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      Trump mineral deal with Ukraine offers hope but little in the way of security

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      If you want to get an idea of how Donald Trump’s mind works (and this can change from day to day, as we know), it’s worth taking a look at his TruthSocial website. As I write, beneath a video pinned to the top of his feed featuring an AI-generated vision of “Trump Gaza” (complete with casinos, shopping malls and a giant golden statue of the man himself), can be found a clue to the frenetic presidential activity of the past month.

      In a post threatening legal action against any writer or publisher whose “Fake books” offends, Trump refers to himself as “a President who is being given credit for having the Best Opening Month of any President in history”. Apparently George Washington is second on that list – and, given that Potus #1 took 33 days to sign the first bill passed under the new US constitution, you could say Potus #47 has left him trailing in his wake.

      Of course #47 appears to face fewer constitutional constraints than his illustrious predecessor.

      Sadly, though, Trump will be unable to include in this list the deal he has reportedly just struck with Volodymyr Zelensky which swaps a share in Ukraine’s mineral wealth for an as yet unspecified security guarantee.

      Precise details of this deal aren’t confirmed. But we’re told that the original US$500 billion (£394 billion) demand has been dropped in return for a share in an investment fund into which Ukraine will contribute 50% of the revenue from its mineral resources. “What better could you have for Ukraine than to be in an economic partnership with the United States?” commented US national security adviser, Mike Waltz.

      Sign up to receive our weekly World Affairs Briefing newsletter from The Conversation UK. Every Thursday we’ll bring you expert analysis of the big stories in international relations.

      But for the sake of social media, a deal’s a deal and can be trumpeted as such. Zelensky is heading to Washington to sign the agreement and we shall find out in due course whether or not this will assure Ukraine’s future security. There is still the actual peace deal with Russia to work out, after all.

      Another landmark foreign policy deal brokered by the Trump White House was with the Taliban in 2020 and concerned the future of Afghanistan. And, as Philip A. Berry writes, Zelensky can take little comfort in that.

      Berry, a research fellow at King’s College London, who has extensive experience of working with anti-narcotics agencies in Afghanistan, points to similarities in the way Trump managed negotiations with the Taliban and his deal-making with Ukraine and discussions so far with Russia. The Afghan government was largely cut out of the negotiations, as Trump has threatened to do to Ukraine with regards a peace deal. And like the current situation, Trump’s regular public utterances seriously undermined the talks. Berry concludes:

      Trump’s Taliban deal excluded the US’s ally, conceded too much to an adversary, and was partly motivated by the perception of wasting American dollars in a far-off land. Unfortunately, these hallmarks are all too evident in the president’s stance on Ukraine. Zelensky can only hope that things work out better this time around.

      Read more:
      How Trump the ‘master deal-maker’ failed when it came to negotiating with the Taliban in Afghanistan

      Trust will be absolutely vital if the US and Ukraine are to conclude this agreement and, more critically, if they are to reach terms with Russia that will guarantee the “just peace deal” that Zelensky craves, writes David J. Wilcox of the University of Birmingham. Wilcox points to the relationship of trust built by Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan in the 1980s which paved a way for a series of nuclear weapons reduction treaties between the Soviet Union and the US.

      It has just been announced that preparations are being made for “expert-level” talks between the US and Russia, but, as Wilcox points out, “any negotiations to end the war will rest ultimately on those two states and their leaders”. And at present, nothing has been publicly said about whether Putin and Zelensky have even agreed to meet.

      Read more:
      Ukraine war: why negotiations depend on trust

      Meanwhile, what do we know about Ukraine’s mineral wealth and what sort of return Trump can expect for the US? Dafydd Townley, an expert in international security at the University of Portsmouth, stresses that Trump’s recent decision to impose punitive tariffs against Beijing has closed off China as a source of key minerals on which the US has been reliant up until now.

      It’s a clue, writes Townley, as to why the US president seemed very keen on bringing his deal-making facilities to bear on Greenland, which also has large deposits of desirable minerals.

      Interestingly, as Townley points out, Russia has taken control of about 20% of Ukraine’s mineral deposits under the territory it now controls (which America would be open to exploiting according to an offer made by Vladimir Putin’s aides at the recent talks in Saudi Arabia).

      It’s also worth noting that Ukraine’s extraction sector has suffered over the past decade from chronic under-investment, thanks to the ongoing hostilities between Russia and Ukraine. As a result it could be some years before the US gets what it needs from the deal it has reportedly struck with Kyiv.

      Read more:
      Why Trump really wants Ukraine’s minerals — China has put theirs off limits

      Three long years

      Amid all the shuttle diplomacy and wheeler-dealing taking place around them, at the start of the week the embattled Ukrainian population marked the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion. They were joined by more than a dozen foreign leaders who gathered in Kyiv to express their continuing support.

      Sombre gathering: European leaders in Kyiv mark the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
      EPA-EFE/Javad Parsa

      As the conflict moves into its fourth year, Stefan Wolff, an international security expert at the University of Birmingham, takes a look at the broader geopolitical implications of the conflict in the era of Trump.

      He sees worrying parallels with the Munich conference of 1938 which sealed Czechoslovakia’s fate. Not, as you might expect, in terms of Trump’s apparent appeasement of Putin – but because, like Munich, talks on the fate of a sovereign nation are being held without that nation being present. Wolff writes:

      There is every indication that Putin is unlikely to stop in or with Ukraine. And it is worth remembering that the second world war started 11 months after Neville Chamberlain thought he had secured “peace in our time”.

