are hundreds of sanctuary cities, towns, counties and states across the country that all have a variation of policies that limit their cooperation with federal immigration authorities.

      Sometimes – but not always – places with sanctuary policies bar local law enforcement agencies from working with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the country’s main immigration enforcement agency.

      A large part of ICE’s work is identifying, arresting and deporting immigrants living in the U.S. illegally. In order to carry out this work, ICE issues what is known as “detainer requests” to local law enforcement authorities. A detainer request asks local law enforcement to hold a specific arrested person already being held by police until that person can be transferred to ICE, which can then take steps to deport them.

      While places without sanctuary policies tend to comply with these requests, some sanctuary jurisdictions, like the state of California, only do so in the cases of particular violent criminal offenses.

      Yet local officials in sanctuary places cannot legally block ICE from arresting local residents who are living in the country illegally, or from carrying out any other parts of its work.

      Can Trump withhold federal funding?

      Trump claimed in 2017 that sanctuary policies violated federal law, and he issued an executive order that tried to rescind federal grants that these jurisdictions received.

      However, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a 2018 case involving San Francisco and Santa Clara County, California, that the president could not refuse to “disperse the federal grants in question without congressional authorization.”

      Federal courts, meanwhile, split over whether Trump could freeze funding attached to a specific federal program called the Edward Byrne Memorial Assistance Grant Program, which provides about US$250 million in annual funding to state and local law enforcement.

      These cases were in the process of being appealed to the Supreme Court when the Department of Justice, under Biden, asked that they be dismissed.

      Other Supreme Court rulings also suggest that the Trump administration’s claim that it can withhold federal funding from sanctuary places rests on shaky legal ground.

      The Supreme Court ruled in 1992 and again in 1997 that the federal government could not coerce state or local governments to use their resources to enforce a federal regulatory program, or compel them to enact or administer a federal regulatory program.

      Under pressure

      The first Trump administration was not generally successful, with the exception of the split over the Edward Byrne Memorial Assistance Grant Program, at stripping funding from sanctuary places. But cutting federal funding – even if it happens temporarily – can be economically damaging to cities and counties while they challenge the decision in court.

      Local officials also face other kinds of political pressure to comply with the Trump administration’s demands.

      A legal group founded by Stephen Miller, deputy chief of staff in the Trump administration, for example, sent letters to dozens of local officials in January threatening criminal prosecution for their sanctuary policies.

      Michelle Wu, the mayor of Boston, a sanctuary city, testifies during a House committee hearing on sanctuary city mayors on March 5, 2025, in Washington.
      Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images

      The real effects of sanctuary policies

      One part of Trump’s argument against sanctuary policies is that places with these policies have more crime than those that do not.

      But there is no established relationship between sanctuary status and crime rates.

      There is, however, evidence that when local law enforcement and ICE work together, it reduces the likelihood of immigrant and Latino communities to report crimes, likely for fear of being arrested by federal immigration authorities.

      Sanctuary policies are certainly worthy of debate, but this requires an accurate representation of what they are, what they do, and the effects they have.

      This is an updated version of a story originally published on May 28, 2025. More

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      Trump wants to cut funding to sanctuary cities and towns – but they don’t actually violate federal law

      by

      San Francisco, Chicago and New York are among the major cities – as well as more than 200 small towns and counties and a dozen states – that over the past 40 years have adopted what is often known as sanctuary policies.

      There is not a single definition of a sanctuary policy. But it often involves local authorities not asking about a resident’s immigration status, or not sharing that personal information with federal immigration authorities.

      So when a San Francisco police officer pulls someone over for a traffic violation, the officer will not ask if the person is living in the country legally.

      American presidents, from Ronald Reagan to Joe Biden, have chosen to leave sanctuary policies largely unchallenged since different places first adopted them in the 1970s. This changed in 2017, when President Donald Trump first tried to cut federal funding to sanctuary places, claiming that their policies “willfully violate Federal law.” Legal challenges during his first term stopped him from actually withholding the money.

      At the start of his second term, Trump signed two executive orders in January and April 2025 which again state that his administration will withhold federal money from areas with sanctuary policies.

      “Working on papers to withhold all Federal Funding for any City or State that allows these Death Traps to exist!!!” Trump said, according to an April White House statement. This statement was immediately followed by his April executive order.

      These two executive orders task the attorney general and secretary of homeland security with publishing a list of all sanctuary places and notifying local and state officials of “non-compliance, providing an opportunity to correct it.” Those that do not comply with federal law, according to the orders, may lose federal funding.

