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      ‘In a real sense, US democracy has died’: how Trump is emulating Hungary’s Orbán

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      A pitiless crackdown on on illegal immigration. A hardline approach to law and order. A purge of “gender ideology” and “wokeness” from the nation’s schools. Erosions of academic freedom, judicial independence and the free press. An alliance with Christian nationalism. An assault on democratic institutions.The “electoral autocracy” that is Viktor Orbán’s Hungary has been long revered by Donald Trump and his “Make America Great Again” (Maga) movement. Now admiration is turning into emulation. In the early weeks of Trump’s second term as US president, analysts say, there are alarming signs that the Orbánisation of America has begun.With the tech billionaire Elon Musk at his side, Trump has moved with astonishing velocity to fire critics, punish media, reward allies, gut the federal government, exploit presidential immunity and test the limits of his authority. Many of their actions have been unconstitutional and illegal. With Congress impotent, only the federal courts have slowed them down.“They are copying the path taken by other would-be dictators like Viktor Orbán,” said Chris Murphy, a Democratic senator for Connecticut. “You have a move towards state-controlled media. You have a judiciary and law enforcement that seems poised to prioritise the prosecution of political opponents. You have the executive seizure of spending power so the leader and only the leader gets to dictate who gets money.”Orbán, who came to power in 2010, was once described as “Trump before Trump” by the US president’s former adviser Steve Bannon. His long-term dismantling of institutions and control of media in Hungary serves as a cautionary tale about how seemingly incremental changes can pave the way for authoritarianism.Orbán has described his country as “a petri dish for illiberalism”. His party used its two-thirds majority to rewrite the constitution, capture institutions and change electoral law. He reconfigured the judiciary and public universities to ensure long-term party loyalty.View image in fullscreenThe prime minister created a system of rewards and punishments, giving control of money and media to allies. An estimated 85% of media outlets are controlled by the Hungarian government, allowing Orbán to shape public opinion and marginalise dissent. Orbán has been also masterful at weaponising “family values” and anti-immigration rhetoric to mobilise his base.Orbán’s fans in the US include Vice-President JD Vance, the media personality Tucker Carlson and Kevin Roberts, the head of the Heritage Foundation thinktank, who once said: “Modern Hungary is not just a model for conservative statecraft but the model.” The Heritage Foundation produced Project 2025, a far-right blueprint for Trump’s second term.Orbán has addressed the Conservative Political Action Conference and two months ago travelled to the Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida for talks with both Trump and Musk. He has claimed that “we have entered the policy writing system of President Donald Trump’s team” and “have deep involvement there”.But even Orbán might be taken aback – and somewhat envious – of the alacrity that Trump has shown since returning to power, attacking the foundations of democracy not with a chisel but a sledgehammer.On day one he pardoned about 1,500 people who took part in the 6 January 2021 insurrection, including those who violently attacked US Capitol police in an effort to overturn his election defeat. Driven by vengeance, he dismissed federal prosecutors involved in Trump-related investigations and hinted at a further targeting of thousands of FBI agents who worked on January 6-related cases.Bill Kristol, director of the advocacy group Defending Democracy Together and a former official in the Ronald Reagan White House, said: “Flipping the narrative on January 6, becoming a pro-January 6 administration, then weaponising the justice department and talking at least of mass firings at the FBI – that’s further than the norm and very dangerous for obvious reasons.“If he could do that, he could do anything. Why can’t he order the justice department to investigate you and me and 50 other people? One assumes the lawyers at justice or the FBI agents wouldn’t do it, but if a couple of thousand have been cleared out and the rest are intimidated. I’m not hysterical but I do think the threat is much more real now than people anticipated it being a month ago.”Borrowing from Orbán’s playbook, Trump has mobilised the culture wars, issuing a series of executive orders and policy changes that target diversity, equity and inclusion programmes and education curricula. This week he signed an executive order aimed at banning transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports and directed the attorney general, Pam Bondi, to lead a taskforce on eradicating what he called anti-Christian bias within the federal government.View image in fullscreenHe is also seeking to marginalise the mainstream media and supplant it with a rightwing ecosystem that includes armies of influencers and podcasters. A “new media” seat has been added to the White House press briefing room while Silicon Valley billionaires were prominent at his inauguration. Musk’s X is a powerful mouthpiece, Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook has abandoned factchecking and the Chinese-owned TikTok could become part-owned by the US.Trump has sued news organisations over stories or even interview edits; some have settled the cases. The Pentagon said it would “rotate” four major news outlets from their workspace and replace them with more Trump-friendly media. Jim Acosta, a former White House correspondent who often sparred with Trump, quit CNN while Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law, was hired to host a new weekend show on Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut the most dramatic change has been the way in which Trump has brought disruption to the federal government on an unprecedented scale, firing at least 17 inspectors general, dismantling longstanding programmes, sparking widespread public outcry and challenging the very role of Congress to create the nation’s laws and pay its bills.Government workers are being pushed to resign, entire agencies are being shuttered and federal funding to states and non-profits was temporarily frozen. The most sensitive treasury department information of countless Americans was opened to Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) team in a breach of privacy and protocol, raising concerns about potential misuse of federal funds.Musk’s allies orchestrated a physical takeover of the United States Agency for International Development (USAid), locking out employees and vowing to shut it down, with the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, stepping in as acting administrator. “We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper,” Musk posted on X.Musk’s team has also heavily influenced the office of personnel management (OPM), offering federal workers a “buyout” and installing loyalists into key positions. It is also pushing for a 50% budget cut and implementing “zero-based budgeting” at the General Services Administration (GSA), which controls federal properties and massive contracts.View image in fullscreenMusk, a private citizen who has tens of billions of dollars in government contracts, is slashing and burning his way through Washington with little accountability and has significant potential conflicts of interest. An array of lawsuits is demanding interventions to stop him unilaterally gutting government. Protests are erupting outside government agencies and jamming congressional phone lines.But critics aiming to sound the alarm that a shadow government is conducting a hostile takeover face intimidation or punishment. Edward Martin, the interim US attorney for the District of Columbia, threatened legal action against anyone who “impedes” Doge’s work or “threatens” its people. Martin posted on X: “We are in contact with FBI and other law-enforcement partners to proceed rapidly. We also have our prosecutors preparing.”Murphy, the Democratic senator, said: “What’s most worrying to me right now is there’s a whole campaign under way to try to punish and suppress Trump and Musk’s political enemies. It started with the pardoning of the January 6 rioters; now everybody knows that they are at risk of having the shit beat out of them if they oppose Donald Trump.“It extended to the seizure of government funding. It’s clear now that Musk and Trump are going to fund entities and states and congressional districts that support them and will withhold funds from entities and states and congressional districts that don’t support them.”He added: “Now you have this lawyer who represented January 6 defendants, the new acting DC US attorney, trolling activists online, threatening them with federal prosecution. It’s dizzying campaign of political repression that looks more like Russia than the United States.”View image in fullscreenDemocrats such as Murphy are determined to fight back but, being in the minority, have few tools at their disposal. Republicans have mostly appeared content to cede their own power. The party’s fealty to Trump was demonstrated again this week when senators in committee voted to move forward with the nominations of Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F Kennedy Jr as director of national intelligence and health secretary respectively – two mavericks whose selection would have been unthinkable just a year ago.Charlie Sykes, a conservative author and broadcaster, said: “There had been some lingering optimism that at least some Republican senators would draw the line at some of the more absurd Maga appointees but that hasn’t happened. That also demoralises any potential opposition.”He added: “What Elon Musk represents is basically a hostile takeover of the government and the complete indifference of the Republican Congress to the ways that it is being stripped of its core constitutional functions is demoralising. It is this mood that nothing can be done or will be done to stop them. You’re seeing that in the business community, in the political community, and it’s a fundamental loss of faith in the rule of law and in our system of checks and balances.”One guardrail is holding for now. Courts have temporarily blocked Trump’s efforts to end birthright citizenship, cull the government workforce and freeze federal funding. Even so, commentators warn that the blatant disregard for congressional authority, erosion of civil service protections and concentration of power in the executive branch pose a grave threat.Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “You’d have to have your eyes fully closed not to be deeply concerned and outraged about the vacuum that Donald Trump is operating in now. In a real sense, US democracy has died this month. It doesn’t mean it’s dead for the long term but at this moment the idea of an accountable representative system, as the framers of the constitution wrote it, is no longer present.” More

