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      Trump administration sued for access to immigration detainees at Guantánamo Bay – live

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      A coalition of immigrant rights organizations has sued the Trump administration for access to undocumented immigrants held at Guantánamo Bay.The group, which includes the American Civil Liberties Union and its Washington DC affiliate along with the Center for Constitutional Rights and International Refugee Assistance Project, sued on behalf of several detainees brought to the US military base under a new Trump administration policy, as well as multiple legal service providers seeking to access people held there. Also among the plaintiffs is a family member of a man detained at Guantánamo.“The Trump administration cannot be allowed to build upon Guantánamo’s sordid past with these latest cruel, secretive, and illegal maneuvers. Our constitution does not allow the government to hold people incommunicado, without any ability to speak to counsel or the outside world,” said Eunice Cho, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s National Prison Project.Here’s more about the Trump administration’s decision to send migrants to the base in Cuba:Speaking to reporters in the Oval office after Tulsi Gabbard’s swearing in as his intelligence director, Donald Trump said that he had “a great call” with President Vladimir Putin of Russia that lasted for “over an hour this morning” on the subject of ending the war in Ukraine. “I also had a call with President Zelensky, a very good call after that, and I think we’re on the way to getting peace”.After again claiming that as many as 1.5 million soldiers had been killed in the war, a vastly larger number than either nation, or independent experts estimate, Trump said that a meeting between his Vice President, JD Vance and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky this week at the Munich Security Conference would be part of the peace talks.“I’ll be dealing with President Putin, largely on the phone, and we ultimately expect to meet. In fact, we expect that he’ll come here, and I’ll go there, and we’re going to meet also, probably in Saudi Arabia. The first time we’ll meet in Saudi Arabia, to see if we get something done”.Trump suggested that the meeting would be arranged by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.The Saudi crown prince and the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, Kirill Dmitriev, were involved in negotiations for the release of American teacher Marc Fogel from a Russian prison, a source close to the negotiations between Russia and the United States told Reuters earlier on Wednesday.Donald Trump was just asked during the Oval Office ceremony to swear in Tulsi Gabbard how soon he would like the Department of Education to be closed.Jennifer Jacobs of CBS News reports on X that he replied: right away.“It’s a con job” the president said.Moments after being sworn in as director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard promises “to refocus our intelligence community” in remarks in the Oval Office.Here is some of what Gabbard said to the pool reporters allowed into the room, as Trump and Bondi looked on:
      Unfortunately, the American people have very little trust in the intelligence community, largely because they’ve seen the weaponization and politicization of an entity that is supposed to be purely focused on ensuring our national security.So I look forward to being able to help fulfill that mandate that the American people delivered to you very clearly in this election to refocus our intelligence community by empowering the great patriots who have chosen to serve our country in this way and focus on ensuring the safety, security and freedom of the American people. As you said, Mr. President, this is what I’ve dedicated my life to, and it is truly humbling to be in this position to serve in your administration help to rebuild that trust and ultimately to keep the American people safe. Last thing I’ll mention is that in your National Prayer Breakfast speech, you made a statement about your legacy of wanting to be remembered as a peacemaker. I know that I can speak for many of my fellow service members who are here today, veterans, Medal of Honor recipients, how deeply that resonates with us. For those who volunteer to put their lives on the line when duty calls, but to have a president, commander in chief who recognizes the cost of that sacrifice and ensuring that war is the last resort, not the first. So thank you for your leadership. On behalf of my friends here and all who wear the uniform, we’re grateful.
      Tulsi Gabbard has been sworn in as Donald Trump’s director of national intelligence, in an Oval Office ceremony attended by the president.Attorney general Pam Bondi administered the oath.Trump spoke briefly about Gabbard, calling her “an American of extraordinary courage and patriotism”. He’s scheduled to sign unspecified executive orders in a few minutes.The trustees of the Kennedy Center have elected Donald Trump as their chairman, the Washington Post reports, after the president made the unusual announcement that he would like to oversee the Washington DC performing arts venue.The president had earlier this week named Ric Grenell, a diplomat and longtime associate, as the center’s interim executive director, a decision that raised fears of politicization at the venue. The Post reports that the center’s current president Deborah Rutter told staff she was stepping down, and that Trump had also ordered the firing of all of Joe Biden’s appointees to the center’s board. Here’s more on Trump’s foray into the performing arts:A coalition of immigrant rights organizations has sued the Trump administration for access to undocumented immigrants held at Guantánamo Bay.The group, which includes the American Civil Liberties Union and its Washington DC affiliate along with the Center for Constitutional Rights and International Refugee Assistance Project, sued on behalf of several detainees brought to the US military base under a new Trump administration policy, as well as multiple legal service providers seeking to access people held there. Also among the plaintiffs is a family member of a man detained at Guantánamo.