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      The question no one dares ask: what if Britain has to defend itself from the US? | George Monbiot

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      All the talk now is of how we might defend ourselves without the US. But almost everyone with a voice in public life appears to be avoiding a much bigger and more troubling question: how we might defend ourselves against the US.As Keir Starmer visits the orange emperor’s court in Washington, let’s first consider the possibilities. I can’t comment on their likelihood, and I fervently hope that people with more knowledge and power than me are gaming them. One is that Donald Trump will not only clear the path for Vladimir Putin in Ukraine, but will actively assist him. We know that Trump can brook no challenge to his hegemony. Russia is no threat to US dominance, but Europe, with a combined economy similar to that of the US, and a powerful diplomatic and global political presence, could be.Putin has long sought to break up the EU, using the European far right as his proxies: this is why he invested so heavily in Brexit. Now Trump, in turn, could use Putin as his proxy, to attack a rival centre of power. If Trump helps Russia sweep through Ukraine, Putin could then issue an ultimatum to other frontline and eastern European states: leave the EU, leave Nato and become a client state like Belarus, or you’re next. In Hungary, Viktor Orbán might agree to this. If Călin Georgescu wins in Romania in May, he might too.What form could US support for Putin in Ukraine take? It could involve intelligence sharing. It could involve permanently withdrawing Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet service from Ukraine, which is strategically crucial there, while making it available to the Russian armed forces. Already, the US government has threatened to nix the service if Ukraine doesn’t hand over its minerals, as reparations for being invaded. This is how Trump operates: blackmailing desperate people who are seeking to defend themselves against an imperial war, regardless of past alliances. In the extreme case, Trump’s support for Russia might involve military equipment and financial backing, or even joint US-Russian operations, in the Arctic or elsewhere.Now consider our vulnerabilities. Through the “Five Eyes” partnership, the UK automatically shares signals intelligence, human intelligence and defence intelligence with the US government. Edward Snowden’s revelations showed that the US, with the agreement of our government, conducts wholesale espionage on innocent UK citizens. The two governments, with other western nations, run a wide range of joint intelligence programmes, such as Prism, Echelon, Tempora and XKeyscore. The US National Security Agency (NSA) uses the UK agency GCHQ as a subcontractor.All this is now overseen by Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s director of national intelligence, in charge of the CIA, NSA and 16 other agencies. After she recited conspiracy fictions seeded by the Syrian and Russian governments, she was widely accused of being a “Russian asset” or a “Russian puppet”. At what point do we conclude that by sharing intelligence with the US, the UK might as well be sharing it with Russia?View image in fullscreenDepending on whose definitions you accept, the US has either 11 or 13 military bases and listening stations in the UK. They include the misnamed RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk, actually a US air force base, from which it deploys F-35 jets; RAF Menwith Hill in North Yorkshire, in reality a US NSA base conducting military espionage and operational support; RAF Croughton, part-operated by the CIA, which allegedly used the base to spy on Angela Merkel among many others; and RAF Fylingdales, part of the US Space Surveillance Network. If the US now sides with Russia against the UK and Europe, these could just as well be Russian bases and listening stations.Then we come to our weapon systems. Like everyone without security clearance, I can make no well-informed statement on the extent to which any of them, nuclear or conventional, are operationally independent of the US. But I know, to give just one example, that among the crucial components of our defence are F-35 stealth jets, designed and patented in the US. How stealthy they will turn out to be, when the US has the specs, the serial numbers and the software, is a question that needs an urgent answer.Nor can I make any confident statement about the extent to which weapons designed here might be dependent on US central processing units and other digital technologies, or on US systems such as Starlink, owned by Musk, or GPS, owned by the US Space Force. Which of our weapons systems could achieve battle-readiness without US involvement and consent? Which could be remotely disabled by the US military? At the very least, the US will know better than any other power how to combat them, because our weapons are more or less the same as theirs. In other words, if the US is now our enemy, the enemy is inside the gate.Much as I hate to admit it, the UK needs to rearm (though cutting the aid budget to find the money, as Keir Starmer intends, is astonishingly shortsighted). I reluctantly came to this conclusion as Trump’s numbers began to stack up last July. But, if they are fatally compromised by US penetration, rearmament might have to begin with the complete abandonment of our existing weapons and communications systems.This may need to start very soon. On 24 February, the UN general assembly voted on a Ukrainian resolution, co-sponsored by the UK and other European nations, condemning Russia’s invasion. Unsurprisingly, Russia, Belarus, North Korea, Hungary and several small and easily cowed states voted against it. But so did the US andIsrael. This, more clearly than any other shift, exposes the new alignment. An axis of autocracy, facilitating an imperial war of aggression, confronts nations committed (albeit to varying degrees) to democracy and international law.For many years, we have been urged to trust the UK’s oppressive “security state”. Yes, this security state is yanked around like a fish on a line by the US government, with such catastrophic outcomes as the US-UK invasion of Iraq. Yes, it is engaged in mass surveillance of its own citizens. But, its defenders have long argued, we should suck all this up because the security state is essential to our defence from hostile foreign actors. In reality, our entanglement, as many of us have long warned, presents a major threat to national security. By tying our defence so closely to the US, our governments have created an insecurity state.I hope you can now see what a terrible mistake the UK has made, and how we should have followed France in creating more independent military and security systems. Disentangling from the US will be difficult and expensive. Failing to do so could carry a far higher price.

