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      Militarized LA: troops here to stay as Trump doubles down on deployments

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      Shortly before last November’s presidential election, before anyone could envision him defying his “America first” political base and launching a bombing raid on Iran, Donald Trump offered a preview of how and why he would want to deploy the military on US soil.It was, the president said, to deal with “the enemy within”.“We have some very bad people. We have some sick people. Radical left lunatics,” he said in a Fox News interview that prompted widespread condemnation at the time. “I think it should be very easily handled by … national guard, or if really necessary, by the military, because they can’t let that happen.”Trump did not specify what it was he didn’t want to let happen – only that while he promised to put an end to America’s “forever wars” overseas, he regarded domestic political adversaries, perhaps like the ones who have been protesting in massive numbers in Los Angeles and across the US this month, as a national security threat worthy of a military response.When thousands of protesters took to the streets of Los Angeles earlier this month to protest against his administration’s heavy-handed immigration sweeps targeting workers in factories and car washes, he wasted little time making good on what he had promised.The reality of Trump sending thousands of national guard troops and US marines into LA earlier this month has not matched his rhetoric – yet the shock of it may have been dulled by the headlines coming out of the Middle East. The troops have largely kept a low profile, their duties restricted to guarding federal buildings and, at least according to the administration, accompanying immigration enforcement agents and other federal officials as they go about their business.Still, as the dust settles on two weeks of impassioned street protests and occasional vandalism and violence in downtown Los Angeles, the deployment continues to unnerve California’s political leaders, national Democratic party figures worried about who might be next, as well as many ordinary citizens and influential figures within the military itself.“The US military exists to defend the nation from foreign threats, not to police American streets or intervene in political disputes at home,” a group of retired four-star generals and admirals and high-profile former Pentagon officials said in a statement, signalling just how far Trump has strayed from precedent.The group, including a former secretary of the army, a former secretary of the navy, and Michael Hayden, a retired air force general who led the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency under presidents of both parties, are part of a lawsuit seeking to reverse the deployment, which they say “puts both service members and civilians at risk of harm and violates longstanding constitutional limits on government power”.Some observers have gone further, seeing a direct link between Trump’s willingness to send troops into American city streets and his decision to involve the United States in the growing conflict between Israel and Iran. “That kind of authoritarian aggression [rarely] stays inside the country’s borders,” Julia Ioffe, a national security expert and founding editor of Puck News, said of the California deployment on 11 June. “Didn’t think I’d be right so soon,” she wrote on Friday, as Trump’s war plans for Iran were ramping up.The Trump administration has vowed to keep the troops in place for at least 60 days, to ensure – as Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, told a House defense appropriations subcommittee – “that those rioters, looters and thugs on the other side assaulting our police officers know that we’re not going anywhere”.The threat of a more muscular military confrontation with “the enemy within” has not gone away, either, though one of the questions remaining is whether the military or the many agencies under the control of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) – immigration enforcement, border patrol, FBI – are more likely to take the lead.Two days before the No Kings rallies, Kristi Noem, the DHS secretary, was in Los Angeles and said the federal government’s goal was not just to maintain order on the streets but “to liberate the city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country”. Seconds after delivering these lines at a news conference, FBI agents under Noem’s authority manhandled and handcuffed Alex Padilla, a California senator who interrupted her to ask a question.Tom Homan, Trump’s “border czar”, has threatened to arrest the governor, Gavin Newsom, and LA’s mayor, Karen Bass, if they stand in the way of the immigration sweeps. At least two elected officials, the New Jersey congresswoman LaMonica McIver and New York City comptroller, Brad Lander, have indeed been arrested for alleged interference in Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations.The military has so far stayed out of these headline-grabbing events, their role largely eclipsed by continuing immigration raids conducted by masked federal agents refusing to disclose their names or badge numbers, but experts and constitutional scholars say their very presence risks destabilizing what is already a volatile and politically charged situation. “The risk of escalation, or of someone making a mistake, is always present and in these situations actually quite high,” said Chris Mirasola, a national security expert at the University of Houston Law Center. “Just the deployment itself is escalatory.”View image in fullscreenIn deciding to take charge of the California national guard, over Newsom’s objections, Trump stopped short of invoking the Insurrection Act used by past presidents to help quell civil unrest, most recently during the 1992 LA riots when marines rode alongside southern California police patrols in burning neighborhoods.Rather, he invoked a rarely used power to mobilize the military to “temporarily protect” federal property and personnel. Lyndon Johnson used the same protection power to guarantee the safety of civil rights demonstrators in Alabama in 1965, in defiance of the state’s segregationist governor, George Wallace, and Richard Nixon used it in an ill-fated attempt to get the national guard to deliver the mail during a postal strike in 1970. But scholars said they were not aware of it being used any time since.Mirasola said he was a little perplexed, given the vehemence of Trump’s rhetoric about “violent, insurrectionist mobs”, that the president opted for this softer approach. “Maybe he just wanted the theatrics of getting the military on the streets,” Mirasola said. “This is a way of doing that while still preserving some space to continue to escalate.”It was also possible, he suggested, that Trump could not talk his military commanders into taking a more aggressive approach. “The military establishment is extremely allergic to the Insurrection Act,” he said. “It’s one of the few things bred into every single officer.”According to veterans and advocacy groups for service members being deployed to Los Angeles, the military also prides itself on being entirely apolitical and has no appetite to be drawn into a political conflict involving Trump or anyone else. Perhaps for this reason, the national guard and the marines have been barely visible in Los Angeles.At the first big downtown protest, on 8 June, the Los Angeles police moved protesters away from the national guard’s staging area at a federal courthouse complex and parked their patrol cruisers in such a way that the guardsmen could not come out and intervene.Six days later, in the final stages of the No Kings protest, a hard core of protesters briefly faced off against a line of marines stationed on the front steps of the downtown federal building. “Leave LA!” the crowd chanted, prompting the marines to deploy riot shields and push the protesters away from the building. The Los Angeles police quickly issued a dispersal order, sent in officers on horseback, and fired volleys of teargas to send most of the crowd scattering.Otherwise, the only reported incident has involved a military veteran who inadvertently crossed a line of police tape outside a federal building in west Los Angeles. One of the marines on guard wrestled him to the ground and cuffed him, but he was released shortly after and told reporters he was treated “very fairly”.California has sued the Trump administration over the military deployment and seemed to score an early win in court last week when a district judge said the president had exceeded his authority and needed to return control of the state national guard immediately. An appeals panel has since reversed that ruling, however.Part of California’s problem in arguing its case is that the national guard has been pressed into non-traditional activities with increasing frequency in recent years, undermining the notion of a strict separation between military and civilian activities.Several states, under both Republican and Democratic leadership, have drafted the guard into border patrol duties despite severe morale issues among the troops and opposition from the military brass. New Mexico has asked its national guard to work as substitute teachers in understaffed schools. Florida has had them filling in as prison guards, and New York has seconded its guard to police the New York City subway.Supporters of California’s lawsuit argue that none of these scenarios are appropriate. And deploying the national guard for non-military purposes is even more inappropriate, they say, when it happens for an overtly partisan purpose over the objections of the state governor. “The military shouldn’t be in the business of domestic law enforcement. That’s not what they’re trained to do,” said Beau Tremitiere, a lawyer with Protect Democracy, an advocacy group supporting the suit.“If Americans weren’t aware of the risks posed by politicized domestic deployments by the military before the events in Los Angeles, they certainly are now. Healthy and respectful civil-military relations are yet another bulwark of US democracy that the president is trying to erode. We’re all on notice.” More

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      Free buses, more housing, taxing the rich: how Zohran Mamdani has gone viral in the New York mayor’s race

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      Zohran Mamdani trailed Andrew Cuomo, the frontrunner to be the next New York City mayor, by 30 points just a few months ago.Now, just ahead of the Democratic primary on Tuesday, the 33-year-old democratic socialist has bridged the gap with Cuomo, a politician so of the establishment that a giant bridge north of New York literally bears his last name.The surge in support for Mamdani, an aspiring rapper turned state politician, with a penchant for turning out snappy social media videos and a track record of progressive, leftwing ideas, has shown his clear ability to win over young voters. It also didn’t hurt when he won the backing of the progressives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders this month.Mamdani’s rise has lent a new edge to an election that was in danger of becoming a procession for Cuomo, the former New York governor who resigned in disgrace in 2021 after being accused of sexual harassment.For a Democratic party struggling to stand up to Donald Trump and his “make America great again” acolytes, the closely watched election will offer an insight into what rank-and-file Democrats desire: a good old boy promising a steady hand on the tiller, or a fresh outsider who has energized parts of a weary New York electorate with plans to freeze rent and make buses free citywide.Mamdani’s rise has been boosted by a social media following that dwarfs his rivals’.He has almost a million followers across Instagram and TikTok, where he posts funny and self-aware videos selling himself to the public. The clips frequently show him walking through New York, or riding the subway, things that are unlikely to come naturally to the multimillionaire Cuomo.After supporters commented on Mamdani’s frequently exuberant hand gestures in the videos, he posted a clip where he promised to keep his hands in his pockets, removing them twice only to have them slapped down by a man on the street.