“The Trump administration cannot be allowed to build upon Guantánamo’s sordid past with these latest cruel, secretive, and illegal maneuvers. Our constitution does not allow the government to hold people incommunicado, without any ability to speak to counsel or the outside world,” said Eunice Cho, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s National Prison Project.Here’s more about the Trump administration’s decision to send migrants to the base in Cuba:White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt hit back at legal scholars concerned that Donald Trump’s government-transforming executive orders have sparked a constitutional crisis, saying that the administration is acting lawfully.“The real constitutional crisis is taking place within our judicial branch, where district court judges and liberal districts across the country are abusing their power to unilaterally block president Trump’s basic executive authority,” Leavitt said at her press briefing earlier today. She then attacked federal judges who have disrupted the administration’s policies:
      We believe these judges are acting as judicial activists rather than honest arbiters of the law, and they have issued at least 12 injunctions against this administration in the past 14 days, often without citing any evidence or grounds for their lawsuits. This is part of a larger concerted effort by Democrat activists and nothing more than the continuation of the weaponization of justice by president Trump.
      Meanwhile, the Democratic state attorneys general who have led much of the legal pushback to Trump believe they are fighting a “dictatorship”. Here’s more on that:The chaotic effects of Donald Trump’s drive to dismantle USAid continue to be uncovered, with Reuters reporting that 17 labs in 13 states have had to halt farm research as the agency unraveled.That could set back efforts to stay on top of emerging threats to agriculture in the United States, researchers who spoke to Reuters said. Here’s more:
      The lab closures are another hit to U.S. agriculture from President Donald Trump’s overhaul of the federal government, by blocking research work designed to advance seed and equipment technology and develop markets abroad for U.S. commodities. Farmers have already seen disruptions to government food purchases for aid, and to agricultural grant and loan programs.
      Land-grant universities were founded on land given to states by the federal government.
      “For U.S. farmers, this is not good,” said Peter Goldsmith, who leads the University of Illinois’ Soybean Innovation Lab, one of the affected labs.
      The State Department did not respond to a request for comment.
      The network of 17 laboratories was funded by USAID through a program called Feed the Future Innovation Labs, and pursued research in partnership with countries such as Malawi, Tanzania, Bangladesh, and Rwanda, the lab directors said.
      Their research helps U.S. farmers because programs conducted overseas can develop production practices that may be useful in the U.S. or provide advance warning of pests, directors said.
      “It really reduces our capacity to help farmers fight pests and diseases and help American farmers prevent incursions,” said David Hughes, director of the USAID Innovation Lab on Current and Emerging Threats to Crops at Penn State University.
      One study that has been halted was working to control a viral disease spread by an aphid that was hurting banana crops in Tanzania, Hughes said.
      David Tschirley, who runs an agency-funded lab at Michigan State University and is chair of the Feed the Future Innovation Lab Council, which represents the lab network, said about 300 people are employed by the labs, and they have as many as 4,000 collaborators abroad.
      “It presents an American face to the world that is a very appreciated face,” he said, adding that such work benefits national security.
      Speaking at Nato headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ruled out Nato membership for Ukraine, which the country’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy had been pushing for.“We want, like you, a sovereign and prosperous Ukraine,” Hegseth said, adding that the expectation Ukraine’s borders could revert to their 2014 status before the annexation of Crimea is “unrealistic.”Three people, including one American, are being released from Belarus, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Wednesday. The US envoy for hostages, Adam Boehler, told reporters at the White House that the individual wishes to remain private.The news comes shortly after American schoolteacher Marc Fogel was released by Russia after being imprisoned since 2021. Fogel was arrested in Moscow after Russian authorities found less than an ounce of marijuana in his luggage.The White House said on Wednesday that it was not aware of any preconditions for US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin to visit each other’s countries.“Not that I’m aware of. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist,” White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said, when asked at a press briefing if there were conditions for Trump’s and Putin’s visits.“I was just talking with the president and our national security team, I wasn’t made aware of any conditions,” she added.The defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, was heckled during a visit to a US military installation in Germany as military families protested against the Trump administration’s rollback of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.About two dozen adults who live at the military base chanted “DEI” and booed at Hegseth as he arrived to the US European Command headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany, NBC News reported.Separately, a group of students attending the Patch middle school, also in Stuttgart, held a walkout, according to a letter from the school obtained by the Washington Post. More