      George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist More

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      Transgender US military personnel must be identified and stood down, says Pentagon memo

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      Transgender service members will be separated from the US military unless they receive an exemption, according to a Pentagon memo filed in court on Wednesday – essentially banning them from joining or serving in the armed forces.Donald Trump signed an executive order in January that took aim at transgender troops in a personal way – at one point saying that a man identifying as a woman was “not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member”.This month, the Pentagon had said that the US military would no longer allow transgender individuals to join and would stop performing or facilitating procedures associated with gender transition for service members.Wednesday’s late-evening memo went further. It said that the Pentagon must create a procedure to identify troops who are transgender within 30 days and then within 30 days of that, must start to separate them from the military.“It is the policy of the United States government to establish high standards for service member readiness, lethality, cohesion, honesty, humility, uniformity, and integrity,” said the memo, dated 26 February.“This policy is inconsistent with the medical, surgical, and mental health constraints on individuals with gender dysphoria or who have a current diagnosis or history of, or exhibit symptoms consistent with, gender dysphoria.”There is no requirement for transgender troops to self identify and the Pentagon doesn’t have a precise number.The Pentagon said waivers would be granted only “provided there is a compelling government interest in retaining the service member that directly supports warfighting capabilities”.It added that for a waiver, troops must also be able to meet a number of criteria, including that the service member “demonstrates 36 consecutive months of stability in the service member’s sex without clinically significant distress”.The military has about 1.3 million active duty personnel, according to Department of Defense data. Transgender rights advocates say there are as many as 15,000 transgender service members. Officials say the number is in the low thousands.The move, which goes further than restrictions Trump placed on transgender service members during his first administration, was described as unprecedented by advocates. “The scope and severity of this ban is unprecedented. It is a complete purge of all transgender individuals from military service,” said Shannon Minter of the National Center For Lesbian Rights (NCLR).The memo was filed in court as part of a lawsuit brought by NCLR and GLAD Law. The suit challenges the constitutionality of the January executive order and argues that it violates the equal protection component of the fifth amendment.This month, the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, said people with gender dysphoria already in the military would be “treated with dignity and respect”. More

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      Top Democrat says Trump may seek mineral deal with both Russia and Ukraine

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      Donald Trump may be pursuing a mineral rights deal with Vladimir Putin and Russia as well as with Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Ukraine, a top Senate Democrat has warned, discussing the US president’s demand that Kyiv grant US firms access to 50% of its rare-earth reserves, as a price for helping end the war three years after Russia invaded.“I think anything that helps position Ukraine for any peace negotiations is a positive move,” said Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the ranking Democrat on the Senate foreign relations and armed services committee, who recently visited Ukraine.“Now, what we heard when we were in Ukraine is that 40-50% of those mineral deposits are actually in territory controlled by the Russians. Maybe part of the deal is President Trump is going to get a deal with Vladimir Putin on the mineral rights too. So … that could be a little tricky.”Shaheen was speaking to the One Decision podcast, hosted by the former MI6 chief Sir Richard Dearlove, the former CIA director Leon Panetta and the reporter Christina Ruffini.Saying Ukraine cannot expect to regain all territory taken by Russia, and rejecting Kyiv’s aim of joining Nato, Trump has demanded a deal with Ukraine as repayment for military support. On Wednesday, Trump said Zelenskyy would visit Washington on Friday to sign a “very big agreement that will be on rare earth and other things”.Trump did not offer details of a deal but said he was “not going to make security guarantees beyond very much,” adding: “We’re going to have Europe do that.”Trump is due to meet Keir Starmer, the British prime minister, on Thursday. Starmer has said the UK is willing to contribute peacekeeping troops.Shaheen said: “I do think there is support to do everything we can to help get a peace in Ukraine. And from my perspective, one of the most important aspects of that is ensuring that the Ukrainians are positioned in the most positive, favorable way for them. If this deal helps with that, and President Zelenskyy is comfortable signing it, then I support that.”Shaheen said her visit to Ukraine, with fellow Democrat Michael Bennet, of Colorado, and Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, proved “compelling, disturbing”.The senators visited Bucha, where Russian troops carried out a massacre in 2022. The town “showed the resilience of the Ukrainian people,” Shaheen said, adding: “They’re willing to resist. And it showed just what a murderous thug Vladimir Putin is.”Shaheen said the senators “met with the mayor of Bucha, we met with the priest. There had been a mass grave of a couple of hundred of the civilians who were killed. There were over 500 killed in Bucha in that 33-day siege [the final toll is unclear]. It was horrific. It was absolutely brutal. Finding the graves, taking the corpses out of the graves.“We met with the investigators who were investigating each murder individually, and they showed us the picture of the Russian commander who had given the order. And it was very clear that the order was to frighten the civilians, to do everything you can to try and reduce any resistance from the civilians. And for me … I thought this was a small village someplace in the hinterlands of Ukraine, but it’s not, it’s a suburb of Kyiv, and the tanks were stopped right there at the suburb.“So it really pointed out the stark contrast between the Russians and the Ukrainians and what’s at stake in this war.”Trump has stirred huge controversy by seeming to favor Putin and Russia in regards to the war in Ukraine, not least by beginning talks for a settlement without including Ukraine or European powers.Asked about Trump’s lie that Zelenskyy was a dictator who started the war, Shaheen said: “It’s very distressing. And the president’s wrong. He’s just wrong … Vladimir Putin is the dictator. President Zelenskiy was duly elected by the people of Ukraine, and he has a higher favorability rating than Donald Trump.” More