      San Francisco and 14 other sanctuary cities, including New Haven, Connecticut, and Portland, Oregon, sued the Trump administration in February on the grounds that it was illegally trying to coerce cities to comply with its policies. A U.S. district court judge in California issued an injunction on April 24 preventing the administration – at least for the time being – from cutting funding from places with sanctuary policies.

      However, as researchers who have studied sanctuary policies for over a decade, we know that Trump’s claim that sanctuary policies violate federal immigration law is not correct.

      It’s true that the federal government has exclusive jurisdiction over immigration. Yet there is no federal requirement that state or local governments participate or cooperate in federal immigration enforcement, which would require an act of Congress.

      A sign is seen at the Nogales, Ariz., and Mariposa, Mexico, border crossing.
      Jan Sonnenmair/Getty Images

      What’s behind sanctuary policies

      In 1979, the Los Angeles Police Department was the first to announce a prohibition on local officials asking about a resident’s immigration status.

      However, it was not until the 1980s that the sanctuary movement took off, when hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans, Guatemalans and Nicaraguans fled civil war and violence in their home countries and migrated to the U.S. This prompted a number of cities to declare solidarity with the faith-based sanctuary movement that offered refuge to Salvadoran, Guatemalan and Nicaraguan asylum seekers facing deportation.

      In 1985, Berkeley, Calif., and San Francisco pledged that city officials, including police officers, would not report Central Americans to immigration authorities as long as they were law abiding.

      Berkeley also banned officials from using local money to work with federal immigration authorities.

      “We are not asking anyone to do anything illegal,” Nancy Walker, a supervisor for San Francisco, said in 1985, according to The New York Times. “We have got to extend our hand to these people. If these people go home, they die. They are asking us to let them stay.”

      Today, there are hundreds of sanctuary cities, towns, counties and states across the country that all have a variation of policies that limit their cooperation with federal immigration authorities.

      Sometimes – but not always – places with sanctuary policies bar local law enforcement agencies from working with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the country’s main immigration enforcement agency.

      A large part of ICE’s work is identifying, arresting and deporting immigrants living in the U.S. illegally. In order to carry out this work, ICE issues what is known as “detainer requests” to local law enforcement authorities. A detainer request asks local law enforcement to hold a specific arrested person already being held by police until that person can be transferred to ICE, which can then take steps to deport them.

      While places without sanctuary policies tend to comply with these requests, some sanctuary jurisdictions, like the state of California, only do so in the cases of particular violent criminal offenses.

      Yet local officials in sanctuary places cannot legally block ICE from arresting local residents who are living in the country illegally, or from carrying out any other parts of its work.

      Can Trump withhold federal funding?

      Trump claimed in 2017 that sanctuary policies violated federal law, and he issued an executive order that tried to rescind federal grants that these jurisdictions received.

      However, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a 2018 case involving San Francisco and Santa Clara County, California, that the president could not refuse to “disperse the federal grants in question without congressional authorization.”

      Federal courts, meanwhile, split over whether Trump could freeze funding attached to a specific federal program called the Edward Byrne Memorial Assistance Grant Program, which provides about US$250 million in annual funding to state and local law enforcement.

      These cases were in the process of being appealed to the Supreme Court when the Department of Justice, under Biden, asked that they be dismissed.

      Other Supreme Court rulings also suggest that the Trump administration’s claim that it can withhold federal funding from sanctuary places rests on shaky legal ground.

      The Supreme Court ruled in 1992 and again in 1997 that the federal government could not coerce state or local governments to use their resources to enforce a federal regulatory program, or compel them to enact or administer a federal regulatory program.

      Under pressure

      The first Trump administration was not generally successful, with the exception of the split over the Edward Byrne Memorial Assistance Grant Program, at stripping funding from sanctuary places. But cutting federal funding – even if it happens temporarily – can be economically damaging to cities and counties while they challenge the decision in court.

      Local officials also face other kinds of political pressure to comply with the Trump administration’s demands.

      A legal group founded by Stephen Miller, deputy chief of staff in the Trump administration, for example, sent letters to dozens of local officials in January threatening criminal prosecution for their sanctuary policies.

      Michelle Wu, the mayor of Boston, a sanctuary city, testifies during a House committee hearing on sanctuary city mayors on March 5, 2025, in Washington.
      Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images

      The real effects of sanctuary policies

      One part of Trump’s argument against sanctuary policies is that places with these policies have more crime than those that do not.

      But there is no established relationship between sanctuary status and crime rates.

      There is, however, evidence that when local law enforcement and ICE work together, it reduces the likelihood of immigrant and Latino communities to report crimes, likely for fear of being arrested by federal immigration authorities.

      Sanctuary policies are certainly worthy of debate, but this requires an accurate representation of what they are, what they do, and the effects they have. More

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      How long will it be before Melania steps aside for MelanAI? | Arwa Mahdawi

      by

      I imagine students at the US Military Academy at West Point are trained to handle unexpected situations, but I’m not sure anyone could have prepared them for the bonkers speech Donald Trump delivered to graduates on Saturday. I wish I could point you to a government transcript, but the White House recently started removing official transcripts of the president’s public remarks, replacing them with curated videos instead. I imagine (just a hypothesis!) that this is to make Trump seem more coherent.One of the “highlights” of the disjointed ramble Trump delivered at West Point was his thoughts on trophy wives: “I must tell ya. A lot of trophy wives, doesn’t work out [sic],” he mused in the middle of an anecdote about a divorced real estate developer (not him). This has raised a few eyebrows; particularly as Michael Wolff’s 2018 book about Trump claimed the president used to boast that Melania was his “trophy wife.”I don’t know if Trump ever really thought that Melania was some sort of compliant accessory to be paraded around. If he did, I’m sure he’s now seen the error of his ways. Melania has made it clear to everyone that she is unbothered, unbossed, and entirely uninterested in pretending to care about either her husband or her role as first lady. It’s claimed that as of early May, Melania had spent fewer than 14 days at the White House. Trump is her useful idiot husband, she’s not his trophy wife.Melania is certainly collecting her own trophies, however. I’ve got to hand it to the woman: she’s mastered the art of making enormous amounts of money with the minimum amount of effort. Last year, she released what columnist Pamela Paul described as a “book-adjacent object” titled Melania, which one imagines she did not write herself. Last week, she announced that the audiobook was narrated with an AI-generated version of her voice. Now we’ve officially got an AI Melania voice, can it be long before we get a full-on MelanAI? A realistic AI-powered robot who does all the boring first lady things that Melania clearly hates doing – and doesn’t swat Trump’s hand away in public. More

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      Trump’s unfounded attack on Cyril Ramaphosa was an insult to all Africans | John Dramani Mahama