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      Trump names oil and gas advocate to lead agency that manages federal lands

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      Donald Trump has nominated a longtime oil and gas industry representative to oversee an agency that manages a quarter-billion acres of public land concentrated in western states.Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Colorado-based oil industry trade group Western Energy Alliance, was named Bureau of Land Management director, a position with wide influence over lands used for energy production, grazing, recreation and other purposes. An MIT graduate, Sgamma has been a leading voice for the fossil fuel industry, calling for fewer drilling restrictions on public lands that produce about 10% of US oil and gas.If confirmed by the Senate, she would be a key architect of Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” agenda alongside the interior secretary Doug Burgum, who leads the newly formed National Energy Council that Trump says will establish US “energy dominance” around the world. Trump has vowed to boost US oil and gas drilling and move away from Joe Biden’s focus on the climate crisis.The former interior secretary David Bernhardt relocated the land bureau’s headquarters to Colorado during Trump’s first term, leading to a spike in employee resignations. The bureau went four years under Trump without a confirmed director.The headquarters for the 10,000-person agency was moved back to Washington DC under Biden, who installed the Montana conservationist Tracy Stone-Manning at the bureau to lead his administration’s efforts to curb oil and gas production in the name of fighting the climate crisis.Sgamma will be charged with reversing those policies, by putting into effect a series of orders issued last week by Burgum as part of Trump’s plan to sharply expand fossil fuel production.Burgum ordered reviews of many of Stone-Manning’s signature efforts, including fewer oil and gas lease sales, an end to coal leasing in the country’s biggest coal fields, a greater emphasis on conservation and drilling and renewable energy restrictions meant to protect a wide-ranging western bird, the greater sage grouse. Burgum also ordered federal officials to review and consider redrawing the boundaries of national monuments that were created under Biden and other presidents to protect unique landscapes and cultural resources.Sgamma said on social media she was honored to be nominated.She said she greatly respects the agency’s work to balance multiple uses for public lands – including energy, recreation, grazing and mining — with stewardship of the land. “I look forward to leading an agency that is key to the agenda of unleashing American energy while protecting the environment,” she wrote on LinkedIn.But environmentalists warned that Sgamma would elevate corporate interests over protections for public land. “Kathleen Sgamma would be an unmitigated disaster for our public lands,” said Taylor McKinnon at the Center for Biological Diversity, adding that Sgamma has “breathtaking disdain for environmental laws, endangered species, recreation, or anything other than industry profit”.The Wyoming governor, Mark Gordon, said Sgamma’s nomination was an “excellent choice”.“I know she is well-qualified and knowledgeable when it comes to Wyoming, the West, and multiple use of public lands,” Gordon, a Republican, said in a statement.Trump nominated Brian Nesvik to lead the US Fish and Wildlife Service, which also is under the interior department and helps recover imperiled species and protect their habitat.Nesvik until last year led the Wyoming game and fish department, where he pushed to remove federal protections for grizzly bears. That would open the door to public hunting for the first time in decades after the animals bounced back from near-extinction last century in the northern US Rocky Mountains.The Biden administration in its last days extended protections for more than 2,000 grizzly bears in and around Yellowstone and Glacier national parks, a move that was blasted by Republican officials in Wyoming, Idaho and Montana. More

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      Google defends scrapping AI pledges and DEI goals in all-staff meeting