“This election is in your hands,” a caption read on the video, in which Mamdani urged people to register to vote. The video was left to roll at the end as Mamdani laughed at the shtick.Born in Uganda to Indian parents, Mamdani moved to New York City when he was seven years old, and had a long-term interest in politics. Last week, a former classmate shared a video in which she recalled how Mamdani won a “mock presidential election” in 2004. A cricket and soccer player – “he usually played defense or defensive midfield, and would sprint down the field and score”, a former teammate told the Guardian – he was elected to represent an area of Queens in the state assembly in 2021.View image in fullscreenMamdani has bold ideas for what he would do as mayor. In a city with a longstanding affordable housing crisis, he wants to freeze rent increases for people in applicable buildings, and build 200,000 new units over the next 10 years. He says he would eliminate fares on city buses, something which would cost at least $630m but, according to Mamdani, would generate $1.5bn in economic benefits. (New York City has an annual budget of $115.1bn for 2026.) He says he can fund his proposals by increasing the corporate tax rate and bringing in a flat tax on people earning more than a million a year.But Mamdani’s limited political record, more than his proposals, has come under scrutiny as he has flown closer to the sun.There was more than a whiff of jealousy from Mamdani’s opponents during the Democratic debate on 4 June, with even his progressive rivals taking a shot. Jessica Ramos, a state senator – theoretically a more powerful position than Mamdani’s role as state representative – lamented that she had not run for mayor four years earlier, adding: “I thought I needed more experience, but turns out you just need to make good videos.”Ramos’s slight mirrored Cuomo’s persistent refrain that Mamdani lacks the experience to be mayor. As Mamdani has risen in the polls, Cuomo has stepped up the attacks on his rival, painting him as too radical and inexperienced to lead the city in a barrage of TV ads and mailed-out flyers. In one proposed mailer, a pro-Cuomo group appeared to have darkened the skin and beard of Mamdani, who would be New York’s first Muslim mayor, a move Mamdani criticized as “​​blatant Islamophobia”. A spokesperson for the group said the ad had been proposed by a vendor and upon review “it was immediately rejected for production and was subsequently corrected”.For his part, Mamdani has repeatedly sought to tie Cuomo to Trump, pointing out that many of his donors backed Trump in the presidential election.“Oligarchy is on the ballot. Andrew Cuomo is the candidate of a billionaire class that is suffocating our democracy and forcing the working class out of our city,” Mamdani’s campaign said in an email to supporters on Tuesday.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn a more pointed critique of his opponent, Mamdani said on the debate stage: “I have never had to resign in disgrace. I have never cut Medicaid, I have never stolen hundreds of millions of dollars from the MTA, I have never hounded the 13 women who credibly accused me of sexual harassment, I have never sued for their gynecological records, and I have never done those things because I am not you, Mr Cuomo.”The New York Democratic primary will use ranked-choice voting, allowing voters to select multiple candidates, which Mamdani hopes could boost his chances. Last week, he announced he was “cross-endorsing” with Brad Lander, a fellow progressive who on Tuesday was arrested by Ice agents while visiting an immigration court.The winner of the primary is not guaranteed to become the 111th mayor of New York, but it is highly likely in a city where registered Democrats heavily outnumber Republicans. The incumbent, Eric Adams, who won the 2021 election as a Democrat but is running this year as an independent candidate, is deeply unpopular in the city. Last year, Adams was charged with taking bribes and accepting foreign campaign contributions. The charges were dropped in April after the Trump administration intervened.While popular with young people and the left of the party, Mamdani has lagged behind Cuomo among Black and Latino voters – though a recent poll showed Mamdani gaining support from both.The Cuomo campaign and its backers have also raised the issue of Mamdani’s criticism of Israel’s war on Gaza. He has said the country is committing genocide, a characterization that Cuomo, a fiercely pro-Israel Democrat who has courted the city’s large Jewish population, has sought to exploit. In a recent post on X, Cuomo all but accused Mamdani of fomenting antisemitism. Mamdani says he has built a coalition including Jewish New Yorkers, and would form a department to investigate hate crimes.In an election where Cuomo’s strategy has been to largely avoid the press and the public, the energy has been with Mamdani.A rally with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the New York congresswoman and a fellow democratic socialist, drew thousands of people to a music venue in Manhattan in mid-June, and Mamdani’s appearances at hip music venues across the city have drawn enthusiastic crowds.“For the longest time, mayoral candidates have been kind of the same type of guy. Either they’re like legacy New York politics people, or businessmen that kind of pivoted through,” said Tomas Carlson, a 23-year-old Mamdani supporter.“This is the first time in a while where I saw a candidate that had new ideas. And I think the Democratic party in general, we need a sort of fresh breath of air.” More

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      ‘I’m scared to death to leave my house’: immigrants are disappearing from the streets – can US cities survive?

