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      ‘The greatest propaganda op in history’: Trump’s reshaping of US culture evokes past antidemocratic regimes

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      Bigger than the Super Bowl, claimed Donald Trump, sitting in a big leather chair beside a big map. Then came an announcement over the public address system. “Air Force One is currently in international waters,” declared the flight crew of the US presidential jet, “for the first time in history flying over the recently renamed Gulf of America.”As his aides clapped and whooped, Trump gloated: “Isn’t that nice? We’re about ‘Make America Great Again’, right? That’s what we care about.” He proceeded to sign a proclamation declaring 9 February “Gulf of America Day” as Air Force One flew over the body of water previously known as the Gulf of Mexico.It was classic Trumpian showmanship from the highest perch in the world. It was also the latest salvo by the 47th president and his allies to control language, influence media narratives and reshape cultural institutions in ways that some compare with the Soviet Union or other authoritarian regimes from history.Long a master of branding, Trump is making propaganda a core element of his strongman presidency. This comes as little surprise to critics who regard it as an extension of last year’s election campaign in which he sold himself as a champion of the forgotten people and victim of a weaponised justice department.Tara Setmayer, a former Republican communications director on Capitol Hill, said: “Donald Trump’s re-election is the greatest, most successful propaganda op in history. Propaganda is why Donald Trump is president again and they know this, which is why they undermined the press, expertise and science.”Since taking office, Trump has outpaced his predecessors by signing 64 executive orders and 27 memos and proclamations in less than a month. His blitz on immigration, trade and the federal bureaucracy was expected. But the president’s aggressive approach to reshaping national identity through symbolism and language has taken opponents by surprise.When Trump used his inaugural address to assert his vision of US dominance by promising to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, the former secretary of state Hillary Clinton burst out laughing. But the switch came with a sinister edge.This week, the White House banned the Associated Press, one of the world’s biggest news outlets, because it has not changed its stylebook entry for Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America (the AP serves numerous countries that do not recognise the new name). The punitive measure prompted CNN to invoke “newspeak” from George Orwell’s novel 1984, in which language is a tool of control and can be narrowed to limit thought.In a similar vein, the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, signed an order restoring the name of a special operations forces base in North Carolina back to Fort Bragg, reversing a Joe Biden effort in 2023 to remove names that honored Confederate leaders (Hegseth swerved past that association by this time recognising Roland Bragg, an obscure veteran of the second world war).The White House is also redefining terms to cast opponents in a negative light – for example, by referring to fired federal employees as “deep-state activists”. The National Park Service erased references to transgender people on its webpage for the Stonewall national monument.As the AP discovered, the media – long derided by Trump as “fake news” and “the enemy of the people” – is now subject to a system of rewards and punishments. The owners of the Washington Post and major social media platforms such as Facebook and X had the best seats in the house at his inauguration.At least 10 of the 18 reporters that the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, called on during her briefing this week work for partisan rightwing outlets. Officials at the Pentagon decided to “rotate” eight major news outlets from their workspaces, replacing them with more Trump-friendly media, and invited a far-right activist, Jack Posobiec, to take part in Hegseth’s first trip overseas.In addition, Trump is pursuing lawsuits against media outlets by using novel legal theories to circumvent established first amendment protections, while his allies are using the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to target broadcast news networks whose content they deem unfavorable.View image in fullscreenThere are concerns that the intimidatory tactics are working. Setmayer, who now leads the Seneca Project, a women-led super political action committee, said: “The mainstream American media has failed. What is happening is not a normal transition; it’s a constitutional crisis. That’s the way the American media should be covering this and they’re not.“They’re parsing their words. They’re whitewashing and sanewashing what Elon Musk has been allowed to do and what Donald Trump is telegraphing he plans to do more of. They’ve made a business decision to obey in advance. It’s not an accident that Trump went after the FCC licenses and sued these media conglomerates for them to bend their knees to him, so they won’t cover him honestly.”Trump is also making a surprise foray into arts and culture with a hostile takeover of the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, a living memorial for the 35th president that, with a $268m budget last year, hosts classical music, dance, hip-hop, opera, theatre, touring productions and educational arts programming.Trump has installed himself as chair, stacked the board of trustees with his loyalists and replaced president Deborah Rutter with his former acting director of national intelligence, Ric Grenell, a disrupter who has no prior experience in arts administration.“We know the importance of the arts in telling stories and keeping the truth out there and in being part of the resistance, so it is no accident that Trump is coming for the arts, similar to other fascists in history,” Setmayer said.The president admitted he has not been to the Kennedy Center but felt the overhaul was necessary because of drag shows that are “specifically targeting our youth” as well as other “anti-American propaganda”. He told reporters: “We’re going to make sure that it’s good and it’s not going to be woke. There’s no more woke in this country.” In response, several stars have dissociated themselves from the centre.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAt the same time, the National Endowment for the Arts, the biggest national funder of the arts and arts education with a budget of $207m in 2024, has cancelled grants aimed at marginalised groups and posted updated guidelines stating that grant recipients should “not operate any programs promoting ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)’” or “use federal funds to promote gender ideology”.The changes fueled concerns about the politicisation of the arts, with critics pointing to examples of dictators in history who suppressed and censored artists.Olivia Troye, a former adviser to then vice-president Mike Pence, said: “There’s a lot of things I expected from Trump, having worked with his circle of people, but I have to say that it was striking to me when he decided to insert himself and take over the Kennedy Center because that to me was a sign that it is him wanting to fully control all narratives.”Trump is exhibiting an authoritarian streak and seeking to curb dissent, Troye added: “The arts is a significant pillar of watching what happens in nations that are facing the potential failing of their democracy and that’s concerning. People need to be paying attention to these types of thing.”“They may seem frivolous: why do I care what he did to the Kennedy Center? Well, let’s look at the history. Who has ever done that as president? Why is he doing that? It’s all part of the overarching effort by this individual who wants to control every narrative there is.”Like past authoritarians, Trump understands the power of symbols such as Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, which is carved with the faces of former presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna of Florida proposed legislation adding Trump to the monument, explaining: “President Trump’s bold leadership and steadfast dedication to America’s greatness have cemented his place in history.”Trump has issued an order to revive a “National Garden of American Heroes”, an attempt to curate a version of history that reinforces ideas of national exceptionalism. The representative Buddy Carter of Georgia has introduced a bill to rename Greenland as “Red, White, and Blueland”, as Trumpseeks to acquire the island territory.Trump has also called for “patriotic education”, attempting to control what is taught in schools and instil a conservative vision. The administration is pushing to restrict what teachers can teach about gender and race and has threatened to withhold funds from schools that fail to comply.Above all, the 47th president is dominating the nation’s attention, filling news cycles and social media 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Last Sunday, he became the first sitting US president to attend the Super Bowl, the crown jewel of US sport, which drew a record 127 million viewers and “a Caesar-at-the-Colosseum air,” according to New York Times critic James Poniewozik.Then, when Trump hosted ally Elon Musk and his son X in the Oval Office, there was saturation coverage. White House communications director Steven Cheung tweeted an image of eight news networks simultaneously broadcasting the meeting and boasted: “FULL SPECTRUM DOMINANCE.”Reed Galen, president of the Union, a pro-democracy coalition, said: “With dictators throughout history, it’s all spectacle. The idea of propaganda is not necessarily to lie about things but to keep the attention focused where you want it, and he’s a master of that.”Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a history and Italian studies professor at New York University and author of Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present, describes Trump as “one of the most successful propagandists in all of history”, as skilled as the former Italian dictator Benito Mussolini in his use of images, symbols and repetition.She said: “The cult of personality is that you must be omnipotent but you’re also omnipresent, you’re everywhere. It’s not just old-school dictatorships like North Korea today or communist China where the face of the leader is everywhere.“Nowadays, for example, Modi in India is the most followed leader in the world. He’s a genius at Instagram. When he ran for office in 2014, he used holograms so he could be in a hundred places at the same time. Being everywhere and inescapable is part of making the population depend on you and on no one else.” More

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      Donald Trump has become master of the US Senate | Sidney Blumenthal

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      First, before Elon Musk came for everyone, Donald Trump came for the US Senate. When he returned to office, the House of Representatives was already under his heel. Many of the House Republican leaders had been his sidekicks during January 6, and one, Mike Johnson, had since become the speaker. The Senate, however, still retained, for the most part, its club-like atmosphere where the members considered themselves powers unto themselves. Senators with a toga complex have always looked down on House members as rabble. Trump viewed the independent character of the upper body as a thorn in his side. The subservience of the House of Representatives was the model that Trump envisioned for the Senate. It could no longer pretend to be the greatest deliberative body of legislators in the world, but a vassal fiefdom subject to his whims.Trump’s opportunity to crush the Senate appeared at once. As soon as he made his nominations for his cabinet, the Senate would hold confirmation hearings. His misfit nominees gave him his chance. In any previous time, just a tincture of the alcoholism, serial sexual abuse, playing footsie with a Russian-backed despot, hawking of snake oil, doodling enemies lists and bilking non-profit organizations, quite apart from plain incompetence, would have been enough to knock them out before they ever approached a seat in a hearing room.The senator John Tower, of Texas, very much a member of the club of his day, but a drunken sexual harasser of the old school, groping in elevators, was exposed when George HW Bush nominated him as secretary of defense, and dropped out. But shame in the Trump orbit is as antiquated a notion as virtue.The patent unfitness of Trump’s nominees put the senators on the spot. It was the senators, not the obviously disqualified nominees, who had to pass the test. They were not the ones sitting in judgment; they were in Trump’s dock. If Trump could break the lords of the Senate over his cabinet of curiosities, he could reduce them to being his serfs. By transforming their duty to advise and consent into shut up and obey, Trump would trample more than unstated norms. He would be obliterating a constitutional responsibility of the Senate and removing a further check and balance on his power.Subverting the institution was not an abstract exercise. If individual senators looked like they might stand in the way, it was not enough that they be defeated on a roll-call vote. They had to be personally violated. The part of themselves that they held to be at their core both as public officials and private persons had to be soiled. They had to be made examples before the others. Their humiliation had to be performed as a public demonstration. By voting in favor of nominees they knew in their bones should never be approved, whose disqualifications crossed the senators’ deepest principles, their intimidation made them Trump’s subjects. Once the method of defilement was established, it would be applied again and again. It would loom as an ever-present threat over any others’ wavering. Trump’s degradation would be sufficient to cow the rest. But he would not stop. After the first victim, then there was the next, and the next, one after another, until Trump was the master of the Senate. Trump began with one senator whose vulnerability he could twist to make her writhe.That senator was Joni Ernst, of Iowa.View image in fullscreenAfter attending Iowa State University, where she joined ROTC, Ernst enlisted in the army, served during the Iraq war in Kuwait in charge of a transport unit, and attained the rank of lieutenant colonel. Running for the US Senate in 2014, she said she had been sexually harassed in the military and pledged that, if elected, she would make independent investigation and prosecution of sexual crimes her signature issue.Once she entered the Senate, Ernst was for the most part a down-the-line conservative Republican, yet was also among the few Republicans who consistently sponsored and voted for bills to protect victims of domestic violence and sexual assault, especially focusing on women in the military.When Ernst divorced in 2019, her painful story of emotional and physical abuse became public – her husband’s dalliance with a babysitter, his long-term affair with a mistress and, after she confronted him, how he suddenly “grabbed me by the throat with his hands and threw me on the landing floor. And then he pounded my head.” Her husband responded by accusing her of having an affair herself, which she said was a “lie”. She also revealed at that time that she had been raped as a college student, reported it to the counseling service, but chose not to go to the police, and had kept it a secret. “I couldn’t stomach the idea that my rape would become public knowledge,” she wrote in a memoir published in 2020. “I was sure my boyfriend would find a way to blame me.”Ernst’s divorce complaint disclosed for the first time that she had turned down candidate Donald Trump’s offer to be his vice-presidential running mate in the 2016 campaign. She attributed her refusal as vaguely not being “the right thing for me or my family”. It is uncertain whether Trump ever made the actual offer. He took Mike Pence, who was pressed on him by his campaign manager Paul Manafort to represent the evangelical right.When Trump nominated Pete Hegseth to be secretary of defense, stories instantly surfaced that the Fox News weekend host had been accused of rape, paid hush money, had a history of sexual abuse in two of his marriages, impregnated a girlfriend and was a raging alcoholic who drank on the job. He also opposed women serving in combat roles in the military, as Ernst had.“I am a survivor of sexual assault,” Ernst said in her initial response to Hegseth’s nomination. She insisted that she wanted “to make sure that any allegations have been cleared, and that’s why we have to have a very thorough vetting process”.But the “vetting process” was warped. Witnesses were hesitant to come forward, afraid they would be subject to the reign of terror that Christine Blasey Ford endured when she publicly testified in Brett Kavanaugh’s hearing to be on the supreme court he had sexually assaulted her. But the woman who claimed that Hegseth had raped her was willing to speak privately with Ernst. So were two other witnesses, both female soldiers who would also talk to her in private about his drunkenness and sexual harassment.Ernst was then subjected to waves of “Maga” attacks. Facing re-election in 2026, she was threatened with a primary challenge from a local rightwing talkshow host, Steve Dease, who posted: “Joni Ernst sucked as a Senator long before this … I am willing to primary her for the good of the cause.” Elon Musk forked over a half-million dollars to blast ads that wallpapered Iowa TV, hailing Hegseth as a “patriot” and “warrior”, and warning that the “deep state” (ie Ernst) opposed him. Donald Trump Jr unleashed a storm on social media against Ernst, saying that if any senator criticized Hegseth, “maybe you’re in the wrong political party!” An online squadron of winged monkeys swarmed her. The phrase “She’s a Democrat” trended.Ernst succumbed to the smear campaign. She refused to meet with the alleged rape victim, according to a report by Jane Mayer in the New Yorker. She also would not see the other women with first-hand accounts. Ernst hid. The witnesses, however, told their stories to Senator Tammy Duckworth, a Democrat of Illinois and a combat veteran who lost both of her legs. From her isolation, Ernst finally released an announcement that she would support Hegseth. Duckworth said that Ernst and other Republican senators had refused to put “the national security of America over their own political survival”.Then came the turn of Thom Tillis, the senator of North Carolina. He, too, was wary of Hegseth. He heard first-hand from a witness about his drunken behavior. Tillis told Hegseth’s former sister-in-law that if she provided an affidavit about Hegseth’s abuse, he would vote against him. So, she came forward despite the slings and arrows of the Trump mob. The evening before the vote, Tillis quietly told the Republican leader John Thune he would oppose Hegseth. Tillis spoke with both JD Vance and Trump. Unlike Ernst, none of his drama was conducted in public. When the time came to vote, Tillis, who faces a tough re-election in 2026, voted “yes”. Tillis turned on a dime.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionView image in fullscreenThen they came for Bill Cassidy, the senator of Louisiana. Cassidy is a physician who has devoted much of his career to public health and educating people about the importance of vaccinations. He was the decisive vote on the Senate finance committee on the nomination of Robert F Kennedy Jr to become secretary of health and human services, the leading vaccine skeptic who has made millions off his crank conspiracy theories and whose cousin, Caroline Kennedy, called him “a predator”.Cassidy attempted to coax Kennedy into committing to the scientific truth that vaccines work.“I’m a doc, trying to understand,” Cassidy said. “Convince me that you will become the public health advocate, but not just churn the old information so that there’s never a conclusion.” No matter how many times he tried, Kennedy would not give him a straight answer.Cassidy was already vulnerable. He had voted to impeach Trump after the January 6 insurrection. A far-right primary opponent, the representative Clay Higgins, was preparing to run against him. After Cassidy’s questioning of Kennedy, the winged monkeys descended on him. And Higgins posted on X: “So, vote your conscience Senator, or don’t. Either way, We’re watching.” Cassidy replied with a biblical quotation: “Joshua said to them: ‘Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged. Be strong and courageous. This is what the LORD will do to all the enemies you are going to fight.” But when the vote came, Cassidy crumpled.They came for Todd Young, the senator of Indiana. He is something of Hoosier Republican royalty, married to the niece of former vice-president Dan Quayle. Young was poised as the decisive vote on the Senate intelligence committee on the nomination of Tulsi Gabbard to be the director of national intelligence. In addition to “parroting false Russian propaganda”, as the former senator Mitt Romney put it, and visiting Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad, whom she declared was not a “torturer” and “murderer”, she had urged a pardon for “brave” Edward Snowden, who stole massive amounts of data from the National Security Agency and absconded to Russia. When Young asked her whether Snowden had “betrayed the American people”, she acknowledged he had broken the law, but would not go beyond that formulation. Young appeared edgy about her nomination.“Todd Young is a deep state puppet,” posted Elon Musk. His ears had pricked up when he had learned that Young was on the board of directors of the National Endowment for Democracy, created by Ronald Reagan and funded through USAid to promote the rule of law and democracy around the world. Musk tweeted that the NED was “an evil organization [that] needs to be dissolved”. The Trump X mob swarmed. Besieged, Young spoke with JD Vance. The US vice-president arranged a call with Musk. Young announced he would back Gabbard. The noise disappeared.The novel Advise and Consent, by a Washington reporter, Allen Drury, published in 1959 and produced as a movie in 1962, described a cold war melodrama in the Senate over the confirmation of a nominee to become secretary of state who had a left-wing background in his youth. One senator, with a secret gay past, caught up in the fight, fearing exposure, commits suicide. (The scene depicting a gay bar was a movie first.) But the suicide was not over any great principle. The victim was collateral damage. And the president in Advise and Consent was not attempting to use the process to coerce the Senate into vassalage.Hegseth, Kennedy and Gabbard are now all confirmed. The advise and consent responsibility of the Senate was twisted. The senators came to kneel before Trump – and Musk. Musk praised Young, the former “puppet”, as “a great ally”. Cassidy posted: “After collaborative conversations with RFK and the White House, I voted yes to confirm him.” Tillis gave a floor speech extolling Musk and Doge: “Innovation requires pushing the envelope and taking calculated risks.” Ernst wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal entitled USAid Is a Rogue Agency.Meanwhile, the $2bn in USAid purchases of agricultural products for humanitarian aid were suspended. The Iowa Soybean Association, dependent on a $95m grant supporting more than 1,000 farms that was now not being paid, protested. Ernst, a member of the Senate agriculture committee, was silent.“I was embarrassed,” Ernst told the Des Moines Register about speaking about being raped. “I didn’t know how to explain it. I was so humiliated. And I’m a private person, when it comes to those things.” After that incident, she found herself in an abusive relationship and the victim of domestic violence. As a senator, she used her position to break with her past of victimhood and established herself as a champion of those who had been victimized as she had been. But then she found herself in another abusive relationship, with Donald Trump. She was threatened with being completely stripped of everything she had striven for and her status as a senator destroyed. She had a choice to stand up against her transgressor or to subject herself to him. She decided to submit to the humiliation. And afterward she became the enabler of the abuser.

      Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth More

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      A tale of two suckers: Donald Trump’s plastic straws and Keir Starmer | Stewart Lee

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      It’s difficult to know whether to set any store by Donald Trump’s bleak and yet also often banal pronouncements, which read as if handfuls of offensive concepts have been tossed into the air by a monkey, read out in whatever order they landed and then made policy. Until it’s clear they can’t work. At which point, the monkey must toss again.But this month, Trump, whose morning ablutions increasingly appear to consist of dousing himself in sachets of the kind of cheap hot chocolate powder I steal from three-star hotels, like a flightless bird stuck in the machine that glazes Magnum lollies, declared he wanted to build his hotels on the mass graves of Gaza. Hasn’t Trump seen The Shining? It won’t end well. Pity those whose children have the misfortune to die next to a monetisable stretch of shoreline. And hope humanity’s next wave of mass killings happens somewhere uneven and way inland that hopefully wouldn’t even make a decent golf course.Is Ukraine the frontier upon which the future of European democracy hinges, or is it just a massive stretch of undeveloped fairway, its leisure/conference utility value currently compromised only by the desire of some losers to continue living in the country they consider home? Where we see the falling domino chain that starts with Poland and ends in your back garden, does Trump see only a succession of 18-hole courses full of men in caps and enormous flapping flares brokering manly deals at the tee? Drive your golf carts over the bones of the dead!But maybe Trump’s horrible mouth-cack is just continuing evidence of his former acolyte Steve Bannon’s advice to “flood the zone with shit”? Does Trump really hate all sea creatures so much that he has to reinstate the plastic straws Joe Biden successfully, and commendably, outlawed? Perhaps he was once told to keep his hands to himself by a mermaid. “These things don’t work,” Trump said of paper straws. “I’ve had them many times, and on occasion, they break, they explode.” Must millions of seabirds, turtles, manatees and dolphins die because Trump imagines that paper straws explode? Or so he can suck up his Diet Coke fast enough to amuse Elon Musk, Pete Hegseth and JD Vance by burping a smelly chorus of YMCA in Biden’s face next time there’s a gathering of ex-presidents.Because Trump, a fully grown man with unlimited funds, loves Diet Coke, and it’s tempting to wonder how many of his seemingly incomprehensible policy decisions can be traced back to his desire to be continually saturated by the soft drink. Maybe there is a subterranean lake of the stuff somewhere deep beneath the Greenland tundra that the climate crisis, which doesn’t exist, will soon make accessible to Trump’s deep Diet Coke drills? Delighted Inuit strip off their sealskins and dance in the showering liquid as they realise they have just struck a rich seam of their new master’s black gold. Like some kind of infantilised diaper king, Trump has genuinely had a special Diet Coke-summoning button installed in the Oval Office. Hopefully, he won’t get it mixed up with that other button. It will be a shame if all life on Earth is fatally irradiated just because Trump wanted a 500ml bucket of fizz to swill down his Big Mac and fries.But are we meant to take Trump’s erratic announcements seriously? While the last concerned voices of the dying liberal press pen outraged articles to their dying liberal readers about Gaza hotels, the invasion of Canada and Trump making it compulsory to drink everything through a Trump Plastic Freedom Straw Company Deluxe Plastic Freedom Straw ™ ®, even cauliflower cheese soup, his homunculus Musk has been quietly dismantling the infrastructure of American government as you knew it. There are cup-and-ball tricksters on Parisian street corners with more subtle moves.Half a dozen of Musk’s own hand-harvested incels-in-waiting, the kind of people who under normal circumstances would have got rich by inventing a way in which hardcore digital pornography could have been mainlined directly into the bloodstream in liquid form, have, under the spurious authority of Musk’s imaginary “department of government efficiency”, gone in and stolen all the data about everyone and everything in the US ever. Never mind. I am sure they will use it responsibly. What can possibly go wrong?Some people gathered at the scenes of Musk’s cost-cutting exercises and waved placards. Others sat and gawked at news footage of Kanye West’s naked wife’s arse or enjoyed disappointing trailers for the new Captain America movie, while the world as they knew it crumbled beneath their king-sized sofas. Keir Starmer backed away, as one might from a neighbour’s unpredictable weapon dog, avoiding direct comment, dodging a commitment to the AI declaration like a coward and hoping for the best, while Trumpy growls and foams. Which simply won’t do.Look. I’m as disappointed as the next metropolitan liberal elitist champagne socialist by Starmer’s government. While I accept, for example, the migration crisis must be addressed, I didn’t expect Starmer, who once left his “village and went to the city of Leeds” and “discovered a whole new world of indie bands – like Orange Juice and the Wedding Present”, to do it with Nigel Farage-style performative cruelty. Address the migration crisis, by all means, but don’t be a c*** about it. Did Orange Juice suffer the indignity of their eponymous third album not even entering the top 50 in 1984 just so, 41 years later, Starmer could send Yvette Cooper out to downgrade the desperate, like Paul Golding in heels.Currently, as Putin puffs up under Trump’s protection and unregulated AI threatens to rewrite history in real time, Starmer is on his knees sucking the paper straw of Trump’s presidency. I fear it may be about to explode in his mouth.

      Stewart Lee tours Stewart Lee vs the Man-Wulf this year, with a Royal Festival Hall run in July

      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at observer.letters@observer.co.uk More

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      ‘They may be Russian some day’: was this the week that changed the war in Ukraine?

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      Volodymyr Zelenskyy has had some tough weeks in the past three years, but this past one may be up there with the worst of them.Back on Monday, in an hour-long interview with the Guardian at his Kyiv offices, the Ukrainian president was in a cautiously optimistic frame of mind. He said he had received “positive signals from the Americans” over upcoming negotiations. His team was working to fix a date for a meeting with Donald Trump, he said, and he was sure that the US president understood the importance of coordinating his position with Kyiv before talking to Russia.Zelenskyy’s main message, which he returned to several times in the interview, was that it was vital for the US to play a key role in enforcing any potential peace settlement. If Ukraine was to be denied Nato membership, it at least required Nato-style guarantees that would deter Vladimir Putin from coming back to bite off more chunks of the country in a year or five. “Security guarantees without America are not real security guarantees,” he said, unequivocally.But the reality of Trump’s second term can come at you fast. By Wednesday, the US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, had ruled out both Nato membership for Ukraine and any US role in enforcing a peace deal. Later that day, in a surprise announcement, Trump said he had conducted a 90-minute phone call with Putin, and gave a press conference afterwards during which he proceeded to rip up three years of US rhetoric on supporting Ukraine.In Kyiv, the announcements hit with a shock as jarring as the wall-shaking booms from Iskander missiles that had been shot down on the outskirts of the city in the early hours of that morning.It had been a “bad war to get into” for Ukraine, said Trump, suggesting it was Kyiv’s choice to be invaded. He declined to say that Ukraine would be an equal partner in future negotiations, disparaged Zelenskyy’s poll ratings and repeatedly emphasised that his priority was regaining the money the US had spent on aid to Ukraine over the past few years, bandying around figures that appeared to have been plucked from thin air.View image in fullscreenHe doubled down on Hegseth’s insistence that Ukraine restoring its territorial integrity was unlikely, and even suggested that Russia might in some way deserve to keep the occupied territory because “they took a lot of land and they fought for that land”. The readout of the call said Trump and Putin had talked about the “great history” of their respective nations and discussed the second world war, all of which will have been music to Putin’s ears.Perhaps the Trump comment that caused the most anger in Ukraine was the casual remark in a television interview that “they may be Russian some day, they may not be Russian some day, but we’re gonna have all this money in there and I said I want it back.” It was a flippant dismissal of Ukraine’s existential fight to defend itself from Russian occupation, wrapped up in a demand for cash.In response, Zelenskyy has been walking an unenviable diplomatic tightrope. He knows that if he starts even to gently criticise the US president, it could make things worse for his country. On Monday, he offered careful compliments, tipping his hat to Trump’s “decisiveness”. He repeated the description on Friday at the Munich Security Conference, when JD Vance, the US vice-president, made the keynote speech and hardly mentioned Ukraine, and when there were surely many different words in Zelenskyy’s private thoughts.There is a depressing sense of deja vu to the situation. In the early months of Zelenskyy’s presidency, back in 2019, he got dragged into an impeachment drama after Trump tried to pressure him to investigate Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine. When Trump released a memo of the call, Zelenskyy appeared to be trying to sidestep entering a criminal conspiracy by flattering Trump. (“You are absolutely right. Not only 100%, but actually 1,000%,” he said, when Trump criticised European support for Ukraine.)This time, with the stakes even higher and Ukraine’s survival as a state on the line, Zelenskyy’s team has come up with a “victory plan” designed to catch Trump’s eye. Instead of appealing to shared values or European security, neither of which get Trump excited, they instead suggested joint exploitation of Ukraine’s “rare earths” and potentially lucrative contracts for US companies in the reconstruction of postwar Ukraine.“Those who are helping us to save Ukraine will [have the chance to] renovate it, with their businesses together with Ukrainian businesses. All these things we are ready to speak about in detail,” Zelenskyy said on Monday.The pitch worked, and on Wednesday, the US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, arrived in Kyiv with a draft agreement on natural resources. But reports of the contents suggest it requires Ukraine to hand over 50% of its mineral wealth without being provided with any security guarantees in return. “It made people quite upset,” said one source in Kyiv. Zelenskyy has so far declined to sign.For some officials from other allied nations, many of whom have become deeply personally invested in Ukraine’s fight to throw off Russian domination, the crumbling of US support over the last week has felt like a betrayal.The EU ambassador to Ukraine, Katarína Mathernová, wrote on Facebook that she had attended the funeral of two Ukrainian soldiers in the western city of Lviv on Friday, and “cried like a child” as they were laid to rest. “How can a deal about Ukraine be made without Ukraine? How could such an agreement ever be explained to the families of the thousands of Ukrainian soldiers who have fallen defending the integrity of their homeland?” she asked.Many Ukrainians say they are willing to see concessions made for the sake of a peace deal, after three long years of disrupted lives and thousands of deaths. But the key question of what security guarantees could enforce such a deal looks even harder to answer satisfactorily for Kyiv after Trump’s comments this week.On the other hand, if no deal is done, Ukraine will face an extremely difficult situation militarily. Late last month, the Ukrainska Pravda news outlet quoted Kyrylo Budanov, the head of military intelligence, as telling a closed parliamentary committee that if negotiations did not begin in earnest by summer “dangerous processes could unfold, threatening Ukraine’s very existence”. Budanov later denied making the remarks, and the SBU security service opened an investigation to try to discover the outlet’s sources, showing the sensitivity of the topic.Several sources in Kyiv said that while the frontline has stabilised since late last year, by the beginning of the summer Ukrainian forces may be in trouble, particularly if US military aid deliveries cease. The army is currently dealing with a desertion problem, difficulty in mobilising new troops and intense exhaustion among those at the frontline.View image in fullscreenHowever, some caution against the dangers of rushing into a quick deal, especially now that the spectrum of possibilities on offer from Trump appears to be so troubling. “The earlier we get to the table the worse the outcome will be,” said Vadym Prystaiko, a former foreign minister. “It’s counterintuitive, and I know it’s painful. But there are still ways. We don’t have to give up. There is a Ukrainian saying: ‘Don’t fall down before you’re shot,’” he said.Prystaiko said there ought to be ways to engage Europe more forcefully in the context of a Trump retreat, notably by finally pushing through an agreement on sending Ukraine money from frozen Russian assets. And while the outcomes for Ukraine may look bleak now, many Ukrainians remind outsiders that the country has been written off before. In February 2022 many observers expected the Russian army to overrun Kyiv in days. Instead, the capital remained standing and the population launched a fightback.“Ukraine survived for three years and Russia is still fighting for some villages in the Donbas. It’s a miracle,” said one senior security source. “I don’t believe the front will collapse, but it will get harder. We have time, but we are paying heavily for that time, first of all in the lives of our people.”As well as the future of Ukraine, Zelenskyy has his own political future to consider in the coming weeks. Both Trump and his envoy Keith Kellogg have raised the question of elections, a topic also frequently mentioned by the Kremlin as a supposed reason why they cannot negotiate with him, after his official term ended last year.In the interview on Monday, Zelenskyy bristled and came the closest to a direct criticism of the Trump administration when asked about these demands. “It’s an internal question… nobody, not even someone with a very serious position, can just say, ‘I want elections tomorrow.’ That’s the sovereign right of Ukraine and Ukrainians,” he said.Zelenskyy pointed out the challenges of holding an election in the current climate. Martial law precludes it, and even if there were a ceasefire it is hard to imagine how the logistics of a countrywide vote would work, given the millions of voters living in occupied territories, frontline areas and abroad as refugees.“Will the elections be only when we’ve solved everything in 20 years’ time? No. But we cannot just shout loudly, ‘We want elections.’ Let’s be honest, today our people would see this as something shocking,” he said.Increasingly strident criticism of Zelenskyy can be heard from some Ukrainians, amid complaints about his leadership style and a centralisation of power in the presidential administration. There was also confusion and anger over an ill-timed move this week to place financial sanctions on former president Petro Poroshenko, in what appears to be an act of political revenge. But there are few voices who think that now is the time for a vote.“Our position is that during a war there is no room for politics and especially not for elections,” said Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, an MP from the Fatherland party of former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko and a former head of the SBU security agency. “It would be the end for Ukraine. To start political or election activity would mean Putin’s victory the next day.”If some kind of sustainable peace deal is concluded in the coming months, elections might happen later in the year, analysts suggest. The big question will be whether Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the popular former army commander who now serves as ambassador to London, would stand. If he does, informal polls suggest he is likely to win; against other candidates, Zelenskyy has a much better chance.It is widely assumed that Zelenskyy himself plans to stand for another term, although when asked, he claimed that – like so much else in Ukraine – that will depend on what happens in the coming months. “That’s really a rhetorical question for me… I really don’t know. I don’t know how this war will finish,” he said. More

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      Europeans are right to be angry with Donald Trump, but they should also be furious with themselves | Andrew Rawnsley

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      It was, Sir Keir Starmer told members of his inner circle, one of his most meaningful visits abroad. In the middle of last month, he flew to Kyiv to double-down on the commitment to back Ukraine’s struggle for freedom, a pledge he first made a defining feature of his leadership when Labour was in opposition. Hands were warmly clasped with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, wailing air raid sirens greeted a Russian drone attack, financial promises were made, and signatures were inscribed on a 100-year partnership treaty. The prime minister solemnly intoned the western mantra about backing the resistance to Russian tyranny “for as long as it takes” for Ukraine to become “free and thriving once again”.All of which now sounds for the birds, thanks to Donald Trump. It was with his trademark contempt for his country’s traditional allies that the US president blindsided them by announcing that he had initiated peace negotiations with Vladimir Putin over the heads of Ukraine and the European members of Nato. The UK received no more warning of this bombshell than anyone else. So much for the vaunted “special relationship”. The US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, then unleashed another punch to the solar plexus of European security by publicly declaring that Ukraine would have to accept the surrender of large chunks of its territory and should forget about becoming a member of Nato. The future defence of Ukraine, he went on to declare, would be down to Europe, because the US wouldn’t be sending any of its troops to sustain a security guarantee.Humiliated and anguished, European leaders are crying “betrayal”. The UK government is not adding its voice to that charge in public, but it privately agrees. There is astonishment that the US president blithely conceded to several Russian demands before negotiations have even begun. “What happened to the Art of the Deal?” asks one flabbergasted minister. There is disgust at the Kremlin’s undisguised glee with what it interprets as a vindication of the barbarity it has inflicted on its neighbour. There is fear of the consequences for the Baltic states and others by rewarding Russian predation. There is horror at Trump’s subsequent suggestion that Putin be invited to rejoin the G7, as if the bloody slate of war crimes perpetrated by the Russians can simply be wiped clean.A hideous idea doing the rounds is that Trump will make a state visit to Moscow timed to coincide with the May Day parade, which celebrates Russia’s military. What a grotesque spectacle: the supposed leader of the free world sitting with the Kremlin’s tyrant watching a march across Red Square by the army that has committed so many atrocities in Ukraine.The biggest surprise is that so many people claim to be surprised. We knew that this US president despises America’s historic allies among the European democracies as he disdains the architecture of international security that his predecessors built. His geopolitics is one in which carnivorous great powers cut deals with each other and the smaller ones fall into line or get crushed underfoot. If you are genuinely shocked by these developments, I can only assume you haven’t been paying much attention.The perils are acute. A dictated peace will embolden Putin and other predators by sanctifying the redrawing of international borders by force. Were the US in concert with Russia to dismember Ukraine over the protests of Kyiv and European capitals, the transatlantic alliance would be mortally fractured.Europeans are right to be angry with Trump, but they should also be furious with themselves. They are to blame for leaving their continent so vulnerable to this danger-infused turn in world events. Trump has always had a point when he’s railed about Uncle Sam being treated as Uncle Sucker and he isn’t the first US president to tell Europe to take more responsibility for its security, even if none before have been so brutal about it. Under the lazy assumption that the US would always ultimately have their backs, European countries have spent too little on their own defence. The Russian invasion of Ukraine was often described as a wake-up call, but too much of Europe responded by hitting the snooze button. Three years on, the latest authoritative report from the International Institute for Strategic Studies finds that Moscow is feeding more resources into its war machine than the entirety of non-Russian Europe is spending on defence. Some frontline Nato countries, notably Poland, have ramped up their military budgets in response to the ravaging of Ukraine. The Poles grasp that the cost of deterrence is worth paying to avoid the far greater price of leaving yourself exposed to devastation. Others are still asleep. Last year, eight of Nato’s 32 members were still failing to meet the modest obligation to spend at least 2% of GDP.It is not that Europe lacks the resources to protect itself without US assistance. Russia’s population is about 144 million. The total population of Nato countries, excluding the US, is over 636 million and their combined economic heft is about 12 times that of Russia. The means are there; what’s been lacking is the will.Defence spending is about to become a lively issue in British politics. George Robertson, defence secretary during Tony Blair’s time at Number 10 and subsequently a secretary general of Nato, has been leading a strategic defence review. Lord Robertson is a shrewd Scot who has overseen a serious piece of work that has come to conclusions which will be jolting. His grim findings have just been delivered to the desks of the defence secretary and the prime minister. They will have landed with a thump.The Robertson review will add further detail to an already alarming picture of escalating threats out-matching inadequate protections. It suggests innovations designed to extract more bangs for taxpayers’ bucks by improving the efficiency of defence spending. It also recommends the reprioritisation of roles and activities. It makes the argument that it’s not just how much you spend that matters, it is also how well you spend. Yet the bluntest message of the review will be that Britain is not adequately resourcing its security. John Healey, the defence secretary, has effectively conceded that already by decrying the “hollowed-out” armed forces left behind by the Tories, a “dire inheritance” which includes the smallest army since the Napoleonic wars and an air force losing pilots faster than it can train replacements.One of Mr Healey’s junior ministers has said that the British army could be wiped out in as little as six months if it engaged in a war on the scale of the conflict in Ukraine. In the realm of cyberwarfare, the head of the National Cyber Security Centre recently warned that Britain’s shields aren’t strong enough to protect from the myriad bad actors who are menacing us.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionLabour’s election manifesto made a pledge to get spending up to 2.5% of GDP, but not until some distant and undefined point in the future. At an imminent meeting with the prime minister at Number 10, the heads of the armed forces are expected to argue that there will be more cuts to our enfeebled capability unless they get an additional £10bn a year than has been budgeted for.People in a position to know tell me that Sir Keir is becoming swayed by the case to spend more. For that to happen, three big obstacles will have to be overcome. One is the Treasury, which has ever viewed the MoD as a prodigiously wasteful spender, as it often has been. When money is already tight, Rachel Reeves is going to take a lot of persuading to make a special case of defence. There will be baulking by the many Labour ministers and MPs who will flinch at more money for missiles when it will mean less for public services. There’s also a job of persuasion to do with the British public for whom defence and security has not recently been a priority. At last summer’s election, just one in 50 named it as their top issue in deciding how to vote.It is going to take a lot of effort to shift the dial, but the need to do so is becoming pressing. There’s an old diplomatic saw: “If you’re not at the table, you’ll probably be on the menu.” In this era of international relations, exemplified by Trump seeking to do a strongman-to-strongman deal with Putin to carve up Ukraine, the law of the jungle is beginning to prevail. If the UK and the rest of Europe don’t want their vital interests to be on the menu, we’re going to have to stump up the cost of a seat at the table. More

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      US civil rights agency seeks to dismiss gender-identity discrimination cases

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      The US commission that enforces civil rights laws against workplace discrimination has moved to dismiss six cases it brought on behalf of workers alleging gender-identity discrimination, it was revealed on Saturday.The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), established via the Civil Rights Act of 1964, said in court papers it was looking to dismiss the cases in Illinois, Alabama, New York and California, because they now conflict with a Trump administration executive order to recognize only two “immutable” sexes, male and female.Each of the six complaints alleges discrimination against transgender or gender-non-conforming workers.The case in Alabama charged a hospitality group with discriminating against an employee who identifies as gay, non-binary and male by firing him hours after co-owners learned of his gender identity.The New York lawsuit alleged that a hotel group fired a transgender housekeeper who complained that a supervisor repeatedly misgendered them and made anti-transgender statements, referring to the housekeeper as a “transformer” and “it”.The complaint in Illinois alleged that a Wendy’s franchisee subjected three transgender employees to pervasive sexual harassment and claimed a supervisor demanded to know whether one employee had a penis.In two other cases in the state, a transgender Reggio’s Pizza cashier at Chicago O’Hare international airport was “outed” by her manager, called a racist, homophobic slur by co-workers, and fired when she complained.In southern Illinois, at a hog farm called Sisbro Inc, a man allegedly exposed his genitals to a transgender co-worker and touched her breasts.In California, lawyers with the EEOC charged that a Lush handmade cosmetics store manager sexually harassed three gender non-conforming employees with “offensive physical and verbal sexual conduct”.The request to dismiss the cases marks a significant shift in the commission’s interpretation of civil rights law and contrasts with a 2015 ruling that determined that discrimination against transgender employees fell under federal sex-discrimination law.That decision found that the department of the US army had discriminated against Tamara Lusardi, a transgender employee who transitioned from male to female on the job, by barring her from using the same bathroom as all other female employees, and by her supervisors’ continued intentional use of male names and pronouns in referring to Lusardi after her transition.Last year, the EEOC updated its guidance to specify that deliberately using the wrong pronouns for an employee, or refusing them access to bathrooms corresponding with their gender identity, constituted a form of harassment.The request to dismiss the six cases comes as federal agencies have begun removing references to transgender identity from their websites but not sought to weaken protections against discrimination based on sexual preference.Last week, the National Park Service eliminated all references to transgender people from its website for the Stonewall national monument in New York that commemorates a 1969 riot, led by trans women of color, that ignited the contemporary gay rights movement.David Lopez, a former EEOC general counsel and professor at Rutgers law school, told the Associated Press that the commission has never previously dismissed cases based on substance rather than merit.For the country’s anti-discrimination agency “to discriminate against a group, and say: ‘We’re not going to enforce the law on their behalf’ itself is discrimination, in my view,” Lopez said. “It’s like a complete abdication of responsibility.”The commission’s website states that it received more than 3,000 charges alleging discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity in 2023, up more than 36% from the previous year. But a link for more information on discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity appears to have been removed.Two weeks ago, Trump dismissed two Democratic commissioners of the five-member EEOC before their terms expired. Soon after, the acting EEOC chair, Andrea Lucas, a Republican, signaled her intent to put the agency’s resources behind enforcing Trump’s executive order on gender.Lucas announced that one of her priorities would be “defending the biological and binary reality of sex and related rights”.“Biology is not bigotry. Biological sex is real, and it matters,” Lucas said in her statement. “Sex is binary (male and female) and immutable. It is not harassment to acknowledge these truths – or to use language like pronouns that flow from these realities, even repeatedly.”Lucas later ordered that the EEOC would continue accepting any and all discrimination charges filed by workers, but that complaints that “implicate” Trump’s order would be elevated to headquarters for “review”.Jocelyn Samuels, one of the EEOC commissioners who was fired last month, said that Trump’s executive order and the EEOC’s response to it “is truly regrettable” and that the administration’s “efforts to erase trans people are deeply harmful to a vulnerable community and inconsistent with governing law”. More

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      Trump administration fires 20 immigration judges with no explanation

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      The Trump administration fired 20 immigration judges without explanation, a union official said on Saturday amid sweeping moves to shrink the size of the federal government.On Friday, 13 judges who had yet to be sworn in and five assistant chief immigration judges were dismissed without notice, said Matthew Biggs, president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, which represents federal workers. Two other judges were fired under similar circumstances in the last week.It was unclear whether they would be replaced. The US Department of Justice’s executive office for immigration review, which runs the courts and oversees its roughly 700 judges, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday.Immigration courts are backlogged with more than 3.7m cases, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, and it takes years to decide asylum cases. There is support across the political spectrum for more judges and support staff, though the first Trump administration also put pressure on some judges to decide cases more quickly.The Trump administration earlier replaced five top court officials, including Mary Cheng, the Executive Office for Immigration Review’s acting director. Sirce Owen, the current leader and previously an appellate immigration judge, has issued a slew of new instructions, many reversing policies of the Biden administration.Last month, the justice department halted financial support for non-governmental organizations to provide information and guidance to people facing deportation but restored funding after a coalition of non-profit groups filed a federal lawsuit.The firings touch on two top Trump priorities: mass deportations and shrinking the size of the federal government. On Thursday, it ordered agencies to lay off nearly all probationary employees who had not yet gained civil service protection, potentially affecting hundreds of thousands of workers. Probationary workers generally have less than a year on the job.Biggs, the union official, said he didn’t know whether the judges’ firings were intended to send a message on immigration policy and characterized them as part of a campaign across the federal workforce.“They’re treating these people as if they’re not human beings,” he said. “It’s bad all around.” More

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      Trump administration backtracks on firing nuclear arsenal workers

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      The US agency charged with overseeing nuclear weapons is looking to contact workers who were fired on Thursday as part of the Trump administration’s federal cost-cutting measures, but are now needed back.Officials with the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) attempted to notify some probationary employees who had been let go that they are due to be reinstated – but they struggled to find them because their contact information was missing.“The termination letters for some NNSA probationary employees are being rescinded, but we do not have a good way to get in touch with those personnel,” the agency said in an email, obtained by NBC News.“Please work with your supervisors to send this information (once you get it) to people’s personal contact emails,” the notice added.The NNSA, which sits within the department of energy, oversees the Lawrence Livermore national laboratory in California, which is responsible for the safety and reliability of nuclear warheads; the Los Alamos national laboratory in New Mexico; the Pantex plant in Texas; the Y-12 national security complex in Tennessee, a source of enriched uranium nuclear weapon components; and other sites.The agency runs off a $25bn annual budget, and is now overseeing a weapon modernization program. It currently employs more than 65,000 federal and contract employees nationwide. The US is projected to spend approximately $756bn on nuclear forces between 2023 and 2032, according to a congressional budget office report.Last year, the Biden administration approved a US nuclear strategy to prepare for possible coordinated nuclear confrontations with Russia, China and North Korea. Two years earlier, the same administration amended the longstanding “no first use” policy.The 2022 US nuclear posture review said the US nuclear arsenal “is intended to complicate an adversary’s entire decision calculus, including whether to instigate a crisis, initiate armed conflict, conduct strategic attacks using non-nuclear capabilities, or escalate to the use of nuclear weapons on any scale”.Last week, Trump said he wants all countries to move toward denuclearization once “we straighten it all out” in the Middle East and Ukraine.“There’s no reason for us to be building brand-new nuclear weapons. We already have so many,” Trump said on Thursday at the White House. “You could destroy the world 50 times over, 100 times over. And here we are building new nuclear weapons, and they’re building nuclear weapons.”“We’re all spending a lot of money that we could be spending on other things that are actually, hopefully, much more productive,” he said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAs of September 2023, the US maintains 3,748 nuclear warheads, a decrease from the stockpile of 22,217 nuclear warheads in 1989 and 31,255 in 1966, according to the Department of Energy.Russia has an estimated stockpile of 4,380 nuclear warheads, and China boasts an arsenal of roughly 600, according to the Federation of American Scientists.Trump signaled his interest in denuclearization talks with Russia and China at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last month.“Tremendous amounts of money are being spent on nuclear, and the destructive capability is something that we don’t even want to talk about today, because you don’t want to hear it,” Trump said on 23 January. More