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      Google’s executives gave details on Wednesday on how the tech giant will sunset its diversity initiatives and defended dropping its pledge against building artificial intelligence for weaponry and surveillance in an all-staff meeting.Melonie Parker, Google’s former head of diversity, said the company was doing away with its diversity and inclusion employee training programs and “updating” broader training programs that have “DEI content”. It was the first time company executives have addressed the whole staff since Google announced it would no longer follow hiring goals for diversity and took down its pledge not to build militarized AI. The chief legal officer, Kent Walker, said a lot had changed since Google first introduced its AI principles in 2018, which explicitly stated Google would not build AI for harmful purposes. He said it would be “good for society” for the company to be part of evolving geopolitical discussions in response to a question about why the company removed prohibitions against building AI for weapons and surveillance.Parker said that, as a federal contractor, the company has been reviewing all of its programs and initiatives in response to Donald Trump’s executive orders that direct federal agencies and contractors to dismantle DEI work. Parker’s role has also been changed from chief diversity officer to the vice-president of Googler Engagement.“What’s not changing is we’ve always hired the best person for the job,” she said, according to a recording of the meeting the Guardian reviewed.Google’s chief executive, Sundar Pichai, said the company had always “deeply cared” about hiring a workforce that represents the diversity of its global users but that the firm had to comply with the rules and regulations of where it operates.“Our values are enduring, but we have to comply with legal directions depending on how they evolve,” Pichai said.Pichai, who was speaking from Paris while attending an international AI summit, and other executives were responding to questions employees posted in an internal forum. Some of these questions were part of a coordinated effort among worker activist groups such as No Tech for Apartheid to force company executives to answer for the tech giant’s drastic move away from its previous core values.Employees had submitted 93 questions about the company’s decision to remove its pledge not to build AI weapons and more than 100 about Google’s announcement that it was rolling back DEI pledges, according to screenshots the Guardian reviewed. The company recently shifted to using AI to summarize similar questions employees had ahead of regularly scheduled staff meetings, which are known as TGIF.Last week, Google joined Meta and Amazon in shifting away from an emphasis on a culture of inclusivity in favor of policies molded in the image of the Trump administration. In addition to removing mentions of its commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) from filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the company said it would no longer set hiring targets for people from underrepresented backgrounds. The company also removed language from its publicly posted AI principles that stated it wouldn’t build AI for harmful purposes including weaponry and surveillance.“We are increasingly being asked to have a seat at the table in some important conversations, and I think it’s good for society that Google has a role in those conversations in areas where we do specialize – cybersecurity, or some of the work around biology, and many more,” Walker, the chief legal officer, said. “While it may be that some of the strict prohibitions that were in [the first version] of the AI principles don’t jive well with those more nuanced conversations we’re having now, it remains the case that our north star through all of this is that the benefits substantially outweigh the risks.”Google has long attempted to give the impression that it was toeing the line between its stated corporate and cultural values and chasing government and defense contracts. After employee protests in 2018, the company withdrew from the US Defense Department’s Project Maven – which used AI to analyze drone footage – and released its AI principles and values, which promised not to build AI for weapons or surveillance.In the years since, however, the company has started working with the Pentagon again after securing a $9bn Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability contract along with Microsoft, Amazon and Oracle. Google has also had active contracts to provide AI to the Israel Defense Forces. The tech giant had worked over time to distance the contract, called Project Nimbus, from the military arm of the Israeli government, but the Washington Post revealed documents that showed the company not only worked with the IDF but rushed to fulfill new requests for more AI access after the 7 October attacks. It is unclear how the IDF is using Google’s AI capabilities but, as the Guardian reported, the Israeli military has used AI for a number of military purposes including to help find and identify bombing targets.In a statement a Google spokesperson, Anna Kowalczyk, said the company’s work with the Israeli government was not “directed at highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOrganizers at No Tech for Apartheid said the DEI and AI announcements were deeply related. The “SVP of People Operations Fiona Cicconi communicated internally that the move to dismantle DEI programs was made to insulate government contracts from ‘risk’,” the group wrote in a worker call to action published on Tuesday. “It is important to note that the bulk of government spending on technology services is spent through the military.”For each category of question from employees, Google’s internal AI summarizes all the queries into a single query. The AI distilled the questions about the development of AI weapons to: “We recently removed a section from our AI principles page that pledged to avoid using the technology in potentially harmful applications, such as weapons and surveillance. Why did we remove this section?”While the company does not make all of the questions that were posted visible, the list gives a snapshot of some of them. Questions that employees asked included how the updated AI principles would ensure the company’s tools “are not misused for harmful purposes” and asked executives to “please talk frankly and without corp speak and legalese”.The third-most-popular question employees asked was why the AI summaries were so bad.“The AI summaries of questions on Ask are terrible. Can we go back to answering the questions people actually asked?” it read. More

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      AP excoriates White House barring of reporters as ‘alarming precedent’