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      Trump orders a plan to close Education Department – an anthropologist who studies MAGA explains 4 reasons why Trump and his supporters want to eliminate it

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      “And one other thing I’ll be doing very early in the administration is closing up the Department of Education.”

      Donald Trump made this promise in a Sept. 13, 2023, campaign statement and repeated it frequently on the campaign trail.

      Trump tried to make this long-standing pledge a reality on March 20, 2025, by signing an executive order that he said will “begin eliminating the federal Department of Education once and for all.”

      Trump said that he hopes Democrats would support his executive order. “I hope they’re going to be voting for it,” said Trump, speaking from the White House in front of a group of children seated at desks. “Because ultimately it may come before them.”

      Project 2025, the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for the Trump administration, provides detailed recommendations for closing the Education Department, which was created by an act of Congress in 1979.

      The Department of Education already announced on March 9 that it laid off more than 1,300 of its 4,100 employees.

      Trump’s new executive order calls for Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure (of) the Department of Education and return education authority to the States, while continuing to ensure the effective and uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely,” according to a White House statement distributed to media.

      I am an anthropologist and have been studying U.S. political culture for years. During Trump’s first presidency, I wrote a book about the extremist far right called “It Can Happen Here”. Since then, I have continued to study the Make America Great Again, or MAGA, movement, seeking to understand it, as the anthropological expression goes, “from the native’s point of view.”

      Education policies in the U.S. are largely carried out at the state and local levels. The Education Department is a relatively small government agency, which as late as February 2025 had just over 4,000 employees and a US$268 billion annual budget. A large part of its work is overseeing $1.6 trillion in federal student loans as well as grants for K-12 schools.

      And it ensures that public schools comply with federal laws that protect vulnerable students, like those with disabilities.

      Why, then, does Trump want to eliminate the department?

      A will to fight against so-called “wokeness” and a desire to shrink the government are among the four reasons I have found.

      President Donald Trump, sitting in the White House on March 20, 2025, signs an executive order aimed at shutting down the Education Department.
      Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

      1. Education Department’s alleged ‘woke’ mentality

      First and foremost, Trump and his supporters believe that liberals are ruining public education by instituting what they call a
      “radical woke agenda” that they say prioritizes identity politics and politically correct groupthink at the expense of the free speech of those, like many conservatives, who have different views.

      Diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, initiatives promoting social justice – and critical race theory, or the idea that racism is entrenched in social and legal institutions – are a particular focus of MAGA ire.

      So, too, is what Trump supporters call “radical gender ideology,” which they contend promotes policies like letting transgender students play on school sports teams or use bathrooms corresponding with their gender identity, not biological sex.

      Trump supporters say that such policies – which the Education Department indirectly supported by expanding Title IX gender protections in 2024 to include discrimination based on gender identity – are at odds with parental school choice rights or, for some religious conservatives, the Bible.

      Race and gender policies are highlighted in Project 2025 and in the 2024 GOP’s “Make America Great Again!” party platform.

      Trump has repeatedly promised, as he did on Aug. 14, 2024, in North Carolina, to “keep critical race theory and transgender insanity the hell out of our schools.”

      2. American Marxist indoctrination

      For MAGA supporters, “radical left” wokeness is part of liberals’ long-standing attempt to “brainwash” others with their allegedly Marxist views that embrace communism.

      One version of this “American Marxism” conspiracy theory argues that the indoctrination dates to the origins of U.S. public education. MAGA stalwarts say this alleged leftist agenda is anti-democratic and anti-Christian.

      Saying he wants to combat the educational influence of such radicals, zealots and Marxists, Trump issued executive orders on Jan. 29 that pledge to fight “campus anti-Semitism” and to end “Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schools.”

      3. School choice and parental rights

      Trump supporters also argue that “woke” federal public education policy infringes on people’s basic freedoms and rights.

      This idea extends to what Trump supporters call “restoring parental rights,” including the right to decide whether a child undergoes a gender transition or learns about nonbinary gender identity at public schools.

      The first paragraph of Project 2025’s chapter on education argues, “Families and students should be free to choose from a diverse set of school options and learning environments.”

      Diversity, according to this argument, should include faith-based institutions and homeschooling. Project 2025 proposes that the government could support parents who choose to homeschool or put their kids in a religious primary school by providing Educational Savings Accounts and school vouchers. Vouchers give public funding for students to attend private schools and have been expanding in use in recent years.

      Critics of school vouchers, like the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers unions, argue that vouchers would diminish public education for vulnerable students by taking away scarce funding.

      Trump has already issued a Jan. 29 executive order called “Expanding Educational Freedom and Educational Opportunity for Families,” which opens the door to expanded use of vouchers. This directly echoes Project 2025 by directing the Education Department to prioritize educational choice to give families a range of options.

      4. Red tape

      For the MAGA faithful, the Education Department exemplifies government inefficiency and red tape.

      Project 2025, for example, contends that from the time it was established by the Carter administration in 1979, the Education Department has ballooned in size, come under the sway of special interest groups and now serves as an inefficient “one-stop shop for the woke education cartel.”

      To deal with the Education Department’s “bloat” and “suffocating bureaucratic red tape,” Project 2025 recommends shifting all of the department’s federal programs and money to other agencies and the states.

      These recommendations dovetail with Trump’s broader attempt to eliminate what he and his MAGA supporters consider wasteful spending and deregulate the government.

      Trump signed an executive order on Jan. 20 that establishes a “Department of Government Efficiency” headed by billionaire Elon Musk. Musk said on Feb. 4 that Trump “will succeed” in dismantling the Education Department.

      An electric school bus is parked outside a public high school in Miami in March 2024.
      Joe Raedle/Getty Images

      Can Trump abolish the Education Department?

      Trump’s executive order shuttering the Department of Education will almost certainly spark legal challenges in court.

      Republican Senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota also introduced a bill in November 2024 to close the department.

      Trump has dismantled other government agencies in his second term, chiefly the U.S. Agency for International Development, without the required congressional approval. A federal judge ruled on March 18 that the dismantling of USAID likely violated the Constitution and ordered the Trump administration to restore all USAID employees’ email and computer access.

      Abolishing the Department of Education would legally require congressional approval and 60 votes to move forward in the Senate, which is unlikely since Republicans only have 53 seats.

      Regardless of such legal challenges, Trump’s March 20 executive order will further weaken the Department of Education even as it remains in the crosshairs.

      This story was updated on March 20, 2025, from an earlier version published originally on Feb. 7, 2025. More

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      Why does Trump want to abolish the Education Department? An anthropologist who studies MAGA explains 4 reasons

      by

      “And one other thing I’ll be doing very early in the administration is closing up the Department of Education.”