      This, of course, is the prospect that has both terrified and stiffened the resolve of Ukraine’s western allies. But Wolff also points to limitations in this analogy, in that he doesn’t believe that Trump is acting out of fear that he is in a weaker position than Putin, as did Neville Chamberlain and the French prime minister Édouard Daladier.

      It’s rather that Trump sees himself as part of a triumvirate of world leaders, along with Putin and China’s president, Xi Jinping, who have the opportunity to carve out spheres of influence and establish a new world order based on the exercise of raw power.

      Read more:
      Ukraine war: Trump is not trying to appease Putin – he has a vision of a new US-China-Russia order

      Richard Youngs, meanwhile, sees the dawning of what he calls a “no world order”. Youngs, an international relations expert at the University of Warwick, sees an era of flux, where the stability of the past 80 years is disintegrating without anything stable or concrete to replace it.

      Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, with EU commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, and European Council president, Antonio Costa.
      EPA-EFE/Ukrainian presidential press service

      Several European leaders, including Keir Starmer who is today visiting Trump in Washington, are due to meet this Sunday ahead of a bigger defence summit in Brussels next week, to continue discussions about how to respond to the changing Ukraine situation. Reports suggest a European defence bank or fund that would include the UK may be on the cards.

      Youngs certainly believes that European powers will need to consider practical measures in order to bind themselves into more cohesive relationship and ensure their continuing autonomy. One of those will be in boosting their defence capabilities – something that is now gathering pace in the face of US pressure.

      But more radical thinking will be needed, writes Youngs, who has coined the term “geoliberalism” as a way of visualising the sort of thinking about the values and certainties that can bind Europe together in the face of global turbulence.

      Read more:
      No world order: Europe needs more radical thinking for the Trump era

      Alex Titov, meanwhile, believes that for all the talk of “deals” to end the violence, both sides have their reasons for wanting to continue, given that their stated positions remain diametrically opposed and irreconcilable.

      Russia’s battlefield progress, while steady, is slow and there’s no real prospect of it forcing a capitulation from Kyiv in the next 12 months. But – particularly with the radically different US position under Donald Trump, neither is there any chance of Russia being forced off the territory it has captured. Ominously, Titov concludes, this could mean that “the bloodiest battles of the war are yet to come”.

      Read more:
      Ukraine war three years on: the bloodiest battles may be still to come

      A new way of governing

      After a whirlwind first month, Trump held his first cabinet meeting this week, with a special appearance from his right-hand man Elon Musk, who reportedly got to speak more than anyone else. Musk, of course, has been responsible for much of the maelstrom of activity that has caused so much disquiet and is providing a lot of work for lawyers who are pushing back against many of the new adminstration’s measures on the grounds they are unconstitutional.

      Special guest star: Elon Musk addresses Donald Trump’s first cabinet meeting.
      EPA-EFE/Al Drago/pool

      Musk, Trump and his vice-president J.D. Vance have, in turn, pushed back against judges who have issued injunctions to either halt or delay some of their measures. Musk, in a fit of pique this week when three judges halted three of the administration’s policies, complained bitterly “What is the point of having democratic elections if unelected activist ‘judges’ can override the clear will of the people? Well, that’s no democracy at all!”

      Stephen Lovell, professor of modern history at King’s College London, has been looking at the way that Trump and his team are attempting to bend the US constitution to their will, comparing their approach to that of Vladimir Putin. Putin, as we know, never saw a constitutional loophole he didn’t want to wriggle through or otherwise obliterate.

      Read more:
      Trump, Putin and the authoritarian take on constitutionalism

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      Ice contractor plans for surveillance boom under Trump migrant crackdown

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      The Geo Group, the largest single private contractor to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), said it was building out its surveillance business to be able to monitor hundreds of thousands or millions more immigrants than it already does.The Geo Group, a private prison corporation and parent company of BI Inc, has contracted with Ice for nearly 20 years to manage the agency’s electronic monitoring program. It currently tracks approximately 186,000 immigrants using devices such as ankle monitors, smart watches and a facial recognition app, according to public Ice data. Due to increasing demand from Donald Trump’s administration, which has promised mass deportations, company executives said that they expect that number to grow past its previous peak of 370,000 to 450,000 immigrants within the next year. The remarks were made during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call on Thursday morning.“A little over two years ago, the ISAP contract utilization peaked at approximately 370,000,” George Zoley, the executive chair of the Geo Group, said on an earnings call on Thursday, referring to the agreement between Ice and Geo. “Returning to that utilization level would generate incremental revenues of $250m and even more if the contract exceeds the prior peak of utilization.”While the company is still ramping up its production of additional GPS units in anticipation of an expanded Ice contract, executives said they are able to monitor “several hundreds of thousands” of people and are trying to position themselves to be able to monitor millions of people. Zoley said that the Geo Group, and its competitor in running private prisons and detention centers, Core Civic, are in expedited discussions with Ice to expand current contracts for detention facilities as well as electronic monitoring.“It’s a fluid situation, but it’s picking up pace, if I may say,” he said. “We’ve gone from conceptual proposals … to substantive pricing and operational discussions. But the procurement process is moving at a speed that is unprecedented. We’ve never seen anything like this before.”The company’s vast electronic monitoring program was instituted as an alternative to detention in 2004 and has been entrusted to Geo group subsidiary BI Inc since then. Many of those forced to wear the ankle monitors, designed and produced by BI, have complained the devices can overheat, shock them or have been put on too tightly. The company has pitched its smart watch location tracker and smart phone app, called SmartLink, as a lower-level of surveillance than the monitor. Executives said on Thursday’s earnings call, however, that they expect a return to a reliance on the physical ankle monitors.“I think there is going to be a preference in the beginning for the ankle monitors which represents the high-security level of monitoring,” Zoley said.Though the company has yet to receive an indication from Ice on when the agency expects to reissue a new contract for the electronic monitoring program, called the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program, executives say they believe the agency is focused on expanding the number of people being tracked through the existing program. The Geo Group is investing $16m into building out its inventory of ankle monitors in order to “be in a position to scale up the federal government’s utilization of ISAP by several hundreds of thousands to upwards of several millions of participants as required”, according to Zoley.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionCompany executives also said they believed that under the Laken Riley Act, which requires the detention of undocumented immigrants charged with violent crimes or theft, those detained will be required to be monitored under the ISAP program “indefinitely” if there is not enough capacity in detention facilities. The executives signaled their intent to expand the company’s surveillance program so that it could monitor an estimated 7 to 8 million people on the non-detained docket who entered the US through non-authorized pathways and then are released into the US. They are also building up capabilities to monitor the estimated 9.5 to 10 million people in the US who are otherwise undocumented in anticipation of Ice’s requests.“Given the size of the population our view is in addition to increased detention capacity … the Laken Riley Act will require significant ramp-up of electronic monitoring services to ensure proper trafficking of persons on non-detained docket and their compliance of the requirements of their immigration court proceedings,” Zoley said. More

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      Trump and California don’t see eye to eye, but critique of high-speed train has many on board

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      Californians know their state is a punching bag for Donald Trump’s administration, a “paradise lost” that the president intends to wrest back from the “radical left lunatics”. But when Trump took aim at the state’s much-delayed high-speed rail project earlier this month, saying it was “the worst managed project” he’d ever seen, some of those leftwingers – and more moderate voters – found themselves in the unusual position of conceding he might have a point.California’s beautiful dream of a bullet train whisking passengers from Los Angeles to San Francisco in less than three hours has been more than 16 years in the making, approved by voters but dogged by so many delays, broken deadlines and cost overruns that it has only just reached the initial stages of laying down track.Originally the whole 494-mile route – stretching south beyond Los Angeles to Anaheim, home to Disneyland – was supposed to be finished by 2020, at a cost of around $30bn. Now, the state’s high-speed rail authority is refocusing its ambitions on a truncated 171-mile middle section in California’s Central valley, at a cost of more than $35bn and a tentative completion date of 2033. The budget for the entire line has ballooned to more than $100bn, with no end date in sight.“It’s impossible that something could cost that much,” Trump complained to reporters in the Oval Office in the midst of his slash-and-burn campaign to cut government spending across the board. He and his transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, have launched an investigation and are threatening to withhold more than $4bn in federal grants previously approved by the Biden administration.California officials from the governor, Gavin Newsom, down have made a show of defending the project, calling it a catalyst for economic development that, after more than $13bn of investment to date, has progressed too far to justify any change of plan. “We just have to accept the responsibility of where we are, and that’s exactly what we are doing,” Newsom said last month at a ground-breaking ceremony for a railhead outside Bakersfield, at the southern end of the truncated Central valley line.With or without federal funding, California will have to come up with the lion’s share of the budget and currently has no plan in place to do so, beyond a study proposed by the state legislature to explore public-private partnerships and the possibility of using revenue from new economic development along the track to keep financing more of it.That comes on top of what supporters and detractors alike describe as years of top-heavy bureaucracy, too much money spent on consultants, and endless negotiating with property owners and public utilities who have felt little pressure to respond to the rail authority’s requests.The inspector general responsible for overseeing the high speed rail authority just issued a pair of reports, one anticipating that the project will keep missing deadlines including the 2033 completion date for the Central valley stretch, and the other detailing long delays caused by the latest negotiations to move water, electricity and gas lines out of the way of the rail route.Republicans, many of them opposed in principle to high-speed rail, have taken to calling the project “the train to nowhere”. But they are not the only ones. David Lazarus, a liberal commentator for the Los Angeles television news station KTLA who is in favor of a bullet train built right, said the state was “in the middle of a boondoggle of bad decisions that is now light years from its original plan and seems to be getting worse”.Elected Democrats who feel similarly have been largely silent since Trump and his so-called “department of government efficiency”, led by Elon Musk, started voicing their criticisms in the wake of last November’s presidential election. In the past, though, many of those Democrats have voiced concern that a botched high-speed rail line in California might spell the death of climate-friendly mass transit in the future.View image in fullscreenFiona Ma, the Democratic state treasurer, told the Guardian in 2023 she thought the government should get out of rail-building and defer to private enterprise because “government is not in the business of being efficient”. That same year, a Democratic state assembly member, Corey Jackson, said: “I don’t think history’s going to judge us well from the decisions we’re making on the project right now.”Newsom, Ma and Jackson did not agree to an interview request or requests for comment.For now, the high-speed rail line retains modest public support. An opinion poll conducted earlier this month for KTLA showed that 54% of California voters still believed it was a good investment, slightly down from a similar survey published by the Los Angeles Times three years ago. Whether those numbers can hold for another decade remains an open question, however, and some Republicans are already smelling blood in the water.View image in fullscreen“This is not the project the voters approved,” Republican assembly member Bill Essayli said in December. “I believe it should go back to the voters to ask them if they want to continue this project and say what it’s actually going to cost and accomplish.”Another Republican assemblymember, Alexandra Macedo, has introduced long-shot legislation to redirect state funding for the rail project to wildfire prevention and water infrastructure projects – both hot topics in the wake of last month’s devastating fires that destroyed whole neighborhoods in and around Los Angeles.The high speed rail authority, meanwhile, remains sanguine about the risk of losing federal funding, saying it welcomes the Trump administration’s investigation. “We stand by the progress and impact of this project,” the chief executive Ian Choudri said in a statement.Asked how the authority planned to continue financing the project, with or without federal money, a spokesperson said they were looking at a variety of options including private investment and government loans. “We are building what we can where we can as other funding is identified,” spokesperson Kyle Simerly said. “It is common for major infrastructure projects to be built in phases to spread costs and manage complexity.”View image in fullscreenMany policy insiders, including Ma, favor the private rail-building approach taken by the Florida-based company Brightline, which is building a high-speed line from Las Vegas to the eastern Los Angeles suburbs. In fact, Brightline is considering a branch line to connect its route to the future high-speed LA-San Francisco line.The only problem? The connection point, in the desert town of Palmdale north of Los Angeles, is 95 miles short of the Central Valley high-speed segment and unlikely to be linked up to it for decades.The branch line would mainly serve as a roundabout way for Brightline passengers to reach downtown Los Angeles from Las Vegas, including a slow stretch of commuter rail over the final 60 miles. On the map, the route looks like a giant wiggle around the San Gabriel mountains instead of a much straighter line along the freeway system. Still, in January, the Biden administration awarded a last-minute $1m federal grant to prepare the Palmdale station for high-speed rail traffic – an act of faith the Trump administration looks unlikely to repeat. More

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      Jimmy Kimmel on Trump: ‘Somehow, he’s managed to make everything disgusting’

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      Late-night hosts talk Donald Trump’s proposed “gold card” visas, Trump’s first cabinet meeting and confusion over who leads the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge).Jimmy KimmelTrump announced another disquieting idea on Wednesday – to allow foreigners to purchase new “gold card” visas for $5m apiece – and Jimmy Kimmel was not happy about it. “What a good idea – I’ve always said our immigration system should run more like the customer rewards program at a casino in Atlantic City,” he joked on Wednesday evening.“Somehow, he’s managed to make everything disgusting,” Kimmel continued. “This is basically what he does at Mar-a-Lago. He’s selling memberships to a country club, but this club is actually our country. The land of the free, and by free I mean $5m bucks.”Trump also said he would consider selling the visas to Russian oligarchs: “I know some Russian oligarchs who are very nice people, it’s possible.”“Let me tell you something: he may know oligarchs, but not as well as they know him,” Kimmel quipped.Kimmel also mocked Elon Musk, who tried to defend Doge’s slash-and-burn approach to civil servant layoffs as an organization that owned up to mistakes. During Trump’s first cabinet meeting, Musk conceded that Doge “accidentally” canceled USAid’s Ebola prevention program, but “restored it immediately”.“Oh, well, that’s fine then,” Kimmel joked. “He only canceled our Ebola prevention for a couple of days, calm down, everybody.“That’s not an excuse,” he added. “Just ask the doctor – ‘As soon as I realized I unplugged my mother’s life support to charge my iPhone, I immediately plugged it back in.’”Stephen ColbertOn Wednesday, Trump held his first full cabinet meeting of his second term, “and everybody was there”, said Stephen Colbert on The Late Show. “It was a who’s who of why them?”“As commander in chief, Trump made it immediately clear who is in charge: Elon Musk,” Colbert continued. Musk, who attended the meeting, introduced himself as “humble tech support” because “that is almost a literal description of the work that the Doge team is doing”.“Well, of course. I mean, we’ve all had that call with tech support,” Colbert mocked. “Hello? Yes, you’re computer’s frozen? Have you tried turning it off and then firing 4,000 people with an email.”Trump rambled on in nonsense fashion about Doge, somehow landing on the topic of circumcision. “That long, rambling response actually reminds me of circumcision, because somebody really should have cut that dickhead off,” Colbert quipped.While Musk is supposedly head of Doge, the White House continues to insist that he’s not in court filings and through its press secretary. Finally, on Tuesday, for reasons that remain unclear, the White House stated the agency is led by the career civil servant Amy Gleason. “Why Gleason? We don’t know for sure!” said Colbert.At the time of the announcement, Gleason was on vacation in Mexico. When reached by reporters, she declined to comment. “I am not surprised,” said Colbert. “It’s really hard to speak clearly when you’re under a bus.”The Daily ShowAnd on The Daily Show, Desi Lydic mocked Trump’s proposed “gold card” visas, which he described as “green card privileges plus”.“Oh? Green card privileges plus? See, I was still getting America with ads,” Lydic joked. “Quick question: if I’m unhappy with America, can I cancel my subscription after seven days?”According to Trump, the gold card visas will be “a route to citizenship, and wealthy people will be coming into our country by buying this card. They’ll be wealthy, and they’ll be successful and they’ll be spending a lot of money.“Did this guy just put a cover charge on America?” Lydic wondered. “It’s $5m to get in, but he’ll waive it if you bring three hot girls with you.“I mean, I guess this beats the old way of becoming a citizen? Which was to marry Donald Trump,” she added.“Now you might be thinking, wait a second, if the US is just going to put citizenship up for sale, doesn’t that mean can any monster can buy one as long as they’re rich? Well, according to Trump, yes,” she continued, pointing to Trump’s comment that he knows Russian oligarchs who are “very good people”.“Seems like Trump watched Anora, and his takeaway from that movie was ‘we need to do more to help out that rich Russian teenager. He’s so good at sex!’” Lydic joked. More

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      ‘It’s been a lifesaver’: millions risk going hungry as Republicans propose slashing food stamps

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      During a recent grocery store visit, Audrey Gwenyth spent $159.01 on items such as eggs, Greek yogurt, edamame snaps, bagels, chia seeds, brownie mix, oatmeal, milk, cilantro rice and pork sausage. The entire bill was paid via her electronic benefit transfer, or EBT, card, which is how recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), pay for groceries at participating stores, farmers markets and restaurants.“Because I’m a single mom and I don’t receive child support, I don’t have a lot of help in the world,” said Gwenyth, a mother of two toddlers, whose food budget is around $100 per week. She shares many of her EBT purchases on social media to help others make the most of their benefits. “I could not pay for food if it wasn’t for EBT. It’s been a lifesaver.”In the US, more than one in eight households say they have difficulty getting enough food. Snap, formerly known as food stamps, helps more than 42 million people fill those gaps, and is considered the country’s most effective tool to fight hunger. But now, the USDA-run program is facing attacks from House Republicans who see deep cuts as a way to pay for an extension of the 2017 tax bill that benefits the very wealthy.On Tuesday night, the House narrowly passed a budget resolution that called for $4.5tn in tax cuts and a $2tn cut in mandatory spending, which includes programs such as Snap and Medicaid.While it is unknown exactly how much would be slashed from Snap, some estimates say funding could be reduced by at least 20%. The House budget resolution enables committees to cut $230bn from the agriculture committee over 10 years in order to help extend tax cuts for the top 1%, according to the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.This means the millions who rely on Snap would receive less help, and many of them could lose assistance altogether, even amid rising food costs and inflation.“Hunger and poverty aren’t going to stop because you cut a program,” said Gina Plata-Nino, Snap’s deputy director at the Food Research & Action Center (Frac). “The price of food keeps going up, things are more expensive, people are concerned about tariffs in terms of consumer goods and people relying on these benefits will not have any recourse.”Cuts could be made by limiting how people use Snap, removing benefits from those who lose their jobs and arbitrarily capping maximum benefits. Congress could also convert Snap into a block grant and have states pay a portion of benefits, which could limit access to assistance at a time when families are struggling already.Anti-hunger groups are especially alarmed about proposed alterations to the Thrifty Food Plan, which the USDA uses to determine benefit amounts and the annual cost of living of living adjustment, or Cola. One Republican proposal would cut $150bn from the program by limiting Thrifty Food Plan updates, which means benefits would be slashed for every American using Snap, affecting one in five kids in the US.Republicans have sent mixed signals. The House agriculture chair GT Thompson (Republican of Pennsylvania) said last week there would be no Snap cuts in reconciliation or the upcoming farm bill. But other Republicans have signaled openness to this, and critics of the budget resolution question how lawmakers could possibly chop $230bn without affecting Snap.Even before cuts, the current average Snap benefit is only around $6 a day per person, which means that they often fall short of what people actually need. “When you think about the rising cost of food, that is such a small amount of food,” said Rachel Sabella, the director of No Kid Hungry New York, a non-profit that works to end childhood hunger. “People are making tough choices in the grocery store.”Six dollars doesn’t get you much these days at food retailers. This year, the average price of eggs hit a record high of $4.95, and is expected to keep climbing as the US deals with the ongoing bird flu outbreak. A gallon of milk costs more than $4 and a pound of ground chuck costs $5.50, according to the consumer price index.To get by, families often hide food to save so it lasts later into the month. Caretakers report eating less or cutting their portion sizes and mothers say they sometimes forgo food at the end of the month so their kids can eat. People also reduce protein and produce in favor of cheap filler foods like rice. For people already making concessions, these proposed cuts would be devastating.“I live in poverty, not ignorance, so I keep a monthly budget and watch my spending very closely, which requires precision,” said Brytnee Bellinger, who is visually impaired and receives around $80 per month in food assistance. Bellinger usually spends her Snap dollars on grass-fed bison, which she says helps combat her iron deficiency, and fresh produce from farmers markets. If her benefit amount was reduced, she would likely be unable to afford either.“How are people supposed to balance making healthy food choices with spending wisely if their Snap benefit amount doesn’t accurately reflect the current cost of a healthy diet?” she said. “Poor people buying food isn’t the cause of federal overspending.”After being founded in 1964 as part of Lyndon Johnson’s war on poverty, Snap has been targeted by both Republicans and Democrats. Cutbacks to the program were first made in the early 1980s under Ronald Reagan. Bill Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, which set time limits, reduced maximum allotments and eliminated eligibility of most legal immigrants for food stamps. During his first term, Donald Trump unsuccessfully attempted to cut Snap by 25 to 30%.While the Biden administration has been lauded for updating the Thrifty Food Plan to boost the amount of money people have to buy food, Republicans have made reversing the increase a major priority.GOP lawmakers and conservative thinktanks have falsely criticized the program as having high administrative costs and being rife with fraud and abuse. (In 2023, around 6% of Snap spending went to state administrative costs and few Snap errors are due to fraud on the part of recipients.) They’ve also attacked recipients for using Snap on things such as sweetened drinks. Trump officials have said that they want to ban sugary beverages, candy and more, although similar efforts have failed in the past.And the USDA secretary, Brooke Rollins, signaled on Tuesday that she plans to target Snap under the guise of keeping undocumented immigrants from receiving benefits even though they are already generally prohibited from receiving food assistance.When Snap benefits are cut, researchers have found that children were more likely to be food insecure, in poor health and at risk for development delays. Since Snap is part of a larger ecosystem, advocates say cutting the program will increase healthcare costs, poverty and hardship.Retail giants such as Walmart, Albertsons, Costco, Sam’s Club and Kroger would also be severely affected since Snap dollars are most often spent there. More than 25% of all Snap dollars are spent at Walmart and nearly 95% of the program’s recipients say they shop at the retailer.Food banks and pantries would also be massively affected by cutbacks. “If Snap is cut at the levels they’re talking about, food banks are not going to be able to fill that gap – we’re meant to be an emergency system,” said Jason Riggs, the director of policy and advocacy at Roadrunner Food Bank of New Mexico. “A cut to Snap at this time, when food costs are continuing to rise, the timing is horrifying. We can’t food bank our way out of this.” New Mexico has the eighth highest hunger rates in the nation and Riggs said many of their clients already use Snap.In Los Angeles, 25% of households face food insecurity, far higher than the national average of 14%, and rates are expected to increase due to the effects of the recent wildfires. “If cuts to Snap are enacted, we would need to further draw on philanthropic and community support to try to meet the increased demand for our services,” said Chris Carter, senior policy and research manager at Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, which has distributed $14.2m pounds of food and personal care products through their network, which is a 37% increase compared with last year.Advocates of Snap say there are still countless people who qualify for assistance but do not apply for it due to administrative burdens, social stigma and deeply ingrained myths about welfare and poverty in the US. Food insecure veterans are consistently less likely than nonveterans to be enrolled in Snap and data from the National Council on Aging shows that while nearly 9 million older adults are eligible for Snap, they are not enrolled. Immigrants who are permanent residents or green card holders are only able to apply for Snap after a five-year waiting period, although there are a few exceptions for children and disabled people receiving other benefits.Since being diagnosed with lupus, pancreatitis and gallbladder stones, Michele Rodriguez has been unable to work and had to change her diet to include daily servings of fresh vegetables for juicing to help with her health conditions. If her benefit was reduced, she said she would have to prioritize feeding her two children and rely on food pantries, which would have long lines, or free giveaways for produce.“It’s just devastating because people like myself and seniors and children need help with food,” said Rodriguez, who sees the proposed cuts as being unfair and contrary to what Trump said while campaigning. “The price of food has not gone down. It’s really sad to see he’s only fighting for and helping people like him, but the people in the middle and lower class, what about us? Don’t you want to protect all of us?” More

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      White House social media Trump-style: bad taste, sycophancy and trolling

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      Traditionally the White House social media feeds have been a relatively sober way for administrations to communicate with the public. The X and Facebook accounts promote their presidents, but have tended to stop short of full-fledged propaganda.Not any more. Under Trump’s presidency the White House’s digital communications have blasted past mere propaganda, to a level of bad taste and sycophancy that has shocked observers and prompted concerns that Trump sees himself as a monarch.“CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD. Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED. LONG LIVE THE KING!” the White House blasted out on X this month. The post featured a fake Time magazine front cover which showed a grinning, svelter-than-real-life Trump wearing a bejeweled gold crown.The post referenced the Trump administration’s move to stop New York City’s congestion pricing scheme, introduced by the state’s Democratic governor, Kathy Hochul, in January. But the reaction mostly focused on the idea that the White House was promoting the president as a king – something which, for a country that fought a war to escape monarchy, represented a bold move.“Revoltingly un-American”, Adam Keiper, executive editor of the conservative Bulwark news site, wrote on BlueSky. JB Pritzker, the Illinois governor, reacted in a speech in his state’s capitol: “As governor of Illinois, my oath is to the constitution of our state and our nation. We don’t have kings in America, and I won’t bend the knee to one.”Hochul rebutted both the monarchist aspect and the argument that Trump will overturn the congestion pricing.“New York hasn’t labored under a king in over 250 years and we sure as hell are not going to start now,” Hochul said in a press conference.“The streets of the city where battles were fought, we stood up to a king and we won. In case you don’t know New Yorkers, when we’re in a fight, we do not back down, not now, not ever.”But the regal proclamation was the tip of the iceberg for the White House’s output.On Wednesday, Trump faced a fresh backlash after he shared an AI-generated video which showed Gaza being from transformed into a glittery coastal city and depicted a topless Trump sipping a cocktail with Benjamin Netanyahu.Set to a dance track with the lyrics “Trump Gaza is finally here”, the video showed, among other things, a gigantic statue of Trump in the center of a roundabout in the reimagined Gaza, some children being showered in paper money, and a man who looks like Elon Musk eating a sandwich.It comes after Trump said he wanted the US to “own” Gaza, claiming the strip, which has been devastated by Israeli bombardment, could become the “Riviera of the Middle East”.It might not even be the most offensive footage Trump has posted in recent weeks.A video posted this month, captioned “ASMR: Illegal Alien Deportation Flight”, featured officials laying out chains and shackles beside an airplane, before attaching them to faceless individuals.“‘YAY! Other people suffering!’ This from the White House official page? America has fallen,” was one of the most liked responses.ASMR stands for autonomous sensory meridian response, a tingling sensation triggered in some people by soft noises, such as whispering, the tearing of paper, or the crinkling of chip packets. The video represented an effort by the White House to get on board with a trend – although ASMR creators were among those unimpressed.Amy Kay, an ASMR YouTuber, told Huff Post she believed the video was an attempt to “own the libs”.“Many go to ASMR for the human connection it provides in a disconnected world. It’s a caring and accepting corner of the internet, so seeing it perverted to ‘own’ anyone who happens to have empathy hurts my heart,” Kay said.View image in fullscreenAnother X post, published on Valentine’s Day, showed a scowling Trump and his “border czar” Tom Homan on a pink card. “Roses are red violets are blue come here illegally and we’ll deport you,” the text said.In the comments, some pointed to a Washington Post story that reported Musk, who was born in South Africa, worked illegally in the US, and an Associated Press article that alleged Melania Trump, the president’s wife, was paid for modelling jobs in the US before she was legally allowed to work in the country.Voto Latino, a non-profit organization which encourages Latinos to vote, said the post had been “deliberately crafted to provoke and sow division”, but the struggles of immigrant families were not a joke.The organization added: “Using a lighthearted holiday to demean and target communities is not only irresponsible – it is beneath the dignity of the presidency.”The same Trump-as-king photo was also posted to the White House Facebook page – “this is absolutely insane” is currently the most liked response – along with the Valentine’s image.Kate Berner, who was the White House principal deputy communications director under Biden, told the Associated Press that Biden “never would have allowed us to use language like that”.“You can communicate aggressively, clearly in the way that real people talk around the country, and not in the way that’s disrespecting or degrading or something that we wouldn’t want our kids to mimic,” she said.The branding is different from the White House feed under Trump’s first administration. That account was archived on 20 January 2021 after Trump left office, but is still available for viewing. The feed still championed Trump’s achievements, along with regular retweets of Ivanka Trump and Melania Trump. There were favorable media clips and flattering photos of the president. However, there were none of the aggressive memes that have characterized the new feed.The 2025 style instead fits with the pugnacious first month of the Trump administration, which has been characterized by bombastic gestures which have excited and energized Trump’s base. A second benefit has been to upset, and distract, Democrats – a point made by the Fox & Friends host Lawrence Jones on air.“He is making fun of them! He doesn’t really think he is a king,” Jones said.“He has mastered making them go crazy. He gives them a little bait, and he knows they’re not gonna focus on the issue. They’re going to focus on the name ‘king’.”Just one month into Trump’s second term, there will probably be plenty more bait to come. More

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      Trump is using the presidency to seek golf deals – hardly anyone’s paying attention | Mohamad Bazzi

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      In his first month in office, Donald Trump destroyed federal agencies, fired thousands of government workers and unleashed dozens of executive orders. The US president also found time to try to broker an agreement between two rival golf tournaments, the US-based PGA Tour and the LIV Golf league, funded by Saudi Arabia.If concluded, the deal would directly benefit Trump’s family business, which owns and manages golf courses around the world. And it would be the latest example of Trump using the presidency to advance his personal interests.On 20 February, Trump hosted a meeting at the White House between Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour commissioner, and Yasir al-Rumayyan, chair of LIV Golf and head of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, along with the golf star Tiger Woods. It was the second meeting convened by Trump at the White House this month with PGA Tour officials involved in negotiating with the Saudi wealth fund. A day before his latest attempt at high-level golf diplomacy, Trump travelled to Miami to speak at a conference organized by the Saudi Public Investment Fund, which is managed by Al-Rumayyan but ultimately controlled by the kingdom’s de facto ruler and crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.Trump’s sports diplomacy in the Oval Office and cozying up to Saudi investors in Miami did not get much attention compared with his whirlwind of executive orders and new policies. But these incidents encapsulate Trump’s transactional and corrupt approach to governing – and the ways that wealthy autocrats including Prince Mohammed will be able to exploit the US president. While Trump will often boast he is making good deals for the US, his relationship with Saudi Arabia and its crown prince is largely built on benefits for Trump’s family and its extensive business interests.During Trump’s first term, the Trump Organization had dealings with Saudi Arabia that posed a potential conflict of interest for the president, especially after Saudi government lobbyists spent more than $270,000 on rooms at the Trump International hotel in downtown Washington. Now with no guardrails from Congress or the courts, the Trump family business is plowing ahead with new agreements that could reap tens of millions of dollars in profit from Saudi-linked real estate and golf ventures.In December, a month after Trump was elected to a second term, the Trump Organization announced several real estate projects in Saudi Arabia, including a Trump Tower in the capital, Riyadh, and another $530m residential tower in the city of Jeddah. The projects are branding deals for Trump’s family business with Dar Global, an international subsidiary of Dar Al Arkan, one of the largest real estate companies in Saudi Arabia. While Dar Al Arkan is a private company, it relies on large Saudi government contracts and the crown prince’s goodwill.After a mob of Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, the Trump Organization lost a series of real estate partnerships and other deals in the US. During Trump’s years out of power, Saudi Arabia became one of the few consistent sources of new deals and growth for the Trump brand, which was considered toxic by many US customers and businesses. Aside from real estate branding agreements with Saudi companies, Trump convinced the kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund to host the LIV professional golf tour at several of his golf courses, including those in Washington, Miami and Bedminster, New Jersey. After the assault on the Capitol, the PGA of America, which is a separate organization from the PGA Tour and runs one of golf’s most important tournaments, the PGA Championship, cancelled a 2022 tournament at Trump’s golf club in New Jersey. The LIV Golf tournaments brought Trump’s properties back into the professional golfing circuit and provided millions of dollars in revenue for the Trump family business.In November 2022, as Trump was preparing to announce his presidential campaign, the Trump Organization finalized a deal with Dar Al Arkan and the government of Oman to be part of a multibillion-dollar real estate development in Oman. While the Trump Organization is not expected to contribute funds toward the project’s development, it will earn millions of dollars in licensing fees for a Trump-branded hotel and golf course – and will be paid millions more in management fees for up to 30 years. The project raised concerns that if Trump was re-elected, he would violate the US constitution’s emoluments clause by profiting from being in a partnership with the government of Oman, a longtime US ally, and a real estate firm with close ties to the Saudi government. (A report released by Democrats in Congress last year found that Trump’s businesses had received $7.8m from at least 20 foreign governments during his first term as president.)As Saudi Arabia helped keep Trump’s family business afloat after the Capitol insurrection, it provided even more crucial support to Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser during the first Trump administration. Six months after Kushner left the White House in 2021, his newly created firm, Affinity Partners, secured a $2bn investment from the kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund. Prince Mohammed overruled a panel of advisers who had recommended against investing in Kushner’s company, citing its lack of experience and track record in private equity. The advisers warned that due diligence had found the firm’s early operations “unsatisfactory in all aspects”, but internal documents leaked to the New York Times showed that the prince and his aides were more concerned with using the investment as part of a “strategic relationship” with Kushner.Why was Prince Mohammed so eager to invest in Trump and Kushner’s businesses, even when they were out of power? The prince was betting on a second Trump term – and he was rewarding Trump’s steadfast support throughout his presidency. The Trump administration helped Prince Mohammed survive a severe challenge to his rule: fallout from the assassination of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. In October 2018, Khashoggi was ambushed inside Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul by a 15-member hit team, who suffocated the Saudi journalist and dismembered his body with a bone saw.As the international outcry over Khashoggi’s killing intensified and members of Congress demanded sanctions against Prince Mohammed and other Saudi officials, Trump and Kushner never wavered in their support for the prince and his regime. While Saudi officials at first tried to claim that Khashoggi had left the consulate alive, the crown prince eventually blamed rogue operatives for the assassination. But a US intelligence report, which Trump refused to release, found that Prince Mohammed had ordered Khashoggi’s killing.The president later made sure to remind Prince Mohammed that he owed Trump for defending him after Khashoggi’s assassination. In interviews with the journalist Bob Woodward in early 2020, Trump boasted: “I saved his ass”– meaning he protected the crown prince from a backlash in Congress. “I was able to get Congress to leave him alone,” Trump told Woodward. “I was able to get them to stop.”Today, the president is trying to reap more benefits based on his protection of Prince Mohammed – beyond what Kushner and the Trump Organization have already amassed from Saudi investments during Trump’s time out of office. Trump is corrupting the presidency by using it to negotiate international golf agreements and other deals that will ultimately enrich his family – and hardly anyone is objecting.

      Mohamad Bazzi is director of the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, and a journalism professor at New York University More

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      Trump says US won’t give Ukraine security guarantees ‘beyond very much’ ahead of Starmer meeting – UK politics live

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      Good morning. Keir Starmer is in Washington where later today he will have his first meeting with President Trump since the inauguration. With Trump aligning with Moscow even more explicitly than he did during his first administration, and threatening to wind down the Nato guarantees that have underpinned the security of western Europe since the second world war, the stakes could not be higher. Starmer, despite leading a party whose activists mostly loathe Trump and everything he represents, has managed to establish a warm relationship with the president and today will give some clues as to what extent he can sustain that, and protect the UK from the tariff warfare that Trump is threatening to unleash on the EU. But Starmer is one of three European leaders in Washington this week (Emmanuel Macron was there on Monday, Volodymyr Zelenskyy is there tomorrow) and today’s meeting is also part of a wider story about the fracturing of the US/Europe alliance. It is definitely in trouble; but what is not yet clear is whether after four years of Trump it will still be functioning effectively.Starmer spoke to reporters on his flight to the US yesterday. Pippa Crerar, the Guardian’s political editor, was on the plane and, as she reports, Starmer said he wants Trump to agree that, in the event of a peace settlement in Ukraine, the US will offer security guarantees that will make it durable. He has already said that Britain would contribute troops to a European so-called “tripwire” peace-keeping force, there to defend Ukraine and deter Russia. But European soldiers would need US air and logistical support to be effective, and Starmer is looking for assurances on this topic.But the backdrop is not promising. As Starmer was flying across the Atlantic, Trump wsa holding a televised cabinet meeting where, Soviet-style, his ministers laughed heartily at his jokes as they all congratulated each other on how brilliantly they were doing. In the course of the meeting, on the subject of Ukraine, Trump said:
      I’m not going to make security guarantees beyond very much. We’re going to have Europe do that.
      Starmer is due to arrive at the White House shortly after 5pm UK time and the press conference is meant to start at 7pm. We will, of course, be covering it live. It should be fascinating. During Trump’s first term, Theresa May managed to get the first foreign leader invite to the White House and her visit, during which she offered the president a state visit, was deemed a success. But it did not stop Trump treating her very badly later during the presidency, regularly patronising when they spoke in private, and sometimes in public too, and openly suggesting at one point that Boris Johnson would make a better replacement.Here is the agenda for the day.9.30am: The Home Office publishes its latest asylum, resettlement and returns figures.9.30am: Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, takes questions in the Commons.After 10.30am: Lucy Powell, the leader of the Commons, makes a statement to MPs about next week’s parliamentary business.11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.Around 5.15pm (UK time): Keir Starmer is due to arrive at the White House for his meeting with President Trump.Around 7pm (UK time): Starmer and Trump are due to hold a press conference.And at some point today Heidi Alexander, the transport secretary, is expected to announce that she is approving a decision to expand Gatwick.If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line or message me on social media. I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word.If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use social media. You can reach me on Bluesky at @andrewsparrowgdn. The Guardian has given up posting from its official accounts on X but individual Guardian journalists are there, I still have my account, and if you message me there at @AndrewSparrow, I will see it and respond if necessary.I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos. No error is too small to correct. And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog. More