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      The executive editor of the Associated Press sent a letter to the White House on Wednesday criticizing its decision to block two of its journalists from attending press events on Tuesday after the outlet refused to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as “the Gulf of America”.“I write on behalf of The Associated Press, an independent global news organization that reaches billions of people every day, to object in the strongest possible terms to the actions taken by the Trump administration against AP yesterday,” Julie Pace, the AP’s executive editor, wrote in the letter addressed to Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff.“The issue here is free speech – a fundamental pillar of American democracy and a value of the utmost importance to all Americans, regardless of political persuasion, occupation or industry.”Pace said that on Tuesday, the White House barred AP journalists from attending two press events with Donald Trump, “following an apparent complaint over AP’s editorial decisions regarding the Gulf of Mexico, which President Trump renamed the Gulf of America”.The Associated Press said in a January style guide update that they would continuing referring to the body of water that borders both the US and Mexico “by its original name while acknowledging the new name Trump has chosen”.The agency stated that Trump’s order to change the name only carried authority within the US, and that other countries including Mexico did not have to recognize the name change.“The Gulf of Mexico has carried that name for more than 400 years,” the AP wrote, adding that “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”.Pace said that during a meeting on Tuesday, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, informed an AP reporter that AP’s access to the “Oval Office would be restricted if AP did not immediately align its editorial standards with President Trump’s executive order”.When AP did not accede to the demands, Pace said, White House staff blocked an AP reporter from attending an executive order signing at the Oval Office and, later, another AP reporter from attending a press event in the Diplomatic Reception Room.“The actions taken by the White House were plainly intended to punish the AP for the content of its speech,” Pace wrote. “It is among the most basic tenets for the First Amendment that government cannot retaliate against the public or the press for what they say.”She added: “This is viewpoint discrimination based on a news organization’s editorial choices and a clear violation of the First Amendment.”Pace said that as of Wednesday, it was not clear whether the White House intended to impose these access restrictions against AP reporters on an ongoing basis, and urged the administration to “end this practice”.The “fundamental role of the press is to serve as the public’s eyes and ears”, she said, adding that “when journalists are blocked from doing their job, it is the American public who suffers”.It also sets an “alarming precedent”, she said, that has the potential to affect every news outlet and, in turn, “severely limit the public’s right to know what is happening inside their government”.The AP, she wrote, is “prepared to vigorously defend its constitutional rights and protest the infringement on the public’s right to independent news coverage of their government and elected officials”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOn Wednesday, Leavitt was asked which White House official made the decision to bar the AP reporters from the events.Leavitt said: “It is a privilege to cover this White House” and “nobody has the right to go into the Oval Office and ask the president of the United States questions. That’s an invitation that is given.”“We reserve the right to decide who gets to go into the Oval Office,” Leavitt told the press briefing room.“If we feel that there are lies being pushed by outlets in this room, we are going to hold those lies accountable and it is a fact that the body of water off the coast of Louisiana is called the Gulf of America, and I am not sure why news outlets don’t want to call it that, but that is what it is.“It is very important to this administration that we get that right,” she added.The Guardian has contacted the White House for additional comment. More

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      Trump is the most lawless president in American history | Robert Reich