      President Donald Trump made this promise in a Sept. 13, 2023, campaign statement. Since then, he has frequently repeated his pledge to close the U.S. Department of Education.

      Project 2025, the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for the Trump administration, also provides detailed recommendations for closing the Education Department, which was created by an act of Congress in 1979.

      On Feb. 4, 2025, Trump described his plans for Linda McMahon, his nominee for education secretary. “I want Linda to put herself out of a job,” Trump said, according to The Associated Press.

      I am an anthropologist and have been studying U.S. political culture for years. During Trump’s first presidency, I wrote a book about the extremist far-right called “It Can Happen Here”. Since then, I have continued to study the Make America Great Again, or MAGA, movement, seeking to understand it, as the anthropological expression goes, “from the native’s point of view.”

      Education policies in the U.S. are largely carried out at the state and local levels. The Education Department is a relatively small government agency, with just over 4,000 employees and a US$268 billion annual budget. A large part of its work is overseeing $1.6 trillion in federal student loans as well as grants for K-12 schools.

      And it ensures that public schools comply with federal laws that protect vulnerable students, like those with disabilities.

      Why, then, does Trump want to eliminate the department?

      A will to fight against so-called “wokeness” and a desire to shrink the government are among the four reasons I have found.

      President Donald Trump waves to supporters at a Jan. 25, 2025, rally in Las Vegas.
      Ian Maule/Getty Images

      1. Education Department’s alleged ‘woke’ mentality

      First and foremost, Trump and his supporters believe that liberals are ruining public education by instituting what they call a
      “radical woke agenda” that they say prioritizes identity politics and politically correct groupthink at the expense of the free speech of those, like many conservatives, who have different views.

      Diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, initiatives promoting social justice – and critical race theory, or the idea that racism is entrenched in social and legal institutions – are a particular focus of MAGA ire.

      So, too, is what Trump supporters call “radical gender ideology,” which they contend promotes policies like letting transgender students play on school sports teams or use bathrooms corresponding with their gender identity, not biological sex.

      Trump supporters say that such policies – which the Education Department indirectly supported by expanding Title IX gender protections in 2024 to include discrimination based on gender identity – are at odds with parental school choice rights or, for some religious conservatives, the Bible.

      Race and gender policies are highlighted in Project 2025 and in the 2024 GOP’s “Make America Great Again!” party platform.

      Trump has repeatedly promised, as he did on Aug. 14, 2024, in North Carolina, to “keep critical race theory and transgender insanity the hell out of our schools.”

      On Jan. 20, 2025, Trump signed executive orders targeting “gender ideology extremism” and “radical” DEI policies. Two weeks later, he signed another one on “Keeping Men Out Of Women’s Sports.

      2. American Marxist indoctrination

      For MAGA supporters, ”radical left“ wokeness is part of liberals’ long-standing attempt to ”brainwash“ others with their allegedly Marxist views that embrace communism.

      One version of this ”American Marxism“ conspiracy theory argues that the indoctrination dates to the origins of U.S. public education. MAGA stalwarts say this alleged leftist agenda is anti-democratic and anti-Christian.

      Saying he wants to combat the educational influence of such radicals, zealots and Marxists, Trump issued executive orders on Jan. 29 that pledge to fight ”campus anti-Semitism“ and to end ”Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schools.“

      3. School choice and parental rights

      Trump supporters also argue that “woke” federal public education policy infringes on people’s basic freedoms and rights.

      This idea extends to what Trump supporters call “restoring parental rights,” including the right to decide whether a child undergoes a gender transition or learns about nonbinary gender identity at public schools.

      The first paragraph of Project 2025’s chapter on education argues, “Families and students should be free to choose from a diverse set of school options and learning environments.”

      Diversity, according to this argument, should include faith-based institutions and homeschooling. Project 2025 proposes that the government could support parents who choose to homeschool or put their kids in a religious primary school by providing Educational Savings Accounts and school vouchers. Vouchers give public funding for students to attend private schools and have been expanding in use in recent years.

      Critics of school vouchers, like the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers unions, argue that vouchers would diminish public education for vulnerable students by taking away scarce funding.

      Trump has already issued a Jan. 29 executive order called “Expanding Educational Freedom and Educational Opportunity for Families,” which opens the door to expanded use of vouchers. This directly echoes Project 2025 by directing the Education Department to prioritize educational choice to give families a range of options.

      4. Red tape

      For the MAGA faithful, the Education Department exemplifies government inefficiency and red tape.

      Project 2025, for example, contends that from the time it was established by the Carter administration in 1979, the Education Department has ballooned in size, come under the sway of special interest groups and now serves as an inefficient “one-stop shop for the woke education cartel.”

      To deal with the Education Department’s “bloat” and “suffocating bureaucratic red tape,” Project 2025 recommends shifting all of the department’s federal programs and money to other agencies and the states.

      These recommendations dovetail with Trump’s broader attempt to eliminate what he and his MAGA supporters consider wasteful spending and deregulate the government.

      Trump signed an executive order on Jan. 20 that establishes a “Department of Government Efficiency” headed by billionaire Elon Musk. Musk said on Feb. 4 that Trump “will succeed” in dismantling the Education Department.

      An electric school bus is parked outside a public high school in Miami in March 2024.
      Joe Raedle/Getty Images

      Can Trump abolish the Education Department?

      At first glance, the Education Department’s days might seem numbered given Trump’s repeated promises to eliminate it and his reported plans to soon sign an executive order that does so. Republican Senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota also introduced a bill in November 2024 to close the department.

      And Trump has taken actions, such as seeking to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development without the required congressional approval, which suggest he may try to act on his Education Department promises.

      Abolishing the department, however, would legally require congressional approval and 60 votes to move forward in the Senate, which is unlikely since Republicans only have 53 seats.

      Trump also made similar promises in 2016 that were unfulfilled. And Trump’s executive actions are likely to face legal challenges – like a DEI-focused higher education lawsuit filed on Feb. 3.

      Regardless of such legal challenges, Trump’s executive orders related to education demonstrate that he is already attempting to “drain the swamp” – starting with the Education Department. More

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      Elon Musk’s journey from climate champion to backing EV-bashing Trump

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      Donald Trump’s attempts to slash incentives for electric cars would cause sales of the vehicles to plummet, with this effort cheered on by a seemingly confounding supporter – Elon Musk, the billionaire chief executive of Tesla and erstwhile champion for action on the climate crisis.Trump has said that he “will revoke the electric vehicle mandate, saving our auto industry and keeping my sacred pledge to our great American auto workers”.The US president, who previously suggested supporters of EVs “rot in hell” before somewhat tempering his rhetoric, has already ditched an aspirational goal for half of all car sales to be electric by the end of the decade, halted some funding for EV chargers and began reversing vehicle pollution standards that prod auto companies to shift away from gasoline models.A key tax credit for Americans buying an EV, worth up to $7,500, is also a major target for elimination, although to overturn this Trump will require Republicans in Congress. Should he succeed, though, the impact would be significant, with a recent study finding that electric car sales could fall by 27% without the incentive.“Turning off the credits would affect a meaningful share of the EV market,” said Joseph Shapiro, a University of California, Berkeley, economist and co-author of the study, who added that while a growing number of people would still go electric, the total number of cars sold would shrink by more than 300,000 a year than if the incentives stayed in place.“You could say that it would be a speed bump in the road but if the US goes all electric in 2090 rather than 2050, say, that matters a lot for the planet,” he said. “A lot of carbon would be emitted in that time.”Trump’s agenda has been enthusiastically backed by Musk, despite the world’s richest person heading Tesla, the market-leading EV company that also relies upon some parts made in China that may be targeted by tariffs imposed by Trump.Musk has said, though, that removal of EV subsidies will hurt rivals such as Ford and General Motors more than Tesla. “Take away the subsidies,” Musk wrote on X, another of his companies, in July. “It will only help Tesla.”There is some logic to this, Shapiro said. Tesla is comfortably the largest EV brand in the US, accounting for nearly half of all sales, and makes more profit per car than its rivals, meaning the removal of incentives would be disproportionately felt by other manufacturers.View image in fullscreen“If the tax credit is removed Tesla could survive and have less competition, they have more headroom to withstand a decrease in the market size,” Shapiro said. Stock in Tesla surged following Trump’s election win.However, Tesla will still be affected. Weakening federal pollution rules, for example, could see a reduction in the amount of carbon credits Tesla sells to other car companies – amounting to $2.7bn just last year – to offset their emissions and avoid fines. Tesla’s sales dipped slightly for the first time in 2024, amid concern among some of its traditionally liberal customer base about Musk’s rightward political turn.“Tesla isn’t immune to sales being impacted, they have some brand loyalty although we don’t know what the impact Elon Musk has had on polarizing consumers yet, that’s still a bit of an unknown,” said Stephanie Valdez Streaty, director of industry insights at Cox Automotive, which estimates EVs will have a 10% share of US car sales this year, up from 8% in 2024.Regardless, Musk’s focus has now seemingly shifted away from EVs to other areas such as robotics, artificial intelligence and his SpaceX venture, Valdez Streaty said. He has also embraced rightwing fixations shared by Trump. In a speech after the president was inaugurated, Musk made no mention of cars but said that the “future of civilization is assured” with “safe cities, secure borders, sensible spending, basic stuff”.He added: “We’re going to take Doge to Mars,” in reference to the “department of government efficiency” he heads in an effort to curb spending. “Can you imagine how awesome it will be to have American astronauts plant the flag on another planet for the first time? Bam. Bam. Yeah. How inspiring would that be?”Concern over the climate crisis is seemingly no longer one of Musk’s priorities, despite previously saying he is “super pro-climate” and in 2016 calling for a “popular uprising” against the fossil fuel industry because the world was “unavoidably headed toward some level of harm and the sooner we can take action, the less harm will result”.When Trump removed the US from the Paris climate agreement in 2017, Musk said he was quitting a presidential advisory body in protest. “Climate change is real,” he tweeted at the time. “Leaving Paris is not good for America or the world.”But Musk has had little to say after Trump, who memorably called climate change “a giant hoax”, once again pulled the US from the Paris deal and issued a flurry of orders to ramp up oil and gas drilling and stymie renewable energy production. In January, Musk said: “Climate change risk is real, just much slower than alarmists claim.”Critics say it is unlikely Musk will reflect the growing alarm voiced by scientists, and the American public, over the impacts of dangerous global heating within the Trump administration.“It just shows he’s an opportunist, really,” said Paul Bledsoe, who was a climate adviser to Bill Clinton’s White House. “He now downplays the dangers of climate change, but I think in the back of his mind he’s thinking about using government contracts for geoengineering as the costs of climate change become so undeniably expensive.”Those who know Musk say that he soured on Democrats in part after not being invited to a major summit on electric cars held by the White House in 2021, after Joe Biden became president.“That was an unforced error by Biden,” said Robert Zubrin, a leading advocate for human exploration of Mars who said he helped introduce Musk to the idea of Martian expansion. “And in the past two years, Elon Musk has redefined himself from the white knight of environmentalists to a Bond villain.”Zubrin said that Musk’s “central motivation is the desire for eternal glory for doing great deeds. He wants to save civilization because he wants to be famous for saving civilization.“This desire for eternal glory for doing great deeds has motivated his primary accomplishments, Tesla and SpaceX,” he added. “But it also has a dark side to it, and this has been exploited.”Tesla was contacted about its stance towards the EV tax credits but did not respond. More

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      If Trump really cared about his ‘favourite’ US president, he would leave Gaza and Greenland alone | Simon Jenkins

      by

      Donald Trump’s favourite US president was William McKinley. Who he? In his inaugural address, Trump pledged to restore the name Mount McKinley to North America’s highest peak. It was an anti-woke dig at Barack Obama, who had given it the Alaskan native name of Denali. But why this idolatry?The answer has since become clear. McKinley was the president (1897-1901) who introduced super-tariffs in his first year in office to protect the US’s post-recessionary manufacturers. Some were as high as 57%, and were seen as an alternative fundraiser to income tax. McKinley was also appealing to Trump for presiding over the founding of a hesitant US empire beyond the North American continent, one from which it has since retreated. Apart from that, the man was unostentatious, intelligent and impeccably polite, faults that Trump is clearly ready to forgive. His only carelessness was to be assassinated six months into his second term.Trump has blatantly sought to mimic McKinley’s policies over the past fortnight. It is therefore worth studying what his hero actually did. Unlike Trump, McKinley made sure that his tariffs were approved by Congress. Indeed, the constitution then required it – and technically still does. He was emphatic that they should be based on treaties embracing reciprocity. They should be treaties.In the event, the tariffs were not seen as critical to economic recovery. They were also blamed for a 25% rise in the cost of living. McKinley lost enthusiasm for them and became instead a champion of global free trade. He formed a group of nations to pursue an open-door policy, aimed at strengthening trade with China. He never saw tariffs as tactical weapons of foreign policy, nor used Trump’s description of his trading partners as “atrocious”.As for seeking new colonies, historians regard McKinley as at best an accidental imperialist. A year after his 1897 tariffs were introduced, the US was faced with the effective collapse of the Spanish empire, with armed insurrections in Cuba and the Philippines. Like many Americans, McKinley welcomed the arrival of new and free states. But he was adamantly against aiding them in wars against Spain. His much-cited quote was that “war should never be entered upon until every agency of peace has failed”. He had seen the civil war, and never wanted to see another one.View image in fullscreenYet he was under pressure. This was a time when European nations were reaching their imperial limits. It was an opportunity for the US to spread its wings, and many of McKinley’s colleagues were eager for the challenge. Over the course of 1898, war fever against Spain became hysterical. The Hearst and Pulitzer newspapers daily demanded intervention in the Caribbean and the Pacific. Showered with petitions, Congress demanded, in effect, that McKinley declare war on Spain.He did so under protest. His belligerent assistant navy secretary, the young Teddy Roosevelt, had already mobilised the navy, aiming it at Cuba and the Philippines. Roosevelt then formally resigned his position and led a volunteer regiment to fight in Cuba amid a blaze of publicity. He had accused McKinley of having “no more backbone than a chocolate eclair”. He was nonetheless chosen as McKinley’s vice-president in 1900.These interventions did not result from any threat to US territory or sovereignty. They were naked acts of aggression. They were spectacularly egged on by Rudyard Kipling’s poem, The White Man’s Burden, directed at the Philippines and published in the New York Sun. It challenged America to take over from the British empire, to fight “the savage wars of peace” against “sloth and heathen folly”.McKinley throughout was on the side of negotiation and peace. The Spanish war ended in a treaty signed in Paris in December 1898, which ceded America varying measures of control over Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines. McKinley agreed with an anti-imperial majority in Congress that, once pacified, the US should deny any “intention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction, or control”. The government of the islands must be left to their people. The only “imperial” acquisition that McKinley did undertake was that of Hawaii, to prevent it falling into the hands of Japan.View image in fullscreenOn McKinley’s assassination in 1901, it was Roosevelt who assumed control of these territories, did not leave and retained them into the 20th century. It was also Roosevelt who backed rebels in seizing Panama from Colombia and giving the US control of the canal’s building and fortification. This was highly controversial. Roosevelt was challenged in Congress and by the New York Times for “an act of sordid conquest”. If Trump is seeking to emulate an earlier president, it is surely Roosevelt – described as the “bucking bronco” of American imperialism – he should be worshipping.Almost every president comes to office asserting if not isolationism, then a refusal to commit money or resources to setting the world to rights. Yet all are seduced by the power of office and the language of the founding fathers. They come to see the US’s “manifest destiny” as being to champion freedom and democracy wherever it is threatened. From Woodrow Wilson to Franklin Roosevelt, from JFK to Johnson and the Bushes father and son, all came to see themselves as global crusaders for that cause.In 2016, Trump refreshingly described the interventionism of his predecessors as a “total disaster”. He stuck to his guns and almost entirely avoided troop deployments during his first term of office. The world at least knew where it stood.His emphasis on putting America’s interests first was repeated in 2024. But this time the prospect is uncertain. In his inaugural speech, he described his task as one that “expands our territory … and carries our flag into new and beautiful horizons”. He even used the fell phrase, manifest destiny, as being one he would “pursue … into the stars … to plant the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars”. Not content with Mars, he has set his sights on Panama, Greenland and Gaza.These territories might not match the ambitions of a Kipling or a Roosevelt, but Trump’s current intentions are hardly pacific. If he is to deify McKinley, he might first seek to find out a bit more about him.

      Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist

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      California city partners with US border patrol to surveil beach for migrant boats

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      Leaders of the southern California city of San Clemente, located about halfway between Los Angeles and San Diego, are partnering with US Customs and Border Protection to place surveillance cameras along the city’s beach to detect boats carrying passengers attempting to enter the country without authorization.At a Tuesday gathering of the town’s city council, members ordered city manager Andy Hall to begin coordinating with Customs and Border Protection (CBP).Mayor Steven Knoblock – a Republican who was elected in November on a public safety platform – told the Los Angeles Times the cameras are intended to spot fishing boats, called pangas, attempting to dock on San Clemente’s shores and to lower crime rates.“People have observed pangas crammed with illegal aliens, hitting our beach, and then scattering in the community or jumping into a van, which is parked nearby and ready to receive them,” Knoblock told the LA Times.He added: “San Clemente has had significant crime issues with the sophisticated Chilean burglary rings hitting our neighborhoods on a very systematic basis and continues to be a problem.”The state of California has prohibited law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration authorities since 2017, when the state passed its “sanctuary state” law in an effort to prevent mass deportations during the first Trump administration. After Donald Trump’s victory in the November 2024 election, Democratic California governor Gavin Newsom gathered lawmakers for a special legislative session to “Trump-proof” the state. But since wildfires devastated much of southern California, the state is now seeking federal aid to rebuild.Before San Clemente city council members voted to collaborate with CBP on the camera initiative, the city had been considering joining a lawsuit against the state’s sanctuary law.San Clemente will not technically be violating the sanctuary state law by coordinating with CBP. The law specifically prevents law enforcement from cooperating with CBP, but San Clemente does not have its own police force. Instead, the city will work directly with border patrol.Knoblock has proposed installing cameras that operate 24/7 and cover about 7 miles of territory.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I’m recommending the cameras being aimed oceanward with a rotating telescopic lens and thermal imaging for night viewing,” Knoblock told the LA Times. “This additional visibility will hopefully provide interdiction prior to [migrants] hitting our beaches.”City officials are also considering ways to open access to the footage to the public.This is not Knoblock’s first time challenging California sanctuary laws. As a city council member in 2022 he sponsored a measure calling for California to become a “sanctuary city for life” – in contrast with California’s laws permitting abortion.Nor is it the first time a California city has challenged the state’s sanctuary law for immigrants. In December, the San Diego county sheriff said she would cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement despite state laws prohibiting such activity. More

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      Be clear about what Trump and Musk’s aid axe will do: people will face terror and starve, many will die | Gordon Brown

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      An earthquake of magnitude 7.0 or above could not have caused more carnage. Recent floods in Asia and droughts in Africa have been catastrophic, yet they have inflicted less damage and affected fewer people than the sudden withdrawal of billions of dollars of US aid from the world’s most volatile hotspots and its most vulnerable people. Coming alongside President Trump’s plan for a US takeover of Gaza, the US administration’s resolve to shut down its international aid agency sends a clear message that the era when American leaders valued their soft power is coming to an end.But while the Gaza plan is as yet only on the drawing board, USAid cuts – which will see funding slashed and just 290 of the more than 10,000 employees worldwide retained, according to the New York Times – have already begun to bite this week. We have seen the halting of landmine-clearing work in Asia, support for war veterans and independent media in Ukraine, and assistance for Rohingya refugees on the border of Bangladesh. This week, drug deliveries to fight the current mpox and Ebola outbreaks in Africa have been stopped, life-saving food lies rotting at African ports, and even initiatives targeting trafficking of drugs like fentanyl have been cut back. One of the world’s most respected charities, Brac, says that the 90-day blanket ban on helping vulnerable people is depriving 3.5 million people of vital services.One critical programme has been granted a limited waiver. Pepfar, created by Republican president George W Bush, offers antiretroviral prescriptions to 20 million people around the world to combat HIV and Aids. Its activities escaped the ban only after warnings that a 90-day stoppage could lead to 136,000 babies acquiring HIV. But it has still been blocked from organising cervical cancer screening, treating malaria, tuberculosis and polio, assisting maternal and child health, and efforts to curtail outbreaks of Ebola, Marburg and mpox.Not only does the stop-work edict mean that, in a matter of days, the US has destroyed the work of decades building up goodwill around the world, but Trump’s claim that America has been over-generous is exposed as yet another exaggeration. Norway tops the list as biggest donor of official development assistance (ODA) as a percentage of gross national income (GNI) at 1.09%; Britain is at just over 0.5%, albeit down from the UN target of 0.7%; but the US is near the bottom of the advanced economies at 0.24% – alongside Slovenia and the Czech Republic. It is simply the size of the US economy – 26% of world output – that means that the 0.24% adds up to more aid than any other country. The US provided $66bn in 2023, making USAid a leader in global humanitarian aid, education and health, not least in addressing HIV/Aids, malaria and tuberculosis.On Sunday night, Trump told reporters that USAid had been “run by a bunch of radical lunatics, and we’re getting them out”. “I don’t want my dollars going towards this crap,” his press spokesperson added, with one of the president’s chief advisers Elon Musk calling the agency a “viper’s nest of radical-left marxists who hate America”. “You’ve got to basically get rid of the whole thing. It’s beyond repair,” he said. “We’re shutting it down.”View image in fullscreenIndeed, in a post on X last weekend, Musk shared a screenshot quoting the false claim that “less than 10 percent of our foreign assistance dollars flowing through USAID is actually reaching those communities”. The implication is that the remaining 90% was diverted, stolen, or just wasted. In fact, the 10% figure is the proportion of the budget going directly to NGOs and organisations in the developing world. The remaining 90% is not wasted – instead, it comprises all the goods and services that USAid, American companies and NGOs, and multilateral organisations deliver in kind, from HIV drugs to emergency food aid, malaria bed nets, and treatment for malnutrition. It is simply untrue that 90% of aid falls into the wrong hands and never reaches the most vulnerable.In fact, the initial blanket executive order proved to be such a blunt instrument – the only initial exemptions were for emergency food aid and for military funding for Israel and Egypt – that it had to be modified to include exceptions for what the government called “life-saving humanitarian assistance”, although it stopped short of defining them. “We are rooting out waste. We are blocking woke programs. And we are exposing activities that run contrary to our national interests. None of this would be possible if these programs remained on autopilot,” said a statement released by the state department. The new secretary of state, Marco Rubio, now wants his department to control the whole budget and close down USAid entirely. “Does it make America safer? Does it make America stronger? Does it make America more prosperous?” Rubio asked in a statement that suggested that the America which generally worked multilaterally in a unipolar era is now determined to act unilaterally in a multipolar one.This new stance is not just “America first” but “America first and only” – and a gift to Hamas, IS, the Houthi rebels, and all who wish to show that coexistence with the US is impossible. The shutdown is also good news for China, whose own global development initiative will be strengthened as it positions itself to replace America. Desperate people will turn to extremists who will say that the US can never again be trusted. And by causing misery and by alienating actual and possible allies, far from making America great again, the cancellation of aid will only make America weaker.The tragedy for the planet is that US aid cuts come on top of diminishing aid budgets among the world’s richest economies, from Germany to the UK. International aid agencies are now so underfunded that in 2024, for the second consecutive year, the UN covered less than half of its humanitarian funding goal of nearly $50bn – at a time when increasing conflicts and natural disasters necessitate more relief donor grants than ever. Yes, we can discuss how greater reciprocity can create a fairer system of burden sharing – but further cuts in aid threaten more avoidable deaths, and a poorer world will ultimately make the US poorer too.US generosity is often seen as mere charity, but it is in the country’s self-interest to be generous because the creation of a more stable world benefits us all. We all gain if USAid can mitigate the spread of infectious diseases, prevent malnutrition in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Sudan, halt the upsurge of IS in Syria and support a fair, humanitarian reconstruction of Gaza and Ukraine. Only the narrowest and most blinkered view of what constitutes “America first” can justify the disaster America has unloaded on the world.

      Gordon Brown is the UN’s special envoy for global education and was UK prime minister from 2007 to 2010 More