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      Trump plans to cut more than 90% of USAid foreign aid contracts

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      The Trump administration said it is eliminating more than 90% of the US Agency for International Development’s foreign aid contracts and $60bn in overall US assistance around the world.The cuts detailed by the administration would leave few surviving USAid projects for advocates to try to save in what are current court battles with the administration.The Trump administration outlined its plans in an internal memo obtained by the Associated Press and in filings in one of those federal lawsuits.The supreme court intervened in that case late Wednesday and temporarily blocked a court order requiring the administration to release billions of dollars in foreign aid by midnight.Wednesday’s disclosures also give an idea of the scale of the administration’s retreat from US aid and development assistance overseas, and from decades of US policy that foreign aid helps US interests by stabilizing other countries and economies and building alliances.Donald Trump and ally Elon Musk have hit foreign aid harder and faster than almost any other target in their push to cut the size of the federal government. Both men say USAid projects advance a liberal agenda and are a waste of money.Trump on 20 January ordered what he said would be a 90-day program-by-program review of which foreign assistance programs deserved to continue, and cut off all foreign assistance funds almost overnight. The funding freeze has stopped thousands of US-funded programs abroad, as the administration and Musk’s “department of government efficiency” teams have pulled the majority of USAid staff off the job through forced leave and firings.In the federal court filings on Wednesday, nonprofits owed money on contracts with USAid describe Trump political appointees and members of Musk’s teams terminating USAid’s contracts around the world at breakneck speed, without time for any meaningful review, they say.“’There are MANY more terminations coming, so please gear up!”’ lawyers for the nonprofits wrote, quoting an email sent by a USAid official to staff on Monday.The state department said Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, had reviewed the terminations.In all, the Trump administration said it will eliminate 5,800 of 6,200 multi-year USAid contract awards, for a cut of $54bn. Another 4,100 of 9,100 state department grants were being eliminated, for a cut of $4.4bn.The Washington Free Beacon was the first to report on the memo.The memo described the administration as spurred by a federal court order that gave officials until the end of the day Wednesday to lift the Trump administration’s monthlong block on foreign aid funding.“In response, State and USAid moved rapidly,” targeting USAid and state department foreign aid programs in vast numbers for contract terminations, the memo said.The nonprofits, among thousands of contractors, owed billions of dollars in payment since the freeze began, call the en masse contract terminations a maneuver to get around complying with the order to lift the funding freeze temporarily.Trump administration officials – after repeated warnings from the federal judge in the case – also said on Wednesday they had finally begun paying USAid bills again after the month-long halt on payments, freeing for delivery a few million of billions of dollars owed. More

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      Trump administration briefing: president praises Doge’s efforts and threatens US media

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      In his first full cabinet meeting of his second term, which was attended by Elon Musk, President Donald Trump praised dramatic planned cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency and his planned 25% tariffs on European Union imports.Musk, who runs the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) team, said at the meeting that their goal was to achieve “$1tn in deficit reduction by financial year 2026” – already halving the $2tn in cuts he had promised during the campaign. He claimed this would require “saving $4bn per day, every day” until the end of September.Trump later signed an executive order designed to expand the Doge agency’s power.Here are the biggest stories in US politics on Wednesday, 26 February.Trump touts government-shrinking effort led by Musk – and signs executive order to increase its reachTrump used the first full cabinet meeting of his second term to emphasize his administration’s focus on drastically reducing the size of the federal government, with tech billionaire Elon Musk warning without evidence that “America will go bankrupt” without significant spending cuts.Read the full storyLater, Trump signed an executive order meant to expand Doge’s power. The new order calls for a “transformation” in federal spending on contracts, grants and loans by requiring agencies to create a centralized system to record and justify payments, which may be made public for transparency – an initiative that would be monitored by Musk’s team.Read the full storyTrump faces Truth Social backlash over AI video of Gaza Donald Trump is facing a backlash on his Truth Social platform after sharing an AI-created video of him sipping cocktails with a topless Benjamin Netanyahu in Gaza, in a future imagining of the Palestinian territory devastated by Israel’s war.The video presented a computer-generated vision of Trump’s property development plan for Gaza, under which he said he wants to “clean out” the population of about 2 million people. Named the “Riviera of the Middle East” plan, the proposal has been criticised as a blueprint for ethnic cleansing.Read the full storyTrump plans to cut more than 90% of USAid foreign assistance contractsThe Trump administration said it was eliminating more than 90% of the US Agency for International Development’s foreign aid contracts and $60bn in overall US assistance around the world, the Associated Press reported.Wednesday’s disclosures give an idea of the scale of the Trump administration’s retreat from US aid and development assistance overseas, and from decades of US policy that foreign aid helps US interests by stabilizing other countries and economies and building alliances.Read the full storyWhite House gives deadline to plan mass layoffsUS government agency heads have been given a 13 March deadline to produce a plan for drastically slashing the federal workforce as Trump reinforced warnings that workers who failed to account for what they do could be fired.Read the full storyTrump: no significant guarantees in Ukraine dealTrump announced that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will visit the White House on Friday to sign a rare earth minerals deal, but also said the US would not provide significant security guarantees to Ukraine as part of the agreement.Read the full storyTrump vows to slap 25% tariffs on EU Trump threatened to slap 25% tariffs on the European Union claiming the 27-country bloc was “formed to screw the United States”. He said he would soon release details of the latest tariff threat.Read the full storyBezos narrows focus of Washington Post opinion pagesJeff Bezos, the self-proclaimed “hands-off” owner of the Washington Post, emailed staffers on Wednesday about a change he is applying to the paper’s opinion section, which he said would now “be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets.” Bezos’s decision to inject more regular and weighty conservative theming will also see the departure of opinions editor David Shipley, although it was not immediately clear if he was fired for resisting Bezos’s direction, or chose to resign.Read the full storyTrump threatens to sue media after critical editorial A Wall Street Journal editorial slamming Trump’s tariff plans as terrible for the US economy and auto industry prompted a broadside from the president followed by threats to sue the media. Trump wrote on Truth Social the Journal is “soooo wrong” and threatened those publishing “Fake books and stories with the so-called ‘anonymous’, or ‘off the record’, quotes”.Read the full storyUS supreme court likely to back straight woman in ‘reverse discrimination’ caseThe US supreme court justices appeared to lean on Wednesday toward making it easier for people from “majority backgrounds”, such as white or heterosexual people, to pursue workplace discrimination claims, as they heard an appeal by an Ohio woman who claims she was denied a promotion and demoted because she is heterosexual.Read the full storyDoge quietly deletes billions in claimed savings from websiteWhen Elon Musk’s Doge posted its “wall of receipts” boasting of major savings to the federal budget, the list was billed as the proud public interface of a radical shake-up of the US government. But in the latest embarrassment to befall the site, Doge has stealthily expunged all of the five largest items on the “wall of receipts” after the much-vaunted “savings” were revealed to be so much hot air.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      New York City mayor Eric Adams asked a federal judge to toss out the corruption case against him, alleging prosecutorial misconduct.