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      He is the most lawless president in American history.As Donald Trump’s law-breaking continues, America’s last defense is the federal courts.But the big story here (which hasn’t received nearly the attention it deserves) is that the Trump-Vance-Musk regime is ignoring the courts.On Sunday, JD Vance declared that “judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power”.This is bonkers. In our system of government, it’s up to the courts to determine whether the president is using his power “legitimately”, not the president.Consider Trump’s freeze on all federal spending. Article I, section 8 of the constitution gives Congress the power to appropriate money, not the president.So far, two federal judges have ordered Trump’s freeze on spending stopped, pending full hearings on the lawsuits. But Trump is ignoring these court decisions and continues to freeze funds Congress has appropriated.The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, says the freeze will continue even though Trump’s office of management and budget (OMB) has withdrawn the memo implementing it.Today, federal judge John L McConnell Jr ordered the Trump administration to comply with what he called “the plain text” of an edict he issued last month to release billions of dollars in federal grants.It’s the first time a judge has expressly declared that the Trump White House is disobeying a judicial mandate.Last week, US district judge Loren AliKhan reprimanded the OMB for disregarding a similar order:
      It appears that OMB sought to overcome a judicially imposed obstacle without actually ceasing the challenged conduct. The court can think of few things more disingenuous.
      On Saturday, federal district court judge Paul A Engelmayer temporarily denied Musk’s young recruits access to the treasury’s payment and data systems, finding a risk of “irreparable harm”. The judge ordered anyone who had been granted access to the systems since 20 January to “destroy any and all copies of material downloaded” from it.Another federal judge, John Coughenour, has blocked Trump’s executive order altering birthright citizenship, calling it “clearly unconstitutional”. The judge didn’t pull any punches:
      It has become ever more apparent that, to our president, the rule of law is but an impediment to his policy goals. The rule of law is, according to him, something to navigate around or simply ignore, whether that be for political or personal gain.
      Meanwhile, in a lawsuit filed on Friday, several “sanctuary” cities and counties are challenging both Trump’s executive order withdrawing federal funds from places that refuse to help carry out his immigration agenda and his justice department’s threat to prosecute any jurisdiction that refuses to comply.Plaintiffs are seeking to “check this abuse of power” by asking the courts to declare the Trump regime’s actions unlawful and prevent their enforcement.The law is clearly on the plaintiff’s side. The supreme court has repeatedly held that the federal government cannot force cities and states to adopt laws or to enforce federal mandates.But Trump isn’t budging.Over the next months, these and dozens of other federal cases will be appealed to the supreme court – either by the plaintiffs arguing that Trump is ignoring lower-court decisions, or by Trump’s justice department appealing those decisions.Then what?You have every reason to be cynical about the current majority on the supreme court. But the cases I’ve just cited, along with many others, are based on the supreme court’s own precedents that say that Trump cannot legally do what he’s doing.The Roberts court has shown itself willing to reverse its prior opinions (see: Roe v Wade), but my betting is that at least on some of these issues the high court will rule against Trump.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAll of which raises a final, perilous question: What if the Trump regime ignores the supreme court just as it has ignored lower courts?In his 2024 year-end report on the federal judiciary, Chief Justice John Roberts anticipated this possibility, noting that judicial independence “is undermined unless the other branches [of government] are firm in their responsibility to enforce the court’s decrees”.Roberts mentioned defiance by southern governors of the supreme court’s 1954 ruling in Brown v Board of Education. Their defiance required that federal troops enforce the supreme court’s decision.Roberts then commented on more recent defiance:
      Within the past few years … elected officials from across the political spectrum have raised the specter of open disregard for federal court rulings. These dangerous suggestions, however sporadic, must be soundly rejected.
      There’s no secret whom Roberts was referring to. His first initials are JD and he ought to know better. Vance graduated Yale Law School Class of 2013, and his wife, Usha, clerked for Roberts from 2017 to 2018.Yet Vance said on a 2021 podcast: “When the courts stop you, stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did and say: ‘The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.’”Here’s Vance in a February 2024 interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos:Vance: “The president has to be able to run the government as he thinks he should. That’s the way the constitution works. It has been thwarted too much by the way our bureaucracy has worked over the past 15 years.”Stephanopoulos: “The constitution also says the president must abide by legitimate supreme court rulings, doesn’t it?”Vance: “The constitution says that the supreme court can make rulings, but if the supreme court – and, look, I hope that they would not do this – but if the supreme court said the president of the United States can’t fire a general, that would be an illegitimate ruling, and the president has to have Article II prerogative under the constitution to actually run the military as he sees fit.”In other words, if the US supreme court rules against Trump on an important issue, there’s a fair chance the Trump-Vance-Musk regime will thumb their nose at it.What then? Impeachment isn’t a possibility because Republicans run both chambers of Congress and haven’t exactly distinguished themselves with integrity or independence.If Trump simply ignores the high court, is that the end of law?

      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More

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      US inspectors general fired by Trump sue to win jobs back

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      Several federal watchdogs fired by Donald Trump have filed a lawsuit against his administration to get their jobs back.In the suit filed on Wednesday, eight former inspectors general from eight government departments – including defense, veterans affairs, health and human services, state, agriculture, education and labor – and the Small Business Administration said they were seeking “redress for their unlawful and unjustified purported termination” by Trump and their respective agency heads.The lawsuit states that just four days into his second term, Trump, “acting through a two-sentence email sent by the director or deputy director of the office of presidential personnel, purported to remove from office (supposedly on account of ‘changing priorities’) nearly a score of IGs”.It also says that the fired officials were “appointed by and/or served under presidents of both parties”, including Trump during his first term.Altogether, the inspectors general who were fired were responsible for conducting and facilitating oversight of more than $5tn of appropriated funds annually and more than 3.5 million federal employees, or 80% of the federal workforce.The lawsuit alleges: “Despite the obvious illegality of these purported terminations, the head of each affected agency – including the eight heads of plaintiffs’ respective agencies – effectuated and continue to effectuate the purported removals.”It adds that the eight federal agencies removed the inspectors general from their access to their government email accounts and computer systems, government-issued phones, personal ID cards and computers.The inspectors general were also alleged to have been banned from entering the government buildings where they worked, with the lawsuit stating that “these actions have had their intended effect of making it impossible for the IGs to perform their lawful duties”.“Because the purported removals were illegal and hence a nullity, the actions just described constituted illegal interference with the IGs’ official duties,” the lawsuit says, adding that “neither President Trump nor anyone else in his administration has claimed that the purported removals complied with the IG Act”.“Instead, President Trump falsely claimed after the fact that such removals were ‘a very common thing to do’ and ‘a very standard thing to do’,” the lawsuit says, alleging that Trump is “wrong to claim these actions were ‘common’ or ‘standard’”.As part of the lawsuit, the plaintiffs are seeking a declaration that their purported removals were legally invalid and so they remain as inspectors general of their agencies unless and until the president lawfully removes them in compliance with statutory procedures. Additionally, the plaintiffs are seeking injunctive relief prohibiting the defendants or anyone working in concert with them from impeding the lawful exercises of the duties of their office, the lawsuit says.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWednesday’s lawsuit follows Trump’s sacking of 18 inspectors general less than a month after he returned to the White House.Hannibal “Mike” Ware, one of the plaintiffs in Wednesday’s lawsuit and the former inspector general for the Small Business Administration, told MSNBC last month: “This is not about any of our individual jobs. We acknowledge that the president has the right to remove any of us that he chooses. But the protections that were baked into the act is everything, absent having to provide a real reason. We’re looking at what amounts to a threat to democracy, a threat to independent oversight, and a threat to transparency in government.”Similarly, Mark Greenblatt, the former inspector general of the interior department, told CNN that the firings “should be setting off alarm bells”.“The whole construct of inspectors general, it’s based on us being independent, that we’re not beholden to a political party of any stripe, that we are there as the taxpayers’ representatives to call balls and strikes without any dog in the fight. And so the question is: what will President Trump do with these positions? Is he going to nominate watchdogs or is he going to nominate lapdogs?” said Greenblatt. More