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      At Hector’s Mariscos restaurant in the heavily Latino and immigrant city of Santa Ana, California, sales of Mexican seafood have slid. Seven tables would normally be full, but diners sit at only two this Tuesday afternoon.“I haven’t seen it like this since Covid,” manager Lorena Marin said in Spanish as cumbia music played on loudspeakers. A US citizen, Marin even texted customers she was friendly with, encouraging them to come in.“No, I’m staying home,” a customer texted back. “It’s really screwed up out there with all of those immigration agents.”Increasing immigrant arrests in California have begun to gut-punch the economy and wallets of immigrant families and beyond. In some cases, immigrants with legal status and even US citizens have been swept into Donald Trump’s dragnet.The 2004 fantasy film A Day Without a Mexican – chronicling what would happen to California if Mexican immigrants disappeared – is fast becoming a reality, weeks without Mexicans and many other immigrants. The implications are stark for many, both economically and personally.“We are now seeing a very significant shift toward enforcement at labor sites where people are working,’ said Andrew Selee, president of the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. “Not a focus on people with criminal records, but a focus on people who are deeply integrated in the American economy.”In California, immigrant workers comprise bigger shares of certain industries than they do for the nation overall. Here, the foreign-born make up 62% of agriculture labor and 42% of construction workers, according to the American Immigration Council. About 85% of sewing machine operators in garment factories are foreign-born. Fully 40% of entrepreneurs are foreign-born.Nationally, about a quarter of workers are foreign-born in agriculture and construction, according to the American Immigration Council. More than half of drywall hangers, plasterers and stucco masons are foreign-born. And in science, technology, engineering and math – the so-called Stem fields – nearly a quarter of workers are foreign-born, said the council.The current enforcement trend, Selee said, will “lead to a strategy that will have big economic implications if they continue to go after people who are active in the labor force rather than those who have criminal records”.In both California and across an ageing nation, about half of the foreign-born are naturalized US citizens – a crucial defense in immigration raids and arrests.View image in fullscreenSelee said the current strategy was launched when “the Trump administration realized they weren’t getting large numbers by following traditional approaches to pursuing people who are priority targets for deportation”.Now the threat and chilling effect from immigration raids can be felt in disparate communities from Dallas to El Paso to rural Wisconsin – among migrants and, in some cases, the employers who hire them.In the small town of Waumandee in Wisconsin, dairy farmer John Rosenow said he can’t find US citizens who can withstand the rigors of dairy work.“Fact of the matter is if you want to eat or drink milk you are going to need immigrant workers,” he said.“Yes, we want to get rid of the people who are bad actors,” Rosenow said. “But the people I know, people who are working in the dairy farms, are just hard-working people, getting things done, doing jobs Americans don’t want to do.”In California’s San Joaquin valley, rancher and melon-grower Joe Del Bosque has heard reports of US agents chasing workers in the strawberry fields south of his operation.The San Joaquin valley, known as the food basket of the world, is heavily dependent upon foreign-born workers, especially at harvest time, Del Bosque said. He currently has 100 people working for him and that number will double as the harvest picks up in the coming weeks.“They’re going to disrupt the harvest and food chain. This will hurt the American consumer,” Del Bosque said. “These people are hard workers. They come to work, especially if they have families here or in Mexico.”In a surprise pivot late last week, Trump said there would be an easing of the crackdown in agriculture and the hospitality industries. The New York Times first reported that new guidance from a senior Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) official called for a “hold on worksite enforcement investigations/operations” in the agriculture sector and restaurants and hotels. The Ice guidance, issued in an email, also said agents were not to make arrests of “noncriminal collaterals”, a key point for those who note that many detained immigrants have had no criminal record. However, the Department of Homeland Security told staff it was reversing that guidance on Monday.Some business leaders and immigrants remain scared and confused.View image in fullscreenRaids, or the threat of them, are also taking an emotional toll on families and generating protests in Chicago, Seattle, Spokane, New York, San Antonio, Dallas and elsewhere. Bigger protests are expected in days to come.In El Paso, protesters flipped the White House script that undocumented immigrants were “criminals”. They waved mostly US flags and shouted “No justice, no peace. Shame on Ice.”Among the protesters was Alejandra, a US citizen and a junior at the University of Texas at El Paso. She asked for partial anonymity for fear of reprisal against her mixed-status family.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionShe said she took to this border city’s streets to honor the sacrifice of her grandparents who migrated from Ciudad Juárez. “All it takes is for you to look at who took that first step to bring you the life you have currently,” Alejandra said.In the Dallas area, a Guatemalan worker said he had been absent from construction sites for days.