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    ‘There was no place for me in American society’: an ex-Black Panther cub speaks out

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    Hello and welcome to The Long Wave. This week, Guardian Documentaries has released a short film about the life and legacy of the Black Panthers with a focus on the group’s children. It was released alongside a Long Read by Ed Pilkington in the US on the wider group. I spoke to one of those cubs in the film, Ericka Abram, about her childhood within the activist community in the 1970s, and how her life was shaped by the experience. But first, the weekly roundup.‘I lived in a protected Panther bubble’View image in fullscreenThe first thing I notice about Ericka is that she is deliberate in her articulation and her responses are meticulously considered. She is also warm and quick-witted, with a flair for a killer line. She will not argue with people online about Donald Trump, she says, because it’s a waste of time to engage with a “bot, a baby or a bigot”.Ericka is the daughter of Elaine Brown, a former chair of the Black Panther party, and Raymond Hewitt, one of its leaders. She spent her early years in Oakland, California, and the Black Panther party she grew up in was not only a political organisation, but also a social one. The cubs lived in dormitories and had their own school. At weekends, they could return to a home where adult members of the party lived together and played an equal role in their care – “comrade moms” is how she describes the women she lived with.Ericka had no idea her childhood was anything out of the ordinary. Even though reporters showed up at their schools, and she had seen her mother and Huey Newton, the co-founder of the Black Panthers, on television, she did not have a sense of how outsiders perceived the party. I ask her if she was aware of the risks involved for her family and the wider network. “It just felt like family,” she says. Despite this, she shares a chilling story about her mother’s bodyguard stopping a seven-year-old Ericka from opening the door of their house and rebuking her, because he was the first person who should walk out, in case someone shoots.The full picture did not start to become clear until she was in high school, years after her mother left the party and took Ericka with her. She recalls someone once telling her: “Your mother is the only woman in US history to lead a paramilitary organisation.” Ericka says it was “strange” to hear her mum being described like that.She recalls a community that was deeply activist but also, perhaps counterintuitively, apolitical. Ericka tells me it often shocks people that she not only had no insights on the internal politics of the Black Panthers, but she had almost no idea what the party actually was. “The Black Panther party and the reasons it existed were unknown to me. [This is] because I wasn’t suffering racism or sexism; I lived in a protected Panther bubble.” The group participated in boycotts with farmworkers, who successfully secured better working conditions and union rights, and Ericka “hated” that party members couldn’t eat grapes and things she thought were delicious. But the boycotts were explained to her in such a way that she grasped that there were overlords who needed to be forced to play fair. She says from an early age she understood capitalism as synonymous with greed.View image in fullscreenLeaving that bubble was a sharp adjustment. When Ericka was eight her mother left the party and moved to Los Angeles, and the experience of attending a non-Black Panther school for the first time was full of conflict. “I had fights frequently – arguments with my teachers – most of it was about injustice. One teacher put me out of class because I said Australia was founded by prisoners and bigots or something like that. I was in seventh grade.” Another time she was ejected from class for sitting quietly during the pledge of allegiance. “I might not have understood the values that were raising me, but as soon as I was removed from them I needed them most,” she says.I ask how she adjusted to living in the mainstream. Her answer is unequivocal: “There was no place for me in American society.” That might have led to her finding refuge in drugs, says Ericka, who started using cocaine when she was 15. “I was trying to medicate a pain I didn’t understand. And living a life I hadn’t any intention of living.” As a child, she had assumed she would one day become a Black Panther. When that life did not come to pass, a profound sense of effacement took hold. “I developed this idea that unless I die for the people, my life was worthless,” she says. Growing up in an organisation with such a clear purpose raised the hurdle so high that one may as well not try to scale it. That’s what comes “from being raised by people who knew what they were willing to die for”, she says.I suggest that she is describing a sort of nihilism and erasure. Well, yes, is her answer. Ericka has always believed that individuals do not matter. “We were raised to believe we were precious – but we were precious for a purpose. I went to school with a kid called Bullet. I mean, there’s no pressure there.” Ericka says at times she felt she did not live up to expectations. As a teenager “I felt I had failed my mother,” she admits casually. I stop her. Why? “Because when we left [the Black Panther party] there was nothing to protect us from America. I thought I could protect her but I didn’t understand what that meant.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWith such a legacy, I wonder if she harbours any resentment towards her mother, or indeed that generation of Black Panther parents, for not preparing their children for life outside the party? “No,” she says, before I finish the question. “I didn’t feel resentment. But I remember I was about to start my sophomore year when Huey Newton was killed. I felt so alone. And I realised that I wasn’t mourning his death but that, even at the age of 19, some part of me thought that as long as he was alive, someone would still come and tell me what to do.” As she holds back tears, there is such plaintiveness and loss in her voice. For a moment, she is again that 19-year-old faced with figuring life out on her own.And it feels as if she has. Ericka’s sense of failure has been replaced by an understanding that what the Black Panthers signed up to was something exceptional. She refuses to call herself a cub, because a cub grows up to be a Panther. And she is not that. “They really did promise their lives to an ideal,” she says.The values she grew up with are serving her well during a tumultuous time in US political history. “I know that I see the world in a unique way,” Ericka says when I ask how the Black Panthers shaped her life. She understands now that the difference between “activists and revolutionaries is what you are willing to risk” – and that without solidarity, nothing can be achieved. The Black Panthers were not just seeking racial equality but interconnection between all who are suffering the depredations of state and capital. There is in Ericka a clear understanding that what it takes to stabilise politics in a country roiled by a second Trump administration is a combination of empathy but also resolve – action guided by love.The Black Panther Cubs: When the Revolution Doesn’t Come is out now. For more on this story read Ed Pilkington’s in-depth essay, here. And for an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the Guardian’s latest films as they release, sign up here to the Guardian Documentaries newsletter.To receive the complete version of The Long Wave in your inbox every Wednesday, please subscribe here. More

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      Jon Stewart on GOP’s obsession with free speech: ‘It’s such blatant hypocrisy’

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      Late-night hosts talked conservatives’ hypocrisy over free speech and the Trump administration accidentally texting an Atlantic editor its war plans.Jon StewartJon Stewart was back in old-school Daily Show mode on Monday evening, pointing out the hypocrisy of Republicans in power. But first, he mocked the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, whose group text on Signal regarding the administration’s plans to bomb Houthi targets in Yemen accidentally included Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg.“Back in my day if you were a journalist who wanted leaked war documents, you had to work the sources, meet them in a dark garage, earn the trust, pound the pavement,” Stewart said. “Now? Just wait for the national security adviser to be distracted by The White Lotus while he’s setting up his Bomb Yemen group chat.”Stewart went on: “There are certain hypocrisies and absurdities that we find in our cultural moment that make for great fodder for humorous dialogue: a facial expression, a nod and a wink. Then there are pronouncements by our elected officials, other actions by our government that are so baldly bullshit, even though you know it will have no effect, and that these powerful creatures have been genetically modified to resist shame or self-reflection of any kind, you just can’t help yourself but to go old-school Daily Show gotcha.”He specifically referred to conservatives’ obsession with “free speech” and the liberal “thought police”, while arguing in the same breath for CNN to be banned from the airwaves, among other proposed cancellations and censorship.“Generally, you’ve gotta search the archives for contradictions on one’s stated principles, dig through policy papers to uncover private actions that are undermined by someone’s public stance, but this is so blatant,” said Stewart. “I can’t wrap around it. It’s not even the hypocrisy, it’s that they so fetishize free speech, this thing that they do not in any way actually practice.”Stewart cited Trump banning the AP from the White House for refusing to rename the Gulf of Mexico to “the Gulf of America”, and the detainment of Columbia student protester Mahmoud Khalil.“These guys don’t give a fuck about free speech,” he said. “They care about their speech. It’s such blatant hypocrisy.”Stephen Colbert“Our nation is a beautiful pastry spread of freedom and opportunity,” said Stephen Colbert on The Late Show. “And yesterday, I got a closeup look at one of the donuts that Trump has been licking” at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC. Colbert and a number of comedians attended in support of Conan O’Brien, who received the Mark Twain prize for American humor.“It was a great night full of life and love and laughs,” he said, but the mood in DC was “still grim”. Last week, Trump held his first official meeting with “all of his hand-picked flunkies” that appointed him to the board of the Kennedy Center, “so he knows that they’re all 100% loyal to him”.During the meeting, which was recorded and leaked to the press, Trump said he wanted to make the Kennedy Center programming “slightly more conservative” and feature more “non-woke musicals”. “Non-woke musicals, also known as any musical you take your dad to,” Colbert joked.Besides rambling on about his love for the musical Cats, Trump also put his name forward as a potential host for the annual Kennedy Center Honors. “Man alive, you could’ve given me a thousand guesses, and that would’ve been all of them,” said Colbert, himself a three-time former host of the ceremony. “I tell you what, sir, I’m willing to trade – you host the Kennedy Center Honors, I’ll be president.”Jimmy KimmelAnd in Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel also mocked the administration putting sensitive military information in a group chat with Goldberg. “In other words, our national security is being guarded by a bunch of doofs you wouldn’t trust to throw your cousin a surprise party,” he said. “No one on the chain thought to ask: ‘Who is JG? What are these initials?’ They could’ve been leaking secrets to Jeff Goldblum, for all they knew.”“If Joe Biden’s top military team accidentally texted these plans to a journalist, Laura Ingraham’s erection would be so rock strong, it would break through the wall like the Kool-Aid man,” he added.“This is a crazy mistake by any definition, but you have to remember: Pete Hegseth, our secretary of defense, three months ago was a weekend host on Fox & Friends.” So his former cohost “looked at the bright side” of the story on-air.As Fox’s Will Cain put it: “What you will see is dialogue between vice-president JD Vance, secretary of defense Pete Hegseth and many more, in a very collaborative, open, honest, team-based attempt to come to the right decision after years of secrecy and incompetence. If you read the content of these messages, I think you’ll come away proud that these are the leaders making these decisions in America.”“If you read the content of these messages – the point is we’re not supposed to read the content of these messages!” Kimmel exclaimed. “That is a real beauty of a spin.” More

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      Trump chose the wrong hill to DEI on | Stewart Lee

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      In the second world war, Navajo code talkers transmitted sensitive US military information in their own undocumented language. Which was nice of them, as their immediate ancestors had been dispossessed and destroyed by white settlers, and then had all their water poisoned with uranium. “Were it not for the Navajos,” concluded major Howard Connor, at the time, “the marines would never have taken Iwo Jima.” And that famous photo of the American soldiers raising a flag would just have shown some Japanese boy scouts letting off a party popper.But last month Trump’s defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, said: “I think the single dumbest phrase in military history is ‘our diversity is our strength’.” Predictably, some Navajo code talkers had to have bodyguards to protect them from white American servicemen who thought they were Japanese. Plus ça change, as they say over there in that Europe.The Navajos’ efforts went unrecognised. When the son of one of the code talkers got to live the American dream by opening a Burger King in Kayenta on Navajo lands in 1986, he made the building a partial museum of his father’s unit. I visited it 30 years ago, with the comedian Kevin Eldon (Narvi the dwarf smith in TV’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power), and it remains the most edifying fast food restaurant I ever ate in. It was even better than that KFC near Bletchley Park that does that delicious Alan Turing chicken strips and alphabetti spaghetti meal deal ™ ®.The Kayenta Burger King also has a more extensive archive of code talker artefacts than any official government repository. Especially since, last week, videos, photos and stories of the Navajo code talkers were temporarily removed online as part of Trump’s assault on diversity. A page commemorating corporal Ira Hayes, a Pima of the Gila River Indian Community, and one of the servicemen photographed raising that Stars and Stripes at Iwo Jima, also disappeared for a while in Trump’s thwarting of the woke. Boris Johnson must be delighted. But I wonder if Trump’s actions please the British daytime TV treasure Lorraine Kelly?Kelly’s interview in the Times on 14 March, culled from a book promotion appearance on Times Radio, seemed to suggest she believed gender and racial diversity are wrongly prioritised in the workplace at the expense of offering opportunities to the (presumably white) working class. The headline spoke for itself: “Lorraine Kelly: Diversity push is leaving working-class people behind.” Was our Lorraine an unexpected supporter of Trump’s anti-diversity agenda?Probably not. This is the rightwing press, or the press as I call it, that we’re talking about, and Kelly didn’t quite espouse the view the headline implies. Even the elements of the radio interview that the paper chose to transcribe show a Lorraine Kelly principally concerned about how the cost of living affects working-class access to media jobs, and she made explicit that she hoped to see diversity initiatives tackle exclusion on the basis of class in addition to concentrating on gender and race. It’s a subtly different position and an example of the nuanced thought that has made Kelly the Socrates of the sofa, while her competitor Richard Madeley stares out of his kitchen window at a donkey in a field while thinking about bread.But this is how papers work. For two decades I was lucky enough to review records (remember them?) for the Sunday Times. So when they asked me, 20 years back, to write an insider comedian’s view of attempts to boycott the Edinburgh comedy awards because the sponsor, Perrier, was owned by Nestlé, which pushed unsafe formula milk initiatives to the developing world, what could possibly go wrong? And the money didn’t hurt either!I wrote a balanced piece about how the boycott was morally the right thing to do, with the appended caveat that high-profile supporters were asking a lot of young broke performers to walk away from a cash bung of £10,000 that might shift at least some of their debts. The headline? “‘Emma Thompson needs to grow up’, says comedian Stewart Lee”, which wasn’t anything I said, but perhaps fitted the paper’s agenda better, and left me apologising, cap in hand, to the charity Baby Milk Action and Miss Thompson herself, who has conspicuously failed to cast me in any of her hit films since.Despite the fun-size fascism we’re seeing across the Atlantic, the woke folk panic still sells papers and farms online engagement. The Times got what it wanted out of massaging Kelly’s quotes, and in the US the fourth estate is finished, jeopardising democracy worldwide. Maybe it’s time for writers to work out what they believe and stand up for it. But the British press is staffed by a class of professionals happy to drift between the Times, the Telegraph, the New European and yes, even the last liberal papers, refining their opinions as required by their offshore billionaire employers. It’s as easy as changing the look of your byline photo from sensible suit and tie to a beatnik polar neck jumper and beard. And that’s just the women. These days.Ironically, some wag at the Times has chosen to illustrate Kelly’s interview with an old photo of her GMTV colleague, the black fitness expert Mr Motivator, holding her aloft on the roof of a building. Presumably there were dozens of more motivated white working-class Mr Motivators, but the woke agenda meant they never got the opportunity to lift a Scottish woman. Let’s see if we can’t see a white working-class TV fitness instructor raising Lorraine Kelly high above their head by the end of 2025, but ideally let’s do it without playing into the divisive playbook of Trump, Musk, Vance and Farage, apportioning blame to the disadvantaged, while consolidating their own chrome-plated futures. More

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      After America: can Europe learn to go it alone without the US?

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      The German ­electronics firm Hensoldt has a backlog of orders for its technology, ­including radars that protect Ukraine from Russian airstrikes. Meanwhile, Germany’s car industry is struggling with low European demand and competition from China.As Europe worries about how it can weather the economic and ­political turmoil unleashed by Donald Trump, executives from Munich and Düsseldorf say they have at least a partial answer.In January, Hensoldt offered to take on workers laid off by the car parts suppliers Bosch and Continental. The defence giant Rheinmetall made a similar ­proposal last year, and in February announced it would repurpose two automotive component factories.It was a pivot that offered hope amid America’s rapid ­dismantling of the postwar global order – ­protecting jobs and Germany’s industrial base as access to US ­markets shrinks, while ramping up Europe’s capacity to protect itself.As politicians around the world try to work out how best to ­protect their countries from Trump’s ­capricious policymaking, the one constant in all their calculations for the future is a diminished American role in their countries. Trump has mooted plans for a 25% tariff on EU goods, including cars, and has already put duties at that level on steel and aluminium from the bloc.In February, his vice-president, JD Vance, launched a blistering attack on European democracy in Munich, questioning whether it was worth defending.In his first term, Trump touted decoupling from China as a way to bolster US jobs and the economy against a rapacious rival. Now, in his second term, he is pursuing a much broader decoupling from the ­country’s historical allies – a shift that few had anticipated or were prepared to face.The new US administration is sealing off its markets, retreating from America’s global security role, and cutting soft-power projects that aimed to shape the world through research, aid and culture.The only form of greater American presence beyond the country’s ­current borders that seems to ­interest Trump is ­territorial ­expansion – ­encouraging, ­perhaps, for a dictator such as Vladimir Putin as he wages an ­imperial war in Ukraine, but ­unwelcome and ­alarming elsewhere.“The idea of the US ­abandoning western Europe was ­unimaginable even a decade ago, because its role there also secures broader American influence in the world,” said Phillip Ayoub, a professor of international relations at University College London.“There is a comparative ­advantage to strong alliances because they make you richer in trade and safer because they deter other powers.”Trump’s vision of the world rejects that view, casting his ­country as a naively magnanimous ­superpower that has for decades funded and policed the world while getting little more than debt and ingratitude for its troubles.View image in fullscreenYet if postwar American ­presidents did not pursue the ­territorial empire that Trump now dreams of, they wielded an ­imperial power not reflected on maps. Decisions made in Washington DC reshaped countries from Chile to Iraq without the participation or consent of their populations.And the global order he is ­tearing down made the country so rich and powerful that for a brief, heady moment around the turn of the ­millennium, the US elite embraced the idea that history was over, and that human society had reached its peak and permanent form in the ­liberal democracy embodied in their constitution.The details of the new American relationship with the world are still being worked out day by day in court battles at home and trade and diplomatic negotiations abroad, but the impact of Trump’s presidency will last long into the future.“An election could change ­policy in Washington DC. But the new ­reality is that from government to government you could have a ­different attitude to the US’s place in the world,” Ayoub said. “This retreat will be factored into policymaking everywhere now.”For now, the ­immediate priority in most ­countries is limiting the extent of tariffs and the impact of US cuts, in areas ranging from aid to defence.Geography and the impact of ­previous free trade deals have ­combined to make neighbours of the US extremely vulnerable to its tariffs. Exports to the US account for a quarter of Mexico’s GDP. In Canada, where all other potential trading partners are an ocean or half a continent away, they are about a fifth of GDP.European countries may be less immediately vulnerable to a trade squeeze, with exports to the US accounting for less than 3% of the European Union’s GDP.But budgets from London to Warsaw are also strained by the need to ramp up defence ­spending to make up for the US retreat, both from immediate support for the Ukrainian forces battling Russia, and from the longer-term backing of European defence. Even ­optimistic assessments suggest it will take the best part of a decade before the continent’s own defence ­capacity can match the protection currently offered by the US, excluding its nuclear deterrent.The pain of breaking up or reshaping major relationships does not only fall on one party – ­something even Trump has ­admitted. The cost of some tariffs will be passed on to US ­consumers, and American businesses may lose customers.One early high-profile casualty could be Lockheed Martin, which produces F-35 jet fighters. Contracts allowing the US to restrict how the planes are used by allies caused little debate during friendlier times. Now, in Berlin and other capitals, defence ministers are worrying about a ­possible “kill switch” and hesitating over major new orders.Longer term, Trump could also fuel a ­cultural “decoupling”, with attacks on the arts and academia ­driving highly talented ­individuals to flee the US or avoid it.Several artists have cancelled tours, and the concert pianist András Schiff last week said last week he would no longer work in the US because of Trump. He had already boycotted Russia.Academics at elite British ­universities say they have seen a surge in job applications from US-based colleagues, many ­willing to lose tenure and take a ­considerable pay cut in order to move across the Atlantic. A French university that offered ­“sanctuary” to US researchers said it had received 40 applications, and one academic moved this month.As with the economy, the US’s ­cultural standing is not under direct threat. American music – much of it made by ­people who publicly oppose Trump – will be consumed worldwide. The Oscars are likely to remain the most ­coveted prize for cinema, the Emmys for ­television, the Pulitzers for ­journalism. Yet an exodus would still be ­damaging in a country where research and the creative arts are key drivers of growth, and benefit the places they settle instead – the long-term US allies that Trump sees as threats.The US president has promised voters that where his economic policies cause pain it will be short-term, and pave the way for long term prosperity in America.To critics, they look like a ­template for a poorer, more ­dangerous and fragmented world, where any limited benefits of ­decoupling are as likely to be reaped by a British university or a German defence firm as by Americans.View image in fullscreenCultureThe hit to America’s creative ­sector, from budget freezes and threats to the federal bodies and national schemes that fund ­museums, ­galleries, theatres and libraries, is set to take a toll on its income from tourism – and send visitors to Britain and Europe instead.In response to the second Trump presidency, some international ­artists are already pulling out of ­appearances in American venues, or at music festivals, and the likely knock-on effect is a reduction in ­visits from abroad.Last week, the Canadian singer/songwriter Leslie Hudson cancelled her American tour, saying on social media: “Like a lot of Canadians, and so many others, I no longer feel safe to enter the country.” The German violinist Christian Tetzlaff cancelled a spring tour in protest at the new administration’s policies, with particular reference to Ukraine.In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the managing director of City theatre, James McNeel, has ­spoken of a growing funding threat. “What we need more than anything is stability,” he says.Prior to the pandemic, the US Travel Association ­valued the total spending of the near-80 million tourists who came into the US at about $2 trillion (£1.5tn).This was supported by federal investment in ­infrastructure and the ­airline industry, but travel experts also traced back much of this tourism success to the diverse image of many of its cities. Art tourism was a big part of this, with art fans who ­travelled to North America in 2023 ­accounting for more than a ­quarter of the global total. Cities such as New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago boast ­celebrated museums and ­galleries, and the rise of immersive art and public installations has broadened this appeal. The attraction of art fairs such as Art Basel Miami has also grown internationally. In 2023, it was reportedly visited by more than 79,000 people.But Trump has made rapid and determined cuts to all museum ­projects tied to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, ­affecting the Smithsonian Institution, which has closed its DEI office. The National Gallery of Art also closed its office of belonging and inclusion, while exhibitions across the ­country have been cancelled. The biggest impact may well be on cultural ­tourism associated with LGBTQ+ communities and climate activism.Trump at one point intended for 2026 to be a bumper year for American tourism, with a ­“special one-time festival” planned for “­millions of people from around the world” at the Iowa State Fairground to mark 250 years since ­independence.The level of ­international advance booking will be watched.Likewise, a new status for London, Berlin and Paris as “refuge cities” for American artists is being predicted.British and European ­institutions might also soon have to make room for American artwork. The Washington Post has reported that large collections of public art have been left without professional ­security or conservationists.View image in fullscreenEconomicsShould the UK government decide to untangle the economy’s many ties with the US, it would need to tread carefully. America is the single ­largest market for Britain’s exports, ranging from the most sophisticated components in US navy submarines to artisan scented candles.Official figures show total trade in goods and services – exports plus imports – between Britain and the US was £294bn in the year to 30 September, 2024. The stock of investment by US companies in the UK stood at £708bn in 2023, or 34% of total of foreign direct investment.Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary, is hoping to sign a limited trade deal with his counterparts in Washington that covers digital services and commits both countries to secure supply chains for vital goods.But a deal with any scope or ­judicial oversight will need Congress to agree, and that is far from certain to happen.UK manufacturers could begin to wean themselves off US raw ­materials and components, but the presumption must be that they traded with the Americans in the first place because they provided the best products. Exports could be directed back at the EU, though without rejoining the single ­market and customs union, the benefit would be limited.It would be a harder job switching services exports away from the US. The common language may often divide the two nations, but in ­practice the sector is a huge boon.In Brussels, officials believe any kind of trade deal with the US is off the agenda.As Donald Trump is only too well aware, the EU has a large trade ­surplus with America. In 2014 the surplus was about €100bn. By last year the gap had grown to almost €200bn. For this reason, the EU has already adopted a more ­confrontational stance.The British Chambers of Commerce says almost two-thirds of factory owners that export to the US are worried. European ­manufacturers have revealed similar concerns in recent surveys.Some are comforted by figures showing the US has a trade surplus in goods with the UK and how, in practice, trade and investment relationships exist well away from the White House and remain robust.However, businesses thought the same about Brussels after the vote to leave the EU. It didn’t happen and a breakdown in relations ensued.That said, rekindling relations with the EU can be part of the answer. Reset talks are under way and there is a leaders’ summit on 19 May that should address at least some trade barriers. The UK might find that food exports become easier and it gains access to a wider range of raw ­materials and ­components by rejoining the Pan-Euro-Mediterranean convention.Still, the US will remain a major trading partner and upsetting the Trump White House could have huge consequences.View image in fullscreenDefenceDonald Trump’s abandonment of Europe’s defence and disdain for Nato marks one of the most ­profound and influential breaks with longstanding US policy, even for a supremely disruptive leader.Many US presidents have grumbled about European over-reliance on American deterrence in recent decades, with predecessors including Barack Obama demanding allies spend more on their own armies.But their frustrations were rooted in concern that European defence cuts undermined an ­alliance that almost everyone in Washington – across the political divide – saw as critical to American global leadership.Trump, in contrast, appears to be seeking European spending to replace or supersede Nato, not strengthen it. He says Washington’s defence priorities are now deterring China in Asia and fighting organised crime at home.In his first term, he touted the idea of withdrawing America from the alliance, which was formed in 1949 for protection against the Soviet Union. This time he has opted to undermine it from within.The president himself has ­publicly contemplated ignoring Article 5, the core mutual defence clause at the heart of the transatlantic ­alliance, which requires Nato ­countries to come to the aid of any member that is attacked. It has only been invoked once – by the US after the 11 September attacks on Washington and New York in 2001.Trump said the US might ­condition any support for other members on military spending, and questioned if US allies would come to the country’s aid if in need. His administration is considering giving up the Nato command role inaugurated by war hero president Dwight D Eisenhower and held by America ever since, NBC reported last week.Europe was already scrambling to increase defence spending and ­coordination when the US halted military aid shipments to Ukraine, and intelligence-sharing with Kyiv earlier this month.Trump’s decision came after a spectacular on-camera showdown in the Oval Office with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. But his willingness to cut loose a force that Washington has trained, armed and backed, and which is fighting a major US rival, stunned even some of his own political allies.European governments who have also spent billions on Ukraine’s defence, and have been dealing with covert Russian sabotage and spy operations across the continent, were not informed in advance.The flow of weapons and aid has now resumed, but the message was clear. Major European military powers, including the UK and Germany, are now reportedly racing to put together a five- to 10-year plan for a managed transfer of European defence, to stave off any more abrupt moves from Washington.Trump’s unpredictability has been heightened by his choice of ­leaders for key security roles, ­including a former Fox television host, Pete Hegseth, as defence secretary, and Tulsi Gabbard, who has a long ­history of pro-Russian views, as director of national intelligence.Security experts warn that ­turmoil in the leadership and ­management of intelligence agencies may also lead to a less visible but highly ­damaging defence decoupling – of the relationship between America’s spies and the secret services of its allies.View image in fullscreenDiplomacyThe votes in the United Nations marking the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine ­provided a bleak snapshot of the yawning diplomatic divide between Donald Trump’s America and the country’s traditional allies.On February 25, the US joined international pariahs Russia, Belarus and North Korea to vote against a resolution condemning Russia as an aggressor state and calling on it to remove its troops from Ukraine.The wording rejected by Trump’s diplomats had been put forward by Ukraine, whose defence the US has funded, and the European Union, Washington’s partner in that effort. It passed in the general assembly with backing from 93 countries.The isolationist bent of Trump’s politics extends beyond the ­economy and defence, into international diplomacy. He has ordered the US to withdraw from a host of global organisations and initiatives, from the World Health Organization to the Paris climate agreement.The process of taking the world’s second biggest emitter of planet-heating pollution out of the accord to tackle global ­emissions will take about a year. As with the UN vote on Ukraine, that move puts the world’s most ­powerful democracy in unusual ­company, with Iran, Libya and Yemen as the only countries outside the deal.Trump imposed sanctions on officials at the International Criminal Court over arrest warrants it had issued for the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, who was the country’s defence minister at the time.His predecessor Joe Biden had also criticised the court, but such a direct attack on an institution ­established with broad international support was unprecedented.Several former British ambassadors to Washington warned this month that there has been a seismic and perhaps permanent shift in the so-called “special relationship” between the two countries, meaning that the UK will need to seek out other allies.“It’s difficult to find either a conceptual area in ­international relations or a particular geographical area where our interests are really converging at the moment,” Nigel Sheinwald, the ­ambassador from 2007 to 2012, told a ­parliamentary committee.“On more or less any big ­foreign policy issue that we’re dealing with today, we don’t agree with the United States… whether that is the Middle East, whether it’s Iran, whether it’s climate change, China, but above all on Europe itself,” Sheinwald said. More

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      What does Maga-land look like? Let me show you America’s unbeautiful suburban sprawl | Alexander Hurst

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      In 1941 Dorothy Thompson, an American journalist who reported from Germany in the lead-up to the second world war, wrote an essay for Harper’s about the personality types most likely to be attracted to Nazism, headlined “Who Goes Nazi?” “Those who haven’t anything in them to tell them what they like and what they don’t – whether it is breeding, or happiness, or wisdom, or a code, however old-fashioned or however modern, go Nazi,” Thompson wrote.Talia Lavin, a US writer, recently gave Thompson’s idea an update on Substack with an essay of her own: “Who Goes Maga?”The essay has since been taken down (I’m not sure why), but in it Lavin reimagined Thompson’s original dinner party setting, with various archetypes in attendance, offering in one or two paragraphs a brief but empathetic explanation for why each person has or has not “gone Maga”.Eventually arriving at Mr I, an academic and a frequent traveller to France with family money, Lavin wrote: “Nonetheless, he will never go Maga and would spend his days in exile even if he got cut off from the family purse … because … he is a true devotee of beauty.” He finds in Maga “a hatred of things that are beautiful and strange, as all the things he loves are. Power holds no attraction for him, only beauty.”Of course, power often tries to use aesthetics, and its own definition of beauty, to further its own purposes. Fascists and authoritarians are deeply aware of the ability of art to propagate ideas or oppose them. From architecture to rallies, Hitler and Mussolini favoured a type of massiveness, an imposing nature and uniformity to evoke a sense of the imperial eternal. Soviet aesthetics – though meant to be futurist rather than focused on a glorified past – also fell back on the idea of massiveness and uniformity to subjugate the individual and elevate the state. And, of course, all three authoritarian regimes repressed art, artists and aesthetics that were dissident.Trumpism, too, has an aesthetic. Allow me to pretentiously, subjectively, declare it not beautiful. The aesthetic of Trumpism is sprawl – which had already infected the United States long before the Maga movement metastasised.Last September I drove nearly 2,000 miles in the US with a French friend, Guillaume, zigzagging our way from DC to New Orleans and tracing, in part, the footsteps of Alexis de Tocqueville. (“It might be our last opportunity to observe democracy in America,” I had said to him.) Through his non-American eyes, I saw even more poignantly the ways the physical manifestation of Hannah Arendt’s “atomisation” are scarred into the suburban and rural US landscape itself.Like fish in water, I wonder if Americans are even aware of how they swim in it. The hours-long stretches of chain stores in single-storey, flat-topped buildings. The cluster of gas stations, with functionally and aesthetically similar convenience stores selling rows and rows of sugary food and drinks. The big box chain stores, some of them matryoshka dolls that house other chains within – rectangular islands of stuff surrounded by parking lots leading to other little islands of fast food, also surrounded by parking lots, filled with rows and rows of the most enormous pickup trucks imaginable.And then, just as it starts to dwindle, another on-ramp/off-ramp, and the whole shebang starts all over again, until you’ve cycled through all of the possible chain permutations and you begin to repeat. Wherever there is grass, it will be impeccably mowed.No matter where you are in America’s 3.8m sq miles, with its 340 million inhabitants, the sprawl will have followed the same driving logic as the chains it hosts – an utterly nondescript, completely indistinguishable look, feel and experience. Somehow, there is always still traffic on these six-lane roads, a trailing line of enormous vehicles that require parking lots that spill out like muffin tops, and with double-wide parking spaces. Everything about sprawl slumps outwards, like warmed jelly that can no longer hold its shape. There is no height except for the height of the signs advertising the chains; those rise several storeys into the sky, enough to be visible from the highway.View image in fullscreenSomewhere along the line, the American Dream became to live alone, surrounded by all of this, rather than living in connection with other people.In somewhat cryptic lines, the poet Keats put forward a nexus that goes beyond the subjective nature of what we, individually, find aesthetically pleasing. “Beauty is truth, truth beauty. That is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know,” he wrote. He was hardly the only one to interrogate the two at the same time. Plato and Plotinus sought to link beauty to an equally ineffable truth that lingered somewhere beyond our material reality; Kant, too, placed beauty beyond taste, as a disinterested thing that radiated outward. In theology, Saint Augustine and Hans Urs Von Balthasar draw the two back to the same divine origin, as critical components to any human attempt to understand the transcendent.And if that’s all too mystical for you, the British theoretical physicist Tom McLeish argues: “As indications of the road forward rather than destinations achieved, beautiful experiments and theoretical ideas can, and even must, be celebrated, their aesthetic appeal unashamedly enjoyed.”I would add a third vector to the one between beauty and truth: art, which in his 1934 book, Art As Experience, John Dewey sees as something that is inherent in the everyday experience of life rather than something necessarily pushed into museums. As long as that living is authentic. “Experience in the degree in which it is experience is heightened vitality,” writes Dewey.Perhaps there is something authentic to suburban sprawl when experienced as spectator and anthropologist. But as everyday life, sprawl is deadening, ugly, fake. Devoid of art, beauty and truth alike. The United States has long bought into the idea that freedom is endless expansion. But slouching across land simply because it is there uplifts neither the land nor the people on it. In this instance in particular, abundance did a disservice to the US by drawing it into an absence of experience. What surprise that a moribund ideology would take root in physical spaces that radiate the peculiar desolation of too much?Given the number of artists, photographers, cinematographers and architects who have been willing to serve nefarious political movements, it would be simplistic for me to claim that artists are somehow immune to them. But art is an attempt to capture – and convey – something true about the world, and the human emotional experience of it. When the rational world has committed itself to a path that leads to destruction, perhaps those dedicated to beauty can, with what Keats called a “negative capability” to perceive truth, bring us back to both.

      Alexander Hurst is a Guardian Europe correspondent More

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      Semisonic denounces White House use of ‘Closing Time’ in deportation video

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      The band Semisonic has said the Donald Trump White House “missed the point” of its hit Closing Time “entirely” when the administration used the Emmy-nominated song in a social media post showing a shackled person being deported.A statement from Semisonic also said the White House did not have permission to use the song in that manner.The White House’s post included a video of a man handcuffed at the waist while being patted down at an airport, captioned with the song’s signature lyrics: “You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.”“We did not authorize or condone the White House’s use of our song ‘Closing Time’ in any way,” the band, which formed in Minneapolis, said in its own Facebook post after the video was circulated widely. “And no, they didn’t ask. The song is about joy and possibilities and hope, and they have missed the point entirely.”The US Customs and Border Protection agency retweeted the White House’s post with the caption: “It’s closing time. We are making America safe again.”The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said on Monday that “our entire government clearly is leaning into the message of this president” when asked about the song.Closing Time appeared on Semisonic’s 1998 album Feeling Strangely Fine, which peaked at No 43 on the Billboard 200 and earned a Grammy nomination for best rock song.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSemisonic joins a growing list of artists objecting to Trump’s unauthorized use of their music, including Abba, Bruce Springsteen, Rihanna, Phil Collins, Pharrell, John Fogerty, Neil Young, Panic! at the Disco, REM, Guns N’ Roses, Céline Dion and Adele.In 2024, Dion’s management and Sony Music Canada rebuked the unauthorized use of My Heart Will Go On at a Trump campaign rally in Montana. A statement – alluding to the hit’s presence on the soundtrack of the 1997 film Titanic and published on her social media – read: “In no way is this use authorized, and Celine Dion does not endorse this or any similar use.… And really, THAT song?”Rihanna had a similar response in 2018 when Don’t Stop the Music played at a Trump rally. She said that her music should not be used for political purposes.Artists including Steven Tyler and Neil Young have sent cease-and-desist letters demanding their songs not be used at campaign events. In May 2023, Village People also sent a cease-and-desist letter and threatened legal action after Trump used their song Macho Man and other hit songs without their permission. More

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      Jon Stewart on Democrats: ‘It’s Trump’s world and we’re just cowering in it’

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      Late-night hosts took aim at the ineffective tactics of the Democrats while also taking issue with Donald Trump’s response to the weekend’s deadly storms.Jon StewartOn The Daily Show, Jon Stewart said that “it is Trump’s world and we’re just cowering in it” in a segment devoted to calling out how poorly the Democrats have handled his second presidency.Over the weekend, Trump played golf once again, which led to a picture of him walking into an office “in his golf attire to bomb the shit out of Yemen”. In attacking the country he “continued a presidential tradition going back decades”.With the recent vote over the new Republican budget to avoid a shutdown, Democrats finally had “an opportunity to stand up” to a “wannabe tyrant”.The budget was criticised by some as a non-starter yet Chuck Schumer broke ranks and voted to move it forward. “What the fuck happened?” he asked.In an interview, Schumer said that the party would “keep at it” but Stewart joked: “Don’t you have to start it to keep at it?”In another interview, Schumer said the best time to reason with Republicans was in the gym as they are more open and less inhibited. “That’s your fucking plan?” he asked. “I’m gonna dangle my balls out of my shorts and then … at the gym?”Stewart also found footage of him saying the same thing back in 2019. “You know I’m not here to posture-shame but for a guy who seems to be spending most of his life in gym: a little less talky-talk, a little more core.”He added: “They’re only being agreeable with you because they want you to leave them alone.”Stewart also joked that “pedalling really hard and not going anywhere is a great metaphor for the Democratic party right now”.He also played a montage of Democrats comparing the state of things to a fever that will inevitably break. “These Republicans are committed to a plan born of an ideological 50- to 60-year project to remake the United States … and classifying it as a fever excuses you.”He said it “allows you to pretend that this is an issue of messaging” and that that was “no match for the game the Republicans are playing”.Jimmy KimmelOn Jimmy Kimmel Live! the host said that on St Patrick’s Day it was “nice to have an excuse to drink on a Monday” given how bad things currently are.There was “a terrible weekend of deadly storms” yet the president who chided Joe Biden for being away when Hurricane Helene raged decided to play golf once again. “If you scored hypocrisy like golf he’d be 30 strokes under par right now,” he said.Trump claimed victory again but Kimmel asked: “Who are the other players in this tournament?”He joked that it could just be “Eric with his Fisher Price clubs” and demanded “a forensic investigation” into the game.Later that day, Trump finally posted that he would be praying with Melania for those affected. “Praying together might be the only activity those two do less than sleeping together,” Kimmel joked.This weekend also saw Trump get accidentally prodded by a fuzzy microphone during an interview. “How funny would it be if that happened every time he was interviewed from here on out?” he joked. More

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      Michael Lewis and John Lanchester: ‘Trump is a trust-destroying machine’

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      In late 2023, as the US presidential election was heaving into view, the author Michael Lewis called up six writers he admired – five Americans and one Briton – and asked if they’d like to contribute to an urgent new series he was putting together for the Washington Post. At the time, Lewis was hearing talk that if Donald Trump got back into power, his administration would unleash a programme of cuts that would rip the federal government to shreds. Lewis decided to launch a pre-emptive strike. The series, entitled Who Is Government?, would appear in the weeks running up to the election. Its purpose, Lewis explains over a Zoom call from his book-lined study in Berkeley, California, “was to inoculate the federal workforce against really mindless attacks”. It would do this by valorising public service and, as he puts it, “jarring the stereotype people had in their heads about civil servants”.Other writers might shrink away from the notion that they could restrain a US president with a handful of essays, but Lewis has an outsized sway. Author of such mega-bestsellers as Liar’s Poker and Flash Boys, he has a knack for writing about arcane concepts in business, finance and economics in ways that don’t just enlighten the uninitiated but whip along with the pace of an airport thriller. Hollywood loves him: Moneyball, The Blind Side and The Big Short all got turned into hit movies crammed with A-listers. So when Lewis speaks out about the forces shaping our world, even if it concerns something as seemingly unsexy as the federal government, people tend to listen.View image in fullscreenThe British writer John Lanchester, who contributed a standout piece to the series, got a glimpse of Lewis’s appeal when they first met in 2014. It was behind the stage at the London School of Economics. Lanchester had agreed to interview Lewis about Flash Boys, which plumbs the murky world of high-frequency trading. “Not only was the venue sold out,” Lanchester recalls, “but they’d had to add on another room at the theatre for people to watch, and that was sold out too. I remember thinking: ‘There’s a tube strike on, it’s absolutely pissing down, nobody’s going to come.’ But not a bit of it. The place was packed.”Lanchester is no slouch himself when it comes to turning knotty financial matters into page-turners. An acclaimed novelist (The Debt to Pleasure, Capital) who used to review restaurants for the Guardian, in 2010 he published a book about the financial crash – Whoops!: Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay – that gave a sweeping overview of the global economy while mercilessly skewering its absurdities. Now he regularly takes his filleting knife to topics ranging from Brexit to cryptocurrencies for the London Review of Books.View image in fullscreenSince their 2014 meeting, the pair have become good friends, with an odd-couple dynamic that’s entertaining to witness. Lewis is hyper-engaged and talks in a confident New Orleans drawl about the iniquities of Trump and Elon Musk; Lanchester, joining us from his kitchen in London, seems more mild-mannered at first but his easy-going demeanour hides a biting wit. They clearly enjoy each other’s work and company. “I make a point of inviting him for dinner whenever I’m in London,” says Lewis, “and I try to get him over here whenever I can. And of course I looped him into this series …”Who Is Government? isn’t Lewis’s first foray into the workings of the US civil service. In 2017, soon after Trump got in for the first time, Lewis had an insight into just how unprepared the new president was to take over the US government’s various branches. “The Obama administration had spent six months preparing a series of briefings for the transition,” he recalls, “but then Trump won and he just didn’t show up. So I decided to fly to Washington and find out what went on inside the government.” He wrote up his findings in three articles for Vanity Fair, later gathering them into the 2018 bestselling book The Fifth Risk. Among the people he spoke to who’d been neglected by the Trump team were officials tending the US nuclear arsenal.View image in fullscreenAs the 2024 election approached, amid warnings that Trump might do much worse than neglect the civil service if he got back into power, Lewis decided to revisit the government’s inner workings. Joining him for the ride this time was Dave Eggers, who reported on a team of scientists probing for extraterrestrial life from Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. In turn, Geraldine Brooks profiled online sleuths at the Internal Revenue Service who uncover evidence of cybercrime and child sexual abuse in the darker regions of the net, and W Kamau Bell wrote touchingly about his Black goddaughter’s work as a paralegal at the justice department.For his part, Lewis tracked down a mining engineer at the labour department named Christopher Mark, whose research had helped prevent fatal roof falls in underground mines. He also wrote about Heather Stone, a rare-diseases expert at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), who had saved lives by fast-tracking authorisation for an experimental drug to treat potentially lethal balamuthia infections.Lanchester, meanwhile, opted to write not about a person but a number – the consumer price index, a fiendishly complex statistic that acts as the main official measure of inflation. The lack of a human protagonist doesn’t make the piece any less absorbing, and Lanchester has fun uncovering the staggering amount of data on seemingly insignificant matters (such as the average length of the adult bedbug or the average annual income for a nuclear medicine technologist in Albany, New York) that the federal government hoovers up every year.View image in fullscreenThe overall effect of the series, just published as a book –Who Is Government?: The Untold Story of Public Service – is to transform civil servants from faceless bureaucrats into selfless superheroes. It’s a cracking read but sadly, contrary to Lewis’s hopes, it did nothing to prevent the flurry of devastating cuts that Trump and Musk, via his “department of government efficiency” (Doge), have inflicted on the government over the past couple of months. Of the 3 million-plus federal workers, it’s estimated that more than 20,000 have already been fired. Many of the subjects of the book are at risk of losing their jobs.“Maybe we’re in early stages in the war, but it’s amazing how little effect the series has had,” Lewis says ruefully. “Not only have I not heard a peep from Doge, but I haven’t had any sense that they were worried about what I might write. Though I did send Elon Musk an email asking if I can move in and watch what he was doing. He didn’t respond.”Musk isn’t the only tech billionaire behaving erratically. From conception to publication, the Washington Post series had the full support of the newspaper’s owner. “Jeff Bezos was very excited to be covering the government in any way you could,” says Lewis. “Every piece, he’d call [then opinion editor] David Shipley, and Shipley would call me, saying: ‘Bezos loves this thing.’ But things have changed.” The day before our conversation, in a move widely interpreted as a knee-bend to Trump, Bezos announced that the newspaper’s opinion section would now be dedicated to supporting “personal liberties and free markets”. Shipley resigned before the announcement.Now Lewis and Lanchester are looking back at a collection of essays conceived in a more hopeful time and wondering what will become of the departments they wrote about – and the country that relies on them. They are not optimistic. Over the course of our 90-minute conversation towards the end of last month, they talked about the motivation behind Trump and Musk’s war on the civil service, its probable effects on the US and the lessons the UK should be taking.You say in the intro to Who Is Government? that “the sort of people who become civil servants tend not to want or seek attention”. Was it hard to find interesting people to write about?ML: It took about a nanosecond. And I think there’s a reason for that: there are just a lot of great subjects [in the federal government], and the minute they face existential risk, they become really interesting. They’re weird and different. They’re not interested in money, for a start. They’ve got some purpose in their lives.Was the entire series written before Trump’s re-election?ML: All except for the last piece [about rare diseases expert Heather Stone], which was conceived before, but I didn’t write it until after. What I’m doing now is getting all the writers to go back to their characters to ask what’s happening to them. Both my characters look like they’re about to be fired. Heather has been told that the whole enterprise of dealing with infectious disease is going to be axed from the FDA. And [mining engineer] Chris Mark texted me the other day to say: “They’ve cut our purchasing authority and they want us to hand in our credit cards.” So if they’re not gone, most of our characters are disabled. It’s like watching a toddler loose inside of a nuclear reactor pushing buttons.You two are watching from afar. Are you watching the end of our democracy? Or are you watching some kind of false jeopardy situation?
      JL: Well, we had an exchange over email about this, and I’ve been thinking about what you said, Michael, that we’ll probably muddle through but we are playing Russian roulette with democracy. That image lodged in my head. And the thing that is deeply shocking and surprising is that nobody seems to give a shit about [the government cuts].The cuts are being made in the name of efficiency but it looks more like an ideological purge. Is that how you see it?ML: I don’t think it’s one person’s will being exerted; it’s a combination of Trump, Musk and Russell Vought, who’s now the director of the office of management and budget. He was the architect of that Project 2025 book and he’s a Christian nationalist-slash-libertarian, whatever that is. Trump is the easiest to grok. He’s a trust-destroying machine. He needs chaos where nobody trusts anybody and then there’s a weird level playing field, and he excels in that environment.My simple view of Musk is that he’s like an addict. He’s addicted to the attention, the drama – he’s stuck his finger in the social media socket and his brain is fried. He’s probably got cheerleaders, his little Silicon Valley crowd, telling him he’s doing a great thing, but most of them don’t know anything about it or the consequences. Vought’s the only one, I think, with a clear vision, but it’s a weird vision – really drastically minimum government. Those are the threads I see of what’s going on, and the backdrop is that they can do anything and the polls don’t move – people here don’t seem to care.But isn’t it only a matter of time before people do start to care… once the effects of the cuts kick in?ML: The pessimistic response is that, when things go wrong, there’ll be a war of narratives. The Trump narrative will inevitably say something like: “These bureaucrats screwed it up,” and it creates even more mistrust in the thing that you actually need to repair. I do think we’re going to muddle through. But I don’t think Trump’s ever going to get blamed in the ways he ought to. And whoever comes and fixes it is never going to get the credit they should.JL: When you look at the historical analogies to this kind of collective delusion, it’s quite hard to think of a way of recovering from losing a sense of an agreed consensus reality. The only historical examples I can think of is, basically, you lose a catastrophic war. You know, the Germans lose and they wake up and they have a reckoning with their past. But that’s historically quite rare and hard to imagine … But maybe that’s too dark. Maybe what happens is specific impacts arise from specific programmes being cut that make people think: “Oh, actually, that’s not such a great idea.”A clip just circulated of Musk talking about the US Agency for International Development (USAid) and he said something like: “Oh yeah, we made a couple little mistakes, like we briefly cut Ebola prevention there for just a second, then we brought it back again.”And then I saw someone who ran the USAid Ebola response during one of the outbreaks saying: “That’s flatly not true [that Musk restored the Ebola response].” Musk talks loudly about fraud and theft in government, but these things aren’t fraud and theft – they’re just programmes they don’t like. In fact I haven’t actually seen anything that you could with a straight face categorise as fraud – have you, Michael?ML: There’s almost no worse place to be trying to engage in fraud or theft than the US government, because there are so many eyes on you. When you take a federal employee out to lunch, they won’t let you pay for their sandwich – they’re so terrified. In fact it’s far easier to engage in fraud and theft in a Wall Street bank or a Silicon Valley startup, and there’s probably much more waste too.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHas either of you met Musk?ML: I have not. I have lots of one degree of separations. Walter Isaacson, who wrote Musk’s biography, is an old friend. I basically watched him do that project – I followed it blow by blow.JL: Isaacson basically lived with Musk for, what, nine months, and there’s not a single commentary on politics at any point in the whole book. In 2022, Musk was still a Democrat. It’s just utterly bizarre. And I think part of the frenzy and vehemence comes from an extraordinary naivety about [government]. He actually doesn’t know anything about it, and he didn’t care about it until about 10 minutes ago.One thing that strikes me about Doge is how adversarial it is without it having to be. You could run a project like this, unleashing a roomful of 20-year-olds on the systems of government, without saying that everyone who works in federal government is a criminal. You could just ask: “How could the systems be made to work better?” Because $7tn [the approximate annual budget of the federal government] is quite a lot of money to spend and it’d be astonishing if there wasn’t some waste in there. But you could do it without making people frightened.And it worries me, because lots of things that happen in the US come back over the Atlantic. It happened with Reagan and Thatcher. It happened with Clinton providing the template for New Labour. So I suspect a version of this is going to come back over here.What lessons should the UK be taking from this? JL: Well, that’s one of them. If we were going to do what they call a zero-based review of government spending, let’s do it without framing them as the enemy, because it’s deeply unhelpful. Also, I wouldn’t be astonished if this attack on DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion in companies and organisations] came over. I think we should brace for impact on that one.For your essay, John, why did you decide to write about a number instead of a human being?JL: It’s partly intellectual vanity, but I really like the challenge in writing about structures and systems. We’re hardwired to like stories about people, but a lot of the most important stories in the world don’t have individual people as their central character. We’re very resistant to the idea that we don’t have agency as individuals.Your writing on economics arose from the research you did for your novel Capital, didn’t it?JL: Yeah, that’s right. I’d been following the financial crisis and ended up knowing a lot about it, so I wrote a nonfiction book [Whoops!] in order to quarantine that information, because one of the problems with research from the fiction point of view is that you end up having to use it. It’s very difficult to research a topic and then say: “You know what, that doesn’t really belong in the book.” But finance is difficult to dramatise because of the level of detail involved. It’s kind of anti-erotic in fiction to just explain things.Michael, in the other direction, have you ever come upon a story that didn’t quite work as reportage and you wished you had a novelist’s toolkit to turn it into fiction?ML: No, but I have had moments where I thought: “This story is not mine because I’m just not equipped to write it.” And I wrote one of them – a book about Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, the two Israeli psychologists [2016’s The Undoing Project]. I had that story land in my lap, with privileged access, and I spent eight years arguing with myself [about whether] I was the person to do it. I was sure that someone else better equipped – a subject-matter specialist – would come along and write the book. Then the people I had interviewed started dying off and I realised that no one was.JL: With quite a lot of these stories, the subject-matter expert is precisely the person who can’t tell the story.ML: That’s right. They don’t have the childlike wonder about it all. They don’t ask the simple questions. because they’re too deep in it … But no, I’ve never been frustrated by my lack of novelistic flair, and I never had a strong desire to write a novel. My literary frustration is all in screenwriting. I’ve had a very successful career as a failed screenwriter. I’ve been paid over and over to do these things, and they never got made.The world of screenwriting is a profound mystery, because you see all the shit they make. What’s the process? You’re turning down these things and making that? I worked on an adaptation of my last novel, The Wall, but then Apple said: “Really sorry, we have a competing project.” The competing project was called Extrapolations and I’ll give you a cash prize if you can get through a single episode. They spent tens and tens of millions on it. And it’s off-the-scale, unbelievably, face-meltingly bad.One problem for writers now is that there’s just such a blizzard of extraordinary news. How do you get a foothold and decide what to write about?JL: Perhaps this is more a matter of temperament than anything else, but I’m feeling that I have to step back a bit until it’s clear what the shape of it is, because my hunch would be some form of horrific implosion and the wheels falling off and chaos ensuing. But I thought that last time that Trump was president.ML: I’m going to Washington for much of April, and I have a character in mind, but I want to test it. It’s kind of a dark, funny book that I want to write, and I’ve got to see if this character can sustain that. Generally, I’m with John in that I like to wait and see. I feel like my role in the war is sniper. Don’t give away your position. You’re going to get one shot at this. Wait until you get the clean shot and take it. But I don’t think we’re far away from having the clean shot.JL: Given that you were on to [the possibility of Trump getting re-elected and gutting the federal government] when we spoke 18 months ago, Michael, are you surprised by how this has played out? Is it basically what you imagined, or is it weirder, more extreme?ML: I’d never have predicted this. I know Trump said that he could go out on Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and the supporters would still be with him …JL: I believe that.ML: But I didn’t think he’d do what he’s doing materially to his own base. I mean, two days ago he partially gutted the veterans’ healthcare system. This is the healthcare system in a lot of the rural US. That’s his base. And who would have predicted the alliance with Musk? Not me. I would have thought they’d have a falling out after three days, that there just isn’t enough oxygen in the room for both of them. If you’re looking for the simplest explanation for what’s going on, if Trump was a Russian asset, I don’t know if he’d behave any differently from how he’s behaving. I’m not saying he is, but it isn’t the behaviour of someone who is maximising his political future – it’s someone who’s maximising the damage to society. And why would you do that? He was supposed to get rid of illegal immigrants, stop inflation, cut taxes, whatever. But [gutting the civil service] has become the central feature of his administration. I just didn’t think he cared that much about it.View image in fullscreenWhich is the real Bezos; the one who was supportive of this series celebrating public service or the one who’s now dedicating the Washington Post’s opinion pages to championing free markets?ML: I feel some sympathy towards Bezos. I really like him, personally. He’s fun to talk to. He seems to be basically sane. He’s not obviously megalomaniacal or even that self-absorbed. He’s really interested in the world around him. He makes sense on a lot of subjects. So I think the real Bezos is not a bad guy.But he’s done a bad thing. And it’s curious why. You would think, if you had $200bn, that you’d have some fuck-you money. I mean, how much do you have to have to be able to live by your principles? There’s some curve that bends, and at some point, when you have so much money, you’re back to being as vulnerable as someone who has almost nothing. He’s behaving like someone who has nothing, like he’s just scared of Trump. I think if you were with him and watching every step, you’d be watching an interesting psychological process where he’s persuaded himself that what he’s doing is good. He’s rationalised his behaviour, but his behaviour is really appalling.JL: How fucking craven do you have to be, if you can lose 99% of your net worth and still be worth $2bn and you can’t say “fuck you” to proto-fascists? The thing that is frightening is that people like him, men like him, are looking into the future and basically assuming that the US is going to become a kind of fascist state. Because, I mean, $2bn is enough to say “fuck you”. But if the US is now going to become a Maga [Make America Great Again] theocracy, and we just had the last election we’re ever going to have, then maybe he’s positioning for that. I don’t know that to be true, but that’s my darkest version.Who Is Government?: The Untold Story of Public Service, edited by Michael Lewis, is published by Allen Lane (£25). 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      in US Politics

      Creating art under Trump will become harder but it will remain vital | Seph Rodney

      by

      One of the most pernicious effects of a bully’s intimidation is making victims afraid of being true to themselves, because it’s the essential and authentic parts of them that incite the bully’s contempt.During his first week in office Donald Trump issued a blitzkrieg of executive orders. Among them, Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity and Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing.” According to the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, among the things these orders direct the administration’s agencies and staff to do are:
      Terminate diversity, equity, and inclusion offices, positions, and programs in the federal government; terminate equity-related grants and contracts; and repeal prior executive orders designed to ensure equal opportunity in the workplace, including a decades-old executive order from the Johnson Administration … ”
      In the art scene these moratoriums had almost immediate consequence. Cheryl Edwards, a visual artist and curator based in Washington DC, had been working on an exhibition titled Before the Americas which was to be mounted at the Art Museum of the Americas, a cultural venue managed by the Organization of American States (OAS), an organization established in 1948 that includes all 35 independent nations of the western hemisphere. In 2021 Edwards was approached by the current museum director, Adriana Ospina, and the previous director, Pablo Zúñiga, to, in her words, curate an exhibition to include African American artists in the DC area. They agreed on a framework engaging the question “Because we are people in a society that existed before slavery, how does that manifest itself in the work of artists in this area and the work of artists in their collection?” She was given a budget of $20,000 (with a $5,000 curator’s fee), the money being allocated by the previous US ambassador to the OAS under Joe Biden, Francisco O Mora. Edwards’s show was scheduled to open on 21 March, but she was informed by Ospina on 6 February that her show was “terminated”. Edwards attests this happened “because it is DEI”.Similarly, Andil Gosine, a Canadian artist and curator, who is also a professor of environmental arts and justice at York University in Toronto, invested several years into an exhibition at the same museum. His show, titled Nature’s Wild with Andil Gosine, was essentially a collaborative project with 50 artists, writers and technicians exploring the themes he had examined in his book of the same title. It was to include artwork by a dozen artists from across the Americas, many of them LGBTQ+ people of color. He received a phone call from Ospina on 5 February informing him that the show had been canceled, despite none of the funding for it coming from OAS (that came from Canada Council). For him that that was “heartbreaking news”. He says: “This is the most time, money and heart I’ve put into anything. This was going to be the pinnacle of my last 15 years of work in the arts.”View image in fullscreenWith his background in international relations (working at the World Bank after graduate school) Gosine understood that the museum’s response had to do with fear of losing their budget by showcasing queer artists in the wake of yet another executive order, this one promising a process of “Reviewing United States Support to all International Organizations”. He explains: “This is a content question, a gamble on how to deal with a shifting political tide: to conform enough, sacrifice some people, sacrifice your values to survive, and then maybe not get the budget.” According to the Congressional Research Service, in 2023 OAS had a budget of $145.2m, with the US contributing 57% of that. Having the United States rescind their support would clearly lacerate the organization’s operations. Nevertheless, Gosine thinks that their anticipatory acquiescence may be for nought. He asks how an organization that is fundamentally concerned with human rights and social justice can reinvent itself enough to mollify this vengeful and disdainful regime.The cancelation of art exhibitions negatively impacts the lives of curators, but these executive orders have an even more corrosive effect on the lives of artists – particularly those whose immigration status is in flux. Erika Hirugami, a formerly undocumented Mexican-Japanese immigrant, doctoral candidate at UCLA, and Los Angeles-based curator who has been working in the arts for 10 years, told me that the pressures placed on immigrants impel them to erase themselves, anticipating law enforcement officials incarcerating and deporting them. She attests that she knows more than 80 artists who “are terrified because having an exhibition at a museum that says that this artist is undocumented signals a reality that generates a kind of violence”.To better understand this, it helps to think of the work of the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, who extensively studied European art museum visitors in the 1960s, concerned with why most art museum visitor profiles seemed to be correlated with a certain socio-economic class. What he found was that given the proliferation of middle-class aesthetics throughout the museum, the majority of working-class people self-selected to not attend, feeling that the museum was not the place for them. He called this de facto rejection of the poor and working class “symbolic violence”, meaning a non-physical violence expressed through the imposition of social norms by a group with greater social power. Worse still, these norms are internalized by all social groups who come to believe that social hierarchy and inequality are natural and inevitable.View image in fullscreenHirugami explains that for artists who are undocumented, this administration has sought to normalize living in fear. Practically this means that some artists now forgo being paid for their work for fear of having their means of remuneration traced. Thus, their labor goes unrecognized and unpaid. To protect themselves some artists, according to Hirugami, go “zero social”, making themselves digitally invisible by taking down their websites and social media pages.Arleene Correa Valencia, a formerly undocumented artist living in Napa, California, understands this dread. “There’s no handbook to how to lose that fear,” she says. Valencia was an enrollee in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) program, and a college student during the previous Trump administration, when she was under almost constant threat of losing her scholarship and means of staying in the country legally. Even now, having achieved permanent resident status, she still worries. “I still feel like I’m very much a target, especially having come to my residency as a Dreamer. There is this feeling that I did it the wrong way.”Less than two months after taking charge of the federal government, Trump and his agents have devised ways to not only erase certain artists and certain types of art; but also to compel these artists to erase themselves, in the name of self-protection. This is exactly the opposite of their most essential work: to engage the public to experience their work and to move them toward transformation. What is a possible solution? Valencia turns toward her art. She says:
      My practice has changed in that now I’m more grounded in knowing that my people have this beautiful language of painting. And with that I also, tattooed my head to recognize, my Indigenous background and my connection to Mexico. This is the time where we have to make our markings known, not just on our bodies, but in our work, marks that are true to ourselves.”
      Indeed, it’s crucial to refuse the option of doing violence to oneself by denying those very aspects of the self targeted in the culture war being waged by this administration. To maintain who you are can be its own kind of victory. More