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      More than 150,000 Canadians sign petition to revoke Musk’s citizenship

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      More than 150,000 people from Canada have signed a parliamentary petition calling for their country to strip Elon Musk’s Canadian citizenship because of the tech billionaire’s alliance with Donald Trump, who has spent his second US presidency repeatedly threatening to conquer its independent neighbor to the north and turn it into its 51st state.British Columbia author Qualia Reed launched the petition in Canada’s House of Commons, where it was sponsored by New Democrat parliamentary member and avowed Musk critic Charlie Angus, as the Canadian Press first reported over the weekend.Born in South Africa and helming US companies including electric vehicle-maker Tesla, aerospace company SpaceX and the social media platform Twitter/X, Musk has Canadian citizenship through his mother, who is from Saskatchewan’s capital, Regina. He has been crusading to slash the US federal government’s size at the behest of the US president, who has consistently challenged Canada’s sovereignty since returning to the White House for a second presidential term on 20 January.Reed’s petition – filed on 20 February – accuses Musk of having “engaged in activities that go against the national interest of Canada” by acting as an adviser to Trump. Trump has invited the scorn of Canada’s 40 million residents by making threats about imposing steep tariffs on Canadian products and openly boasting about having the US annex the country, including shortly before its national hockey team defeated a selection of American opponents in a politically charged 20 February tournament final.The petition asserts that Musk’s alignment with Trump makes him “a member of a foreign government that is attempting to erase Canadian sovereignty”. It asks Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau to take away Musk’s Canadian passport and revoke his citizenship with immediate effect.Trump has often mocked Trudeau as “governor”, the title given to US states’ chief executives. And Musk wrote on X, the social media platform he bought in 2022 for $44bn to relish Trudeau’s announcement in January that he would resign as the head of Canada’s Liberal party after it selected a new leader, with the tech billionaire praising clips of the prominent Canadian Conservative party chief Pierre Poilievre.As the Canadian Press noted, petitions like Reed’s require 500 or more signatures for them to gain the certification necessary to be presented to Canada’s House of Commons and potentially garner a formal government response. Reed’s petition evidently had no trouble clearing that threshold, having collected about 157,000 signatures as of late Sunday, with no indication that the number would soon stop rising.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionCanada’s House of Commons is scheduled to resume its work on 24 March, though the country could call for a general election before parliamentary members return. The signing period for Reed’s petition was set to expire on 20 June.Musk’s directive to ostensibly cut federal spending – after Trump lost re-election in 2020 to Joe Biden but then secured it in November at the expense of Kamala Harris – has affected hundreds of thousands of US government civil servants. The cuts include thousands at the Departments of Veterans Affairs, Defense, Health and Human Services, the Internal Revenue Service and the National Parks Service, among others.An Economist/YouGov poll of nearly 1,600 respondents recently found Musk and his so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) are far less popular with the public that they claim to be serving than many of the areas they are targeting.Nonetheless, on Friday at a gathering of conservatives in Maryland, Musk made light of his involvement in the Trump administration by giddily waving a giant chainsaw in the air.And on Sunday, Musk boosted an X post reading: “Of course we support Doge! Those who don’t support it are unAmerican.” More

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      There is a clear Trump doctrine. Those who can’t see it won’t have a say in reshaping the world | Nesrine Malik

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      A resonant phrase during Donald Trump’s first administration was the advice to take him “seriously, but not literally”. It was a singularly detrimental expression, widely quoted by politicians and the media. Its adoption fit with the position many felt most comfortable taking: Trump was bad, but he wasn’t smart. He wasn’t intentional. He wasn’t calculated and deliberate. He sounded off, but rarely followed up with action. He was in essence a misfiring weapon that could do serious damage, but mostly by accident.The residue of that approach still persists, even in analysis that describes Trump’s first executive orders as a campaign of “shock and awe”, as if it were just a matter of signalling rather than executing. Or that his plan for Gaza is to be taken – you guessed it – seriously, not literally. When that was suggested to Democratic senator Andy Kim, he lost it. “I understand people are bending over backwards to try to mitigate some of the fallout from these statements that are made,” he told Politico. But Trump is “the commander-in-chief of the most powerful military in the world … if I can’t take the words of the president of the United States to actually mean something, rather than needing some type of oracle to be able to explain, I just don’t know what to think about when it comes to our national security.”Part of the problem is that people are reluctant to imbue Trump with any sort of coherence. But a Trump doctrine is emerging, most sharply in foreign policy. It has clear features, contours and a sort of unified theory of conflict. First, it is transactional, particularly when it comes to warfare in which the US is playing a role. Nothing has a history or any objective sense of right and wrong. Time starts with Trump, and his role is to end things, ideally while securing some bonus for the US.That upside is the second feature of the Trump doctrine: financialisation, or the reduction of politics to how much things cost, what is the return and how it can be maximised. Trump sees conflicts and financial assistance that have not produced anything tangible for the US. From the Gaza war, some sort of real estate deal can be salvaged. In Ukraine, a proposal for almost four times the value of US assistance so far in minerals is like the stripping of a distressed company by a new investment manager trying to recoup the funds disbursed by predecessors.The third feature is the junking of any notions of “soft power” – something that is seen as expensive, with questionable benefits that are abstract and unquantifiable. Soft power might even be a myth altogether, a fiction that flattered previously gullible regimes, giving them some sense of control while others fed off the US’s resources. In Gaza or Ukraine, the US was going through the motions of action without a definitive breakthrough. Where others saw soft power, Trump sees quagmires.The features of this approach may change, and they might be shortsighted and deleterious to the US’s security. And they may not entirely come from Trump himself, but rather the intersection of different political strands of the configuration of interests that support and advise him. Channelled through Trump, the doctrine takes on the hallmarks of his character – rambling, narcissistic, ignorant. However, none of this should be confused with a lack of underlying consistency and resolve to follow through.This leaves other leaders, particularly in Europe, in a place where their historical arrangements and understandings when it comes to US compact have been wiped out. European countries are now simply junior nations who can either dispense with their cancelled notions of the importance of rebuffing Vladimir Putin, join Trump in bringing an end to the war on his terms, or pick up the pieces themselves when the US withdraws its support.The ensuing anger and language of “appeasement” and “capitulation” feels like a misreading of what is happening, an echo of a time when it was universally agreed upon that aggressive enemies are to be stood up to, and anything else is a moral defeat and sign of weakness. But Trump is functioning in a different value system, one where these notions don’t even apply or have different definitions.As Europeans seethe, Trump’s plan for Ukraine is being worked out not only away from Europe in Washington, but in the Middle East, at new centres of middleman power that have always been transactional. They themselves are in the throes of redefining their relationship with the US, and have no illusions about the world that is emerging. Sergei Lavrov met with Marco Rubio in Riyadh and Volodymyr Zelenskyy flew to the region preparing for Gulf-mediated peace talks in Abu Dhabi. Those whose relationships with the US have been hard-edged, about mutual self-interest rather than shared values, and have always had to manage the US to greater or lesser extents, seem best positioned now to not freeze in moral horror.For the rest, for the country’s more intimate friends and family, those who shared America’s values and security liabilities, the regime change is a bitter pill to swallow. It is likely that there can be no persuasion, negotiation or hope of a “transatlantic bridge”, as Keir Starmer has been described, a figure that can act as an intermediary between the US and Europe and head off rupture. Perhaps Starmer can appeal to Trump’s ego? Or “tread a diplomatic line”, or convince him that giving in to Putin makes him look weak? All that assumes some measure of impulsiveness on Trump’s part that can be reined in (and by a prime minister not exactly known for his pyrotechnic charm), and also that Trump even shares similar notions of “judgment of history” or the same understanding of “weakness”. There is no small, but still shared, middle ground.There are now two options for the US’s former close friends and security partners: shed everything, dispense with notions of European solidarity, fast-forward the end of the postwar order, and make peace with defence vulnerability and political subordination. Or embark on a colossal power-mapping exercise. This entails rapid, closely coordinated action on a political, bureaucratic and military level to either replace the US, or at least demonstrate that they constitute a bloc that has some power, agency and agility – and challenge Trump in the only language he understands.It is tempting to think that Trump doesn’t mean it, or needs to be managed and cajoled because all that underlies his actions is recklessness. Or that there is a way to reconcile what are now in essence two incompatible conceptions of the global order. Who wants to wake up every day and reckon with the end of the world as they know it? But it is so. And the sooner political leaders come to terms with the fact that roads back to the old way are closed, the more likely it is that this new world will not be fashioned entirely on Trump’s terms.

      Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist More

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      Trump names conservative podcaster Dan Bongino as FBI deputy director

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      Dan Bongino, a former US Secret Service agent who has written bestselling books, run unsuccessfully for office and gained fame as a conservative pundit with TV shows and a popular podcast, has been chosen to serve as the FBI’s deputy director.President Donald Trump announced the appointment on Sunday night in a post on his Truth Social platform, praising Bongino as “a man of incredible love and passion for our country”. He called the announcement “great news for law enforcement and American justice”.The selection places two staunch Trump allies atop the nation’s principal federal law enforcement agency at a time when Democrats are concerned that the president could seek to target his adversaries. Bongino would serve under Kash Patel, who was sworn in as FBI director at the White House on Friday and who has signalled his intent to reshape the bureau, including by relocating hundreds of employees from its Washington headquarters and placing greater emphasis on the FBI’s traditional crime-fighting duties.Patel has declined to explicitly say whether he would use his position to pursue Trump’s political opponents.The deputy director serves as the FBI’s second-in-command and is traditionally a career agent responsible for the bureau’s day-to-day law enforcement operations.Bongino, 49, served on the presidential details for then-presidents Barack Obama and George W Bush, before becoming a popular rightwing figure. He became one of the leading personalities in the Maga political movement to spread false information about the 2020 election.For a few years following Rush Limbaugh’s death in 2021, he was chosen for a radio show on the same time slot of the famous commentator.Bongino worked for the New York police department from 1997 through 1999, before joining the Secret Service. He began doing commentary on Fox News more than a decade ago, and had a Saturday night show with the network from 2021 to 2023. He is now a host of the Dan Bongino Show, one of the most popular podcasts, according to Spotify.Bongino ran for a US Senate seat in Maryland in 2012 and for congressional seats in 2014 and 2016 in Maryland and Florida, after moving in 2015. He lost all three races.During an interview last year, Bongino asked Trump to commit to forming a commission to reform the Secret Service, calling it a “failed” agency and criticizing it for the two assassination attempts last year.“That guy should have been nowhere near you,” Bongino said about the man who authorities say camped outside Trump’s golf course in West Palm Beach, Florida, before he was spotted with a rifle. More

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      Trump administration briefing: Zelenskyy rejects US minerals demand; bomb threat sent to anti-Trump conference

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      As Ukraine prepared to mark the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion of the country, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that he would be willing to step down if it meant peace or membership of Nato, something the US and some other Nato member states oppose. Zelenskyy insisted he wanted good, “friendly” relations with America – a “strategic partner” – and shrugged off Trump’s bruising description of him as a “dictator” for not holding elections during wartime.But he also said that he would not sign a $500bn minerals deal proposed by the US. He said the figure was far higher than the US’s actual military contribution of $100bn.“I’m not signing something that 10 generations of Ukrainians are going to pay later,” he said.Here is what else happened on Sunday:Zelenskyy says he would ‘quit for peace’ as he refuses US demand for Ukraine mineralsVolodymyr Zelenskyy has said he is not willing to cave in to intense US pressure to sign a $500bn minerals deal and that he wants Donald Trump to be “on our side” in negotiations to end the war in Ukraine.Speaking at a press conference in Kyiv ahead of the third anniversary on Monday of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Zelenskyy said he did not recognise the sum demanded by the White House as apparent “payback” for previous US military assistance.Read the full storyTrump ‘surrendering to the Russians’ on Ukraine, top Democrat saysA senior Democratic lawmaker accused Donald Trump of “surrendering to the Russians” on Sunday, as Trump special envoy Steve Witkoff said talks between the US and Russia over Ukraine was “the only way to end the carnage”.Read the full storyBomb threat sent to anti-Trump conference singles out officer who tangled with ex-Proud Boys leaderPeople attending a center-right political conference in Washington DC were forced to evacuate on Sunday, after someone claiming to be Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the far-right Proud Boys group, allegedly emailed a bomb threat against the event. Tarrio, who was convicted and then pardoned for his role in the 6 January insurrection, denied any involvement in the incident.Read the full storyKash Patel tells FBI staff to ignore Elon Musk request to list their achievementsThe new FBI director, Kash Patel, has told his agency employees to hold off on responding to an email from the Donald Trump administration asking them to list their accomplishments in the last week as tech billionaire Elon Musk expands his crusade to slash the federal government’s size.Read the full storyTrump administration eliminating 2,000 USAid positions in US, notice saysThe Trump administration on Sunday said it was placing all but a handful of USAid personnel around the world on paid administrative leave and eliminating about 2,000 of those positions in the US, according to a notice sent to agency workers and posted online.Read the full storyTrump halts medical research funding in apparent violation of judge’s orderThe Trump administration has blocked a crucial step in the National Institutes of Health (NIH) process for funding medical research, likely in violation of a federal judge’s temporary restraining order on federal funding freezes.Read the full storyOpposition to Trump, slow to energize, shakes off its slumberProgressive activists and concerned constituents spent the first week-long recess of the new Trump administration pressuring congressional Republicans to stand up to the president, Musk and their potentially unlawful power grabs.At congressional offices, Tesla dealerships and town halls across the country, including in solidly conservative corners of Georgia, Wisconsin and Oregon, voters registered their alarm over Republicans’ proposed cuts to Medicaid, the widening influence of Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” and the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle or entirely eliminate federal agencies that Americans rely on for essential services.Read the full storyPolitical theatre confirms Elon Musk’s Maga hero status at jubilant CPACWhat do you give the man who has everything? A ballroom full of cheering conservative activists found out this week when Elon Musk was presented with a chainsaw by Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, who has used the power tool as a symbol of his push to impose fiscal discipline.Wearing sunglasses, a black Maga baseball cap and a gold necklace, Musk giddily wielded the chainsaw up and down the stage. “This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy!” he declared. Members of the audience shouted: “We love you!” Musk replied: “I love you guys, too!” And he quipped: “I am become meme.”It was a wild political theatre that confirmed Musk’s status as a new hero of the Maga movement.Read the full storyCan Keir Starmer persuade Trump not to give in to Putin?When Keir Starmer is advised on how to handle his crucial meeting with Donald Trump at the White House on Thursday, he will be told by advisers from Downing Street and the Foreign Office to be very clear on his main points and, above all, to be brief.Starmer will also be advised to flatter Trump when he can, to say that everyone is so grateful that he has focused the world’s attention on the need for peace between Russia and Ukraine. But to flatter subtly. And not to lay it on too thick.Read the full storyTrump compared to mobster Tony Soprano by former envoy to PanamaThe former US ambassador to Panama has launched a stinging critique of Donald Trump’s approach towards Latin America, comparing his conduct to that of the ruthless and egotistical fictional mob boss Tony Soprano.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      Trump said in a post on social media Sunday that Dan Bongino, a conservative talk show host, will be deputy director of the FBI. Bongino will join Kash Patel, who was recently confirmed by the Senate as director of the FBI. Trump said Bongino was named to the role by Patel. The position does not require Senate confirmation.

      A contentious Trump administration proposal to give the US $500bn worth of profits from Ukraine’s rare earth minerals as compensation for its wartime assistance to Kyiv has been taken off the table, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Sunday.

      Republican US senator Markwayne Mullin poured cold water on extremist conservative fantasies that Trump could find a way to run for an unconstitutional third presidential term, saying he would not support that barring an amendment to the US constitution that would legalize it.

      New York Governor Kathy Hochul says she told Trump in a private meeting at the White House that congestion pricing tolls in New York City are necessary and working, yet the Democrat predicted the courts will probably decide the matter.

      Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel was prepared to resume fighting against Hamas after the Palestinian group accused it of endangering a five-week-old Gaza truce by suspending prisoner releases. Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff said he was headed to the Middle East this week to “get an extension of phase 1” of the truce. More

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      Trump administration eliminating 2,000 USAid positions in US, notice says

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      The Trump administration on Sunday said it was placing all but a handful of USAid personnel around the world on paid administrative leave and eliminating about 2,000 of those positions in the US, according to a notice sent to agency workers and posted online.“As of 11:59 p.m. EST on Sunday, February 23, 2025, all USAid direct hire personnel, with the exception of designated personnel responsible for mission-critical functions, core leadership and/or specially designated programs, will be placed on administrative leave globally,” the notice said.“Concurrently”, the notice added, the agency is “beginning to implement a Reduction-in-Force” affecting about 2,000 USAid personnel in the US.The White House did not immediately respond to request for comment.Billionaire Elon Musk has boasted that he is “feeding USAID into the wood chipper” as his so-called “department of government efficiency” has led an effort to gut the main delivery mechanism for American foreign assistance, a critical tool of US“soft power” for winning influence abroad.On Friday, a federal judge cleared the way for the Trump administration to put thousands of USAid workers on leave, a setback for government employee unions that are suing over what they have called an effort to dismantle it.The secretary of state, Marco Rubio, was appointed acting USAid administrator by Donald Trump earlier this month. The unsigned notice came from “the office of the administrator”.Two former senior USAid officials told Reuters that a majority of some 4,600 agency personnel, career US Civil Service and Foreign Service staffers, would be placed on administrative leave.“This administration and Secretary Rubio are shortsighted in cutting into the expertise and unique crisis response capacity of the US”, said Marcia Wong, one of the former officials. “When disease outbreaks occur, populations displaced, these USAid experts are on the ground and first deployed to help stabilize and provide aid?” In a post on Musk’s social-media platform, Wong was even more blunt, calling the job cuts “a shortsighted, high risk and frankly stupid act”.“Unsigned notices like this are not self-implementing. They must be followed up by an individual personnel action or at least an approved leave slip, properly executed by someone with that authority”, a second former official, who asked not to be further identified, told Reuters.The US president ordered a 90-day pause on foreign aid shortly after taking office, halting funding for everything from programs that fight starvation and deadly diseases to providing shelters for millions of displaced people across the globe.Trump, his press secretary and Musk have all tried to justify the cuts by pointing to wildly mischaracterized or wholly invented spending on overseas aid projects.The administration has approved exceptions to the freeze totaling $5.3 billion, mostly for security and counter-narcotics programs, according to a list of exemptions reviewed by Reuters that included limited humanitarian relief.USAid programs received less than $100 million in exemptions, according to the list. That compares to roughly $40bn in USAid programs administered annually before the freeze.Trump’s ally, the prime minister of Hungary, Viktor Orbán, joined the campaign to smear USAid, posting video on Musk’s social media platform of a speech in which he attacked the agency in conspiratorial terms for supporting “pseudo-civil organizations” to promote democracy and human rights.“USAID was the heart of a robust financial and power machine. A monster created to crush, crumble and erode the freedom and independence of nations so that the liberal-globalist empire could thrive,” Orban wrote. Trump, he added, “drove a stake through the heart of the empire”. More

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      Republican says he wouldn’t back unconstitutional third Trump term

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      A conservative lawmaker poured cold water on extremist Republican fantasies that Donald Trump could find a way to run for an unconstitutional third presidential term, saying he would not support that barring an amendment to the US constitution that would legalize it.Asked Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press about Trump’s boasts that he might just stay in the Oval Office after his second presidency ends in 2028, the Republican US senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma said: “No, I’m not changing the constitution, first of all, unless the American people chose to do that.”The comments from Mullin – who made it a point to invoke the maxim among some that Trump should be taken seriously though not literally – referred to a 1951 constitutional amendment that barred US presidents from serving beyond two terms.The exchange between Meet the Press host Kristen Welker and Mullin came after after Republican congressman Andy Ogles of Tennessee proposed a resolution in support of a constitutional amendment that would allow Trump to serve a third stint in the White House because his two terms were not consecutive. That would bar the other three living former presidents who served two consecutive terms from seeking the Oval Office again.Furthermore, Trump recently referred to himself as “King” – a title with no term limits – when discussing his push to halt New York’s congestion pricing policy.The US constitution expressly forbids presidents from running for a third term thanks to its 22nd amendment. That amendment was introduced after Franklin D Roosevelt served two terms after being elected in 1932 – and then was re-elected in 1940 and 1944 amid the second world war. He served as president until his death in 1945.Proposing to change that amendment – in the form Ogles suggested or otherwise – would need approval from two-thirds of both the US Senate and House, which is a margin of control that Trump’s Republican party does not have in Congress. Three-fourths of the US’s state legislatures also would need to approve the change.Republicans as of last year controlled only the legislatures and governorships of about 23 of the US’s 50 states. Democrats controlled those same levers of power in 17 states, with the rest being divided.Nonetheless, that steep math has not stopped Trump from raising the possibility of staying in office beyond his second presidential term since his victory in November’s White House election.At a White House event on Thursday, he teased: “Should I run again? You tell me.”The audience, which included elected Republican officials like US senator Tim Scott of South Carolina and Congressman John James of Michigan as well as famed golfer Tiger Woods, responded with chants of: “Four more years!”According to the Washington Post, Trump remarked that the crowd reaction to his comments would draw “controversy”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThey did indeed.On Sunday, the Democratic US House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, said Trump is trying to “disorient everyday Americans” by talking about a third term and referring to himself as a monarch. Jeffries said those “outrageous” comments were “intentionally unleashing extremism”.Trump “is not a king”, Jeffries said on CNN’s State of the Union. “We will never bend the knee. Not now, not ever. And we’ll continue to point out that he’s focused on the wrong things.”As Republicans are wont to do when Trump muses on unconstitutional ideas, Mullin on Sunday insisted Trump was only joking about pursuing a third White House term.“The president is a very interesting guy that you can find extreme humor when you sit down to visit with him,” Mullin added. “At the same time, he can be deadly serious.” More

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      Bomb threat sent to anti-Trump conference singles out officer who tangled with ex-Proud Boys leader

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      Attendees of a center-right political conference in Washington DC were forced to evacuate on Sunday, after someone claiming to be Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the far-right Proud Boys group who was convicted and then pardoned for his role in the January 6 insurrection, allegedly emailed in a bomb threat against the event. Tarrio denied any involvement in the incident.Organizers of the Principles First summit, which is considered a center-right alternative to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), confirmed the bomb threat after they abruptly asked attendees to clear the room hosting the conference.“We have received a credible bomb threat from an account claiming to be ‘Enrique T.’ ‘To honor the J6 hostages.’ Yesterday, the recently pardoned leader of the Proud Boys who was sentenced to 22 years in prison for seditious conspiracy and the attack of January 6th came to the Summit and harassed the J6 police who were speaking,” organizers said in a social media post.“Hotel security, private security, and MPD have made the decision to evacuate Summit floor so that the area can be secured,” the note added, referring to Washignton’s Metropolitan police department. “We intend to reconvene and continue with the Summit once the area has been secured.”As the situation unfolded, Tarrio shared a social media post denying any connection to the incident and threatening Principles First organizers with legal action for accusing him.Jim Acosta, the former CNN host, posted what he said was a copy of the threatening message on social media. The message claimed that four pipe bombs had been deployed against political enemies of “Emperor Trump” who “all deserve to die”, including attendees at the conference, Michael Fanone, a former US Capitol police officer, Fanone’s mother and John Bolton, Donald Trump’s former national security adviser.After police officers completed the security sweep of the hotel, Heath Mayo, founder of Principles First, confirmed that organizers received a threatening email with the subject line “explosive surprises” from an account belonging to “Enrique T”.Mayo commended the police officers and security officials who responded quickly to the threat, telling summit attendees: “We are not going to be cowed … It would have been easy to go home and write this off and let these threats win. But this is what America is all about, and America’s democracy – the way that our government works – cannot be cowed by threats like this or people like this.”The crowd responded with loud applause.The incident comes one day after Tarrio appeared at the Washington hotel hosting the summit to insult a group of police officers who protected the US Capitol on January 6, one of whom was receiving a “profile in courage” award from Principles First.In video shared by Tarrio on social media on Saturday, he was seen following the officers and mocking them as “fucking cowards”.“You were brave on Twitter,” Tarrio said to the officers. “You guys were brave at my sentencing when you sat there and laughed when I got 22 fucking years. Now you don’t want to look in my eyes, you fucking cowards.”Fanone, the former police officer, then turned to Tarrio and said: “You’re a traitor to this country.”Aquilino Gonell, a former Capitol police sergeant, acknowledged the confrontation with Tarrio as he accepted his “profile in courage” award from Principles First on Saturday.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“A few moments ago, we were upstairs, and Enrique Tarrio and the Proud Boys were upstairs,” Gonell told conference attendees. “How they got into the building, I don’t know, but it’s insane that we had to be subjected to their harassment now because they feel emboldened and empowered because of the pardons that they received.”“We shouldn’t be harassed for doing the right thing, for telling our story, for telling the truth, for speaking against them in court and in public. They’re the traitor. They’re the one who attacked the Capitol,” he added.Tarrio was sentenced to 22 years in prison for seditious conspiracy and other charges related to his role in the January 6 attack, but the president pardoned him and roughly 1,500 other insurrectionists after taking office last month.Organizers received the threatening email from “Enrique T” on Sunday at 12.15pm, Mayo said, when attendees were on their lunch break. As the audience started trickling back in to the conference room, expecting to hear next from Bolton, an organizer asked everyone to exit and proceed to the upper levels of the hotel.The summit was able to resume about two hours later on Sunday afternoon. As they started making their way back to the conference room, attendees applauded the police officers who assisted with the security sweep and then broke out into chants of “USA! USA!” More

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      Kash Patel tells FBI staff to ignore Elon Musk request to list their achievements

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      The new FBI director, Kash Patel, has told his agency employees to hold off on responding to an email from the Donald Trump administration asking them to list their accomplishments in the last week as tech billionaire Elon Musk expands his crusade to slash the federal government’s size.Hundreds of thousands of federal workers had been given little more than 48 hours to explain what they achieved to the office of personnel management (OPM), sparking confusion across key agencies that included the US’s top law enforcement agency.But the FBI director – confirmed by the Senate on Thursday – undercut the request. According to ABC News, the agency was seeking additional guidance from the US justice department on next steps.“FBI personnel may have received an email from OPM requesting information,” Patel’s message read. “The FBI, through the Office of the Director, is in charge of all of our review processes, and will conduct reviews in accordance with FBI procedures. When and if further information is required, we will coordinate the responses. For now, please pause any responses.”Patel’s missive came amid reports on Sunday indicated that he was expected to be named acting head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), a domestic law enforcement agency that – like the FBI – sits within the Department of Justice.Separately, the US attorney John Durham, the top federal prosecutor in the eastern district of New York, also sent a message to his staff to hold off, according to the outlet.“Of course, a majority of our work is law enforcement sensitive (in addition to much classified work), so even assuming this is legitimate, we will need to be careful in how we respond to this inquiry. As noted, the deadline isn’t until 11.59pm on Monday, so we have plenty of time,” Durham wrote in his letter.And the Department of Defense reportedly told employees to pause responding to the OPM message.“The Department of Defense is responsible for reviewing the performance of its personnel and will conduct any review in accordance with its own procedures,” the force’s undersecretary for personnel and readiness said in a message, CNN’s Natasha Bertrand reported on Sunday. “When and if required, the department will coordinate responses to the email you have received from OPM.”Trump’s national health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, however, evidently did not follow the leads of Patel, Durham and the defense department. He required that his staff comply with the OPM directive, according to a copy of an email reported on by Sam Stein of the Bulwark.“This is a legitimate email,” Kennedy’s agency said in an email to staffers. “Please read and respond per the instructions.”Musk, who has been tasked to ostensibly cut government costs during Donald Trump’s second presidency, telegraphed the extraordinary request on his social media network on Saturday.“Consistent with [Trump’s] instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week,” Musk posted on X, which he owns. “Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”Shortly afterwards, federal employees – including some judges, court staff and federal prison officials – received a three-line email with this instruction: “Please reply to this email with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager.”The deadline to reply was listed as Monday at 11.59pm, although the email did not include Musk’s social media threat about those who fail to respond.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe latest unusual directive from Musk’s team has injected a fresh sense of chaos across beleaguered agencies, including the National Weather Service, the state department and the federal court system, as senior officials worked to verify the message’s authenticity on Saturday night and in some cases, instructed their employees not to respond.The president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), which represents 800,000 workers in the federal government, issued a statement saying: “Elon Musk and the Trump Administration have shown their utter disdain for federal employees and the critical services they provide to the American people.”“It is cruel and disrespectful to hundreds of thousands of veterans who are wearing their second uniform in the civil service to be forced to justify their job duties to this out-of-touch, privileged, unelected billionaire who has never performed one single hour of honest public service in his life,” said Everett Kelley, the AFGE president.Thousands of government employees have already been forced out of the federal workforce – either by being fired or offered a buyout – during the first month of Trump’s administration. In fire both new and career workers, the White House and Musk’s so-called department of government efficiency (Doge) have been telling agency leaders to plan for “large-scale reductions in force” and freeze trillions of dollars in federal grant funds.There is no official figure available for the total number of firings or layoffs so far, but the Associated Press has tallied hundreds of thousands of workers who are being affected. Many work outside Washington. The cuts include thousands at the Departments of Veterans Affairs, Defense, Health and Human Services, the Internal Revenue Service and the National Parks Service, among others.Musk on Friday celebrated his new role at a gathering of conservatives by waving a giant chainsaw in the air. He called it “the chainsaw for bureaucracy” and said “waste is pretty much everywhere” in the federal government. More