“There’s too much fear, too much to risk,” said Gustavo, 34, requesting his surname be withheld because he is undocumented. “I fear tomorrow, tonight. I may be deported, and who loses? My family back in Guatemala.”Tough immigration enforcement has been the top-polling issue for Trump. But favor may be slipping. A poll released this week by Quinnipiac University showed Trump had a 43% approval rating on immigration and a 54% disapproval rating. That poll was conducted between 5 and 9 June – after several days of protests.Meantime, back in Santa Ana, a city of about 316,000 in southern California, shop owner Alexa Vargas said foot traffic had slowed around her store, Vibes Boutique, with sales plummeting about 30% in recent days.On a recent day, the shop’s jeans and glitzy T-shirts remained un-browsed. Metered parking spots on the usually busy street sat empty. A fruit and snow cone vendor whom Vargas usually frequents had been missing for days.“It shouldn’t be this dead right now,” Vargas, 26, said on a Tuesday afternoon. “People are too scared to go out. Even if you’re a citizen but you look a certain way. Some people don’t want to risk it.”Reyna, a restaurant cook, told her boss she didn’t feel safe going to work after she heard about the immigration detentions at Home Depot stores in the city.The 40-year-old, who is in the US without legal status, said she fears becoming an Ice target. Current immigration laws and policies don’t provide a way to obtain legal status even though she’s been living in the US for more than 20 years.“I need to work but, honestly, I’m scared to death to leave my house,” she said.For now her life is on hold, Reyna said.She canceled a party for her son’s high school graduation. She no longer drives her younger children to summer school. She even stopped attending behavioral therapy sessions for her seven-year-old autistic son.Reyna said she can’t sleep. She suffers headaches every day.Early on Tuesday, she said, immigration agents in an unmarked vehicle swept up her husband’s 20-year-old nephew, who is a Mexican national without legal status. The scene unreeled across from her home.Her autistic son, a US-born citizen, has begged her to allow him to play on the front yard swing set.“No, honey. We can’t go outside,” Reyna told him.“Why?” he asked.“The police are taking people away,” she explained. “They are taking away people who were not born here.”This story was co-published with Puente News Collaborative, a bilingual non-profit newsroom, convener and funder dedicated to high-quality, fact-based news and information from the US-Mexico border. More

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      Trump’s war with Iran signals perilous shift from showman to strongman

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      So the military parade that brought tanks to the streets of Washington on Donald Trump’s birthday was more than just an authoritarian ego trip. It was a show of strength and statement of intent.Exactly a week later, sporting a “Make America great again” (Maga) cap in the situation room, the American president ordered the biggest US military intervention in decades as more than 125 aircraft and 75 weapons – including 14 bunker-busting bombs – struck three Iranian nuclear sites. Trump called it a “spectacular military success” – but it remains unclear how much damage had actually been inflicted.Trump’s gamble was cheered by Israel and Republican hawks. It alarmed some in his Maga base who fell for his rhetoric promising to be an isolationist who would end forever wars. It left egg on the face of Pakistan, which only a day earlier had said it would nominate Trump for the Nobel peace prize.But there was no inconsistency for those paying close attention to the president’s war on democracy, which since January has included a draconian crackdown on immigration – including masked government agents grabbing people off the street and deporting them without due process – and the deployment of marines and national guard troops against protesters in Los Angeles.Trump’s strike on Iran was another example of both his disregard for public opinion – six in 10 Americans opposed US military involvement in the conflict between Israel and Iran, according to an Economist/ YouGov poll released on 17 June – and his contempt for Congress.Democrats were quick to point out that his actions were a clear violation of the constitution, which grants Congress the power to declare war on foreign countries. There was no evidence of an imminent threat to the US that might have provided grounds for Trump to act unilaterally.Adam Schiff, a Democratic member of the bipartisan Senate national security working group, noted there was no intelligence showing Iran had made the decision to build a nuclear bomb or was constructing the mechanism of a bomb. And in a breach of protocol, leading national security Democrats were not informed of the strikes until after Trump announced them on social media.But once again, Democrats find themselves shut out of power and shouting into the void. Many called for Congress to pass a measure based on the War Powers Act that seeks to block “unauthorized hostilities” in Iran. Congresswoman Summer Lee of Pennsylvania called it a necessary step to “rein in this out-of-control, wannabe dictator”. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York called for Trump’s impeachment.Fat chance. Republicans, who control the majorities of both chambers, are willing accomplices in their own subjugation. They remained mostly silent as Trump unleashed Elon Musk’s Doge on the federal bureaucracy, gutting USAID and other agencies under Congress’s purview. In the House of Representatives, they buried their differences to pass Trump’s signature “one big beautiful bill”.Therefore, do not expect Republicans to pull the emergency brake on a Trump train that might be hurtling towards world war three. Mike Johnson, the House speaker, and John Thune, the Senate majority leader, led a chorus of praise for the attack. Frequent Trump dissenters such as Nikki Haley and Mitch McConnell joined the commendation.Perversely, this most unconventional of presidents who ruined the party brand had reverted to Republican Original, taking the kind of action that would meet approval from George W Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, John Bolton and John McCain.The America First wing, meanwhile, was mostly muted and subdued. Trump’s cult of personality typically trumps differences over policy – and that is not likely to change over a military operation that took place more than 7,000 miles away with apparent success. (A damaging Iranian retaliation, or any suggested of a need for US boots on the ground, could of course change that narrative.)After all, Trump’s isolationism has always been selective: there is Dove Trump and Hawk Trump. Last year, Dove Trump falsely claimed to be the only president in 72 years to have no wars; in fact, Jimmy Carter never declared war or lost a single soldier to hostile action. In his inaugural address in January, he said: “We will measure our success not only by the battles we win but also by the wars that we end – and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into.”Yet Hawk Trump looks familiar enough to any student of US foreign adventurism. In his first term, he ordered cruise missile strikes in Syria, expanded military operations in Somalia, intensified the campaign against the Islamic State, dropped a Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb in Afghanistan and ordered a drone strike that killed the Iranian general Qassem Suleimani. In his second term, Trump’s bombing campaign in Yemen has led to the deaths of almost as many civilians in two months as in the previous 23 years of US attacks on Islamists and militants in the country.View image in fullscreenThese contradictions are where JD Vance, the vice-president, becomes a useful foil. He has been an outspoken isolationist, openly questioning why the US should care about Ukraine’s borders rather than its own. During the Iran crisis he has remained staunchly supportive of Trump, standing beside the president during Saturday night’s televised address and defending the intervention on Sunday’s Meet the Press programme on the NBC network.“We’re not at war with Iran; we’re at war with Iran’s nuclear programme,” Vance said, using the type of doublespeak that the Bush administration specialised in to conjure phantom weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.He added in the same interview: “I certainly empathise with Americans who are exhausted after 25 years of foreign entanglements in the Middle East. I understand the concern, but the difference is that back then we had dumb presidents and now we have a president who actually knows how to accomplish America’s national security objective.”Trump has called on Iran to “agree to end this war”, saying that “now is the time for peace”. It remains to be seen whether the strikes will push Tehran to de-escalate the conflict or widen it further.The former would allow Trump and his army of loyalists to declare victory. The latter would give him potential for a “rally around the flag” effect that puts Democrats in a bind. Nothing suits an authoritarian better than an external threat.The Trump who threw a birthday parade and used the military like a prop invited ridicule. The Trump who deploys troops to the streets of Los Angeles and drops bombs on Iran is altogether more dangerous.Exit the showman. Enter the strongman. More

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      David Lammy refuses to say if UK supported US strikes on Iran nuclear facilities

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      The UK foreign secretary has repeatedly refused to say if the UK supported the US military strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities on Saturday or whether they were legal.Interviewed on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Monday for the first time since the US launched airstrikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities, David Lammy also sidestepped the question of whether he supported recent social media posts by Donald Trump that seemed to favour regime change in Tehran, saying that in all his discussions in the White House the sole focus had been on military targets.Lammy said western allies were waiting for battlefield assessments of the impact of the strikes, but it was possible Iran still had a stockpile of highly enriched uranium, although the strikes “may also have set back Iran’s nuclear programme by several years”.Ever since the US strikes, senior figures in the Labour government have tried to make their criticism of the action only implicit rather than explicit.Lammy tried to focus on urging Iran to return to the negotiating table, insisting that Iran was in breach of its obligations by enriching uranium at levels of purity as high as 60%.The UK Foreign Office has denied Iranian reports that in a phone call on Sunday with the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, Lammy had expressed regret about the US strikes.Asked if the airstrikes were legal, Lammy said three times it was for Washington to answer such questions.But in the course of a 15-minute interview on BBC Radio 4, he at no point backed the US airstrikes, saying he was not going to get into the issues of whether they conformed with either article 2 or article 51 of the UN charter, clauses that permit military action in self-defence.Saying “there is still an off-ramp for the Iranians”, he admitted discussions with Iran involving France, Germany and the UK last Friday in Geneva had been “very tough”.He said: “Everyone is urging the Iranians to get serious about the negotiations with the E3 and the US.” Iran is currently refusing to talk to the US or Israel while it is under military attack.Lammy said he still believed Iran was engaging in “deception and obfuscation” about its nuclear programme, but added “yes, they [the Iranians] can have a civil nuclear capability that is properly monitored that involves outsiders but they cannot continue to enrich to 60 %”.His remarks left open whether the UK supported the US negotiating position of insisting on zero uranium enrichment inside the country, or whether he was prepared to accept that Iran could enrich to 3.67% level of purity, the maximum allowed in the Iran nuclear deal signed in 2015 and from which the UK, unlike the US, has not withdrawn.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHe also refused to say if he agreed with the latest US intelligence assessment that Iran was close to securing a nuclear weapon, saying instead he relied on the report from the UN nuclear inspectorate, the International Atomic Energy Agency. In its latest reporting, the IAEA said it had no evidence that Iran was seeking a nuclear bomb.He said: “You can only deal with the Iranian nuclear programme diplomatically. If Iran is able to enrich beyond 60%, is able to get a weapon, what we will see is nuclear proliferation across the Middle East.”Asked about Trump’s references to regime change he said: “I recognise there is a discussion about regime change but that is not what is under consideration at this time. The rhetoric is strong but I can tell you, having spoken to the secretary of state, having sat in the White House, that this targeted action is to deal with Iran’s nuclear capability.”When pressed to comment on a claim by Carl Bildt, the former Swedish prime minister, that by “being blind” on the issue of the legality of the US’s action, European leaders undermined their position on Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Russia, Lammy insisted there was no moral equivalence between the Russian invasion of a sovereign country and the actions the US had taken in Iran. More

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      Rich Americans flock to apply for New Zealand’s ‘golden visas’ after rules relaxed

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      Wealthy Americans are leading the charge in applications for New Zealand’s “golden visas” after rules on applying were relaxed.New Zealand’s coalition government in February loosened the requirements for its Active Investor Plus visa – commonly known as the golden visa – offering residency to wealthy foreigners in a bid to boost the flagging economy.The new rules, which came into effect in April, lowered investment thresholds, removed English-language requirements and cut the amount of time applicants must spend in the country to establish residency from three years to three weeks.Immigration New Zealand says the scheme has attracted 189 applications, representing 609 people, under the new rules. Prior to the changes, the visa attracted 116 applications over 2.5 years.Nearly half the investors who have applied hail from the US, representing 85 applications, followed by China, 26, and Hong Kong, 24. Residents from countries across Asia and Europe make up the rest of the applicants.“Nearly everyone who is applying is applying because of the changes they’re seeing under the Trump administration,” said Stuart Nash, a former Labour party minister, who now runs Nash Kelly Global, an immigration and relocation consultancy.Under the new rules, 149 applied under the visa’s “growth” category, which requires a minimum $5m investment over three years, and 40 applied under the “balanced” category, which requires a minimum $10m investment over five years.Immigration has approved 100 applications in principle and seven have transferred their funds – netting New Zealand $45m.There has been a significant increase in interest in the visa since the changes, with investors drawn to New Zealand’s stability and innovation in sustainable business and technology, said Benny Goodman, New Zealand Trade and Enterprise’s general manager for investment.“This is a rare combination, and one that deeply resonates with investors thinking about legacy, not just returns,” he said.Global instability makes New Zealand – with its stable democracy, independent judiciary and safe banking system – an attractive destination, particularly to Americans, Nash said.“We are seeing more people looking for a safe haven than a tax haven – and that’s what we have got here in New Zealand, Nash said.It is not the first time New Zealand has attracted the interest of Trump-weary Americans and other wealthy foreigners seeking to make New Zealand their “bolthole” at a time of societal division.Following Trump’s 2016 election, visits to the country’s immigration website rose almost 2,500%. After the supreme court decision removing abortion rights, New Zealand’s immigration site visits quadrupled to 77,000. After Trump’s 2024 election win, New Zealand’s property market saw a surge of interest from the US.Meanwhile, billionaires acquiring residency or citizenship in New Zealand have been subject to political controversy in the past. In 2017, news broke that Peter Thiel, the billionaire co-founder of PayPal, was granted citizenship despite spending only 12 days in the country, prompting former Labour prime minister Jacinda Ardern to tighten the rules on investment visas and foreign home ownership in 2018.The loosening of the visa rules is one of a number of Ardern-era policies the right-wing coalition has wound back in its bid the boost the economy. Earlier this year it relaxed other more restrictive visa settings to attract so-called ‘digital nomads’ to New Zealand.New Zealand’s economy suffered as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and the country experienced the biggest contraction in GDP of any developed country in the world in 2024, due to high interest rates and unemployment.In a statement on Monday, economic growth minister Nicola Willis said so far the visa could represent “a potential $845 million of new investment in New Zealand business”.“New investors don’t just bring their dollars to our shores, they also bring skills, knowledge and experience that will drive future economic development,” Willis said. “It’s a win-win.” More

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      Western leaders call for diplomacy, but they won’t stop this war – they refuse to even name its cause | Nesrine Malik