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      The meeting at the White House between Donald Trump and the South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, was, at its heart, about the preservation of essential historical truths. The US president’s claims of white genocide conflict with the actual racial persecution and massacres that took place during the two centuries of colonisation and nearly 50 years of apartheid in South Africa.It is not enough to be affronted by these claims, or to casually dismiss them as untruths. These statements are a clear example of how language can be leveraged to extend the effects of previous injustices. This mode of violence has long been used against Indigenous Africans. And it cannot simply be met with silence – not any more.The Kenyan writer Mzee Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o wrote: “Language conquest, unlike the military form, wherein the victor must subdue the whole population directly, is cheaper and more effective.”African nations learned long ago that their fates are inextricably linked. When it comes to interactions with the world beyond our continent, we are each other’s bellwether. In 1957, the year before my birth, Ghana became the first Black African country to free itself from colonialism. After the union jack had been lowered, our first prime minister, Dr Kwame Nkrumah, gave a speech in which he emphasised that, “our independence is meaningless unless it is linked up with the total liberation of Africa”.Shortly after, in 1960, was the Sharpeville massacre in South Africa, which resulted in 69 deaths and more than 100 wounded. In Ghana, thousands of miles away, we marched, we protested, we gave cover and shelter. A similar solidarity existed in sovereign nations across the continent. Why? Because people who looked like us were being subjugated, treated as second-class citizens, on their own ancestral land. We had fought our own versions of that same battle.I was 17 in June 1976, when the South African Soweto uprising took place. The now-iconic photo of a young man, Mbuyisa Makhubo, carrying the limp, 12-year-old body of Hector Pieterson, who had just been shot by the police, haunted me for years. It so deeply hurt me to think that I was free to dream of a future as this child was making the ultimate sacrifice for the freedom and future of his people. Hundreds of children were killed in that protest alone. It is their blood, and the blood of their forebears that nourishes the soil of South Africa.The racial persecution of Black South Africans was rooted in a system that was enshrined in law. It took worldwide participation through demonstrations, boycotts, divestments and sanctions to end apartheid so that all South Africans, regardless of skin colour, would be considered equal. Nevertheless, the effects of centuries-long oppression do not just disappear with the stroke of a pen, particularly when there has been no cogent plan of reparative justice.Despite making up less than 10% of the population, white South Africans control more than 70% of the nation’s wealth. Even now, there are a few places in South Africa where only Afrikaners are permitted to own property, live, and work. At the entrance to once such settlement, Kleinfontein, is an enormous bust of Hendrik Verwoerd, the former prime minister who is considered the architect of apartheid.Another separatist town, Orania, teaches only Afrikaans in its schools, has its own chamber of commerce, as well as its own currency, the ora, that is used strictly within its borders. It has been reported that inside the Orania Cultural History Museum there is a bust of every apartheid-era president except FW de Klerk, who initiated reforms that led to the repeal of apartheid laws.Both Kleinfontein and Orania are currently in existence, and they boast a peaceful lifestyle. Why had the America-bound Afrikaners not sought refuge in either of those places?Had the Black South Africans wanted to exact revenge on Afrikaners, surely, they would have done so decades ago when the pain of their previous circumstances was still fresh in their minds. What, at this point, is there to be gained by viciously killing and persecuting people you’d long ago forgiven?According to the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, half of the population of South Africa is under 29, born after the apartheid era and, presumably, committed to building and uplifting the “rainbow nation”. For what reason would they suddenly begin a genocide against white people?Ramaphosa was blindsided by Trump with those unfounded accusations and the accompanying display of images that were misrepresented – in one image, pictures of burials were actually from Congo. Trump refused to listen as Ramaphosa insisted that his government did not have any official policies of discrimination.“If you want to destroy a people,” Archbishop Desmond Tutu once said, “you destroy their memory, you destroy their history.” Memory, however, is long. It courses through the veins of our children and their children. The terror of what we have experienced is stored at a cellular level. As long as those stories are told, at home, in church, at the beauty and barber shop, in schools, in literature, music and on the screen, then we, the sons and daughters of Africa, will continue to know what we’ve survived and who we are.Mzee Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o wrote: “The process of knowing is simple. No matter where you want to journey, you start from where you are.” We journey forward with a history that cannot be erased, and will not be erased. Not while there are children dying in the mines of the Congo, and rape is being used as a weapon of war in Sudan.Our world is in real crisis; real refugees are being turned away from the borders of the wealthiest nations, real babies will die because international aid has been abruptly stopped, and real genocides are happening in real time all across the globe.

      John Dramani Mahama is president of the Republic of Ghana

      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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      Trump news at a glance: Administration’s crackdown on foreign students at US universities widens

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      The Trump administration has continued its crackdown on American universities by ordering US embassies worldwide to immediately stop scheduling visa interviews for foreign students.The directive comes as the government prepares to implement comprehensive social media screening for all international applicants and after the president’s assault on Harvard that followed pro-Palestinian campus demonstrations last year.Trump has repeatedly described top American universities as havens for “Marxist maniacs and lunatics” and on Monday mused that he would redirect their federal funding to trade schools.Here are the key stories at a glance:Trump orders US embassies to stop student visa interviewsA Tuesday state department cable instructs consular sections to pause adding “any additional student or exchange visitor (F, M, and J) visa appointment capacity until further guidance is issued”.The directive, first reported by Politico and now confirmed by the Guardian, could severely delay visa processing and hurt universities – many of which Donald Trump accuses of having far-left ideologies – that rely heavily on foreign students for revenue.Read the full storyTrump orders agencies to cut all federal ties with HarvardThe Trump administration is set to order federal agencies to cancel all government contracts with Harvard University worth an estimated $100m, dramatically escalating the president’s assault against America’s most prestigious university.Read the full storyRFK Jr drops Covid boosters for some groupsThe US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, announced that the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would remove Covid-19 booster shots from its recommended immunization schedule for healthy children and pregnant women.Read the full storyTrump warns Putin he is ‘playing with fire’ Donald Trump has warned Vladimir Putin that he is “playing with fire”, launching a fresh broadside at his Russian counterpart over stalled Ukraine peace efforts.Read the full storyNPR sues Trump administration over funding cutsNational Public Radio, the US public broadcaster that provides news and cultural programming to more than 1,000 local stations, has filed a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration, challenging an executive order that cuts federal funding to the public broadcaster as an unconstitutional attack on press freedom.Read the full storyTrump’s company to spend $2.5bn on bitcoinDonald Trump’s media company said that institutional investors will buy $2.5bn worth of its stock, with the proceeds going to build up a bitcoin reserve.Read the full storyTrump to pardon reality TV stars Julie and Todd ChrisleyThe White House said on Tuesday that Donald Trump is set to pardon reality TV stars Julie and Todd Chrisley, the couple famous for Chrisley Knows Best, which followed their tightly knit family and extravagant lifestyle.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      Argentina ratified its decision to withdraw from the World Health Organization during Robert F Kennedy’s visit to Buenos Aires.

      Trump issued an unconditional pardon to a former Virginia sheriff who was convicted on federal fraud and bribery charges.

      Trump wants to “dictate” policies like those of far-right regimes in the 1930s, a leading billionaire investor has warned.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 26 May 2025. More

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      Judge strikes down Trump order that targeted US law firm WilmerHale

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      Donald Trump’s campaign against the legal profession hit another setback on Tuesday as a federal judge struck down yet another executive order that sought to place sanctions on one of the country’s most prestigious law firms.The order in favor of WilmerHale marks the third time this month that a federal judge in Washington has deemed the US president’s series of law firm executive orders to be unconstitutional and has permanently barred their enforcement.“The cornerstone of the American system of justice is an independent judiciary and an independent bar willing to tackle unpopular cases, however daunting. The Founding Fathers knew this!” wrote US district judge Richard Leon.To permit the order to stand, Leon wrote, “would be unfaithful to the judgment and vision of the Founding Fathers”.The firm applauded the ruling from Leon, an appointee of former Republican president George HW Bush.“The court’s decision to permanently block the unlawful executive order in its entirety strongly affirms our foundational constitutional rights and those of our clients. We remain proud to defend our firm, our people, and our clients,” a spokesperson for the firm said.The ruling was similar to one from Friday by a different judge that rejected a Trump edict against the firm of Jenner & Block and another one from earlier in the month in favor of the firm Perkins Coie.The firms had all been subjected to Trump executive orders that sought to impose the same set of consequences, including suspending security clearances of attorneys and barring employees from federal buildings.The orders have been part of a broader effort by Trump to reshape US civil society by targeting perceived adversaries in hopes of extracting concessions from them and bending them to his will.Several of the firms singled out for sanctions have either done legal work that Trump has opposed, or currently have or previously had associations with prosecutors who at one point investigated him.The order against WilmerHale, for instance, cited the fact that the firm previously employed former justice department special counsel Robert Mueller, who led an investigation during Trump’s first term into potential ties between Russia and Trump’s 2016 campaign.Other major firms have sought to avert orders by preemptively reaching settlements that require them, among other things, to collectively dedicate hundreds of millions of dollars in free legal services in support of causes the Trump administration says it supports. More

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      Republican senator Tommy Tuberville launches run for Alabama governor

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      Republican US senator Tommy Tuberville has officially entered the race for governor of Alabama, revealing a campaign website on Tuesday to launch his candidacy.If the campaign is successful, Tuberville could become Alabama’s governor-elect by the end of 2026. He aims to succeed Republican governor Kay Ivey, who is finishing her second term and is barred from running again due to term limits.His announcement was the next anticipated step following Tuberville’s transition from college football coach to politician. In 2016, he was coaching at the University of Cincinnati, having earlier led Auburn University’s football team. By 2020, he had made his political debut, winning a US Senate seat representing Alabama.Tuberville built upon his reputation from the football world to enter politics, often referring to himself as “Coach”. His celebrity status in Alabama gave him a strong base of support, which he further bolstered by aligning himself closely with Donald Trump.The US president previously endorsed Tuberville over former US attorney general Jeff Sessions in the 2020 Republican primary. Sessions, once a senator from Alabama, had fallen out of favor with Trump, who appointed and later dismissed him as attorney general.Tuberville went on to defeat Democratic incumbent Doug Jones in the general election. Jones had briefly flipped the seat in a 2017 special election after Republicans nominated Roy Moore, whose campaign was derailed by allegations of sexual misconduct.Since entering the Senate, Tuberville has cultivated strong ties with conservative organizations such as the Club for Growth, which recently endorsed his campaign. He has also drawn national attention for his months-long blockade of military promotions in protest of the Pentagon’s abortion-related policies under Joe Biden.Tuberville, known for his strongly conservative beliefs, says that he believes that “men are men and women are women” and that “allowing men to compete in women’s sports is wrong” on his new campaign website.He also mentions “poisonous ideologies” such as “Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), which teach our kids to hate each other”. He adds that “zero taxpayer dollars should go towards abortions” in his view.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe senator also faces scrutiny over allegations that he was not a full-time Alabama resident, charges he has denied. Tuberville is now the second sitting US senator to announce a gubernatorial campaign this year. More