      Apple has promised to fix a bug in its iPhone automatic dictation tool after some users reported it had suggested to them “Trump” when they said the word “racist”.

      A new book was announced on Joe Biden’s bid for a second term, promising to reveal a top-level cover-up about his health decline.

      Trump said that the Environmental Protection Agency might cut up to 65% of its employees and declined to comment in response to a question about whether he would ever allow China to take control of Taiwan by force.

      Trump said that tariffs on Canada and Mexico will continue, and that a 25% tariff on the European Union was coming soon.

      Health secretary Robert F Kennedy said that two people had died from a measles outbreak, but did not provide details about the deaths. Earlier on Wednesday, it was reported that one child had died of measles. More

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      Trump cabinet flunkies hail wannabe Caesar and Elon, his oligarch pal

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      On Tuesday, just over a mile from the White House, the classicist Mary Beard spoke to an audience about Roman emperors. “An autocrat is somebody who kills you when he’s being his most generous,” she remarked. “You go to dinner, you think, wow, this is wonderful! But the generosity of the autocrat is always potentially lethal.”On Wednesday, Donald Trump held his first full cabinet meeting. The mood was warm and convivial and, some might say, generous. Housing secretary Scott Turner offered a prayer that included: “Thank you, God, for President Trump.”Was it just an accident that the TV camera framed the scene as the antithesis of DEI? Viewers could see seven men in suits with Trump in the middle, then another row of seven men in suits sitting behind. Nearly all of them were white. (Yes, there were women and people of colour at the meeting – but not many.)The Vice-president, JD Vance, was in attendance but there was no doubt whom this emperor had appointed as consul. Trump invited Elon Musk, the tech billionaire running the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), to speak before any of his cabinet secretaries after claiming that everyone present was supportive.Wearing a black “Make America great again” cap, Musk jokingly referred to himself as “humble tech support” – people laughed dutifully – and claimed that his haphazard efforts to take a chainsaw to the federal government can save a trillion dollars and dig the country out of debt. “It’s not an optional thing, it’s an essential thing,” he said. “If we don’t do this, America will go bankrupt.”It sounds fine in theory. But Doge, mostly consisting of young male software engineers fuelled by pizza and Red Bull, has been a disaster. It fired the people who oversee the nuclear weapons stockpile then hastily tried to rehire them, only to find they were hard to contact because they could not access their work email accounts. It claimed to have saved $8bn on a terminated contract that was actually worth only $8m. Musk falsely stated that the US spent $50m on condoms for Gazans. And it emerged this week Doge quietly deleted the top five items from its public ledger of alleged savings after they turned out to be nothing of the sort.Musk – who brought similar unholy chaos to Twitter when he bought it – admitted to the cabinet that Doge will make mistakes, but said it will fix them quickly. “So, for example, with USAid, one of the things we accidentally canceled briefly was Ebola prevention. So we restored the Ebola prevention immediately, and there was no interruption.”Not reassuring.Then came the most autocratic episode of the meeting. Trump, both generous and lethal, asked his cabinet: “Is anybody unhappy with Elon? If you are, we’ll throw him out of here.”To the crocodiles? Or as his pal Vladimir Putin favours, from a high window? From this assembly of fawners, flatterers and flunkies, there was nervous laughter and applause.Triumphant, the president assured reporters: “They have a lot of respect for Elon, that he’s doing this, and some disagree a little bit but I will tell you for the most part I think everyone’s not only happy – they’re thrilled.”Game respects game. Musk, a fan boy of far-right movements all over Europe, showed an impressively instinctive feel for totalitarianism.He said: “President Trump has put together I think the best cabinet ever, literally, and I do not give false praise. This is an incredible group of people. I don’t think such a talented team has ever been assembled. I think it’s literally the best cabinet the country’s ever had … ”Then came a telling slip from the world’s richest man: “I think the company [sic] should be incredibly appreciative of the people in this room.”The cabinet on which Musk lavished such praise includes Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News host accused of sexual assault and alcohol abuse, and Robert F Kennedy Jr, a vaccine conspiracy theorist who once dumped a dead bear cub in New York’s Central Park. Less Marvel’s Avengers than Star Wars cantina.Kennedy was asked by reporters about a measles outbreak in Texas in which a child reportedly died, the first measles fatality in the US for a decade. His lackluster response: “It’s not unusual. We have measles outbreaks every year.”The whole meeting was yet another sorry exercise in worshipping an authoritarian and normalising a bully. Musk tried to defend the emails he sent to government employees, asking what they did last week, as not a “performance review” but a “pulse check review” because some people on the government payroll are dead.Trump rounded off the meeting by observing: “The country’s got bloated and fat and disgusting and incompetently run.”Yet as Jon Stewart noted this week on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, Doge will not touch the $3bn in subsidies given to oil and gas companies, a hedge fund loophole worth $1.3bn a year, or the $2tn given to defence contractors to build a fighter jet that will soon be obsolete. “This is where the real money is,” Stewart said.Not even a functioning democracy ever did much about those. So hopes for a country run by a wannabe Caesar and his oligarch pal are not high. More