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      The Orbánisation of America: inside the 14 February Guardian Weekly

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      We’re just over three weeks into the second Donald Trump administration, and the pace of events both inside and outside the US has been dizzying and unprecedented.Many of us have been alarmed by Trump’s shocking pronouncements on the Israel-Gaza war, trade tariffs and territorial claims on Greenland and Panama. But inside America, an equally startling transformation has been taking place.Aided by the tech billionaire Elon Musk, Trump has moved swiftly to fire critics, reward allies, punish media, gut the federal government and exploit presidential immunity. Yet much of the blueprint comes not from Trump’s own policy team, but from a power-consolidation playbook established over the past decade by the Hungarian authoritarian leader Viktor Orbán.For the Guardian Weekly’s big story this week, our Washington bureau chief David Smith sets out the parallels between Orbán’s self-styled “petri dish for illiberalism” and Trump’s vision for America. Then columnist Moira Donegan argues that it is not the president but Musk who is actually running the US now.Get the Guardian Weekly delivered to your home addressFive essential reads in this week’s editionView image in fullscreenSpotlight | The families vowing to stay in GazaMalak A Tantesh and Emma Graham-Harrison speak to defiant Palestinians who reject Donald Trump’s resettlement plan after enduring 15 months of conflictScience | Why silence is goldenOur increasingly noisy world has been linked to numerous health complaints. But that’s not the only reason we need more peace and quiet in our lives, explains Sam PyrahFeature | An amazing/terrifying brain implantAn accident left Noland Arbaugh paralysed, but Elon Musk’s Neuralink chip allows him to control computers with his thoughts. Is it a life-changing innovation – or the start of a dystopia where a billionaire can access our thoughts? Jenny Kleeman reportsOpinion | The right are wrong on climate – why is the UK following their lead?Promoting green growth does not make you an ‘eco-nutter’. It’s the only way forward, argues Will HuttonCulture | The rise and fall of Emilia PérezLess than three weeks ago, the movie was flying high, with 13 Academy Award nods. Then came a social media scandal and a serious backlash. Steve Rose finds out whyWhat else we’ve been reading I enjoyed this picture essay about 1990s British nightlife in the hours after the clubs had shut. I particularly liked the photographer’s dedication to going to bed at 10pm to be up at 4.30am the next morning to shoot. I imagine he must have some excellent stories from tagging along with some of the groups captured in the images. Eimhin Behan, marketing executive I’m always looking for film recommendations so I was drawn to Rebecca Liu’s piece about the review site Rotten Tomatoes. While the “fresh” or “rotten” critics’ verdicts do lend themselves to a polarisation of opinion, Liu decided to explore the 40 worst-rated films to find if their hype (or tripe) was justified. Neil Willis, production editorOther highlights from the Guardian websiteView image in fullscreen Audio | Going bald in an increasingly hairy world – podcast Video | Artificial news: How to create an AI anchor Gallery | ‘A place with its own rules’: images of London’s Square MileGet in touchWe’d love to hear your thoughts on the magazine: for submissions to our letters page, please email weekly.letters@theguardian.com. For anything else, it’s editorial.feedback@theguardian.comFollow us Facebook InstagramGet the Guardian Weekly magazine delivered to your home address More

