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      Fury as Republicans go ‘nuclear’ in fight over California car emissions

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      California has long been one of the nation’s preeminent eco-warriors, enacting landmark environmental standards for cars and trucks that go much further than those mandated by the federal government. Vehicles across the country are cleaner, more efficient and electric in greater numbers because of it.But that could all change if Donald Trump and his Republican allies manage to revoke the state’s ability to set its own, stricter emissions standards amid a White House crusade to combat climate-friendly policies.The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sets and updates its own federal standards for all states on smog and emissions from cars and trucks, which the Biden administration made even stricter last year, saying they will save American drivers thousands in fuel costs and maintenance over the life of a vehicle.But for decades, California has been granted the ability to make those rules even stricter to help address some of the worst smog and air quality issues in the nation, which are linked to a host of health effects that disproportionately affect people of color.On Wednesday, the Senate voted to reverse the waivers, in move that prompted fury from Democrats who call it a “nuclear” option, calling it an unprecedented, and illegal, use of the statute. The Government Accountability Office and the Senate parliamentarian have agreed, saying EPA waivers are not subject to the review law.The House approved similar resolutions earlier this month. The resolutions now go to the White House, where Trump is expected to sign them.“This move will harm public health and deteriorate air quality for millions of children and people across the country,” said senators Alex Padilla, Sheldon Whitehouse and the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, in a statement.“This Senate vote is illegal. Republicans went around their own parliamentarian to defy decades of precedent. We won’t stand by as Trump Republicans make America smoggy again,” California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, said in a statement on Thursday. “We’re going to fight this unconstitutional attack on California in court.”Kathy Harris, the director of clean vehicles at the Natural Resources Defense Council, emphasized California’s ability to mandate strict emissions standards for cars, trucks and buses had existed for nearly 60 years, noting the state had been granted more than 75 waivers under Republican and Democratic presidents.Among the waivers include rules to increase the share of electric vehicles each year among all new car and truck sales, as well as mandates that auto companies introduce progressively cleaner vehicles.She described the waivers as a “quadruple win”, benefiting public health, air quality, drivers’ pockets and the economy as a whole.“These waivers are not new or novel,” Harris said in an interview. “California has historically been innovators in systems to help produce cleaner air and stymying California’s ability is a direct attack on our ability to limit pollution and health harming pollutants in the air.”View image in fullscreenShe added revoking the waivers would immediately lead to an increase in pollution on the nation’s roadways.More than a dozen states follow California’s lead on emissions standards, according to the California air resources board. The standards now cover nearly 40% of new light-duty vehicle registrations and more than a quarter of heavy-duty vehicles like trucks across the entire US.Automakers have largely followed California’s emissions standards as well so they can continue to sell cars there, as the state equates to the fourth-largest economy on the planet.Newsom upped the ante in the nation’s environmental future in 2020, declaring his state would ban the sale of all new gas-powered vehicles by 2035. Eleven states have also joined California’s plan to ban the sale of new gasoline-powered cars by the 2035 deadline, a reality that has spooked major car companies.Joe Biden’s administration approved the plan at the end of his term. Trump, however – a vehement opponent to many of the nation’s climate efforts – has vowed to see them reversed.“California has imposed the most ridiculous car regulations anywhere in the world, with mandates to move to all electric cars,” Trump said during his campaign last year. “I will terminate that.”Newsom on Wednesday cast the battle as a nail in the coffin for the American car industry and decades of public health advancements.“The United States Senate has a choice: cede American car-industry dominance to China and clog the lungs of our children, or follow decades of precedent and uphold the clean-air policies that Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon fought so hard for,” he challenged Republicans in a statement. “Will you side with China or America?”The Senate’s decision may have sweeping effects far beyond the state’s borders.Harris said she recently pulled up pictures of what air quality looked like in cities around the country in the 1960s before the Clean Air Act, the seminal environmental law that regulates the nation’s air quality, was in effect. She described normal levels of smog in California as blanketing the state similar to the apocalyptic clouds of wildfire smoke that have descended during recent fire seasons.The American Lung Association also found last month that Los Angeles remained the country’s smoggiest city for the 25th time in 26 years of tracking, despite decades of improvements in air quality.“I think we have forgotten about what our air used to look like,” Harris said. “We take it for granted because it’s a policy that’s been around for so long we don’t really recognize those direct benefits.“There is still a long way to go, we have not succeeded in fully cleaning up our air yet,” she added. “These types of policies help ensure we are moving in a positive direction.” More

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      Volodymyr Zelenskyy has courage. Pope Francis had it too. Why are there so many cowards? | Alexander Hurst

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      “Courage is seeking the truth and speaking it,” Jean Jaurès, the French philosopher and Socialist party leader, told a group of high school students in 1903. “It is not yielding to the law of the triumphant lie as it passes, and not echoing, with our soul, our mouth and our hands, mindless applause and fanatical jeering.”When the first world war reared its ugly, pointless head, Jaurès refused to give in to mindless fanaticism and attempted to coordinate a Franco-German general strike to stop the rush to war. In 1914, he paid for those efforts with his life when a 29-year-old French nationalist shot him twice in the back.Courage among ordinary people is not in short supply. The doctors and humanitarian workers who rush to war zones and refugee camps to care for those who need it. Rümeysa Öztürk, the PhD student who was arrested in the US for voicing an opinion against the relentless bombing of Gaza. Israeli conscientious objectors and an increasing number of other refuseniks. The protesters in Tbilisi, Belgrade and Istanbul who have repeatedly faced down their governments’ attempts at repression.Examples of political courage from those in power, though? These feel less numerous. Volodymyr Zelenskyy has displayed it endlessly. French judges did too, when they upheld the rule of law – which in normal times would simply be doing their duty, but in our times meant facing death threats. Pope Francis pushed reforms of the Catholic church to make it more compassionate and inclusive, and didn’t veer from them. He didn’t “change strategy” when attendance failed to pick up, because he didn’t have a strategy – he was simply doing what was right.View image in fullscreenOn the other hand, we’ve witnessed so many high-profile examples of political cowardice in recent months that I can only talk about them in broad categories. The US supreme court justices who, last summer, bent over backwards to create a monarchical presidency with impunity to break the law as it desires. The law firms that have offered up hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of pro bono work to an administration busy dismantling the rule of law.The CEOs and companies that have turned on the money tap and tripped over themselves to cancel inclusion initiatives to placate a president who is tanking their share prices. An almost comically conspicuous level of grift, alleged corruption and insider trading. Congressional Republicans who have sold out their country’s constitutional principles in order to avoid primaries – or perhaps, as the senator Lisa Murkowski put it, because “we are all afraid … because retaliation is real”.What is just? Who is acting with honour? With courage? When did we stop thinking it normal to consider such questions – and to demand those things from the people who lead us? To demand that they, well, lead?Left with basically no other choice, Harvard University finally made the decision to oppose the Trump administration’s outrageous demands. That is not to downplay the moral courage in the decision; other universities might have and did make different choices when they were in the same bind. As a result of Harvard’s stand, hundreds of college and university presidents have decided that sticking together is better than falling one by one.But perhaps in this moment, Harvard and other elite schools like it might take the opportunity to reflect on exactly what kind of virtues they have been instilling in their students. For years, nearly half of Harvard’s graduates have stepped straight from campus into roles at consulting firms and investment banks. It’s disheartening but perhaps not surprising, given that according to its newspaper, the Crimson, for the past four decades far more first-years have been concerned with “being well-off financially” than with “developing a meaningful life philosophy”.When the primary metric becomes “success” in amassing something – money, followers, territory, votes – society loses its moral centre. As Pankaj Mishra wrote in his 2017 book, Age of Anger, part of the crisis of the current moment is that commercial society has unleashed individuals who are unmoored from each other or from some greater social fabric.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIt may sound quaint, almost conservative, to denounce a breakdown in society’s engagement with morality in public life. But I reject that. Without an ability to think and speak in real moral language, we end up in a place where there is no more shame in hypocrisy, no dishonour in rapacious greed; where if something is true or false matters less than how many people believe it. We end up in a place where the world’s wealthiest man has overseen a series of devastating aid cuts that will indirectly kill hundreds of thousands of children and sentence millions more to death from disease. There is an appropriate descriptive word for that: the word is evil.Much of the media – US media, most certainly – have a lot to answer for in the ways that they have oriented public conversation. Far too frequently, they have approached politics primarily as a horse race. What does this or that mean for a candidate’s electoral chances? How will it play out in the polls? Who is up, who is down? Who agrees, who disagrees, and what is each party saying about the other? What the media don’t like to do, because it’s far more difficult and far riskier, is to talk about whether the policies being proposed and the decisions being taken are morally commendable, just, honourable, courageous.A focus on speaking the truth, of the kind that Jaurès extolled, opens wide other doors. Among them, the ability to move from a political question – what do we want? – to a more courageous one: is this what we should want?

      Alexander Hurst is a Guardian Europe columnist

      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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      Trump’s massive tax and spending bill clears hurdle to advance to House vote in coming hours

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      The Republican-controlled House of Representatives will attempt to pass President Donald Trump’s massive tax and spending bill in the pre-dawn hours of Thursday, following weeks of intra-party divisions of how deeply to cut spending.The bill cleared an important procedural hurdle in the House on Wednesday evening, when a gatekeeper committee approved the measure and set up a floor vote for passage to occur within hours. Shortly before midnight in Washington, the full House reconvened to consider Trump’s so-called “big, beautiful bill”, opening the floor for debate and a series of procedural votes.Republicans have been deeply divided over the bill, which would extend Trump’s signature 2017 tax cuts, create new breaks for tipped income and auto loans, end many green-energy subsidies and boost spending on the military and immigration enforcement.It would pay for those changes by tightening eligibility for food and health programs that serve millions of low-income Americans.The nonpartisan congressional Budget Office estimates the bill will add $3.8tr to the US’s $36.2tr in debt over the next decade.The House Rules Committee voted 8 to 4 to advance the bill late on Wednesday after a marathon session that lasted nearly 22 hours. Republican leaders later scheduled two votes, one to begin debate and a second to pass the bill, before sunrise on Thursday.House passage would set the stage for weeks of debate in the Republican-led Senate.A handful of party hardliners, angry that the bill did not contain more spending cuts, met with Trump and house speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday, a day after Trump’s visit to the Capitol failed to unify the narrow 220-212 majority.Johnson expressed confidence that the bill would pass the House. “I believe we are going to land this airplane,” he told reporters.Representative Dusty Johnson, who leads the chamber’s Main Street Caucus, said he believed the speaker had reached a deal that could pass the House.“The speaker has been working with a broad cross section of the conference,” he told reporters. “We have every expectation, the speaker has every expectation, that we will get there.”Credit rating firm Moody’s last week stripped the US government of its top-tier credit rating, citing the nation’s growing debt. US stocks fell on Wednesday amid investor concern about the mounting debt.The Medicaid health program for low-income households had proved to be a major sticking point, with fiscal hawks pushing for cuts to partly offset the cost of the bill’s tax components, which moderate Republicans say would hurt voters whose support they will need in the 2026 midterm congressional elections.The rules committee approved an overall amendment package containing deals between Johnson and various Republican factions.The revisions included imposing work requirements for the Medicaid program at the end of 2026, two years earlier than previously planned. It also penalized states that expand Medicaid in the future and raised the amount of state and local taxes that can be deducted from federal income taxes.The amendment package also exempted firearm silencers from registration requirements under the National Firearms Act and eliminated a $200 tax on the firearm accessories, changes demanded by Representative Andrew Clyde of Georgia.Democrats railed against the legislation.“Republicans are kicking millions of Americans off their healthcare and (food) benefits in order to finance tax cuts that will help billionaires,” said Representative Jim McGovern, the top Democrat on the House Rules Committee.“Cutting benefits means families will go hungry, farmers will suffer and health care costs will go up,” he said.Trump visited Republican lawmakers at the Capitol on Tuesday to try to persuade holdouts to get in line on what he calls a “big, beautiful bill.”Johnson has little room for error on the House floor, as a handful of Republican “no” votes could scuttle the bill.Republican lawmakers have said they do not believe the nonpartisan analysts’ projections and accused Moody’s of deliberately timing its downgrade last Friday to try to block the bill’s passage.Lawmakers must act to address the debt limit by this summer or risk triggering a devastating default.“Deficits aside, this bill is ugly because it is ultimately a betrayal of the contract that we have made with the American people, and especially to our babies and to our working people,” said Democratic Representative Gwen Moore. More

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      Trump news at a glance: Ramaphosa keeps his cool in Trump’s ‘orchestrated show for the cameras’

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      South African president Cyril Ramaphosa refused to take the bait when Donald Trump falsely accused his nation of committing white genocide, in what his spokesperson dismissed as “an orchestrated show for the cameras”.Ramaphosa remained composed and suggested the two leaders “talk about it very calmly” as Trump ambushed him with a video making the untrue allegations that white Afrikaners in South Africa were victims of genocide.“President Ramaphosa came here not for a TV show, he came here to discuss with President Trump in earnest how we can reset the strategic relationship between South Africa and the US,” Ramaphosa’s spokesperson, Vincent Magwenya, told South African TV station Newzroom Afrika.Ramaphosa was more cordial after the meeting, insisting “it went very well”. He added that he expected Trump to attend the G20 summit in Johannesburg in November, as the US is due to take over the group’s presidency in 2026.“I want to hand over the presidency of the G20 to President Trump in November, and I said he needs to be there,” he said. “I don’t want to hand over the presidency of the G20 to an empty chair.”Trump calls treatment of Afrikaners ‘the opposite of apartheid’ At the White House meeting, Trump said that treatment of white people in the country was like “the opposite of apartheid”. Trump has long maintained that Afrikaners, a minority descended from mainly Dutch colonists who ruled South Africa during its decades of racial apartheid, are being persecuted. South Africa rejects the allegation. Murder rates are high in the country and the overwhelming majority of victims are Black.Read the full storyTrump accepts jet from QatarThe Trump administration accepted the controversial gift of a Boeing 747 jetliner from the government of Qatar, and directed the air force to assess how quickly the plane can be upgraded for possible use as a new Air Force One. The offer of the jet has set off a firestorm of bipartisan criticism of Trump, particularly after the president’s visit to the country last week to arrange US business deals.Read the full storyTrump says he’s ‘seriously considering’ taking Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac publicTrump said he will make a decision in the near future about taking Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac public. The companies are the backbone of the US housing market and together support about 70% of US mortgages. In a post on Truth Social, Trump said: “Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are doing very well, throwing off a lot of CASH, and the time would seem to be right. Stay tuned!”Read the full storyWhite House violated order by trying to deport migrants to South SudanA federal judge ruled that the Department of Homeland Security’s attempt to deport migrants to South Sudan was “unquestionably violative” of an injunction he had issued earlier. Judge Brian E Murphy made the remark at an emergency hearing he ordered in Boston after the Trump administration’s apparent deportation of eight people to South Sudan.Read the full storyMahmoud Khalil blocked from holding son for first time by Ice, lawyers sayMahmoud Khalil, the detained Columbia University graduate and Palestinian activist, was not allowed to hold his newborn son after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officials refused to allow a contact visit between him and his family, his lawyers said on Wednesday. Instead, Khalil was forced to meet his month-old baby for the first time behind glass at a Louisiana detention facility, where he has been detained since March.Read the full storyGeorge Washington University student banned after pro-Palestinian graduation speechA student has been banned from campus at George Washington University after she used her graduation speech to criticize the university’s ties to Israel and express support for Palestinians. The graduating senior, Cecilia Culver, delivered her remarks to nearly 750 students.Read the full storyJustice department moves to cancel police reform dealsThe justice department moved on Wednesday to cancel a settlement with Minneapolis that called for an overhaul of its police department after the murder of George Floyd, as well as a similar agreement with Louisville, Kentucky, after the death of Breonna Taylor, saying it does not want to pursue the cases. It comes amid pressure on the right to recast Floyd’s murder, undermine diversity efforts and define liberal-run cities like Minneapolis as crime-ridden.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      Gerry Connolly, a Democratic congressman from Virginia who previously served as the top Democrat on the House’s key oversight committee, died at age 75.

      Target sales fell more than expected in the first quarter, and the retailer warned they will slip for all of 2025 year as its customers pull back on spending.

      The US Senate passed the No Tax on Tips Act after the Nevada senator Jacky Rosen brought the bill up for a unanimous consent request.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 20 May 2025. More

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      Trump says he’s ‘seriously considering’ taking Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac public

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      Donald Trump said he will make a decision in the near future about taking Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac public, a move which he said he is giving “very serious consideration”.In a post on Truth Social, the US president said he will speak with treasury secretary, Scott Bessent; commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick; and federal housing finance director, William Pulte, about doing so.He added: “Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are doing very well, throwing off a lot of CASH, and the time would seem to be right. Stay tuned!”These two companies are the backbone of the US housing market. Together they support about 70% of US mortgages.Fannie and Freddie, which operate as for-profit corporations with private shareholders, were created by the US Congress to expand the national home lending market by buying home loans from private lenders and repackaging them as mortgage-backed securities.When the housing market collapsed in 2008, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac suffered overwhelming losses. To avoid catastrophic effects for the US economy, they were placed in conservatorship under the newly created Federal Housing Finance Agency.Gary LaBarbera, president of the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York and member of the Housing for US coalition, on Wednesday called on Trump to invest the expected $250bn in proceeds from the sale of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into middle-income housing, after the commander-in-chief announced he’s moving forward to release the government-sponsored enterprises from conservatorship.“President Trump is right to free Fannie and Freddie. But even better, let’s use the proceeds – some $250bn – to build middle-class housing for American workers by American workers. Housing for US stands ready to work with President Trump to make it happen.”Previous attempts to rid government control of the organizations, including under Trump’s first term in office, have been unsuccessful.In February, Bessent said the release of Fannie and Freddie from their conservatorship would depend on mortgage rate implications.“The priority for a Fannie and Freddie release, the most important metric that I’m looking at, is any study or hint that mortgage rates would go up,” Bessent said in an interview with Bloomberg.Reuters contributed to this report More

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      Mahmoud Khalil blocked from holding son for first time by Ice, lawyers say

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      Mahmoud Khalil, the detained Columbia University graduate and Palestinian activist, was not allowed to hold his newborn son after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officials refused to allow a contact visit between him and his family, his lawyers said on Wednesday.Instead, Khalil, 30, was forced to meet his month-old baby for the first time behind glass, after his wife, Noor Abdalla, traveled from New York to the Louisiana detention facility where he has been detained since March, his legal team said.Ice officials and a private prison contractor denied the family’s request for a contact visit, citing the detention center’s no-contact visitation policy and unspecified “security concerns”, lawyers said.Abdalla, a US citizen who gave birth to their first child last month while Khalil was in detention, said she was “furious at the cruelty and inhumanity of this system that dares to call itself just”.“After flying over a thousand miles to Louisiana with our newborn son, his very first flight, all so his father could finally hold him in his arms, Ice has denied us even this most basic human right,” she said in a statement.“This is not just heartless. It is deliberate violence, the calculated cruelty of a government that tears families apart without remorse.”The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The department had previously denied Khalil’s request to be at his wife’s side to attend the birth of their son in New York, a move that Abdalla described as “a purposeful decision by Ice to make me, Mahmoud, and our son suffer”. Instead, he was only able to experience his child’s birth via a telephone call.Khalil, a legal permanent resident, or US green-card holder, was arrested in New York on 8 March in the first in a string of Ice arrests targeting pro-Palestinian students and scholars, and put in detention without due process.In a letter to his son published in the Guardian, Khalil wrote shortly after the birth: “My heart aches that I could not hold you in my arms and hear your first cry, that I could not unfurl your clenched fists or change your first diaper.”“My absence is not unique,” he continued. “Like other Palestinian fathers, I was separated from you by racist regimes and distant prisons. In Palestine, this pain is part of daily life … The grief your mother and I feel is but one drop in a sea of sorrow that Palestinian families have drowned in for generations.”The current president of Columbia University in New York, Claire Shipman, where Khalil had been finishing up his graduate studies, was booed and heckled on both Tuesday and Wednesday by graduates at their commencement ceremonies who also were furious that Khalil was in detention. Many chanted “free Mahmoud”, as Shipman acknowledged their frustration.The Trump administration is using obscure immigration law to make extraordinary claims in cases such as Khalil’s that it can summarily detain and deport people for constitutionally protected free speech if they are deemed adverse to US foreign policy. Khalil is Palestinian and was born in a refugee camp in Syria. His wife accepted a graduate diploma on his behalf at an alternative graduation ceremony in New York on Sunday, while holding their baby. More

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      Trump makes baseless claims about white genocide in chaotic meeting with South Africa’s president – live

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      Another day, another shocking Oval Office meeting between Trump and a world leader. This time it was South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa, who was ambushed by the US president; Trump requested dimmed lights for video footage to be played purporting to show anti-white violence in the country and relentlessly peddled false accusations of “genocide” and Afrikaners being “executed” as justification for admitting them into the US as refugees. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Trump then held up printouts of news articles about what he said were killings of white South Africans, repeating “death, death, death” as he flipped through the pages.In an effort to diffuse the chaos, Ramaphosa kept composed as he tried to explain to Trump that while violent crime affects people of all races in his country most victims are black, white people are not being persecuted there, and his government is trying to redress the enduring injustices of South Africa’s apartheid past. He even quipped that he was sorry he didn’t have a plane to give Trump, to which Trump said he wished he did. Ramaphosa said he was willing to talk with him about his concerns “outside of the media” – which is worth noting given the feeling expressed by many that Trump and JD Vance’s bust-up with Volodymyr Zelenskyy back in February was very much a made-for-TV humiliation of Ukraine’s president.In other news:

      The Trump administration formally accepted the controversial gift of a Boeing 747 jetliner from the government of Qatar, and directed the air force to assess how quickly the plane can be upgraded for possible use as a new Air Force One. The offer of the jet has set off a firestorm of bipartisan criticism of Trump, particularly following the president’s visit to the country last week to arrange US business deals. Here’s our write-up.

      A federal judge ruled that the Department of Homeland Security’s attempt to deport migrants to South Sudan was “unquestionably violative” of an injunction he had issued earlier. US district judge Brian E Murphy made the remark at an emergency hearing he had ordered in Boston following the Trump administration’s apparent deportation of eight people to South Sudan, despite most of them being from other countries. On Tuesday, Murphy ruled that the administration could not let a group of migrants being deported to South Sudan leave the custody of US immigration authorities. My colleague Maya Yang has the story.

      The justice department moved to cancel a settlement with Minneapolis that called for an overhaul of its police department following the murder of George Floyd, as well as a similar agreement with Louisville, Kentucky, after the death of Breonna Taylor, saying it does not want to pursue the cases. The move shows how the civil rights division of the justice department is changing rapidly under Donald Trump, dismantling Biden-era work and investigating diversity programs. It also comes amid pressure on the right to recast Floyd’s murder, undermine diversity efforts and define liberal-run cities like Minneapolis as crime-ridden. Full story here.

      The US army said it has no plans to recognize Donald Trump’s birthday on 14 June when he presides over part of the army’s celebrations of its 250th anniversary. Trump, who is turning 79 on the same day, will play a big role in the celebrations, which will cost between $25m and $45m, will see the army hold a parade down Washington’s Constitution Avenue, one of the main thoroughfares that cuts through the capital. The parade was not part of the original planning for the 14 June celebrations and was added this year, stoking criticism from Democratic lawmakers and others that Trump has hijacked the event. More here.

      Trump nominated Darryl Nirenberg, a lawyer and former Senate staffer, to serve as the next US ambassador to Romania. Nirenberg, a longtime Washington lawyer currently at Steptoe LLP law firm, was chief of staff for late Republican senator Jesse Helms and was a counsel for the Senate foreign relations committee. The nomination will require Senate approval.

      A federal judge rejected a bid by the US treasury department to cancel a union contract covering tens of thousands of IRS staff, in an early blow to Trump’s efforts to eliminate collective bargaining rights for many federal workers. More on that here.

      Democratic US representative Gerry Connolly died aged 75, his family said in a statement posted to his account on X this morning following the Virginia lawmaker’s cancer diagnosis last year. At the end of last month, Connolly announced he would be retiring from Congress at the end of this term and stepping back from his role as ranking member on the House oversight committee after finding out his cancer had returned. He died peacefully at home surrounded by family, their statement said.
      The Trump administration will halt $365 million in federal funding originally allocated for rooftop solar power in Puerto Rico and instead redirect it toward fossil fuel power plants and infrastructure repairs.Puerto Rico has long struggled with frequent blackouts caused by aging infrastructure, the 2017 bankruptcy of the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, and repeated hurricanes. Just last month, the island experienced a major blackout, followed by another that affected 134,000 customers.According to the Department of Energy, the redirected funds will go toward immediate fixes, such as “dispatching baseload generation units, supporting vegetation control to protect transmission lines and upgrading aging infrastructure.” Baseload generation in this case refers to power plants that run on oil products and potentially natural gas.Last week, Energy Secretary Chris Wright issued an emergency order that directed Puerto Rico’s state-owned utility to tackle electricity shortfalls with power generated by oil-burning power plants, which emit pollution, including the greenhouse gases that cause climate change and global warming.The administration of President Donald Trump has supported maximizing the output of fossil fuels and dismantling policies by former President Joe Biden’s administration designed to spur use of renewable power.“The redirection of these funds will expand access to reliable power for millions of people rather than thousands and generate a higher return on investment for taxpayers while advancing grid resiliency for Puerto Rico,” the department said in a statement.Robert F Kennedy Jr’s “Make America Healthy Again” report about childhood diseases is raising questions among farmers and some Republican lawmakers.President Donald Trump promised a review within 100 days that would analyze the ramifications that US lifestyle — from the medications prescribed for children to the food served on their school lunch trays — has on childhood diseases like obesity, depression or attention deficit disorder.Farmers and Republicans are nervous about what the report might say about glyphosate, the ingredient commonly used in pesticides sprayed on crops. Kennedy has denied the report will be unfavorable to farmers.The report, led by a so-called “MAHA Commission,” is expected to be released on Thursday.Here’s what some lawmakers had to say:
      “I hope there is nothing in the MAHA report that jeopardizes the food supply or the livelihood of farmers,” Iowa Republican Senator Chuck Grassley said.
      “There’s a reason why we still use: It works,” said Blake Hurst, a Missouri farmer who is past president of the Missouri Farm Bureau, said about glyphosate.
      Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday dismissed speculation of a falling out with the US administration following a visit to the Gulf by Donald Trump that left out Israel.With the coupling of the US president’s Gulf visit – excluding Israel – and his decision to end US airstrikes on Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis despite their continued attacks on Israel, media speculation grew over a possible rift with Washington.The Israeli prime minister, who had previously made no public comment on the issue, told reporters at a news conference that he had spoken to Trump about 10 days ago and Trump had told him: “‘Bibi I want you to know, I have a complete commitment to you and I have a complete commitment to the state of Israel.’”Amid growing international pressure on Israel, Trump has acknowledged that people are starving in Gaza and the US would have the situation in the territory “taken care of” as it suffered a further wave of intense Israeli airstrikes.In a separate conversation a few days ago, Netanyahu said JD Vance had told him: “Don’t pay attention to all these fake news stories about this rupture between us.”.The UN’s humanitarian chief, Tom Fletcher, said yesterday that 14,000 babies could die in Gaza in 48 hours if aid did not reach them in time.Cyril Ramaphosa said that Elon Musk was present during lunch today with Donald Trump.“The only issue he raised is that he’d like his Tesla cars to be in South Africa,” Ramaphosa told reporters. “He wants to import them. And of course, there are tariffs, and the tariff discussion becomes part of what we are going to discuss between the DTIC as well as the commerce department.”Ramaphosa also said that, although the secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, was present as well, “the discussions never veered towards issues of security”.Instead, Ramaphosa said, they were more about combating criminal activities, and he pointed to the need to “up our game” in that area.UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, was not consulted regarding the US decision to deport eight migrants to South Sudan, a country where fears of civil war are rising.A federal judge on Wednesday ruled that the Trump administration violated a court order on deportations to third countries. Judge Brian E Murphy in Boston said the eight migrants, accused by the US of being dangerous criminals, were not given a meaningful opportunity to object that the deportation could put them in danger.Dujarric told UN reporters that since the UN wasn’t consulted, he had no comment “except to say that, obviously, as a principled position, refugees or people in need of international protection must not be sent back to a place where they face risk”.Ramaphosa’s spokesperson, Vincent Magwenya, told South African TV station Newzroom Afrika that the Oval Office meeting was “an orchestrated show for the cameras” and that the “real business” of the trip was the bilateral closed-door meeting.“President Ramaphosa came here not for a TV show, he came here to discuss with President Trump in earnest how we can reset the strategic relationship between South Africa and the US,” Magwenya said.South African president Cyril Ramaphosa was more cordial about the meeting during a press conference this afternoon.“Much as he flighted the the video and all those press clippings, and in the end, I mean, I do believe that that is there’s doubt and disbelief in his head about all this”, Ramaphosa said. “I have agreed that we’re going to meet again, and we will meet at the G20 by meeting again.”Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, appeared to strike a hardline maximalist position on Iran’s nuclear programme in his second successive day of testifying on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, suggesting that the country must end its uranium enrichment activities if it is to gain relief from US sanctions.Appearing before a subcommittee of the House appropriations committee, Rubio was asked to comment on current negotiations led by Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, and Abbas Araghchi, the Iranian foreign minister, aimed at reaching at deal that would limit Tehran’s nuclear programme, which the US, Israel and other western powers have long suspected of being aimed at building an atomic bomb. Rubio – who also holds the national security adviser’s portfolio – said:
      “The President and his entire team has been very clear, Iran cannot have an enrichment capability, because that ultimately makes them a threshold of nuclear power. There are sanctions related to terrorism, sanctions related to their ballistic missiles program and the like. Those sanctions, if they’re not part of the deal, they’ll remain in place if those things are not addressed. But the enrichment piece is the key piece, and we continue to say that Iran cannot have an enrichment capability.”
      The comments suggested that the administration was seeking the total elimination – rather than restricting – Iran’s uranium enrichment programme, a demand repeatedly made by Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.Witkoff has sent mixed signals about whether Washington would seek the dismantlement of the Iranian programme, although he has previously suggested Iran might be allowed to retain some enrichment capacity. Iran has previously rejected demands for it to end enriching uranium, insisting it is for civilian purposes. Announcing negotiations to reporters last month, Trump was unspecific on Tehran’s enrichment activities but said: “Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.”According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran has enriched its uranium stockpile to 60% since Trump unilaterally withdrew in 2018 from an agreement reached under Barack Obama’s presidency that permitted the country’s Islamic regime to retain a strictly limited enrichment programme. Uranium enriched to 90% is considered to be weapons grade, with experts saying Iran is now just a short technical step from reaching that level.After Donald Trump confronted president Cyril Ramaphosa with false claims of mass killings and land seizures from white people, the South African leader said the meeting went “very well”.As Ramaphosa exited the White House after a private session with Trump, he was asked whether he thought Trump listened to him. “Yes, he did,” Ramaphosa said. “It went very well.”Here is an extract from this week’s edition of The Long Wave by my colleague Nesrine Malik that I think provides helpful context for what we witnessed in the Oval Office today. And if you haven’t already (!) you can sign up for the newsletter here.Since the early days of his presidency, Donald Trump has made white farmers in South Africa one of his pet projects. It is an obsession that dates to his first term, where he amplified allegations by some Afrikaners that they are victims of “mass killings” and suffer from violence and discrimination by vengeful Black South Africans. There is nothing to support this claim. And yet, in March, Trump expelled the South African ambassador to the US, cut off aid and extended an invitation for political asylum to white farmers, even as the US all but halts all refugee admissions to the country. The first of those white South African “refugees” arrived in the US two weeks ago.The source of this odd fixation is those around Trump, who “doesn’t have a sense of the world outside the United States”, Jonathan Jansen, a professor of education in Stellenbosch, tells me, adding: “To know about South Africa, let alone its politics, [the president] must have whisperers,” who are telling him that there is a “white genocide”. Jansen suspects one of those is the South African-born Elon Musk, who has “a grievance against the country”.Jansen believes South Africa’s hard line against Israel has fuelled animosity in Washington. Taking the Israeli government to the international court of justice “is not cool in the world of Trump”. I suggest a provocative factor may also have been how uncompromising and measured the South African government has been on the issue of white farmers when goaded by Trump. “This is true,” Jansen says. “[Cyril] Ramaphosa, with all his faults – and they are many – is a man of restraint.”Despite the media focus on the [white supremacy] issue, Jansen calls for some perspective. He says that some white South Africans who claim racial discrimination are a small group of people who nurse an inflated sense of resentment because they still cannot accept that apartheid is over. “There are grievances with a Black government, which is very hard for some of my white brothers and sisters to accept, even after 30 years.”Jansen says if one is to consider violent crime, “more Black people die than white people, even as a proportion of the population. Make no mistake, these are white supremacists who are drawn to a white supremacist. Their capacity for reflection is not very high.”Despite the understanding in South Africa that the issue of white discrimination is a political stunt, Jansen notes the galling hypocrisy of it all, considering the effort that Black South Africans made to ensure peace after apartheid. “What riles is that you’re giving attention to people who for 350 years were oppressing us. My argument is: don’t get into a tizzy. But I also regard it quite seriously as a slap in the face for Black South Africans.”Here’s my colleague David Smith’s write-up of the most tense Oval Office encounter since Trump’s bullying of Volodymyr Zelenskyy in February. In this encounter, Cyril Ramaphosa refused to take the bait as Trump ambushed him with false claims of white “genocide” and suggested that they “talk about it very calmly”.David writes:
      The biggest bone of contention [for the Trump administration] has been a South African land-expropriation law signed in January that aims to redress the historical inequalities of white minority rule. Ramaphosa denied that the law will be used to arbitrarily confiscate white-owned land, insisting that all South Africans are protected by the constitution.
      And right at the end of David’s story is this helpful reminder of the post-apartheid context:
      South Africa is one of the most unequal societies in the world. White people make up 7% of the country’s population but own at least half of the land. They are also better off economically by almost every measure.
      Read the full story here:Another day, another shocking Oval Office meeting between Trump and a world leader. This time it was South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa, who was ambushed by the US president; Trump requested dimmed lights for video footage to be played purporting to show anti-white violence in the country and relentlessly peddled false accusations of “genocide” and Afrikaners being “executed” as justification for admitting them into the US as refugees. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Trump then held up printouts of news articles about what he said were killings of white South Africans, repeating “death, death, death” as he flipped through the pages.In an effort to diffuse the chaos, Ramaphosa kept composed as he tried to explain to Trump that while violent crime affects people of all races in his country most victims are black, white people are not being persecuted there, and his government is trying to redress the enduring injustices of South Africa’s apartheid past. He even quipped that he was sorry he didn’t have a plane to give Trump, to which Trump said he wished he did. Ramaphosa said he was willing to talk with him about his concerns “outside of the media” – which is worth noting given the feeling expressed by many that Trump and JD Vance’s bust-up with Volodymyr Zelenskyy back in February was very much a made-for-TV humiliation of Ukraine’s president.In other news:

      The Trump administration formally accepted the controversial gift of a Boeing 747 jetliner from the government of Qatar, and directed the air force to assess how quickly the plane can be upgraded for possible use as a new Air Force One. The offer of the jet has set off a firestorm of bipartisan criticism of Trump, particularly following the president’s visit to the country last week to arrange US business deals. Here’s our write-up.

      A federal judge ruled that the Department of Homeland Security’s attempt to deport migrants to South Sudan was “unquestionably violative” of an injunction he had issued earlier. US district judge Brian E Murphy made the remark at an emergency hearing he had ordered in Boston following the Trump administration’s apparent deportation of eight people to South Sudan, despite most of them being from other countries. On Tuesday, Murphy ruled that the administration could not let a group of migrants being deported to South Sudan leave the custody of US immigration authorities. My colleague Maya Yang has the story.

      The justice department moved to cancel a settlement with Minneapolis that called for an overhaul of its police department following the murder of George Floyd, as well as a similar agreement with Louisville, Kentucky, after the death of Breonna Taylor, saying it does not want to pursue the cases. The move shows how the civil rights division of the justice department is changing rapidly under Donald Trump, dismantling Biden-era work and investigating diversity programs. It also comes amid pressure on the right to recast Floyd’s murder, undermine diversity efforts and define liberal-run cities like Minneapolis as crime-ridden. Full story here.

      The US army said it has no plans to recognize Donald Trump’s birthday on 14 June when he presides over part of the army’s celebrations of its 250th anniversary. Trump, who is turning 79 on the same day, will play a big role in the celebrations, which will cost between $25m and $45m, will see the army hold a parade down Washington’s Constitution Avenue, one of the main thoroughfares that cuts through the capital. The parade was not part of the original planning for the 14 June celebrations and was added this year, stoking criticism from Democratic lawmakers and others that Trump has hijacked the event. More here.

      Trump nominated Darryl Nirenberg, a lawyer and former Senate staffer, to serve as the next US ambassador to Romania. Nirenberg, a longtime Washington lawyer currently at Steptoe LLP law firm, was chief of staff for late Republican senator Jesse Helms and was a counsel for the Senate foreign relations committee. The nomination will require Senate approval.

      A federal judge rejected a bid by the US treasury department to cancel a union contract covering tens of thousands of IRS staff, in an early blow to Trump’s efforts to eliminate collective bargaining rights for many federal workers. More on that here.

      Democratic US representative Gerry Connolly died aged 75, his family said in a statement posted to his account on X this morning following the Virginia lawmaker’s cancer diagnosis last year. At the end of last month, Connolly announced he would be retiring from Congress at the end of this term and stepping back from his role as ranking member on the House oversight committee after finding out his cancer had returned. He died peacefully at home surrounded by family, their statement said.
      South Africa’s foreign ministry spokesperson said in a post on X that “there is no land confiscation”, after that chaotic White House meeting in which Donald Trump confronted president Cyril Ramaphosa with false claims of mass killings and land seizures from white people.Congressman Greg Casar, chair of the House progressive caucus, wants to talk to conservatives about the Republican effort to cut Medicaid. So he joined Donald Trump’s Truth Social.In his first post, @repgregcasar stated the obvious: “I’m a progressive Democrat, and I know most users of this platform are more conservative than me.”But the congressman said he shared some common ground with many of the president’s supporters.“If you oppose cutting healthcare and want to take back our government from the billionaire class, I want to talk to you,” he said.Polls have consistently found that most Americans, across party lines, oppose cuts to Medicaid.The move is somewhat unusual. Few elected Democrats have joined Truth Social, the platform where Trump began regularly sharing his all-caps musings, often at odd hours, after being kicked off X and Facebook. His accounts have since been reinstated.But after their 2024 loss to Trump, Democrats have been consumed by the debate over how to, in Washington parlance, “meet voters where they are”.Casar, unveiling his new account in a Fox News op-ed, wrote that part of his rationale was ensuring “people know they are welcome in the Democratic Party even if they do not agree with us on every issue”.
      I am a progressive Democrat and I do not plan on changing or obscuring my position on anything, but I want people to know that we are focused on making the lives of all working class people better. That means we as Democrats need to sound less judgmental and more focused on the issues that matter most to peoples’ lives, like the GOP cuts to Medicaid and Social Security. More

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      Trump’s ‘white genocide’ claims ignore the reality of life and crime in South Africa

      by

      It was an ambush crafted straight from a reality-TV playbook. The Oval Office meeting with South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, started with exchanges of pleasantries, before Donald Trump shouted “turn the lights down” and a video was played to support his false claims that white South African farmers are being murdered for their race.Ramaphosa came prepared with champion white South African golfers Ernie Els and Retief Goosen, whom the golf-mad Trump referred to as “friends”, as well as South Africa’s richest person, Johann Rupert.Ramaphosa, who led the African National Congress (ANC) party’s delegation in the talks that ended apartheid white-minority rule three decades ago, needed to play his strongest cards.In February, Trump signed an executive order cutting aid to South Africa, accusing it of “unjust racial discrimination” against the white Afrikaner minority, which ruled the country during apartheid. The order criticised a South African law allowing land expropriation in limited circumstances and set up a program to bring Afrikaners to the US as refugees. The first group arrived earlier this month.South African media had speculated whether Ramaphosa was walking into a televised trap, like Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, had just a few months before.The White House video was likely a surprise for the South Africans. It spliced together clips of Julius Malema, the leader of the far-left Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) opposition party, saying “We are going to occupy land” and “We must never be scared to kill”, before singing the controversial Kill the Boer song (“Boer” is another name for Afrikaners and means “farmer” in Afrikaans).Malema, whose populism is designed to shock – and whose EFF won just 9.5% of the vote in South Africa’s 2024 election – will probably be thrilled with the attention, after being buoyed up by South African courts ruling that Kill the Boer is not meant to be taken literally.Former South African president Jacob Zuma, now leading his own opposition party, uMkhonto weSizwe (MK), also featured in the video, singing in Zulu: “We are going to shoot them. They are going to run.”The video ended with a drone shot of white crosses lining a road where vehicles were queued. Trump said they were paying respects to more than 1,000 murdered white farmers. Ramaphosa said he had never seen the video, which South African-born billionaire and Trump adviser Elon Musk reshared after it was posted on X in March.Trump then whipped out a sheaf of printed-out news articles, intoning, “Death … death … death,” before handing it over to Ramaphosa.It was not immediately clear where the white crosses were filmed or even if the footage is real. The Whitkruis Monument is a memorial to dead South African farmers, but the crosses are clustered on a hillside on private land.While there have been farm murders involving horrific violence, killers interviewed in jail told Rudolph Zinn, a University of Limpopo professor, that they targeted victims of all races for cash and valuables. In the last quarter of 2024, South African police recorded 12 murders on farms, including Black-owned smallholder plots, out of almost 7,000 murders across the country.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSouth Africa’s agriculture minister, John Steenhuisen, the Afrikaner leader of the ANC’s main rival, the Democratic Alliance – which gets the bulk of its support from white South Africans – said most farmers wanted to stay in South Africa. He also defended the DA’s coalition with the ANC to keep out the “rabble” EFF and MK parties.The two golfers’ words were perhaps less helpful. Els was cryptic: “Two wrongs don’t make a right.” Goosen spoke of his brother’s “constant battle” with people trying to burn down and take away his farm.However, their presence could snap Trump out of attack mode. “I respect champions,” he said. “I think the country is very lucky. They really wanted to be here, these two, they could have been on a beautiful fairway.”South Africa’s most potent defender was Rupert, whose luxury goods conglomerate Richemont owns Cartier. Referring to Malema and Zuma, he said: “I’m their No 1 target.”Rupert pointed out that all South Africans are targets of crime. He said how much his wife loved JD Vance’s autobiography and begged for Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet service at police stations.It remains to be seen, though, whether a fellow billionaire and a few rounds with South Africa’s finest golfers will be enough to mollify Trump and persuade him to attend the G20 summit in Johannesburg in November. More