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      White House denies some reporters access to Trump cabinet meeting – live

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      The White House on Wednesday reportedly denied reporters from Reuters, the AP, and other news organizations access to President Donald Trump’s first cabinet meeting in keeping with the administration’s new policy regarding media coverage.Reuters is reporting that the White House denied access to an Associated Press photographer and three reporters from Reuters, HuffPost and Der Tagesspiegel, a German newspaper.TV crews from ABC and Newsmax, along with correspondents from Axios, the Blaze, Bloomberg News and NPR were permitted to cover the event.This comes as on Tuesday, the Trump administration announced that it would take control of the White House press pool, stripping the independent White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) of its longstanding role in deciding which journalists have access to the president in intimate settings.The head of the Environmental Protection Agency has urged the Trump administration to strike down a key scientific finding that has served as the foundation for US climate change policy, The Washington Post reports.In a report submitted to the White House, EPA administrator Lee Zeldin recommended revising the agency’s 2009 determination that greenhouse gases pose a threat to public health and welfare.This report, established under the Clean Air Act, provides the legal basis for various climate regulations affecting motor vehicles, power plants, and other major pollution sources.Senator Elizabeth Warren, the top Democrat on the Banking Committee, urged President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security to adopt a firm approach toward China, pointing to concerns over Chinese startup DeepSeek’s artificial intelligence technology, Reuters reports.Warren called on nominee Jeffrey Kessler to strengthen AI chip regulations introduced by former President Joe Biden’s administration in January.“In light of DeepSeek, we must reinforce our controls on (China),” Warren wrote, calling for a series of other actions on Chinese tech efforts.Several Democratic senators made dramatic returns to Washington to vote against Republicans’ budget blueprint on Tuesday night.California Congressman Kevin Mullin, who had been absent while recovering from a blood clot and infection following knee surgery, went straight to the airport after being discharged from the hospital, while Colorado Congresswoman Brittany Pettersen returned to teh House floor with her newborn son, Sam, nestled in her arms.Their dramatic – and surprise – appearances were part of an effort by Democrats to block Republicans’ plan to advance major pieces of Donald Trump’s tax cut and immigration agenda.“I have a message for Donald Trump: nobody fights harder than a mom,” Petterson wrote on X. “Republican leadership may have denied my ability to vote by proxy but that didn’t stop us from voting against this disastrous budget that strips away health care and food for seniors, veterans, kids and families across Colorado — all to give tax breaks to billionaires like Elon Musk.”The bill ultimately passed in a 217-215 vote. Only one Democrat, Arizona congressman Raúl Grijalva, who has cancer, returned for the vote. But up until the moment the vote ended, Republicans were working to overcome unified Democratic opposition to the plan, which would likely result in steep cuts to social safety net programs, including Medicaid.“After three surgeries, a blood clot, an infection and being hospitalized for over a week, the moment I was discharged I immediately rushed to the airport so I could get on a plane to D.C. and vote NO on Republicans’ disastrous budget plan,” Mullin said in a statement after the vote. “They are trying to make the most devastating cuts to Medicaid the nation has ever seen – $880 billion – all so they can give more tax cuts to billionaires and corporations.”On board the flight, Mullin’s wife, Jessica Stanfill-Mullin, helped administer IV antibiotics to him.Here are some photos coming in from the wires showing demonstrators gathered on the floor of the Capitol Rotunda on Wednesday, protesting cuts to USAid funding.Organized by ActUp’s Health Global Access Project, the protesters temporarily occupied the rotunda before Capitol Police arrested 21 of them.One of the big moments of today came from Donald Trump’s first officials cabinet meeting. Here were some of the key moments during the public portion of Trump’s first official cabinet meeting of his second term:

      Trump announced that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will visit Washington DC to sign the rare earth minerals agreement. He praised Doge, claiming, without evidence, that it has saved billions.

      Elon Musk also delivered remarks and warned that without cost-cutting, the country could go “bankrupt” describing himself as “tech support”. He acknowledged mistakes made by Doge, such as when they accidently cancelled an Ebola prevention effort, but he said, they “restored it immediately and there was no interruption”.

      Trump also mentioned that the Environmental Protection Agency might cut up to 65% of its employees and declined to comment in response to a question about whether he would ever allow China to take control of Taiwan by force.

      Trump said that tariffs on Canada and Mexico will continue, and that a 25% tariff on the European Union was coming soon.

      Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy said that two people had died from a measles outbreak, but did not provide details about the deaths. Earlier on Wednesday, it was reported that one child had died of measles.
      Other news that happened today:

      UK prime minister Keir Starmer left for Washington today prior to his meeting with Donald Trump set for Thursday in what will be his biggest diplomatic test to date.

      US agriculture secretary Brooke Rollins said that the US will invest up to $1bn to combat the spread of bird flu, including increasing imports of eggs.

      President Donald Trump threatened to sue journalists and authors who use “anonymous” sources in their reporting.

      Minnesota Governor Tim Walz will not run for Minnesota’s newly open US Senate seat, according to his spokesperson.

      The US abstained from World Trade Organization condemnation of Russia’s aggression in Ukraine.

      California Governor Gavin Newsom announced that he is launching his own podcast.

      The US supreme court heard oral arguments in a case that could radically transform workplace discrimination claims.

      New York City Mayor Eric Adams asked a federal judge to toss out the corruption case against him.

      A meeting between EU foreign policy chief and US secretary of state Marco Rubio was cancelled, with both sides citing scheduling conflicts.

      Trump urged Apple to end its diversity, equity and inclusion policies.

      The Trump administration issued a memo directing federal agencies to plan for sweeping layoffs of government employees, according to the Associated Press and other news agencies.

      A US judge has briefly extended an order reinstating the head of a federal watchdog agency responsible for protecting whistleblowers who had challenged his firing by Trump.

      The Trump administration said that New York City must end its congestion pricing program by 21 March, according to Reuters.

      Trump announced that his administration is reversing concessions given to Venezuela on an oil transaction agreement by former president Joe Biden.

      The Trump administration will require undocumented immigrants aged 14 and older to register with the federal government or face possible fines or prosecution.

      The Senate confirmed Trump’s pick for US trade representative, Jamieson Greer.
      The US Securities and Exchange Commission has told unionized employees they will have to return to the office in mid-April, unless they have certain exemptions, per a memo seen by Reuters.In the memo, SEC Chief Operating Officer Ken Johnson told staff that they will be required to work on-site beginning 14 April 2025 and said that the return-to-work directive would “best position the SEC to fulfil the agency’s mission.”In response, the National Treasury Employees Union Chapter 239, which represents SEC employees, said in an email to members seen by Reuters, that the SEC’s action “plainly violates” the union contract and called the order illegal.“Like you, the union only received notice of this order by the SEC management moments ago,” the email reportedly said. Reuters is reporting that the union’s 2023 collective bargaining agreement outlines telework options for approved employees and that the agreement lasts three years.This comes as similar efforts have occurred at the agency with non-unionized staff, and across the federal workforce, in response to a mandate by President Donald Trump that officials fire remote or hybrid work arrangements.A US judge has briefly extended an order reinstating the head of a federal watchdog agency responsible for protecting whistleblowers who had challenged his firing by Donald Trump.According to Reuters, US district judge Amy Berman Jackson in Washington said Hampton Dellinger, the head of the office of special counsel, could remain in his post through at least Saturday.Jackson said the extension would give her time to draft a permanent ruling in the case.Last week, the US supreme court temporarily kept Dellinger on the job as the head of the federal agency that protects government whistleblowers, in its first word on the many legal fights over the agenda of Trump’s second presidency.The justices said in an unsigned order that Dellinger could remain in his job at least until Wednesday. And now, that has been extended to at least Saturday, per Reuters.The Trump administration says in a letter made public on Wednesday that New York City must end its congestion pricing program by 21 March, according to Reuters.Last week, the transportation department announced that it intends to rescind federal approval of New York City’s congestion pricing program, that is designed to reduce traffic and raise money to upgrade ageing subway and bus systems.Two New York City transit agencies have filed suit to block the decision.The letter today comes as this week it was reported by the New York Times that New York’s congestion pricing plan raised $48.6m in tolls during its first month and that it has exceeded expectations and is on track to raise billions of dollars for the New York’s transit system.The revenue numbers were the latest sign that the tolling plan was working.President Donald Trump’s stated plan to slap a 25% tariff on exports from the European Union to the United States will result in a serious trade conflict, Norway’s prime minister Jonas Gahr Store said today to news agency NTB. Norway is not a member of the European Union but it closely integrated with the bloc on trade.A planned meeting between European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas and US secretary of state Marco Rubio was reportedly abruptly cancelled on Wednesday, according to the Associated Press.Both sides blamed scheduling challenges, the AP said, but European officials said they were caught off-guard.In other news today, Utah is poised to become the first state in the US to ban fluoride from its water systems with a bill now before its Republican governor, Spencer Cox. The bill outlaws the adding of fluoride to water “in or intended for public water systems”, and adds that it repeals any previous laws “including sections about providing fluoridated water upon resident request and under emergency circumstances”.Cox has not publicly indicated support or opposition to the bill. If he signs it, fluoride would be banned across Utah starting 7 May, the Salt Lake Tribune reports.Although the bill would remove fluoride from public taps, it would also allow pharmacists to prescribe fluoride supplements to individuals.The bill, HB81, was approved last Friday. “I’m pleased to announce that HB81 has passed both the House and senate and is headed to the governor for his signature,” wrote Stephanie Gricius, the Republican who sponsored it, on social media. “I’m so grateful to everyone who helped push this policy.”Read more about it here:The White House on Wednesday reportedly denied reporters from Reuters, the AP, and other news organizations access to President Donald Trump’s first cabinet meeting in keeping with the administration’s new policy regarding media coverage.Reuters is reporting that the White House denied access to an Associated Press photographer and three reporters from Reuters, HuffPost and Der Tagesspiegel, a German newspaper.TV crews from ABC and Newsmax, along with correspondents from Axios, the Blaze, Bloomberg News and NPR were permitted to cover the event.This comes as on Tuesday, the Trump administration announced that it would take control of the White House press pool, stripping the independent White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) of its longstanding role in deciding which journalists have access to the president in intimate settings.Trump has announced that his administration is reversing concessions given to Venezuela on an oil transaction agreement by former president Joe Biden.In a post on Truth Social, Trump said that he ordered that the agreement, “dated November 26, 2022” be terminated “as of the March 1 option to renew”.Additionally, Trump said, that Venezuela’s “regime has not been transporting the violent criminals that they sent into our Country (the Good Ole’ U.S.A.) back to Venezuela at the rapid pace that they had agreed to.“I am therefore ordering that the ineffective and unmet Biden ‘Concession Agreement’ be terminated as of the March 1st option to renew” he added.The Trump administration will require undocumented immigrants aged 14 and older to register with the federal government or face possible fines or prosecution.The US Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that under the “Protecting the American People Against Invasion” executive order signed by Donald Trump last month undocumented immigrants must also provide their fingerprints, while parents must ensure children under 14 are registered. The department will provide “evidence” of their registration and those 18 and over must carry that document at all times.The announcement comes as Trump has sought to harshly crackdown on immigration and implement a mass deportation campaign. Since taking office, his administration has attempted to suspend a refugee resettlement program (a judge blocked the cancellation), moved to cut off legal aid for immigrant kids (although it later walked back that decision), sought to allow immigration raids in schools and churches (another judge blocked such efforts in some houses of worship) and has begun sending undocumented immigrants to Guantánamo.Under the program announced this week, undocumented immigrants 14 and older in the US for 30 days or more will be required to register and undergo fingerprinting. Parents and guardians must register children under 14, and once children reach that age they must reapply and be fingerprinted, DHS said on its website. Those who do not comply can face criminal penalties, including misdemeanor prosecution, and fines.More on this story here:The Trump administration announced it will take control of the White House press pool, stripping the independent White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) of its longstanding role in deciding which journalists have access to the president in intimate settings.The move has immediately triggered an impassioned response from members of the media – including a Fox News correspondent who called it a “short-sighted decision”.The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, made the announcement during Tuesday’s press briefing, framing the move as democratizing access to the president.“A group of DC-based journalists, the White House Correspondents’ Association, has long dictated which journalists get to ask questions of the president of the United States,” Leavitt said.“Not any more. Today, I was proud to announce that we are giving the power back to the people.”The announcement upends over 70 years of established protocol of journalists themselves – not government officials – determining the rotating reporters who travel with the president on Air Force One and cover events in the Oval Office or Roosevelt Room.You can read more on this story here:Senate confirms Donald Trump’s pick for US trade representativeIn a 56-43 vote, Jamieson Greer was confirmed as the country’s top trade negotiator.Of those who voted in favor of Greer’s confirmation, five were Democrats: Senators John Fetterman, John Hickenlooper, Gary Peters, Elissa Slotkin and Sheldon Whitehouse.Greer is a former lawyer for the air force and served as the chief of staff for Robert Lighthizer, the US trade representative during Trump’s first term. Greer will play a key role in Trump’s tariff plans.Senator Ron Wyden, the ranking member of the Senate finance committee, opposed Greer’s confirmation and said: “Mr Greer will be a rubber stamp for the Trump Tax, the kneejerk decision to slap tariffs on nearly everything Americans buy and make high prices even higher.”Here were some of the key moments during the public portion of Trump’s first official cabinet meeting of his second term.

      Trump opened his meeting by announcing that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will visit Washington DC on Friday to sign an agreement regarding rare earth minerals.

      Trump spoke about the costs of eggs, and how his administration was working to “get the prices down”.

      During the meeting, Trump praised Doge and said, without evidence, that the initiative had cut billions and billions of dollars.

      Trump then asked Elon Musk to stand up and deliver some remarks about his work with Doge. In his remarks, Musk thanked the administration for its support and claimed that if costs don’t get cut, the country will go “bankrupt”. Musk also described himself as “tech support” and said that Doge was doing lots of work to “fix the government computer systems”.

      Musk acknowledged that Doge “won’t be perfect” and said that Doge accidently cancelled an Ebola prevention effort, but “restored it immediately and there was no interruption”.

      Musk said that Doge will send another ultimatum email to federal workers. “We want to give people every opportunity to send an email,” Musk said. Trump also told the room that the federal employees who have not responded so far are “on the bubble” and later added, “maybe they’re going to be gone”.

      Trump said that the Environmental Protection Agency plans to cut up to 65% or so of its employees.

      Trump declined to comment in response to a question about whether he would ever allow China to take control of Taiwan by force. The US president then went on to say that he has a great relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

      Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick, spoke about the new “gold card” plan and said that 200,000 of them could add up to $1tn.

      During the meeting, Trump heavily criticized former president Joe Biden, and criticized the Afghanistan withdrawal and the southern border.

      Trump once again said that he wanted Canada to become the 51st US state.

      Trump said that he will not be stopping tariffs on Canada or Mexico and that he will be announcing tariffs on the European Union soon. “It’ll be 25% generally speaking,” Trump said. “And that’ll be on cars and all other things.”

      Trump described Putin as a “very cunning person” and a “very smart guy”. He also said that he thinks “we are going to have a deal” regarding the war in Ukraine and said that Putin will “have to” make concessions.

      Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy, said that two people had died from a measles outbreak, but did not provide details about the deaths. Earlier on Wednesday, it was reported that one child had died of measles.
      Trump says that the US has “gotten bloated and fat and disgusting and incompetently run” before criticizing former president Joe Biden calling him the “worst president in the history of our country”. More

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      in US Politics

      Fired USAid workers and HIV activists hold ‘die-in’ to protest Trump and Musk

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      Fired USAid employees and advocates for people with HIV staged a protest in a Capitol office building on Wednesday, warning that Donald Trump’s drive to dismantle the agency tasked with implementing Washington’s foreign aid agenda imperils the fight against the virus.Wearing white T-shirts that read “Aids funding cuts kill” and chanting “Congress has blood on its hands, unfreeze aid now”, around three dozen protesters lay down in the rotunda of the Cannon House office building, home to the offices of representatives from both parties. Capitol police said about 20 arrests were made of demonstrators who defied their orders to disperse.“What we are demanding of Congress is that they stop behaving like doormats in the face of this attack on humanitarian assistance that truly is highly effective and life-saving,” Asia Russell, executive director of Health Gap, a global advocacy group fighting against HIV, said prior to the protest.“It’s very hard to overstate what’s at stake regarding humanitarian assistance.”The protest came as USAid remained frozen by the Trump administration’s rapid moves to close the agency. Over the weekend, the agency announced that it was placing all but a small number of its employees worldwide, as well as nearly 2,000 staffers based in the United States, on paid leave. Those working in Washington DC have been invited to retrieve their belongings from its headquarters, which is set to be turned into office space for US Customs and Border Protection, one of the agencies implementing Trump’s hardline immigration policies.On Tuesday, a federal judge reportedly gave the government a two-day deadline to release billions of dollars in foreign aid funds that had been held back after Trump ordered USAid to stop work. If those funds are not restored, former USAid employees who attended the protest at the Capitol warned, the global fight against HIV will be set back.The United States has been a leader in the campaign against the virus that causes Aids through Pepfar, a program that provides medication to 20 million people worldwide and was established during Republican George W Bush’s presidency. But USAid’s abrupt closure has stopped payments to providers working with the program worldwide.“This is not controversial, and what is happening is not government efficiency, it’s government fraud, waste and abuse when it comes to what Doge is doing,” said the fired USAid contractor Van Credle, referring to Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency”, which spearheaded the dismantling of her agency as well as other deep cuts to federal services.The Republican majorities elected to both the Senate and House last November have thus far shown little interest in saving USAid and even supported its closure, despite the fact that foreign assistance has in the past enjoyed support on both sides of the aisle. Kelsey Crow, a contractor at the agency’s bureau of global health who lost her job, said the protest was meant to encourage lawmakers who previously supported USAid to step up.“So much of our work at USAid is mandated by Congress, and so for Congress to not be taking action, for Congress to be holding hearings that are pushing out lies and falsehoods about USAid to say that the waivers are back when we know that they’re actually not turned on and the money’s not actually flowing, it’s incredibly disappointing,” Crow said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionPeter Kerndt, a physician who spent five years with USAid coordinating the fight against tuberculosis in African and Asian countries, said it will be “impossible” to achieve a global goal of eliminating the virus by 2030 if the agency goes away.“For this administration, for Elon Musk to call USAid a criminal organization that should die and to gleefully celebrate that he spent the weekend putting USAid in the wood chipper instead of going to a party is such an insult to all of the workers, both here and in the country,” he said. “But most of all, the people that suffer are the people that we were there to help.”Andrew Roth contributed reporting More