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      If you thought Elon Musk was bad, look at his dreadful mini-mes and shudder for America | Emma Brockes

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      You would be forgiven for thinking we were back at the Bullingdon Club, in the company of Jonty, Munty, Stiffy, Kipper, Chugger and, to use the polite version, Pig Botherer – only in this case it’s Big Balls and a guy with a history of racist tweeting. This is the sudden, startling emergence into American political life of a type deeply recognisable to Brits: that is, jaunty young men with juvenile nicknames and a firm belief they should be running the world.This being America, the class signifiers are slightly different from those in Britain. But in most regards, the cohort of young men hired by Elon Musk for his cost-cutting taskforce, the department of government efficiency (Doge), will be familiar to anyone who lived through the era of Boris Johnson’s weapons-grade flippancy or reports of David Cameron’s youthful hijinks. (Donald Trump is very flippant, of course, but his style skews locker room rather than debate chamber – or, in this case, maths olympiad.) And while politics has always run on young, volunteer energy, less common in the US, perhaps, is the imperial swagger, the sheer frivolous entitlement accompanying a crowd that has seemingly been given the keys to the kingdom.Let’s look at the lineup. The youngest of Musk’s Doge hires, Edward Coristine – online username, Big Balls – is a 19-year-old former intern at Neuralink, Musk’s neurotechnology company, who until recently appeared to be a first-year student at Northeastern University in Boston. Luke Farritor is a 23-year-old former SpaceX intern. Marko Elez, 25, used to work for X and SpaceX, and was revealed by the Wall Street Journal to have authored several since-removed tweets asserting, among other things, “You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity.” (Elez briefly resigned before Musk announced he’d reinstate him.)And Gavin Kliger, a 25-year-old who boosted a post on X by the white supremacist Nick Fuentes, and whose newly launched Substack this week highlighted the perils of skipping freshman English 101 with a post entitled “Why DOGE: Why I gave up a seven-figure salary to save America.”Between them, these men have gained access to federal premises and staffing systems that govern agencies including USAid, the Department of Health and Human Services, the education and energy departments, and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and contain sensitive information relating to millions of Americans. Elez was, reportedly, erroneously given overwrite access to the Treasury department’s payment system before it was yanked back to read-only.Of course, given that Doge has not responded to questions about what, if any, security clearance these young men have gone through, read-only is bad enough. The head of Doge, hiring in his own image, has turned to young, male software engineers with startup energy and the conviction that if you understand coding, you understand life. They’ve established sleeping pods in spare offices at the federal agencies they have been engaged to gut or dismantle, so that while Musk goes on X to mock federal employees for not working at weekends, his mini-mes work round the clock.This feat would be more impressive if their online remarks and bios didn’t flag what might diplomatically be called large gaps in their skill-sets. Musk, a man with the emotional maturity of a cartoon bank robber, is leading a group of men most of whom have no government or management experience whatsoever, let alone expertise in fields governed by the agencies they have been tasked to reform. The whole scene is reminiscent of the 90s boom in management consultancy, during which new graduates stared with frank disbelief at anyone who was over 35 and still breathing. And sure enough, as reported in the New York Times, young engineers have been overheard referring to federal employees as “dinosaurs”, who have in turn called the guys in baseball caps “Muskrats”.On X, meanwhile, Musk amplified a post pitching “autistic tech bros” against “non-binary Deep State theater kids”, and another that said what’s happening in the US right now is equivalent to “the yearbook committe and theater kid types getting rocked by a football team and chess club alliance”. Theatre kids and chess nerds are, traditionally, both categories of social death in high school that are targeted by queen bees and jocks, a case of Musk siding with the oppressor that’s even sadder when you consider that Trump isn’t even a real jock. (For a full account of Trump’s hilariously mediocre sports career relative to his claims about it, read Lucky Loser by Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig.)Anyway, we know how this ends. In the largest sense, with the cancellation of programmes mandated democratically in Congress by a bunch of unelected goons in puffer vests. And in the smallest sense, with one of these 22-year-old jerks spilling his Big Gulp cup of Mountain Dew over a keyboard at the Treasury and wiping the social security data of 70 million Americans. I look forward to watching as Big Balls and co find new ways to tank an economy even more efficiently and irreversibly than Brexit.

      Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist More