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      We demanded justice after George Floyd’s death. Donald Trump made things worse, but we fight on | Al Sharpton

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      Yesterday, I led a private memorial service at ​George Floyd’s graveside​, along with his family, in Houston, Texas. Once that was over, we visited the housing project where Floyd and his siblings grew up.Half a decade after Floyd was taken from them, they were keen, as are we, to ensure his life and legacy will not be forgotten – and to remind the world why the fight for police accountability continues.He died in front of the entire world. Everyone saw the phone footage of the incident where a white officer in Minneapolis kneeled on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes as he repeatedly said “I can’t breathe”, and cried out for his mother. His desperate pleas for help were ignored by those sworn to serve and protect the public; but they were heard in every corner of the globe.The movement for police reform gained renewed fire, and people from all walks of life demanded systemic change and the protection of Black lives. Five years later, while the officer convicted of Floyd’s murder is behind bars, the current climate in the US and regressive actions from those in power have set us back and prevented substantive police accountability.Just a few days shy of this sombre fifth anniversary, Donald Trump’s department of justice announced that it would back away from cases to force reforms on police departments – including in Louisville, Kentucky, and in Minneapolis, the city where Floyd was killed. This outrageous decision is not a surprise; it is just the latest roadblock in the fight for police reform and justice. It is an insult to the mothers, fathers, children and loved ones of all those killed at the hands of law enforcement. The consent decrees and small incremental changes that were achieved after tireless advocacy, organising, protests and political courage have been dismantled by a department that should be protecting the civil rights of individuals, not eliminating them.This move isn’t just a policy reversal. It’s a moral retreat that sends a chilling message that accountability is optional when it comes to Black and Brown victims. Trump is shamelessly weaponising the justice department against marginalised communities. The decision to dismiss these lawsuits with prejudice solidifies a dangerous political precedent that police departments are above scrutiny. The timing is no coincidence; it is an insult to Floyd’s family and the loved ones of victims such as Sandra Bland, Tyre Nichols, Breonna Taylor, Eric Garner and countless others whose names we may never even know.View image in fullscreenI remember delivering the eulogies for Floyd (one in Minneapolis and one in his native Houston) like it was yesterday. There was so much frustration, anger, disgust and exhaustion permeating throughout the US and, in turn, in many nations across the world. In fact, his death sparked global protests against racial injustice, particularly at the hands of law enforcement. Many young people mobilised and hit the streets for the first time, and more than 200,000 folks joined us in the nation’s capital for a march on Washington in August 2020 to call attention to ongoing police injustice. Despite a pandemic, hundreds of thousands from all races, ages and socioeconomic backgrounds protested alongside my organisation, National Action Network (NAN), as we led this march through the streets of Washington.Much has changed. In the wake of Floyd’s killing, and amid calls to respect Black lives, many corporations made commitments to continue diversifying and investing in our communities. Now we are watching many of those same companies turn their backs on their own diversity, equity and inclusion policies, capitulating to a rightwing government. The 2021 conviction of Derek Chauvin, the officer who killed Floyd, represented one of the first major cases in which someone in law enforcement was held accountable for their actions. But now some conservative groups and individuals are pushing for Chauvin to receive a pardon from the president. Such action would be the height of throwing salt into an already achingly deep wound. It should not be entertained for a moment.Some (particularly those in power at the moment) would like to distort reality and act as though police brutality and misconduct aren’t current problems. Nothing could be further from the truth. According to Mapping Police Violence, police in the US have killed 456 people so far this year (as of 23 May). In fact, there has only been a single day when police haven’t killed a person in 2025. And as it highlights, Black people are 2.8 times more likely to be killed by law enforcement than their white counterparts. This is why we still march, this is why we still put pressure on elected officials and corporations.For several months, NAN and I have been leading “buy-cotts” to support businesses such as Costco who remain firm in their DEI commitments. I have had meetings with PepsiCo’s chair and the CEO of PepsiCo North America, as well as Target’s CEO. Recently, I joined fellow leaders of national civil rights organisations for a meeting with top Google executives. And on 28 August, NAN will lead a march on Wall Street to defend DEI, remind corporations of their own promises in the wake of Floyd’s death, and reiterate that we will only spend our dollars where we are respected.When I stood in front of mourners five years ago at Floyd’s funeral, I said that his story has been the story of Black people, because the reason we could never be who we wanted and dreamed of being is because society kept its knee on our neck. Well, just as we loudly proclaimed around the world then, we say it again, remembering George Floyd, remembering all the victims: get your knee off our necks. Do it now.

      Rev Al Sharpton is an American Baptist minister, civil rights activist and radio talkshow host More

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      Hong Kong targets ‘top talent’ as Harvard faces international student ban

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      Hong Kong’s education bureau has called on the city’s universities to “attract top talent” by opening their doors to those affected by the Trump administration’s attempt to ban Harvard from enrolling international students.Last week the Trump administration revoked Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification, effectively banning the university from accepting foreign students. A US federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked the government from enforcing the ban, which would have reportedly forced students currently enrolled and not graduating this year to transfer to another institution or lose their legal status and visa.Harvard has launched legal action, but it has done little to assuage concerns among students thrown into limbo. Experts have warned the US the ban could be a boon for foreign institutions looking to attract talent.On Monday Hong Kong’s education bureau said it had “promptly called on all universities in Hong Kong to introduce facilitation measures for those eligible with a view to safeguarding the legitimate rights and interests of students and scholars, and to attract top talent”.The Hong Kong Science and Technology University announced on Friday an open invitation to any affected foreign students, offering a place to those forced to leave Harvard as well as those with confirmed offers.“The university will provide unconditional offers, streamlined admission procedures, and academic support to facilitate a seamless transition for interested students,” it said.Hong Kong is home to five of the world’s top 100 universities, according to the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, however in recent years they have been made to integrate national security and patriotic themes into studies, after China’s ruling Communist party tightened its grip on the semi-autonomous city.More than 2,000 students from Asia are currently enrolled at Harvard, with an unknown number accepted and waiting to start.“A lot of people in east Asia have some sort of fantasy and feel the prestige of Harvard,” said Taiwanese student Chu, who asked that his real name not be published.Chu was expecting to start a Masters in Science in August, and has already paid about $3,000 in visa and accommodation fees, and deferred his hospital residency for a year“I either stick with Harvard or I just go back to my residency training,” he said. “There’s no other alternative I have.”In a lawsuit filed against the Trump administrations attempted ban, Harvard said the move would immediately blunt its competitiveness in attracting the world’s top students.“In our interconnected global economy, a university that cannot welcome students from all corners of the world is at a competitive disadvantage”, it said, adding foreign students were “a key factor” in the college maintaining its standing in academia.The vast majority of Harvard’s foreign students – about 1,200 currently studying – are from China. On China’s Xiao Hong Shu app, a Chinese masters student from Sichuan, said she had given talks to campus classmates about unequal access to education in her home country.“As a fresh graduate studying abroad in the US for the first time, I’ve overcome a lot to get here,” she said. “But when the hammer came down today, it was the first time I truly realised just how small I am.”A spokesperson for China’s ministry of foreign affairs, Mao Ning, said on Friday that China “opposed the politicisation of educational cooperation”, and warned the move would “harm the image and international standing of the United States”.On the social media platform Weibo, a series of related hashtags, including “Trump is destroying Harvard”, saw more than 200 million interactions, including many viewing it as the latest skirmish between the US and China. Among the reasons cited by the Trump administration for revoking Harvard’s program was an accusation that it fostered “coordinating with the Chinese Communist party on its campus”.Additional research by Jason Tzu Kuan Lu and Lillian Yang More

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      Trump news at a glance: president delays 50% tariffs after ‘very nice call’ with EU chief

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      Donald Trump will delay his threatened 50% tariffs on all European Union imports into the US, after what he described as a “very nice call” with European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen.Von der Leyen wrote that she had a “Good call with POTUS” in a social media post announcing she had secured a tariff delay of more than a month, to 9 July, to give both sides more time to negotiate.The decision marks a U-turn since Friday, when Trump warned he would impose the 50% tariffs on 1 June because discussions with the EU were “going nowhere”. Trump claimed he was “not looking for a deal” that could deter the levies.Here are the key stories at a glance:EU chief vows quick US deal as German minister calls for seriousness In her announcement of the tariff delay, von der Leyen said that Europe was ready to move ahead with trade talks “swiftly and decisively”, while Germany’s finance minister, Lars Klingbeil, told the Bild newspaper, “We don’t need any further provocations, but serious negotiations.”If imposed, the tariff hike would escalate simmering tensions between two of the world’s economic heavyweights. Trump had previously paused threatened tariff hikes for three months to allow time for negotiations, giving trading partners until July to agree to new terms.Read the full storyTrump warns of Russia’s ‘downfall’ if it tries to seize all of UkraineTrump has lashed out at Vladimir Putin and warned that any attempt to seize all of Ukraine would lead to Russia’s “downfall”, after Moscow launched its biggest air attacks in the three-year war over the weekend.His comments came after Russia’s weekend attacks on Kyiv and other cities killed at least 12 people, including three children, and injured dozens more. Trump raised the possibility of imposing more sanctions on Russia in response. He also criticised Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who had earlier condemned US “silence” on the weekend assault.Read the full storyUS federal judges consider creating own armed security force as threats mountFederal judges are discussing a proposal that would shift the armed security personnel responsible for their safety away from the Department of Justice and under their own control, as fears mount that the Trump administration is failing to protect them from a rising tide of hostility.The idea of creating their own armed security detail emerged at a meeting of about 50 federal judges two months ago, according to a Wall Street Journal report.Read the full storyTop Republicans threaten to block Trump’s spending billTrump has been warned by fiscal hawks within his own party in the US senate that he must “get serious” about cutting government spending and reducing the national debt, or else they will block the passage of his signature tax-cutting legislation known as the “big, beautiful bill”.Read the full storyTrump administration tells border shelters helping migrants may be illegalThe Trump administration has continued releasing people charged with being in the country illegally to non-governmental shelters along the US-Mexico border, after telling those same organizations that providing migrants with housing may violate a law used to prosecute smugglers.Read the full storyUS police officer resigns after wrongfully arresting undocumented teenA Georgia police officer resigned from his job on Friday after erroneously pulling over a teenager, causing her to spend more than two weeks in a federal immigration jail, and leaving her facing deportation.The officer, Leslie O’Neal, was employed at the police department in Dalton, a small city more than an hour north of Atlanta. His arrest of college student Ximena Arias-Cristobal not only led to a domino effect that could lead to her deportation – it also engendered anger and criticism, especially given the circumstances of her immigration-related detention.Read the full storyFeatured essay: how Trump is turning US democracy against itselfThere is some mystery surrounding Donald Trump’s moves to dismantle many cherished principles of American history and its culture of governance: his globalization denialism; his romance with Russia; his demolition of universities; his contempt for European values and histories; his campaign to humiliate Canada, writes Arjun Appadurai, professor emeritus at New York University.These are all known examples, but it can be hard to see across them to discern anything like a unified theory of Trumpism, he adds. There are two possibilities here. One is that there is no rhyme or reason to Trump’s actions. He is simply a randomizing generator of chaos; the other is that there is a method. Appadurai subscribes to the second: Trump – and his advisers – know what they are doing.Read the full essayWhat else happened today:

      It’s been five years since George Floyd was killed by police officer Derek Chauvin. Now his family is fighting for sacred ground where he took his last breath.

      Kamala Harris took a swipe at Musk at a conference in Australia and raised concerns about AI.

      Speaking of Musk, where is he? The tech boss drifts to the margins of Trump world

      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 24 May 2025. More

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      US federal judges consider creating own armed security force as threats mount

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      Federal judges are discussing a proposal that would shift the armed security personnel responsible for their safety away from the Department of Justice (DoJ) and under their own control, as fears mount that the Trump administration is failing to protect them from a rising tide of hostility.The Wall Street Journal revealed on Sunday that the idea of creating their own armed security detail emerged at a meeting of about 50 federal judges two months ago. A security committee at the twice-yearly judicial conference, a policymaking body for federal judges, raised concerns about the increasing number of threats against judges following Trump’s relentless criticism of court rulings against his policies.Under the current system, federal judges are protected by the US marshals service, which is managed by the justice department. According to Wall Street Journal, those participating at the March conference expressed worries that Trump might instruct the marshals to withdraw security protection from a judge who ruled against him.Amid those anxieties, the idea surfaced that federal judges should form their own armed security force. That would involve bringing the US marshals service under the direct control of the head of the judiciary, Chief Justice John Roberts.At present, marshals fall under the remit of Pam Bondi, the US attorney general. Bondi was appointed by the president and is a Trump loyalist.She has made clear she will be guided by him – breaking a decades-long norm that kept the White House at arm’s length from the DoJ to ensure law enforcement and prosecutorial independence.John Coughenour, a federal judge in the western district of Washington, told the Journal that he thought the transfer of the marshals out of Trump’s and into judicial control was a “wonderful idea”. He added: “There’s never been any reason in the 43 years that I’ve been on the bench to worry that the marshals service would do whatever was appropriate – until recent years.”Coughenour is one of a growing number of judges who have faced security threats in the wake of Trump’s deluge of invective. In February the judge issued an order blocking Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship for children born on US soil to parents lacking legal status in the country.The judge was then targeted by a swatting attack, where a fake alarm is called into police and a Swat team sent out to the individual’s home.Senior Democrats have demanded an investigation into a spate of dozens of pizza deliveries to the homes of federal judges. The actions are seen as intimidatory, as it shows judges that their private addresses are known.Federal judges have found themselves on the front lines of constitutional battles over Trump’s executive orders over such contentious issues as birthright citizenship, the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants, and the dismissal of tens of thousands of federal employees. So far there have been 249 legal challenges to Trump administration actions, according to a Just Security tracker.Trump has used his social media platform Truth Social to lash out at named judges who have blocked his policies on grounds that they violate the US constitution or law. When Judge James Boasberg objected to the deportation of Venezuelans to El Salvador in the absence of due process, the president called him a “radical left lunatic” and said he should be impeached. Boasberg was first appointed to the federal bench by Republican George W Bush.The White House provided the Journal with a statement from the justice department. It said that marshals would “continue to protect the safety and security of federal judges” and that any other suggestion was “absurd”. More

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      US police officer resigns after wrongfully arresting undocumented teen

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      A Georgia police officer resigned from his job on Friday after erroneously pulling over a teenager, causing her to spend more than two weeks in a federal immigration jail, and leaving her facing deportation.The officer, Leslie O’Neal, was employed at the police department in Dalton, a small city more than an hour north of Atlanta.His arrest of college student Ximena Arias-Cristobal not only led to a domino effect that could lead to her deportation – it also engendered anger and criticism, especially given the circumstances of her immigration-related detention.Though Dalton’s municipal government did not provide any information about why O’Neal resigned, his wife posted his resignation letter on Facebook, which said he believed the local police department did not adequately defend him.“The department’s silence in the face of widespread defamation has not only made my position personally untenable but has also created an environment where I can no longer effectively carry out my duties within the city of Dalton without fear of further backlash from the community,” O’Neal wrote in the letter.On 5 May, O’Neal pulled Arias-Cristobal over in Dalton. The officer accused her of improperly making a false turn – but those charges were later dropped after the police force admitted to mistaking her car for another.The damage, though, was done by the time Arias-Cristobal’s charges were dismissed. The 19-year-old – who is undocumented and was driving with a Mexican license – was brought to the US from Mexico in 2007, when she was just four.The timing of her having been taken to the US barely missed the deadline for her to qualify for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca), a program initiated during Barack Obama’s presidency that provided children in her situation some protections from deportation.After O’Neal arrested her, local authorities contacted Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), the federal agency that detains and deports immigrants. Ice agents then transferred her to an immigration jail in the state.“I cannot go to jail,” Arias-Cristobal said during the arrest, according to dash-cam footage. “I have my finals next week. My family depends on this.”Arias-Cristobal’s plight captured national attention, with many supporting her and calling for her release. Others – including the far-right Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene – agitated for Arias-Cristobal to be deported.“In Mexico, today, there’s over 1.6 million United States of America citizens, living and thriving in Mexico, and I’m sure she and her family will be able to do the same,” Greene said during an interview with Tennessee’s Local 3 News. “But it’s important for our nation, for our sovereignty, for us to uphold the law. And this is what we have to do.”The White House’s attempts to engage in “mass deportations” during Donald Trump’s second presidency has led to an increase in arrests throughout the country. Immigration enforcement operations have been aided by local jurisdictions that partner with Ice, under what are known as 287(g) contracts. These contracts deputize local officials to carry out immigration enforcement arrests, collaborating closely with Ice.The Whitfield county sheriff’s office, which runs the local jail for people arrested in Dalton, has a 287(g) contract with Ice.Additionally, a law signed last year by Georgia’s governor, Brian Kemp, requires local law enforcement, in the entire state, to apply to enter into 287(g) contracts with Ice. Immigration advocacy organizations have called that law “disastrous”.The Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights, for instance, said it would lead to “racial profiling, terrorize immigrant communities and waste local resources”.Arias-Cristobal’s father, José Arias-Tovar, had also been detained by Ice weeks earlier after another traffic stop for speeding. He bonded out of Ice detention on 16 May. Five days later, Arias-Cristobal paid a $1,500 bond, leading to her release. She was home with her family by Thursday evening.“We’re going to keep working on her case to try to keep her here permanently,” Arias-Cristobal’s attorney, Dustin Baxter, told local TV station WSB-TV.Arias-Cristobal’s arrest has prompted some to rally for her release, whether in person or online. Her advocates have criticized Ice and the local police department for how they have handled her case.A GoFundMe campaign launched for her legal defense has raised more than $90,000.The jail where Arias-Cristobal was detained before she bonded out is known as the Stewart detention center. It is a run privately in Lumpkin, Georgia, by CoreCivic under a contract with Ice and for years has been accused of violating rights and maintaining horrific conditions. More

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      Top Republicans threaten to block Trump’s spending bill if national debt is not reduced

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      Donald Trump has been warned by fiscal hawks within his own party in the US Senate that he must “get serious” about cutting government spending and reducing the national debt or else they will block the passage of his signature tax-cutting legislation known as the “big, beautiful bill”.Ron Johnson, the Republican senator from Wisconsin who rose to prominence as a fiscal hardliner with the Tea Party movement, issued the warning to the president on Sunday. Asked by CNN’s State of the Union whether his faction had the numbers to halt the bill, he replied: “I think we have enough to stop the process until the president gets serious about spending reduction and reducing the deficit.”Trump has invested a large portion of his political capital in the massive package. It extends the 2017 tax cuts from his first administration in return for about $1tn in benefits cuts including reductions in the health insurance scheme for low-income families, Medicaid, and to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) food stamps.The bill squeaked through US House by just one vote on Thursday. It now faces a perilous welcome in the upper legislative chamber.Sunday’s admonitions from prominent senators angered by the failure to address the budget deficit bodes ill for Trump’s agenda given the tightness of the Republicans’ congressional majorities. The Senate majority leader, John Thune, can afford to lose only three votes from among his party’s 53.Thune has indicated that changes to the bill might be needed to bring refuseniks on side. That in turn could present the House speaker, Mike Johnson, with a headache.The House will have to approve any changes made in the Senate under the process of budget reconciliation, which allows spending packages to be fast-tracked through Congress avoiding a Senate filibuster of 60 votes. The final contents of the bill will need to be blessed by both chambers, with Democrats almost certain to vote unanimously in opposition.The House speaker renewed his plea to his Senate colleagues on Sunday to go lightly with him. He encouraged them on CBS News’s Face the Nation “to make as few modifications as possible, remembering that I have a very delicate balance on our very diverse Republican caucus over in the House”.But Senate budget hawks do not appear to be in the mood for compromise. Ron Johnson estimated that the bill would add up to $4tn to the federal deficit, a calculation that is broadly in line with the latest analysis from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).Johnson added a rare note of personal criticism of Trump from a congressional Republican. He said that while Trump might not be worried about the national debt, “I’m extremely worried about that.”He added: “We are mortgaging our children’s future. It’s wrong. It’s immoral. It has to stop.”Another key Tea Party senator, Rand Paul from Kentucky, has also been vocal over the deficit. He laid into the spending cuts contained in the big beautiful bill, telling Fox News Sunday that in his view they were “wimpy and anemic” and would “explode the debt”.Other influential Republican senators have been expressing concern about the number of Americans who would lose access to health coverage as a result of the legislation’s cuts to Medicaid. According to the CBO, almost 8 million people would be thrown off the benefit.Speaker Johnson tried to dismiss the concern, telling CBS News that 1.4 million of those vulnerable people were “illegal aliens receiving benefits” – and a further 4.8 million were able-bodied individuals choosing not to work and “gaming the system”.An analysis by the non-partisan FactCheck.org found that the claim that 1.4 million undocumented migrants were on Medicaid was false. People living in the US without immigration papers are not eligible for the federal program other than to receive emergency medical treatment.More than 1 million undocumented immigrants are in danger of losing health benefits as a result of Trump’s cuts – but this assistance is provided by states and has nothing to do with Medicaid.Any reduction in Medicaid would be politically awkward for Trump, who promised repeatedly on the campaign trail last year that he would not touch basic safety nets such as Medicaid, Medicare and social security. The president’s loyal supporters in the Maga (“Make America great again”) movement have cautioned against the move.Steve Bannon, who served as chief White House strategist in Trump’s first administration and remains a persuasive voice within the movement, recently told listeners to his War Room podcast: “You got to be careful, because a lot of Maga is on Medicaid.”Josh Hawley, the Republican US senator from Missouri, recently said that “slashing health insurance for the working poor” would be “politically suicidal”. More

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      Casualties in Trump’s war on the arts: the small museums keeping local history alive

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      For the past two years, a small arts non-profit has been telling stories about the communities living alongside the Los Angeles river, one voice at a time.The organization, called Clockshop, has collected the oral histories of nearly 70 local residents, activists and elected officials. Their knowledge is compiled in a vast cultural atlas – which contains videos, an interactive map and a self-guided tour exploring the waterway and its transformation from a home for the Indigenous Tongva people to a popular, rapidly gentrifying urban space.But in April, the future of the ever-growing atlas was thrown in uncertainty, when a three-year federal grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), the agency that supports libraries, archives and museums, was terminated 17 months early. The grant, originally for $150,000, still had $20,000 left to pay out. “There is no recourse to recover the funds still in the grant project activities,” the organization said in a post on Instagram.Now, executive director Sue Bell Yank says their mission to preserve the stories of residents ousted by gentrification could lead to “erasure of the past, of cultural self-determination, and a lack of understanding about how communities can successfully advocate for the kinds of neighborhoods we deserve”.Clockshop’s post foreshadowed an alarming message that would eventually be delivered to hundreds of other arts and cultural institutions across the US. As the Trump administration directed federal agencies to cancel grants that did not support the president’s new priorities, which focused on funding “projects that reflect the nation’s rich artistic heritage and creativity” and targeted anything broadly deemed “DEI” (diversity, equity and inclusion), millions of dollars dedicated to preserving local history and culture suddenly disappeared.Shortly after IMLS grants were terminated, so too were those awarded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). By Friday 2 May, a spreadsheet created by writer and theater director Annie Doren was being passed around the internet, aiming to catalog every organization that had lost their NEA funding. With more than 500 organizations on the list, the question shifted from who lost their funding to who didn’t.View image in fullscreenWhile organizations of all kinds were impacted, it is the small and midsized institutions that lack endowments, prominent donors, and broad outreach whose futures are particularly in jeopardy. The cuts have affected a broad swath of projects – from a documentary film-maker in Fresno making a film about a woman who has played Harriet Tubman in civil war reenactments for 30 years; to a dance performance about south-east Asian mothers in New York City, to an organization that brings films, book clubs and other cultural events to rural Montana.Rick Noguchi who runs a non-profit called California Humanities, said he has seen the 112 NEH grants it awarded across the state suspended indefinitely by the Trump administration. “There are many newer immigrant communities that don’t have deep donors and struggle with being able to find individual donors that step in to tell their stories.”‘The country is abandoning its citizens’Back in Los Angeles, the cuts have blanketed cultural institutions with feelings of anxiety and urgency. But their leaders are also fighting back, vowing to continue the work of preserving local history in spite of the administration’s threats to revoke non-profit status if they continue to champion DEI programs.The Japanese American National Museum (JANM), an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution in LA’s Little Tokyo neighborhood that focuses on the history, culture and legacy of Japanese immigrants, initially lost grants that amounted to roughly $1.45m – though some have since been temporarily restored after a court order. Among those cut was a NEH landmarks of American history and culture grant, which funded a workshop helping teachers build a curriculum about the history of Japanese incarceration during the second world war. JANM CEO Ann Burroughs said that the program benefits approximately 20,000 students a year.“It was very much to ensure that the history was never forgotten,” Burroughs said about the museum’s mission and outreach. “It was also to ensure that what happened to Japanese Americans never happened to anybody else.”View image in fullscreenLos Angeles’s One Institute, which houses the largest queer archive in the world, also uses their collection to help educate others on queer history and marginalization. They lost a $15,000 NEA grant to support their upcoming annual festival in October, and now they are scrambling to hold fundraisers to keep the festival on track.Tony Valenzuela, the organization’s executive director, said that their event is important because it covers a gap in education. “Even in liberal states like California, only a fraction of students learn about the contributions of queer people to society,” Valenzuela said. “If the government abandons funding non-profits and other individuals and organizations providing a social good, this country will also be abandoning whole swaths of its citizens who greatly benefit from this work.”Another organization that was hit hard was the Los Angeles Poverty Department (LAPD), which operates the Skid Row History Museum & Archive, located just a few blocks north of the neighborhood in Downtown Los Angeles. They lost four grants administered by IMLS, NEH, and California Humanities, and are unlikely to receive an NEA grant that normally keeps the organization running – a total value of nearly $144,000 dollars, or 22% of the organization’s annual budget.Like Clockshop, the LAPD’s exhibitions, public programs and archives chart the ways Skid Row has been transformed – and nearly erased – due to development and gentrification. “Not everyone sees Skid Row as a community, let alone a thriving arts community,” said Henry Apodaca, LAPD’s media archivist. “This is a critical counter narrative to popular narratives that we’ve all been inundated with when talking about Skid Row.”View image in fullscreenOne of the terminated grants was an IMLS grant for small museums, which was being used to support a project called Welcome to the Covid Hotel. The project, named for the temporary medical treatment centers that popped up in vacant hotels during the pandemic to care for unhoused people, culminated in an exhibition and a series of theatrical performances based on interviews with patients, nurses and social workers.“There’s stories of people coming in blind and getting cataract surgeries,” explains LAPD’s co-founder and artistic director, John Malpede. “Someone with gangrene needed to have his legs amputated, and it saved his life. And most people got and accepted some form of next-step housing.”Malpede’s performance is a creative way for policymakers to notice the Covid Hotels’ impact and potentially make the sites into permanent fixtures. When the grants were canceled, LAPD was still waiting on more than $38,000 to come through: money that was supposed to pay venues, crew and performers for events that took place in April, as well as upcoming performances in May and June, and a forthcoming publication. While LAPD aims to move forward with their plans, they are uncertain on how to fund it.After going public on social media, private donors have since stepped up to help the JANM and Clockshop recoup their losses. LAPD and the One Institute, however, are still looking for support. Without this funding, not only could the non-profits disband, but also the communities that have flourished as a result of their work.As Malpede warns: “It’s only because of the neighborhood standing up and using its own history that it continues to be present.” More

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      Whatever happened to Elon Musk? Tech boss drifts to margins of Trump world

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      The Oval Office was crowded, with reporters cautioned not to collide with the Resolute Desk. Standing beside them, dressed in black, was Elon Musk, billionaire ally of Donald Trump and head of his government efficiency drive.“Elon is from South Africa – I don’t want to get Elon involved,” the US president told his South African counterpart, Cyril Ramaphosa, during a discussion about crime against white farmers. “He actually came here on a different subject: sending rockets to Mars. He likes that better.”Musk’s silence during the fraught hour-long meeting was a small but telling reminder of his shift in Trump’s orbit. He remains close to the president and welcome in the West Wing. He also paid a second visit to the Pentagon this week. But a relationship that many forecast would end in an explosive collision of egos seems instead to be undergoing an inexorable tapering off.On Monday, the Politico website published an analysis under the headline “Why has Elon Musk disappeared from the spotlight?” It found a sharp drop in the number of times that Trump posted about Musk on his Truth Social platform, from an average of four times a week in February and March to zero since the start of April.In February, Politico said, Trump’s fundraising operation invoked Musk in fundraising emails almost every day, with one message reading: “I love Elon Musk! The media wants to drive us apart, and it’s not working. He’s great.” But such mentions abruptly halted in early March, with the exception of one email in May advertising a “Gulf of America” hat that Musk had worn.In addition, White House officials no longer fill their social media feeds with Musk-related content. Reporters seldom ask about him at the White House press briefing. Members of Congress are giving his name a wide berth.Musk seems to be taking the hint. This week, the Tesla chief executive confirmed that he had reduced his role as the unofficial head of the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) to just two days a week, and will also cut his political spending substantially – the latest public signal that he is shifting his attention back to his business empire amid growing investor concerns.It is a dramatic shift from the first weeks of Trump’s second term, when Musk attended the inauguration, was a constant presence at Mar-a-Lago, appeared alongside Trump in the Oval Office and gave a joint interview on Fox News full of mutual admiration. Doge dominated media headlines as it took a chainsaw to the federal bureaucracy.It seemed that Trump was dazzled by the world’s richest person, who sends rockets into space and spent at least $250m to support his election campaign last year. In March, the president even turned the White House south lawn into a temporary Tesla showroom, displaying five of the electric vehicles and promising to buy one himself.View image in fullscreenBut the polls told their own story. Last month, a national survey by Marquette University Law School found approval of how Musk is handling his work at Doge at 41% with disapproval at 58%. About 60% of those polled had an unfavourable view of Musk himself, compared with 38% who were favourably disposed to him.Ro Khanna, a Democratic member of Congress who has known Musk for more than a decade, commented: “As his numbers declined, so did Trump’s interest. Trump discards people when their ratings fall and it’s very transactional. It’s nothing more than an initial fascination and a sense of being discarded.”Khanna, whose congressional district sits in the heart of California’s Silicon Valley, had predicted from the outset that Musk was not going to last more than four or five months: “I said he’s going to get frustrated, exhausted and Washington will win – not him – in terms of how the town works.”At that time, Khanna was hoping that Doge would make cuts at the Pentagon. Instead, it flouted the constitution to slash the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the Department of Education, the Internal Revenue Service and other targets.“I said there’s no way he’s going to get anywhere close to $2tn of cuts; he didn’t even get close to a trillion; it’s about $81bn. He learned the lesson that a lot of very successful business leaders learn, that democracy is much tougher than they imagine and doesn’t bend to their will,” Khanna said.Indeed, Musk continues to hit roadblocks. On Wednesday, the US Institute of Peace retook control of its headquarters after a federal judge said the firing of its board and employees by Doge was illegal. On Thursday, a federal judge in San Francisco said Trump cannot restructure and downsize the US government without the consent of Congress and that she would probably extend her ruling blocking federal agencies from implementing mass layoffs.Even so, Doge has already enacted deep cuts to the workforce and spending and, in some cases, sought to shutter entire agencies, causing untold damage to the fabric of government.For example, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) “is not ready” for next month’s start of the hurricane season, according to an internal agency review reported by CNN. The disaster relief agency, which employs more than 20,000 workers, has lost roughly 30% of its full-time staff to layoffs and Doge buyouts.Khanna warned: “We’re going to be living with the consequences for years to come because unfortunately they’ve managed to totally destroy USAID, they’ve destroyed NIH [the National Institutes of Health], they’ve destroyed FDA [the Food and Drug Administration], they’ve destroyed EPA [the Environmental Protection Agency], they’ve hollowed out so much of the state department and it’s going to take a generation to rebuild.“I’m hoping that the damage will stop. We have to see what will continue but hopefully there’ll be no more sledgehammer to these institutions.”Even conservatives who believe in downsizing government share the concerns. Rick Tyler, a political strategist who has worked on Republican campaigns, said: “What they’re trying to do is make the government smaller, which I applaud, but they are not making it more efficient because there has been no vision, no plan to actually make the government operate with fewer people and less money. There is no redesign. This is just slash and burn.”Tesla, which is the major source of Musk’s wealth, has suffered significant brand damage and lost sales due to his political work, particularly with Trump. He has also expressed support for the far-right, anti-immigration AfD party in Germany. Tesla dealerships have become scenes of protest and vandalism in the US and beyond.It may be that Musk met his political Waterloo in Wisconsin. His spending of at least $3m helped make Wisconsin’s supreme court race the most expensive of its kind in US history. He even made a personal appearance in Green Bay the weekend before the election wearing a cheesehead hat – popular with fans of the NFL’s Green Bay Packers – and personally handed out cheques for $1m to supporters.View image in fullscreenBut the candidate he backed lost by 10 percentage points. Democrats had used his intervention to successfully mobilise voters in an election dubbed “People vs Musk”.This week, Musk told Bloomberg’s Qatar Economic Forum in Doha: “In terms of political spending, I’m going to do a lot less in the future.” The Wisconsin Democratic party chair, Ben Wikler, told the Associated Press: “The people have won. The biggest funder in Republican politics is taking his toys and going home.”Evidently, Musk and his chainsaw have become a political liability for Republicans seeking re-election in next year’s midterms. Democrats in races across the country are expected to use Musk as a political boogeyman in attack ads on their opponents.Tyler observed: “The polling numbers, Trump suffering politically, which would hurt his party, which is going to hurt his agenda, caused enough strife that I’m sure he heard from enough members to say, could we just not talk about Elon Musk any more?”Wendy Schiller, a political science professor at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, added: “It was a trial balloon on how they would reduce federal employees. If it worked and people thought it was great, maybe they would keep going with or without Musk, but they used him as the front person for it and the punching bag. When it backfired, they cut him loose. Not surprising at all.“There is nobody that you can sincerely believe Donald Trump thinks is important to his popularity or his standing in a positive way because he believes he generates all that himself. And I don’t think he’s wrong about that. But if you become a liability, you’re gone pretty quickly.” More