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      Since the war on Gaza started, the defining dynamic has been of unprecedented anger, panic and alarm from the public, swirling around an eerily placid political centre. The feeble response from mainstream liberal parties is entirely dissonant with the gravity of the moment. As the US joins Israel in attacking Iran, and the Middle East heads toward a calamitous unravelling, their inertness is more disorienting than ever. They are passengers in Israel’s war, either resigned to the consequences or fundamentally unwilling to even question its wisdom. As reality screams at politicians across the west, they shuffle papers and reheat old rhetoric, all while deferring to an Israel and a White House that have long taken leave of their senses.At a time of extreme geopolitical risk the centre presents itself as the wise party in the fracas, making appeals for cool heads and diplomacy, but is entirely incapable of addressing or challenging the root cause. Some are afraid to even name it. Israel has disappeared from the account, leaving only a regrettable crisis and a menacing Iran. The British prime minister, Keir Starmer, has called for de-escalation. But he referred to the very escalation he wishes to avoid – the US’s involvement – as an alleviation of the “grave threat” posed by Iran, all the while building up UK forces in the Middle East.The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, underlines the importance of diplomacy while making sure to assert that Iran is the “principal source” of instability in the region. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, had seemed to be inhabiting the real world, warning against the inevitable chaos that would be triggered by regime change in Iran and in repeating the mistakes of the past. But by Sunday France had fallen into line, joining the chorus calling for de-escalation and restraint in vague general terms, and reiterating “firm opposition” to Iran’s nuclear programme.If this seems maddeningly complacent to you, let me reassure you that you are not, in fact, missing something. The war with Iran is very bad news, and introduces a number of profoundly destabilising scenarios: regime change with no day-after plan, leaving a large cadre of armed military and security forces in play; the amassing in the region of western military forces that could become targets and flashpoints; or simply a prolonged war of attrition that would seize up the region and open a large festering wound of anger and militarisation. It’s also – and this is something Israel’s assaults have inured us to – killing hundreds of innocent people. To say nothing of the fact that it is, above all the extant risks, illegal.But most western leaders continue to treat it as just another chapter of unfortunate but ultimately fixed realities of the world to manage. And here is the sinkhole at the heart of the entire response to Israel over the past year and a half – a vacant centre. Trump is Trump. No one is expecting him to have a coherent, brave and stabilising response to Israel. But the problem predates him: a political establishment of ostensibly liberal, reliable custodians of stability that has no moral compass, and no care for the norms it constantly claims to uphold. Under its watch, international and human rights law has been violated again and again in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and now Iran. Its answer has been to get out of Israel’s way at best, and arm it and provide it with diplomatic cover at worst. Joe Biden’s administration set the tone, and European governments followed. Collectively, they have clung on to a status quo of unconditional support for Israel and, in doing so, shattered the legal and moral conventions that imbued them with any measure of integrity or authority.And yet they still carry on amid the wreckage. Their pronouncements about the importance of diplomacy sound like echoes from an era that has long passed – one before a livestreamed genocide demolished any semblance of a coherent system of international law. What the current moment has revealed is a cohort of regimes fundamentally unsuited to crisis, fit only for management; a crop of politicians whose very role is not to rethink or challenge the way things are, but simply to shepherd geopolitical traffic. Their mandate is indeed to stabilise, but only in the sense of locking in a world order of failing assumptions and hierarchies. It is not to make the world a better place, but to cast a veneer of credibility over why it is necessary that we live in this worse one.This is not to be confused with “pragmatism”. Pragmatism implies a lack of position or vested interest. What is obscured by the language of reluctant engagement is that it is underpinned by beliefs that are defined not by values, but by tribal supremacy. Iran is a country which, in the eyes of a liberal establishment, is never fully sovereign because it has diverged from western interests. It has no right of response when attacked (and in fact, must show restraint when it is). Its people have no right to expect a careful consideration of their future, or indeed the entire region’s. Israel, on the other hand, is a super sovereign, and never culpable.This default position is so naked in its hypocrisy, so ignorant and parochial in its worldview, so clear in its disregard for human life, that it represents a colossal erosion of sophistication in political discourse, and a new low in contempt for the public. Support for Israel can only be defended by facile, logic-defying references to its right to defend itself even when it is the aggressor, and Iran’s “threat to the free world”. Forgive me, but is that the same free world that backed unilateral attacks on four Middle East territories by Israel, a country whose leader is wanted by the international criminal court? At this point, the biggest threat to the free world is itself, which will sacrifice everything to ensure that not a single challenge to its power is allowed to pass.The end result is that such leaders are not only irresponsible, they are unrepresentative, unable and unwilling even to manufacture consent any more. An accelerating nihilism has taken hold. Mandates fray as centrist governments and political parties stray further and further from the public, which in Europe declares a historically low level of support for Israel. In the US (including Trump supporters), a majority opposes involvement in war with Iran. And so the gap between a detached politics and bloody reality widens even further. The managers of western hegemony hurtle into the void, taking all of us with them.

      Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist More