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    All the executive orders Trump has signed so far

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    Donald Trump has signed dozens of executive orders in his first weeks back in office, including ending birthright citizenship, curbing DEI and “gender radicalism” in the military, and pardoning January 6 rioters.The US president promised in his inaugural speech that these orders would amount to a “complete restoration of America”.Here’s what to know about the executive orders Trump has signed since retaking the White House.ICC sanctionsThe order: Trump signed an order authorizing economic sanctions on the international criminal court (ICC), accusing the body of “improperly targeting” the United States and its allies, such as Israel.What Trump said: Trump has been a vocal critic of the ICC and said the court had “abused its power” in issuing warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes. “This malign conduct in turn threatens to infringe upon the sovereignty of the United States and undermines the critical national security and foreign policy work of the United States government and our allies, including Israel,” Trump said.What it means: The order grants Trump broad powers to impose asset freezes and travel bans against ICC staff and their family members if the US determines that they are involved in efforts to investigate or prosecute citizens of the US and certain allies.Read moreEnding ‘anti-Christian bias’The order: Trump signed an executive order attempting to eliminate “anti-Christian bias” in the US government. The president announced the formation of a taskforce, led by the attorney general, Pam Bondi, to end all forms of “anti-Christian targeting and discrimination” in the government.What Trump said: Trump said Bondi would work to “fully prosecute anti-Christian violence and vandalism in our society and to move heaven and earth to defend the rights of Christians and religious believers nationwide”.What it means: The order is meant to reverse alleged targeting of “peaceful Christians” under Biden. Critics say it changes the traditional understanding of religious liberty, with Americans United for Separation of Church and State saying in a statement that Trump’s taskforce would “misuse religious freedom to justify bigotry, discrimination and the subversion of our civil rights laws”.Read moreBanning trans athletes from women’s sportsThe order: Trump signed an executive order banning transgender athletes from participating in women’s sport. It directs federal agencies, including the Department of Justice, to interpret federal Title IX rules as the prohibition of trans girls and women from participating in any female sports categories.What Trump said: “With this executive order, the war on women’s sports is over.”What it means: The order is the latest in a slew of Trump actions aimed at rolling back the rights of trans people. Trump also signed orders defining sex as “only male or female” and banning gender transitions for people under the age of 19.Read moreEnding Unrwa fundingThe order: Trump signed an executive order stopping funding for Unrwa, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, and withdrawing US from the UN human rights council.What Trump said: The president criticized the entire United Nations as “not being well run” and “not doing the job”.What it means: In his first term, Trump cut Unrwa funding and withdrew from the UN’s human rights council. The Biden administration restored Unrwa funding and rejoined the council.Read moreImplementing tariffs on imports from Mexico, China, and CanadaThe orders: Trump signed three executive orders on 1 February placing tariffs on Mexico, China and Canada, to begin on 4 February.What the orders say: the Mexico order says that drug traffickers and the country’s government “have an intolerable alliance” that endangers US security. The China order says the country’s government allows criminal organizations to “launder the revenues from the production, shipment, and sale of illicit synthetic opioids”. The Canada order says that Mexican cartels are operating in that country, claiming the amount of fentanyl imported could kill “9.5 million Americans”.What it means: All three countries announced retaliatory actions. On 3 February, Trump agreed to postpone tariffs against Mexico and Canada for one month after they committed to increasing border enforcement. China has announced retaliatory tariffs on some American imports and an antitrust investigation into Google on 4 February after Trump’s tariffs took effect.Read moreCreation of a sovereign wealth fundThe order: Trump ordered the US treasury and commerce department to create a sovereign wealth fund. Such a fund, which requires congressional approval, would act as an investment fund for the country, operating outside the Federal Reserve and the treasury department.Trump offered few details about the fund, including where the cash would come from. His treasury secretary and the nominee for commerce secretary would spearhead efforts to create the fund. Treasury secretary Scott Bessent told reporters the government would “stand this thing up within the next 12 months”.What Trump said: “We have tremendous potential,” Trump said. “I think in a short period of time, we’d have one of the biggest funds.”Trump also said that the fund could be used to facilitate the purchase of TikTok.What it means: More than 100 countries and 20 US states have sovereign wealth funds. Senior officials in the Biden administration had been quietly working on a sovereign wealth fund before the US election in November, according to multiple reports.Read moreMigrant detention center at Guantánamo BayThe order: Trump signed an executive order to prepare a huge detention facility at Guantánamo Bay that he said could be used to hold up to 30,000 immigrants deported from the US.What Trump said: Guantánamo could “detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people”, Trump said during the signing of the Laken Riley Act, another of his administration’s hardline immigration policies.What it means: The order is part of a broader effort to fulfill Trump’s promise to remove millions of people from the country.Read moreGender-affirming careThe order: Trump signed an order that attempts to end gender transitions for people under 19.What Trump said: “It is the policy of the United States that it will not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called ‘transition’ of a child from one sex to another, and it will rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit these destructive and life-altering procedures,” reads the order.What it means: The order directs that federally run insurance programs, including Tricare for military families and Medicaid, exclude coverage for such care. The order calls on the Department of Justice to vigorously pursue litigation and legislation to oppose the practice.Read moreReshaping the militaryThe order: Trump signed three executive orders on 27 January that would reshape the military: removing diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, eliminating “gender radicalism” from the military, and reinstating soldiers who were expelled for refusing Covid-19 vaccines.What Trump said: “To ensure we have the most lethal fighting force in the world, we will get transgender ideology the hell out of our military. It’s going to be gone,” Trump said in Florida, according to CBS.What it means: Trump’s order does not yet ban transgender soldiers from the military, but directs the Pentagon to create a policy for trans members of the military.Read moreStart a process to ‘develop an ‘American Iron Dome”’The order: Trump signed an executive order on 27 January that would begin the process of creating a “next-generation” missile defense shield, which the administration is referring to as the American Iron Dome.What Trump said: “The United States will provide for the common defense of its citizens and the Nation by deploying and maintaining a next-generation missile defense shield,” the order said.What it means: Creating a short-range missile defense system akin to Israel’s Iron Dome would take years to build. The order calls for a plan from the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, within 60 days.Read moreReview of disaster agency FemaThe order: Trump ordered a review of Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), the disaster response agency, and suggested there is “political bias” in the agency. Trump previously criticized the agency’s response to Hurricane Helene.What Trump said: “Despite obligating nearly $30 billion in disaster aid each of the past three years, Fema has managed to leave vulnerable Americans without the resources or support they need when they need it most,” the order stated.What it means: A review council – which includes the secretaries of defense and homeland security, Pete Hegseth and Kristi Noem – will report to Trump within 180 days.Read moreDeclassifying MLK and JFK filesThe order: Trump ordered the release of thousands of classified documents on the assassinations of John F Kennedy, Robert F Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.What Trump said: “The federal government has not released to the public all of its records related to those events. Their families and the American people deserve transparency and truth. It is in the national interest to finally release all records related to these assassinations without delay,” the order said.What it means: Trump made this promise during the election campaign and made a similar pledge in his first term, but ultimately heeded appeals from the CIA and FBI to withhold some documents.Read moreRemoving ‘barriers’ to AI innovation and investing in digital financial assetsThe order: During his first week in office, Trump signed an executive order calling for a review of all Biden policies on AI, to remove policies that “act as barriers to American AI innovation”. A second order called for a working group to start work on crypto regulations.What Trump said: “We must develop AI systems that are free from ideological bias or engineered social agendas” to maintain the US’s dominant position in AI technology, the order states.What it means: Former PayPal executive David Sacks has been tasked with leading a group to develop an AI action plan. Meanwhile another working group will start work on crypto regulations.Ending birthright citizenshipThe order: On his first day in office, Trump targeted automatic citizenship for US-born children of both undocumented people and some legal immigrants.What Trump said: The order specifies that it would limit birthright citizenship if a person’s “mother was unlawfully present in the United States and the father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth”, or “when that person’s mother’s presence in the United States at the time of said person’s birth was lawful but temporary”.What it means: Birthright citizenship, which guarantees citizenship to anyone born on US soil, is protected by the 14th amendment and any attempt to revoke it will bring immediate legal challenges. The order was temporarily blocked on 23 January, with the judge calling it “blatantly unconstitutional”.Read moreskip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionPut a freeze on refugee admissionsThe order: Trump signed an order suspending the country’s refugee resettlement program starting on 27 January. Refugees maybe only be admitted on a case-by-case basis so long as their entry is in the “national interest”.What Trump said: The order cited “record levels of migration” to the US and said the country did not have the ability to “absorb large numbers of migrants, and in particular, refugees”.What it means: Advocates say the move put lives in danger and has left families devastated. Thousands of refugees now stranded around the globe.Read moreLeaving the World Health OrganizationThe order: Trump signed an order to have the US exit the World Health Organization (WHO).What Trump said: “World Health ripped us off, everybody rips off the United States. It’s not going to happen any more,” Trump said at the signing. He accused the WHO of mishandling the Covid-19 pandemic and other international health crises.What it means: The US will leave the WHO in 12 months’ time and stop all financial contributions to its work. The US is the biggest financial backer to the United Nations health agency.Read moreRenaming the Gulf of MexicoThe order: Trump ordered two name changes: the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska’s Mount Denali.What Trump said: “President Trump is bringing common sense to government and renewing the pillars of American Civilization,” the executive order said in part.What it means: Trump ordered the Gulf of Mexico to be renamed the “Gulf of America” and will rechristen Alaska’s Mount Denali as Mount McKinley.It will have no bearing on what names are used internationally.Read moreRevoking electric vehicle targetsThe order: Trump revoked a non-binding executive order signed by Joe Biden aimed at making half of all new vehicles sold in 2030 electric.What Trump said: “The United States will not sabotage our own industries while China pollutes with impunity,” Trump said.What it means: Part of an effort to repeal Biden’s environmental protections, Trump has also promised to roll back auto pollution standards finalized by Biden’s administration last spring.Read moreReclassifying federal employees, making them easier to fireThe order: Trump’s executive order reclassified thousands of federal employees as political hires, making it much easier for them to be fired.What Trump said: Aides to the president have long heralded mass government firings as part of an attack on the so-called “administrative” or “deep” state.What it means: Trump in effect reinstates “Schedule F”, an executive order he signed in the last year of his first term, seeking to reclassify tens of thousands of federal workers. (Biden rescinded the order.)Key aides to Trump have called for mass government firings. Project 2025 made attacks on the deep or administrative state a core part of Trump’s second term. The rightwing playbook called for civil servants deemed politically unreliable to be fired and replaced by conservatives.Read moreDeclaring a national energy emergency and ‘unleash’ oil production in AlaskaThe order: Trump declared a national energy emergency as part of a barrage of pro-fossil fuel actions and efforts to “unleash” already booming US energy production that included also rolling back restrictions in drilling in Alaska and undoing a pause on gas exports.What Trump said: The order means “you can do whatever you have to do to get out of that problem and we do have that kind of emergency,” Trump said. The order also says it is US policy for the country to “fully avail itself of Alaska’s vast lands and resources”.What it means: The declaration would allow his administration to fast-track permits for new fossil fuel infrastructure. It is likely that the order, part of a broader effort to roll back climate policy, will face legal challenges.Read moreCreating a policy recognizing only two gendersThe order: Trump signed an order to remove “gender ideology guidance” from federal government communication, policies and forms. The order makes it official policy that there are “only two genders, male and female”.What Trump said: “Agencies will cease pretending that men can be women and women can be men when enforcing laws that protect against sex discrimination,” the order states.What it means: The order reverses a Biden-era executive action on the acceptance of gender identity.Read morePausing the TikTok banThe order: Trump signed an executive order temporarily delaying the enforcement of a federal ban on TikTok for at least 75 days.What Trump said: “I guess I have a warm spot for TikTok that I didn’t have originally,” Trump said at the White House, as he signed executive orders, according to the New York Times.What it means: Trump ordered his attorney general to not enforce the law requiring TikTok’s sale. Trump says the pause allows for time to chart an “appropriate course forward” to protect national security and not abruptly shut down the popular app. In his first term, Trump favored a TikTok ban, but has since changed his position due to factors including his own popularity on the app.Read moreRescinding 78 Biden-era executive actionsThe order: Trump ordered 78 Biden-era executive actions to be rescinded, including at least a dozen measures supporting racial equity and combating discrimination against gay and transgender people.What Trump said: “I’ll revoke nearly 80 destructive and radical executive actions of the previous administration,” Trump told a crowd in Washington after his inaugural speech. He also said he would end policy “trying to socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life” and push for a “color blind and merit-based” society.What it means: The orders signal a reversal of Biden-era policy that prioritized implementing diversity measures across the federal government. Trump repealed orders signed by Biden advancing racial equity for underserved communities and the aforementioned order combating discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation.Declaring a national border emergencyThe order: Trump signed an order at the White House declaring an emergency at the southern US border, along with several other immigration-related policies.What Trump said: “All illegal entry will immediately be halted, and we will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came,” Trump said in his inauguration speech.What it means: The executive action paves the way to send US troops to the southern border and makes good on campaign promises to implement hardline immigration policies. There are limited details about how the administration plans to execute its sprawling set of immigration actions that were all but certain to face legal and logistical challenges.Immigrant communities across the country are bracing for Trump’s promise to carry out the “largest deportation program in American history”, beginning as early as Tuesday morning.Read moreIssuing pardons for January 6 defendantsThe order: Trump issued pardons for offenders and commutations related to the January 6 attack on the Capitol. He will direct the Department of Justice to dismiss cases currently in progress.What Trump said: “I’m going to be signing on the J6 hostages, pardons, to get them out,” Trump said during his rally speech. “We’ll be signing pardons for a lot of people, a lot of people.” Trump said he has pardoned about 1,500 defendants charged in the January 6 attack on the US Capitol and issued six commutations.What it means: Trump made his pledge to issue pardons for those with convictions related to the January 6 Capitol attack a core part of his re-election campaign. On the campaign trail, Trump often featured the national anthem sung by prisoners in a Washington DC jail. There are more than 1,500 people federally charged with associated charges.With Trump back in the White House, justice department investigations into January 6 crimes are expected to cease.Read moreWithdrawing from the Paris climate agreementThe order: Trump issued an executive action withdrawing the US from the 2015 Paris agreement, along with a letter informing the United Nations of the decision.What Trump said: “I am immediately withdrawing from the unfair, one-sided Paris Climate Accord rip-off” Trump said during a rally at the Capital One Arena. In his inaugural speech, Trump said he would use executive action to “end the Green New Deal”.What it means: In 2017, Trump exited the Paris agreement. Upon taking office in 2021, Biden rejoined. Monday’s order makes good on a Trump election promise to withdraw from the 2015 global treaty seeking to avoid the worst impacts of the climate crisis.Exiting the Paris agreement is part of Trump’s broader efforts to roll back climate protections and policy. Trump has described Biden’s efforts to grow the US’s clean energy sector as “the green new scam”.Read more This explainer was first published on 29 January 2025 and is being regularly updated to ensure that it reflects latest news developments. The date of the most recent update can be found in the timestamp at the top of the page. Any significant corrections made to this or previous versions of the article will continue to be footnoted in line with Guardian editorial policy. This article was amended on 30 January 2025. A previous version said the birthright citizenship executive order affected children of immigrants in the country illegally. It applies to children both of undocumented people and some legal immigrants. The subheading of this article was amended on 6 February 2025. An earlier version incorrectly said Donald Trump had abolished the Department of Education. More

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      Elon Musk’s journey from climate champion to backing EV-bashing Trump

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      Donald Trump’s attempts to slash incentives for electric cars would cause sales of the vehicles to plummet, with this effort cheered on by a seemingly confounding supporter – Elon Musk, the billionaire chief executive of Tesla and erstwhile champion for action on the climate crisis.Trump has said that he “will revoke the electric vehicle mandate, saving our auto industry and keeping my sacred pledge to our great American auto workers”.The US president, who previously suggested supporters of EVs “rot in hell” before somewhat tempering his rhetoric, has already ditched an aspirational goal for half of all car sales to be electric by the end of the decade, halted some funding for EV chargers and began reversing vehicle pollution standards that prod auto companies to shift away from gasoline models.A key tax credit for Americans buying an EV, worth up to $7,500, is also a major target for elimination, although to overturn this Trump will require Republicans in Congress. Should he succeed, though, the impact would be significant, with a recent study finding that electric car sales could fall by 27% without the incentive.“Turning off the credits would affect a meaningful share of the EV market,” said Joseph Shapiro, a University of California, Berkeley, economist and co-author of the study, who added that while a growing number of people would still go electric, the total number of cars sold would shrink by more than 300,000 a year than if the incentives stayed in place.“You could say that it would be a speed bump in the road but if the US goes all electric in 2090 rather than 2050, say, that matters a lot for the planet,” he said. “A lot of carbon would be emitted in that time.”Trump’s agenda has been enthusiastically backed by Musk, despite the world’s richest person heading Tesla, the market-leading EV company that also relies upon some parts made in China that may be targeted by tariffs imposed by Trump.Musk has said, though, that removal of EV subsidies will hurt rivals such as Ford and General Motors more than Tesla. “Take away the subsidies,” Musk wrote on X, another of his companies, in July. “It will only help Tesla.”There is some logic to this, Shapiro said. Tesla is comfortably the largest EV brand in the US, accounting for nearly half of all sales, and makes more profit per car than its rivals, meaning the removal of incentives would be disproportionately felt by other manufacturers.View image in fullscreen“If the tax credit is removed Tesla could survive and have less competition, they have more headroom to withstand a decrease in the market size,” Shapiro said. Stock in Tesla surged following Trump’s election win.However, Tesla will still be affected. Weakening federal pollution rules, for example, could see a reduction in the amount of carbon credits Tesla sells to other car companies – amounting to $2.7bn just last year – to offset their emissions and avoid fines. Tesla’s sales dipped slightly for the first time in 2024, amid concern among some of its traditionally liberal customer base about Musk’s rightward political turn.“Tesla isn’t immune to sales being impacted, they have some brand loyalty although we don’t know what the impact Elon Musk has had on polarizing consumers yet, that’s still a bit of an unknown,” said Stephanie Valdez Streaty, director of industry insights at Cox Automotive, which estimates EVs will have a 10% share of US car sales this year, up from 8% in 2024.Regardless, Musk’s focus has now seemingly shifted away from EVs to other areas such as robotics, artificial intelligence and his SpaceX venture, Valdez Streaty said. He has also embraced rightwing fixations shared by Trump. In a speech after the president was inaugurated, Musk made no mention of cars but said that the “future of civilization is assured” with “safe cities, secure borders, sensible spending, basic stuff”.He added: “We’re going to take Doge to Mars,” in reference to the “department of government efficiency” he heads in an effort to curb spending. “Can you imagine how awesome it will be to have American astronauts plant the flag on another planet for the first time? Bam. Bam. Yeah. How inspiring would that be?”Concern over the climate crisis is seemingly no longer one of Musk’s priorities, despite previously saying he is “super pro-climate” and in 2016 calling for a “popular uprising” against the fossil fuel industry because the world was “unavoidably headed toward some level of harm and the sooner we can take action, the less harm will result”.When Trump removed the US from the Paris climate agreement in 2017, Musk said he was quitting a presidential advisory body in protest. “Climate change is real,” he tweeted at the time. “Leaving Paris is not good for America or the world.”But Musk has had little to say after Trump, who memorably called climate change “a giant hoax”, once again pulled the US from the Paris deal and issued a flurry of orders to ramp up oil and gas drilling and stymie renewable energy production. In January, Musk said: “Climate change risk is real, just much slower than alarmists claim.”Critics say it is unlikely Musk will reflect the growing alarm voiced by scientists, and the American public, over the impacts of dangerous global heating within the Trump administration.“It just shows he’s an opportunist, really,” said Paul Bledsoe, who was a climate adviser to Bill Clinton’s White House. “He now downplays the dangers of climate change, but I think in the back of his mind he’s thinking about using government contracts for geoengineering as the costs of climate change become so undeniably expensive.”Those who know Musk say that he soured on Democrats in part after not being invited to a major summit on electric cars held by the White House in 2021, after Joe Biden became president.“That was an unforced error by Biden,” said Robert Zubrin, a leading advocate for human exploration of Mars who said he helped introduce Musk to the idea of Martian expansion. “And in the past two years, Elon Musk has redefined himself from the white knight of environmentalists to a Bond villain.”Zubrin said that Musk’s “central motivation is the desire for eternal glory for doing great deeds. He wants to save civilization because he wants to be famous for saving civilization.“This desire for eternal glory for doing great deeds has motivated his primary accomplishments, Tesla and SpaceX,” he added. “But it also has a dark side to it, and this has been exploited.”Tesla was contacted about its stance towards the EV tax credits but did not respond. More

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      Anxious scientists brace for Trump’s climate denialism: ‘We have a target on our backs’

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      As the world’s largest gathering of Earth and space scientists swarmed a Washington venue last week, the packed halls have been permeated by an air of anxiety and even dread over a new Donald Trump presidency that might worsen what has been a bruising few years for science.The annual American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting drew a record 31,000 attendees this year for the unveiling of a slew of new research on everything from seismology to climate science to heliospheric physics, alongside a sprawling trade show and bouts of networking as scientists jostle to advance their work.As grad students and grizzled researchers huddled around pin-boarded presentations in a cavernous exhibition space, however, one person dominated muttered conversations: Trump. The president-elect has called climate science a “giant scam” and when last in office sought to gut US scientific funding and sidelined or even punished scientists deemed unfriendly to the interests of the chemical and fossil fuel industries.The prospect of an even more ideologically driven Trump administration slashing budgets and mass-firing federal staff has given America’s scientific community a sort of collective anxiety attack. “We all feel like we have a target on our backs,” said one National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientist, who added that agency staff are already seeking to “pivot” by replacing mentions of the climate crisis with more acceptable terms such as “air quality”.View image in fullscreen“My god, it’s so depressing,” said another federal scientist about the incoming administration. A doctoral candidate, when asked about entering the workforce under Trump, simply puffed her cheeks and groaned. “If someone offered me a departmental position now, I’d jump,” said one Nasa researcher. “It’s hard, particularly for younger people. Hopefully we will survive it all.”The challenges posed by the incoming administration barely featured in the official AGU program, which was more focused on highlighting new research – from a dire new warning about the melting Arctic to innovations that leverage artificial intelligence – and general boosterism of the value of science to our lives. But the leadership of the organization acknowledged there was a sense of unease.“Some of the signals coming out right now make people nervous about what’s going to happen to their jobs, their livelihoods, let alone what their science is,” said Ben Zaitchik, a climate scientist who will be president-elect of the AGU next year. “You could say people are feeling beleaguered or besieged, but many are also motivated. At the same time, it’s a time of transition. So we just don’t know.”Trump – through his alteration of hurricane maps with a Sharpie pen, staring with uncovered eyes at a solar eclipse and suggestion that disinfectant injections could cure Covid-19 – is seen by many here at the meeting as a catalyst of scientific contrarianism.This has been underscored by the nomination of Robert F Kennedy, who holds an array of conspiracy theories about vaccines, wind farms and chemtrails, as the nominee for the US’s new health secretary, as well as Trump’s promise this week to cast aside environmental reviews for “any person or company investing ONE BILLION DOLLARS, OR MORE, in the United States of America”.View image in fullscreenBut scientists in the US face a broader crisis beyond the next president, amid a swirl of misinformation and declining trust in the profession among the American public. Overall trust in scientists has fallen by 10% since the pandemic, Pew polling has shown, with a growing partisan gap emerging in how science is viewed; nearly four in 10 Republicans now say they have little to no confidence in scientists acting in the public’s best interests.“When we get that kind of polling data, it is concerning,” acknowledged Lisa Graumlich, a paleoclimatologist and the current AGU president. Gone, it seems, are the halcyon days of celebrity 19th-century scientists such as Charles Darwin and Alexander von Humboldt, or even the reception to the polio vaccine in the 1950s, which was greeted with ringing church bells, with its inventor, Jonas Salk, routinely being greeted with applause and handshakes when he was seen in public.By contrast, Anthony Fauci, the face of the US response to the Covid pandemic, requires round-the-clock security protection due to ongoing death threats, even after his retirement. Climate scientists and meteorologists, too, have faced threats and harassment.“The conspiracy theories are out there, the misinformation is there,” said Graumlich. “Social media engines and the algorithms can take a person that isn’t necessarily prone to a conspiracy mindset and have them end up in this rabbit hole of misinformation.”Some researchers think scientists should adapt to this hyper-partisan environment by sticking to unadorned facts, rather than anything that could be seen as campaigning. “We have been come to be seen as just another partisan lobbying group,” said Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I want us to get back to a point where scientists are seen as the establishers of facts rather than arguing for policy. We need to get back to a situation where we have a shared set of facts.”Others are determined to press the case for science to guide decisions, if not in the White House then with Congress, which previously thwarted major Trump-demanded cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency and Nasa’s Earth science work.View image in fullscreenJay Famiglietti, a hydrologist at Arizona State University who has come to AGU meetings since 1989, attended this year’s event to reveal terrifying findings about the loss of available freshwater around the world, due to the climate crisis and agricultural practices.“People like me who are experts need to step up and say, ‘I think this should be done,’” said Famiglietti, who has tangled with a family member about Trump and has even taken to switching Fox News off from the TVs in his local gym.“I mean I am not going to chain myself to a wellhead but I’m going to make sure the right people in Congress, in Washington, know about it,” he said. “Some people might want to jump off a bridge if they think about the next few years but I don’t think we need to go into a shell or be overly careful. We need to choose our words well, know our audience, but I’m very much in support of full speed ahead.”Even if Trump does follow Florida’s lead by deleting all mention of the climate crisis within the federal government, an oblivious world will continue to heat up regardless, bringing disasters and rising costs to Americans. Scientists say they will still be there when such truths become politically palatable again.“We are sober about the future, but we’re not daunted,” said Graumlich. “The facts are still facts, science is still science. The fight is bigger than just one political cycle, I’ve been doing this for 40 years. We’re not backing down.” More

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      Is it safe to have a child? Americans rethink family planning ahead of Trump’s return

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      Chris Peterson wasn’t surprised that Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election. But he was surprised by how quickly he and his wife started asking one another: should we try to have another baby before a possible nationwide abortion ban takes effect? Or should we give up on having a second child?Peterson and his wife, who live in North Carolina, are thousands of dollars in debt because their first child needed to spend weeks in the hospital after being born prematurely. They had wanted to pay off that debt and wait a few years before having a second baby. But now, reproductive rights are again in the balance – Trump has said he would veto a nationwide abortion ban, but his allies are emboldened to push through more restrictions.Peterson is terrified of what is to come, and that his wife might not be able to get the medical care she needs if they decide to conceive again. “We should be happy thinking about expanding our family,” said Peterson, who is, like his wife, in his late 30s. “We shouldn’t be worried that we’re going to have medical complications and I might end up being a single father.”Peterson is not the only American who, in the weeks after the US election, is rethinking plans around having children. On 6 November, the number of people booking vasectomy appointments at Planned Parenthood health centers spiked by 1,200%, IUD appointments by more than 760% and birth control implant appointments by 350%, according to a statement provided to the Guardian by Planned Parenthood. Traffic to Planned Parenthood’s webpages on tubal ligation, vasectomies and IUDs has also surged by more than 1,000% for each.After the election, the Guardian heard from dozens of people in the US reconsidering whether to have children. Most pointed to fears over the future of reproductive healthcare, the economy and the climate in explaining their concerns.“I hesitate to bring more children into a world with an uncertain ecological future, assuming that the incoming administration pulls out of the Paris climate accord and ceases to support green energy transition,” a 34-year-old Minnesota mother of one wrote to the Guardian in response to a callout inviting readers to share their thoughts about post-election family planning. Trump pulled the US out of the historic agreement during his first administration; doing so again – which Trump has promised to do – could “cripple” the it, according to the UN secretary general.“We have two children and I have desperately wanted a third – but now I am fearful of being able to get adequate care if I get pregnant,” wrote another woman who lives in Louisiana. “I can’t risk leaving my two children behind if [I] die because I can’t get adequate care here. It feels like a dystopian novel, and yet here we are.”These worries are not necessarily new. In 2023, a Pew Research Center survey found that 47% of 18- to 49-year-old US adults say they are unlikely to ever have kids – a steep jump from 2018, when 37% said the same. Of the people who are unlikely to have kids, 38% said “concerns about the state of the world” were a major part of their decision-making. Roughly a quarter pointed to fears about the environment.Working in disaster relief, Catherine regularly sees the effects of the climate crisis up close. “I’m in Washington DC right now and flowers are blooming. It’s November. This should not be happening,” she said in an interview. “While I have always wanted kids, that choice has become tinged with a level of despair and anger that I didn’t have two years ago.”She continued: “Why would I bring a child into this world that is dying?”Earlier this year, Catherine got a copper IUD, which can block pregnancy for more than a decade.Like developed countries around the world, the United States is in the midst of a fertility slump. In 2023, the US fertility rate fell by 3% and reached a historic low.But this decline is not evenly distributed across the political spectrum. After Trump won the presidency in 2016, births in Republican-leaning counties rose sharply compared to those that leaned Democratic. Today, Democrats are likelier than Republicans to be childfree – a trend that, the Washington Post has hypothesized, is likely also related to the rightward drift of big-family white Protestants.That the outcome of the 2024 election has spurred such fear and hesitation around having children is apt – not only are US political parties on diverging paths when it comes to babies, but the election itself was in many ways a referendum on families and fertility. While Kamala Harris made support for abortion rights a key plank in her platform, Donald Trump promised “baby booms” and pledged to give people “baby bonuses”. Trump’s vice-president-elect, JD Vance, has built his political brand on pronatalism, a movement that urges people to have babies to benefit the greater good. Vance has a track record of deriding “childless cat ladies” and raising the alarm about the US fertility rate.“We want more babies because children are good,” Vance once said. “And we believe children are good, because we are not sociopaths.”M, a Texan mother of three who asked to go by her first initial because she feels stigmatized for voting for Trump, hopes that Trump’s victory will improve the economy to the point that she and her husband can afford to have a fourth child.“I still have a child in childcare now – like daycare – and just seeing those costs rise year after year since 2020, it’s been really hard for our family to consider having another baby,” M said. “The possibility of that being alleviated through better economic policy or even just those costs being taken away somewhere else – whether it’s groceries or utilities to whatever it is – that really makes it possible for us to consider having another kid.”M, who opposes abortion, feels confident that she would be able to get adequate care if she had a miscarriage. (Since Roe v Wade fell, at least three women have died in Texas after doctors reportedly delayed treating them for miscarriages or gave them inadequate miscarriage care.) The climate crisis worries M less than making sure her kids have access to clean water and healthy, chemical-free food.Not everyone reconsidering having kids has totally ruled it out. N, a 26-year-old from New York, is for now only delaying her plans to have kids until after Trump leaves office. (She asked to go by her first initial because she previously had an abortion.) Ruth, who has a newborn at home and is married to an undocumented person, fears abortion bans and her husband being deported – but still wants to keep the conversation about having a second kid alive.“We want to be able to dream of having a family the way we want to, on our terms,” said Ruth, who lives in Florida and asked to be identified by her middle name due to her husband’s immigration status. “My husband being an immigrant – we feel that it shouldn’t foreclose our options to build a family. We have just as much of a right to build a family on our terms as anyone else.” More

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      Biden must Trump-proof US democracy, activists say: ‘There is a sense of urgency’

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      The skies above the White House were cold and grey. Joe Biden greeted the championship winning Boston Celtics basketball team, quipping about his Irish ancestry and tossing a basketball into the crowd. But the US president could not resist drawing a wider lesson.“When we get knocked down, we get back up,” he said. “As my dad would say, ‘Just get up, Joe. Get up.’ Character to keep going and keep the faith, that’s the Celtic way of life. That’s sports. And that’s America.”Such events continue to be among the ceremonial duties of a “lame duck” president with waning influence. Biden has cut a diminished figure in recent months, first surrendering his chance to seek re-election, then finding himself sidelined by the doomed presidential campaign of his vice-president, Kamala Harris.But with his legacy imperiled by Donald Trump, the president is facing calls to mitigate the oncoming storm. Advocacy groups say Biden, who turned 82 this week, can still take actions during his final two months in office to accelerate spending on climate and healthcare, secure civil liberties, and Trump-proof at least some fundamentals of US democracy.Trump’s signature campaign promise was a draconian crackdown on illegal immigration. He has nominated officials including Tom Homan and Stephen Miller, architects of family separations at the southern border during his first term, and vowed to use the US military to carry out mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.The plans include mandatory detention, potentially trapping immigrants in inhumane conditions for years as they fight deportation. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is leading an opposition effort, urging Biden to halt the current expansion of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detention facilities, especially those with records of human rights abuses.Eunice Cho, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU national prison project, said Ice detention facilities “characterised by abusive conditions, pervasive neglect and utter disregard for the dignity of people in their custody” are key to Trump’s logistical plan.Dozens of people have died in Ice detention facilities – mostly owned or operated by private prison corporations – over the past four years, according to the ACLU, and 95% were likely preventable if appropriate medical care had been provided. Yet the Biden administration has backed new Ice detention facilities in states where they did not existed before, such as Kansas, Wyoming and Missouri.“We are calling on the Biden administration to take action now, in the final days of the administration, to halt any efforts to expand immigration detention and to shut down specifically abusive facilities once and for all,” Cho told reporters on a Zoom call this week. “We don’t need to put down runway for the Trump administration to put in place these mass detention and deportation machines.”She warned: “We know that the anti-immigrant policies of a second administration are going to be far more aggressive than what we saw in the first term, and mass arrest and detention is going to become perhaps the norm to create and carry out these deportation operations unless we can do all we can to put a halt to them.”View image in fullscreenAnother crucial area for Biden to make a last stand is criminal justice. In his first term, Trump oversaw the execution of more people than the previous 10 presidents combined. Biden’s attorney general, Merrick Garland, then imposed a moratorium on federal executions in 2021.Trump has indicated his intention to resume such executions and even expand the death penalty. His nominee for attorney general, Pam Bondi, issued a public apology in 2013 while serving as Florida’s top law enforcement officer after she sought to delay the execution of a convicted killer because it conflicted with a fundraiser for her re-election campaign.Cassandra Stubbs, director of the ACLU’s capital punishment project, told reporters via Zoom that Trump said “he will work to expand the death penalty. He’s going to try to expand it to people who do not even commit killings. He’s called for expanding the death penalty to his political opponents.“But perhaps most dangerously in Project 2025 [a policy blueprint from the Heritage Foundation thinktank] – and we believe every word of it is this – he promised to try to kill everyone on death row, and the reason why we have to believe this and take it so seriously is the record that Donald Trump left where he, in a span of six months, carried out 13 executions.”The ACLU and other groups are therefore pressing Biden to commute the sentences of all individuals on federal death row to life in prison, fulfilling a campaign promise and preventing potential executions under Trump. Commuting “is really the thing that Biden can do to make it harder for Trump to restart executions”, Stubbs added.Pastor Brandi Slaughter, a board member of the pressure group Death Penalty Action, told reporters this week: “We know what the next president plans to do if any prisoners are left under a sentence of death under the Biden administration. We’ve been there, we’ve done that.”Biden has also received 8,000 petitions for clemency from federal prisoners serving non-death penalty sentences that he could either reduce or pardon. The former senator has long been criticised for his role in drawing up a 1994 crime law that led to the incarceration of thousands of Black men and women for drug offences.This week, members of Congress including Ayanna Pressley and James Clyburn led 64 colleagues in sending a letter to Biden urging him to use his clemency power “to reunite families, address longstanding injustices in our legal system and set our nation on the path toward ending mass incarceration”.They were joined at a press conference on Capitol Hill by Maria Garza, 50, from Illinois, a prison reform advocate who spent 12 years in a state prison. She said in an interview: “There is a sense of urgency because a lot of the people that are sitting waiting for clemency are people that have de facto life sentences that will die in prison if they don’t [receive clemency]. A lot of their unjust sentencing was because of the 1994 crime bill that he was the founding father of.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMitzi Wall, whose 29-year-old son Jonathan is incarcerated on a seven-and-a-half-year federal cannabis charge, called on Biden to keep a campaign promise to grant clemency to more than 4,000 people in federal prison for nonviolent cannabis crimes.“We voted for President Biden,” she said. “He gave us hope and we’re asking him to do nothing more than keep his promise.”Wall, 63, from Maryland, added: “President Biden was partly responsible for writing the 1994 crime bill that thrust families into abject poverty and pain. I know he feels bad about that and he can right that wrong with the power of the pen. I’m appealing to him as a father whose son [Hunter] could very possibly be going to prison.”In other efforts to protect civil liberties, the ACLU is recommending a moratorium on all federal government purchases of Americans’ personal data without a warrant. It is also asking Congress to pass the Fourth Amendment Is Not for Sale Act to prevent potential abuse of surveillance technologies under the Trump administration.Meanwhile, Trump has pledged to rescind unspent funds in Biden’s landmark climate and healthcare law and stop clean-energy development projects. White House officials are working against the clock to dole out billions of dollars in grants for existing programmes to minimise Trump’s ability to rescind or redirect these funds. Earlier this month, the transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, announced more than $3.4bn in grants for infrastructure projects across the country.Wendy Schiller, a political science professor at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, notes that Trump will have the power of impoundment to stall the money flowing out of the government and can order rescissions to programmes funded by Congress.“The singular thing that Joe Biden can do is expedite the flow of federal dollars in all the programmes,” Schiller said.“Any money that is supposed to leave the treasury to go to schools, food safety, environmental protection – anything that is not yet distributed needs to get distributed. It’s like emptying literally the piggy bank before you go on a trip. President Biden needs to be literally getting as much money out the door in the hands of state, local and community organisations as he can.”Another priority for the White House is getting Senate confirmation of as many federal judges as possible, given the potential impact of the judiciary in challenging Trump administration policies. The Marshall Project, a non-profit news organisation, noted: “Federal judges restricted hundreds of Trump administration policies during his first term, and will likely play a significant role in determining the trajectory of his second.”Senate Republicans forced numerous procedural votes and late-night sessions this week in attempt to stall confirmations. Eventually a deal was struck that will bring Biden within striking distance of the 234 judicial confirmations that occurred in Trump’s first term – but four of Biden’s appellate court nominees will not be considered.The outgoing president could also engage with Democratic-led states and localities to bolster protections and establish “firewalls” against Trump’s agenda, particularly in areas such as immigration. These collaborations could involve reinforcing sanctuary city policies and providing resources to states that are likely to face pressure from the Trump administration.Chris Scott, former coalitions director for Harris, said: “What will be interesting is how or what can President Biden to work with states, especially where we have Democratic leadership in place, to be able to brace themselves and arm themselves with more protection. We already have places like a Michigan or Illinois where you have governors vowing to make sure that they have protections – even in the Trump presidency.”As Barack Obama discovered before handing Trump the keys to the Oval Office in 2017, however, lame duck presidents can only do so much. Trump will come into office with a flurry of executive orders, a supportive Congress and fewer guardrails than the first time around.Bill Galston, a former adviser in the Bill Clinton administration, said: “On January 20 Donald Trump will control all the instruments of government and, at that point, it’ll be up to the courts – and public opinion – to restrain him.” More

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      As we wait for national legislation, let’s launch a Green New Deal from below | Jeremy Brecher

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      As Trump and Trumpism devastate the American political landscape, how can people counter this destructive juggernaut? For the past five years, I have been studying how people are actually implementing the elements of the Green New Deal through what has become a Green New Deal from Below. This framework, which ordinary people are already putting into practice, is an approach to organizing that can form a significant means for resisting and even overcoming the Trump agenda.The Green New Deal is a visionary program designed to protect the Earth’s climate while creating good jobs, reducing injustice and eliminating poverty. The Green New Deal erupted into public attention as a proposal for national legislation, and the struggle to embody it in national legislation is ongoing.But there has also emerged a little-noticed wave of initiatives from community groups, unions, city and state governments, Indigenous American tribes and other non-federal actors designed to contribute to the core principle of the Green New Deal: to use the necessity for climate protection as a basis for creating good jobs and social justice. The US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who helped start the campaign for a Green New Deal, has called it “a Green New Deal from Below”.My new book, The Green New Deal from Below: How Ordinary People Are Building a Just and Climate-Safe Economy, details more than a 100 such initiatives in over 40 states. Some of these initiatives use names like “The DeKalb Green New Deal” and “The Green New Deal for Education”; others don’t use the moniker but apply the same principles. Here are some examples.In DeKalb county, Georgia, on 17 September, the DeKalb Green New Deal presented a 100% clean energy and transportation transition plan. Since it started in 2020, the DeKalb Green New Deal has passed 20 climate action policies, resolutions and initiatives. A local official, Ted Terry, told a news outlet: “Our Green New Deal is specifically a DeKalb Green New Deal – it’s what we think we can do with our own resources, our own land, our own people.”On New York’s Long Island, a co-op led by women of the Indigenous American Shinnecock Nation have fought for and are now exercising their traditional right to cultivate and harvest kelp in Long Island Sound. Their ocean farming extracts carbon and nitrogen from the polluted waters of Long Island Sound and produces an environmentally friendly alternative to fertilizer derived from fossil fuel. It is also producing jobs for impoverished tribal members. This and similar programs are often referred to as a “Blue New Deal”.In Minneapolis, unionized workers who clean downtown commercial office high-rises struck to demand that their employers take action on climate change. The janitors, members of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) local 26 who are mostly immigrants and women, won a green education initiative that includes training in climate-friendly cleaning and building management, funded by their employers.In Illinois, the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act, promoted by a broad coalition of labor and community groups, sets the state on a path to a carbon-free power sector by 2045 with the nation’s strongest labor and equity standards. The bill will slash emissions, create thousands of new clean energy union jobs, expand union apprenticeships for Black and Latino communities and increase energy efficiency for public schools. It also contains a transition program for families and communities currently reliant on jobs in the fossil fuel industry. Journalist Liza Featherstone has called the legislation a “miniature Green New Deal” for Illinois.In southern states like Texas and Virginia, the Green Workers Alliance has organized poorly paid solar panel installers to establish “a strong, worker-led movement that supports the Green New Deal and a just transition to a renewable economy”. They have connected with hundreds of workers in Facebook groups and listening tours. They have won back lost wages, organized struggles against temp agency abuses and campaigned to pressure large utility companies to transition to renewable energy.With Trump in the White House and Republicans in control of Congress we can still create local programs like the DeKalb Green New Deal with its comprehensive municipal plan for clean energy and its score of concrete climate initiatives. We can still create co-ops like the Shinnecock Kelp Farmers that protect the environment, eliminate carbon pollution, create jobs for deprived communities and increase the power of those marginalized in our political system. Workers like the union janitors in Minneapolis can organize, strike and win both better working conditions on the job and demands that their employers protect the climate.States can follow the lead of Illinois and pass legislation to transition to carbon-free power while creating union jobs for those who need them most and providing a just transition for workers transitioning out of the fossil fuel economy. Workers in the still-burgeoning green industries can organize both to challenge employer abuses and to fight to expand renewable energy to create good jobs and protect the climate.One of the leading proponents of a Green New Deal from Below is Michelle Wu, the mayor of Boston. Her programs have included solarization and resilience in poor neighborhoods, a massive construction program called the Green New Deal for Boston Public Schools, a Youth Clean Jobs Corp, and provision of free, nutritious breakfasts and lunches to all of Boston’s 50,000 public school students, prepared by an employee- and Black-owned food service company.Wu has already shown how action by a Green New Deal from Below can resist the coming Trump onslaught. On 12 November she told the Boston Globe that the city’s authorities will not assist federal law enforcement in any mass deportation efforts and pledged to fight the fear that might take hold among some Bostonians when President-elect Donald Trump takes office.The role of the Green New Deal from Below in the Trump era can go beyond such defensive measures. To paraphrase Wu, the impact of the Green New Deal has been to “expand the sense of what is possible”. A core goal of Trump and Trumpism is to obliterate that sense of possibility – the knowledge that through collective action people can improve their lives and their world. The Green New Deal from Below resists that obliteration, with people organizing to build the blocks of possibility right in their own backyards.

      Jeremy Brecher is the author of the new book The Green New Deal from Below: How Ordinary People Are Building a Just and Climate-Safe Economy. He is the author of more than a dozen books on labor and social movements and the co-founder and senior advisor of the Labor Network for Sustainability More

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      The Long Wave: Unearthing the real story of Black voters at the US election

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      Hello and welcome to The Long Wave. This week, I had a chat with Lauren N Williams, the deputy editor for race and equity at the Guardian US, about the country’s election results and the role Black voters played. I wanted to discuss the reported swing among Black voters to Donald Trump, which seemed pretty significant. However, talking to her made me see things from a different angle. But first, the weekly roundup.Weekly roundupView image in fullscreenBarbados PM invites Trump for climate talks | At the UN’s Cop29 climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, Mia Mottley told the Guardian that she would “find common purpose in saving the planet” with the president-elect of the US. Trump’s re-election has aggravated fears about the future of climate action.Malcolm X family sues over assassination | The family of Malcolm X have filed a $100m federal lawsuit against the CIA, FBI and New York police department over his death. The lawsuit alleges that law enforcement agencies knew of the plot to assassinate the civil rights leader in 1965 but did not act to stop it.Kenyans embrace standup comedy | Comedy is booming in Kenya, with new venues and a fresh wave of standups picking up the mic. As our east Africa correspondent, Carlos Mureithi, reports: “Topics encompass daily life and the entire range of challenges that beset the country … as performers tap into the power of standup to make people laugh about their difficulties.”Steve McQueen reveals cancer treatment | The Oscar-winning film director and artist Steve McQueen underwent treatment for prostate cancer in 2022. The Blitz producer, whose father died of the disease in 2006, has helped raise awareness of the higher risk of prostate cancer among Black men, and directed a short campaign film, Embarassed.Evaristos connect at Rio book festival | The British Booker prize-winner Bernardine Evaristo and Brazil’s most celebrated living Black author, Conceição Evaristo, met for the first time at Festa Literária das Periferias in Rio de Janeiro last Wednesday. The two Evaristos, who are unrelated, spoke on a panel discussion about their shared surname and its ties to Brazil and the transatlantic slave trade.In depth: A Black political shift – math or myth?View image in fullscreenThe headlines seemed clear: Trump’s support among Black voters had soared. In the US election this month, some media reported that he doubled his share of the Black male vote and won more Black voters than any other Republican in almost 50 years. This was history! Well, not quite, Lauren N Williams tells me. “The numbers overall are almost identical to how people voted in 2020,” she says. According to exit polls, Black voters turned out for Harris at 85%, and for Joe Biden at 87%. The only real difference is that the number of Black men who voted for Kamala Harris dropped slightly, while Black male Trump support increased slightly from 19% in 2020 to 21% in 2024. But, she says, more than 7 million fewer people voted for Harris than Biden. While Trump picked up more Black male voters than he did back then – a detail heavily emphasised in media coverage before and after the election – the prevailing narrative does not account for the fact that: “It’s not only this switch to Trump,” Lauren says. People stayed home, or people voted third party. If you don’t look at the whole picture, then yes, you arrive at the narrative that Black people are swinging one way.”Why was this contextualisation missing from post-election analysis? Because it doesn’t make for a sexy story. “It’s really interesting to people when you have a character like Trump and he attracts folks who you wouldn’t normally think would be into his policies and persona,” Lauren says. “It’s typical that white male voters vote for him overwhelmingly – but what’s not typical is when people of colour do so. For a lot of news media, that is a really attractive story.”I asked her about the viral clip of Barack Obama scolding Black male voters for seemingly not turning out as strongly for Harris as they did for him when he ran. Even I flinched when I saw it, and thought, wow, the Democrats must really be in trouble. But, according to Lauren, the emergency button on that narrative had so constantly been pressed by poll analysts (a narrative that, if I may, the Guardian avoided), that even the Democrats panicked and fell for it, sending Obama to “finger-wag” at prospective voters.‘Complicating the narrative’View image in fullscreenIt’s still interesting to me that a candidate like Trump, with his record on racism, could win over more Black men, even in context. But Lauren calls my attention to a far bigger and more interesting story that has been reduced to a footnote of the election: Harris won almost the entire Black female vote. “If you had white women voting 90%-plus for a candidate, you would not hear the end of that story. It would be endlessly curious and interesting and fascinating. We lose a lot by not applying that same level of curiosity to the ways that other demographics vote.” I can see that this also applies to Black men, three-quarters of whom still voted Democrat. “This story could have been ‘look at the power that Black voters wield’, but that’s just not the American narrative.”And what we lose is a big deal. By writing off those who voted for Harris as doing so simply out of blind loyalty, the reasons for Trump’s victory risk becoming detached from reality. Another broad headline after the election was that there was actually nothing sinister going on – it was “just” the economy. But the Black people who voted for Harris are disproportionately working class, Lauren says, and have made informed decisions despite their economic status because they are accustomed to making compromises and always thinking about “the greater good”. “In the discussions that a lot of the media has about the working class, the undertone is that they are only talking about the white working class”, because considering Black voters as part of the American working class “complicates the narrative”. People would have to reckon with the fact that “Black Americans who experience disfranchisement and a huge racial wealth gap were not wooed by this idea of economic anxiety”.Anti-racism has fallen out of fashionView image in fullscreen“Complicating the narrative” raises the question: why is it that white people are seemingly more anxious about the economy than Black people who are less well off? There is little interest in the answer to this question, says Lauren. “I think people have decided that race is boring,” she says, even though it’s “at the root of so much. Any time we talk about identity politics, we’re talking about people of colour, even though Trump ran on white male identity.” By only treating white people as rational economic voters, we pay “an undue amount of attention” to factors outside race, even though it’s “right up there”. I have definitely noticed a shift since Trump’s first election victory eight years ago. The myriad “white rage” takes of 2016 are thin on the ground this time, despite Trump’s 2024 campaign being even more explicitly racist.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionA growing backlash to Black Lives Matter also played a role. “We shifted so far after George Floyd,” Lauren says, “whether we saw corporations – symbolic or not – changing their behaviour and relationships to racism and people were pissed about that. Not everyone was on the Black Lives Matter bandwagon.”What next for Black Americans?View image in fullscreenIf this is how the election analysis has played out, it does not bode well for the next four years. Perhaps we’ll see wall-to-wall coverage of Trump’s “appeal” to the white working class and continued disregard for the millions of Black people who didn’t vote for him, who now have to live under a regime that “aims to dismantle federal anti-discrimination policies”. Lauren’s approach is to widen the historical lens. “One thing that has helped me is just remembering that we have been here before. Any time there is progress, there is always a backlash to it. One step forward, two steps back. That is peak American history.”As a journalist, Lauren says showing Black lives as fuller than they are often depicted in the mainstream media, insisting on art, culture, and “the Black rodeo down in Mississippi”, is the way to plough ahead. In other words: if you’re a glass-half-full person, which I am, it’s focusing on that one step forward and then the next one. Or, to borrow from Harris, “weeping may endure for a night but joy cometh in the morning”.What we’re intoView image in fullscreen

      I am broadly not a fan of beauty pageants. But I can’t lie, the variations of African dress during this year’s Miss Universe had me mesmerised. It’s impossible to pick a favourite as each one was more stunning the next. Nesrine

      The Afrikan Alien mixtape by Pa Salieu is going platinum on my phone. I love his musings on family, alienation and freedom (he was released from a 21-month prison stint in September). Jason

      I know we are at a saturation point with social media, but hear me out: Bluesky is like the old, less toxic Twitter, and has a handy way of grouping users so you can follow by theme. I mass followed Blacksky, a selection of interesting Black accounts on the app. Check it out. Nesrine

      I can’t wait to catch Cynthia Erivo’s performance as Elphaba in the film Wicked. She is a generational talent and I can’t stop watching her perform an R&B rendition of The Sound of Music on The Tonight Show. Jason
      Black catalogueView image in fullscreenWhen the prominent Fani-Kayode family fled the civil war in Nigeria, the UK gained a curious and radical artist and photographer in Rotimi Fani-Kayode, famous for his portraits exploring race, culture, sexuality, desire and pain. He had a short career, with much of his work accomplished between 1983 and his death from Aids-related complications in London in 1989. Fani-Kayode was a member of the Brixton Artists Collective and a founding member of the Autograph ABP (Association of Black Photographers), and much of Rotimi’s never-before-seen works are being presented at a new exhibition in London that captures his legacy and impact.Tap inDo you have any thoughts or responses to this week’s newsletter? Share your feedback by replying to this, or emailing us on thelongwave@theguardian.com and we may include your response in a future issue. More

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      How Trump 2.0 might affect the wildfire crisis: ‘The harms will be more lasting’

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      In the days that followed Donald Trump’s election win, flames roared through southern California neighborhoods. On the other side of the country, wildfire smoke clouded the skies in New York and New Jersey.They were haunting reminders of a stark reality: while Trump prepares to take office for a second term, the complicated, and escalating, wildfire crisis will be waiting.As the climate crisis unfolds, communities across the country are spending seasons under smoke-filled skies. Federal firefighters are overworked and underpaid, the cost of fire suppression has climbed, and millions of people are at risk of losing their insurance. Landscapes and homes alike have been reduced to ash as the world continues to warm.The president-elect has offered few plans to address the emergency. Instead, he’s promised to deliver a wave of deregulation, cripple climate-supporting agencies, and clear departments of logistical experts relied upon during disasters.His allies, including the authors of Project 2025, a conservative playbook for a second Trump administration, have recommended privatizing parts of the federal government that now serve the public good.In the past week, Trump’s announcements for key cabinet nominations has already shown he’s begun to solidify an anti-science agenda.“Whatever happens at a broad scale is going to affect our ability to manage risks, respond to emergencies, and plan for the future, “ said University of California climate scientist Daniel Swain. “I don’t see any way there won’t be huge effects.”Here are the challenges ahead:Setting the stakesLooking back at his first term, Trump had a poor record managing large wildfire emergencies – and he had many opportunities. After presiding over the response to destructive blazes that left a devastating toll, including the Camp fire that claimed the lives of 85 people in and around the town of Paradise, in 2020 he told a crowd in Pennsylvania that high-risk fire states such as California, and their residents, were to blame.“I said you gotta clean your floors, you gotta clean your forests – there are many, many years of leaves and broken trees and they’re like, like, so flammable, you touch them and it goes up,” he said. That year, a record 10.2m acres were charred across the US.In a signal of how politicized disaster management in the Trump era became, he added: “Maybe we’re just going to have to make them pay for it because they don’t listen to us.”Such comments raised fears among experts and officials working to protect these landscapes and the neighborhoods near them that Trump didn’t understand the magnitude of the risks US forests faced.He’s been unwilling to embrace the strategies that the scientists and landscape managers recommend to help keep catastrophic fire in check, including a delicate and tailored approach to removing vegetation in overgrown forests, protecting old-growth stands, and following those treatments with prescribed burning.The risks and challenges have only intensified since his first term.Some in the wildfire response communities are hopeful that Trump will cut red tape that’s slowed progress on important forest treatments, but others have highlighted a blunt approach could do more harm than good.Many have voiced concerns over ambitions set out in Project 2025 to curb prescribed burning in favor of increasing timber sales.Meanwhile, federal firefighters are waiting to see whether Trump and a Republican-led Congress will secure long-overdue pay raises.The US Forest Service (USFS), the largest employer of federal firefighters, has seen an exodus of emergency responders over abysmally low pay and gaps in support for the unsustainable and dangerous work they do.Federal firefighters who spend weeks at a time on the fireline and rack up thousands of hours in overtime each summer, make far less than their state- and city-employed counterparts with paychecks that rival those of fast-food employees. That exodus has hampered its ability to keep pace with the year-round firefighting needs.“Doing less with your resources makes a task like fire suppression and fuels management extremely more challenging,” said Jonathan Golden, legislative director of the advocacy group Grassroots Wildland Firefighters.Joe Biden facilitated a temporary pay raise for federal wildland firefighters, but those expire at the end of the year. With Trump promising large cuts to federal budgets and the bureaucrats who operate them, many fear the Republican leadership in Congress won’t push the legislation needed to ensure these essential emergency responders keep their raise.If the pay raises are allowed to expire, many more federal firefighters will walk out the door – right when they are needed most.“The job isn’t going to get any easier,” Golden said. “My hope is that we continue to have a well-staffed and well-funded professional workforce that can answer the call year-round – because that’s what is required.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionEmergencies on the riseBillion-dollar weather and climate disasters are on the rise. There was a historic number in the US in 2023 with a total of 28 – surpassing the previous record of 22 in 2022. With more than a month left, there have already been 24 this year.Trump has a history of stalling in the aftermath of natural disasters, opting instead to put a political spin on who receives aid. For wildfires during his first term, that meant threatening California and other Democratic-majority states with delayed or withheld funding to punish them for their political leanings.This time, some fear he may also reduce the amount of aid provided by Fema. Project 2025 has called for a shift in emergency spending, putting the “majority of preparedness and response costs to states and localities instead of the federal government” and either eliminating or armoring grants that fund preparedness to push Trump’s political agenda.The framework advises the next president to remove all unions from the department and only give Fema grants to states, localities and private organizations who “can show that their mission and actions support the broader homeland security mission”, including the deportation of undocumented people.These tactics could hamper both preparedness and recovery from wildfires and other disasters, especially in high-risk blue states such as California and others across the west.The administration has also been advised by Project 2025 authors to dismantle or severely hamper the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, whose forecasting has been essential to warn when dangerous weather arises, and remove all mention of the climate crisis in federal rhetoric and research.Trump’s picks of a former congressman Lee Zeldin to head the Environmental Protection Agency and North Dakota governor Doug Burgum as the Department of Interior secretary – two agencies deeply connected to US climate policy – indicate his strong skepticism of the climate crisis. Zeldin and Burgum have clear directives to oversee rampant deregulation and expedite extraction on public lands.“Folks at federal agencies are already being gently advised to think about the language they use to describe things,” Swain said. He thinks the effects will be far-reaching, especially when it comes to wildfire preparedness and response. Disabling science and weather-focused agencies could reduce important intel that responders rely on, reduce nimbleness and hamper efforts to plan into the future.“A lot of people are thinking this is going to be the second coming of the first Trump administration and I don’t think it’s the right way to be thinking about it,” Swain said.“This time, it’s highly plausible that the disruption and the harms will be a lot deeper and more lasting – it will be much harder to reverse.”Big picture problemsEven before Trump retook the White House, the US was missing the mark on its ambitious climate goals. But scientists and experts have offered clear warnings about how Trump’s policies could accelerate dire outcomes.“Climate change is a huge crisis and we don’t have time to spare,” said Julia Stein, deputy director of the Emmett Institute on climate change and the environment at the UCLA School of Law.Stein pointed to the potential for many of these policies to be challenged in court, much like they were the first time around. States such as California, which is also home to one of the world’s largest economies to back it, are already preparing to challenge Trump’s policies. The directives of the first Trump administration were often legally vulnerable, Stein said, and she thinks they might be again this time around, especially if he attempts to rid the agencies of career bureaucrats and their deep knowledge of how things work.In a state where wildfires are always a risk, California is also bolstering its own approach, doubling down on landscape treatments and investing in preparation, mitigation, and response according to Stein, who noted the $10bn climate bond just passed by voters there that will go toward wildfire prevention and mitigation.Still, fires don’t recognize borders. The threats continue to push into areas that aren’t accustomed to them, and larger swaths of the country will be forced to grapple with smoke. Without partners in federal agencies that manage lands across the US, states will struggle to address the mounting challenges on their own.“Continuing to enforce those laws in California will blunt some of the impact for Californians,” she said. “The unfortunate thing – especially when it comes to climate change – there are going to be national and global consequences for inaction at the federal level.” More

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      Trump picks oil and gas industry CEO Chris Wright as next energy secretary

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      Donald Trump said on Saturday that Chris Wright, an oil and gas industry executive and a staunch defender of fossil fuel use, would be his pick to lead the US Department of Energy.Wright is the founder and CEO of Liberty Energy, an oilfield services firm based in Denver, Colorado. He is expected to support Trump’s plan to maximize production of oil and gas and to seek ways to boost generation of electricity, demand for which is rising for the first time in decades.He is also likely to share Trump’s opposition to global cooperation on fighting climate change. Wright has called climate change activists alarmist and has likened efforts by Democrats to combat global warming to Soviet-style communism.“There is no climate crisis, and we’re not in the midst of an energy transition, either,” Wright said in a video posted to his LinkedIn profile last year.Wright, who does not have any political experience, has written extensively on the need for more fossil fuel production to lift people out of poverty.He has stood out among oil and gas executives for his freewheeling style, and describes himself as a tech nerd.Wright made a media splash in 2019 when he drank fracking fluid on camera to demonstrate it was not dangerous.US oil output hit the highest level any country has ever produced under Biden, and it is uncertain how much Wright and the incoming administration could boost that.Most drilling decisions are driven by private companies working on land not owned by the federal government.The Department of Energy handles US energy diplomacy, administers the Strategic Petroleum Reserve – which Trump has said he wants to replenish – and runs grant and loan programs to advance energy technologies, such as the Loan Programs Office.The secretary also oversees the aging US nuclear weapons complex, nuclear energy waste disposal and 17 national labs.If confirmed by the Senate, Wright will replace Jennifer Granholm, a supporter of electric vehicles and emerging energy sources like geothermal power, and a backer of carbon-free wind, solar and nuclear energy.Wright will also likely be involved in the permitting of electricity transmission and the expansion of nuclear power, an energy source that is popular with both Republicans and Democrats but which is expensive and complicated to permit.Power demand in the United States is surging for the first time in two decades amid growth in artificial intelligence, electric vehicles and cryptocurrencies.Trump also announced on Saturday that he had picked one of his personal attorneys, Will Scharf, to serve as his White House staff secretary. Scharf is a former federal prosecutor who was a member of Trump’s legal team in his successful attempt to get broad immunity from prosecution from the supreme court.Writing on Twitter the day after Trump’s election, Scharf greeted the news that Jack Smith, the special counsel who indicted the former president for his attempt to subvert the 2020 election, was winding down the Trump case and planned to resign with the words, “Bye Jack.” More