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      Democrats help advance Republican funding bill to avoid US shutdown

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      A handful of Senate Democrats on Friday helped pave the way to approve a Republican-drafted bill that would fund the government and avert a shutdown ahead of the midnight deadline.In a 62-38 vote, 10 Senate Democrats joined nearly all Republicans to break the filibuster and move the seven-month funding bill to a final vote. As part of a deal to secure the Democratic votes, the parties agreed to allow a series of amendments on the measure.The result will deeply disappoint Democratic activists and House Democrats who had urged their Senate counterparts to block the bill that they fear would embolden Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s overhaul of the US government.The California Democratic representative and former House speaker Nancy Pelosi came out against the continuing resolution (CR) on Friday after the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, announced on Thursday he would urge Senate Democrats to advance the bill. Schumer argued that allowing a government shutdown would be “a far worse option” than passing the “deeply partisan” Republican legislation, but Pelosi called the bill a “devastating assault on the wellbeing of working-class families”.“Democratic senators should listen to the women,” she said in a statement. “Appropriations leaders Rosa DeLauro and Patty Murray have eloquently presented the case that we must have a better choice: a four-week funding extension to keep government open and negotiate a bipartisan agreement. America has experienced a Trump shutdown before – but this damaging legislation only makes matters worse.”Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez also condemned Schumer for caving to Republican demands on a government funding bill, saying the move had created a “deep sense of outrage and betrayal” among Democrats.Speaking to reporters in Leesburg, Virginia, where House Democrats were gathered for their annual policy retreat, Ocasio-Cortez said she was mobilizing Democratic supporters to push Schumer to oppose what she characterized as an “acquiesce” to the GOP bill.“We have time to correct course on this decision. Senate Democrats can vote no,” the New York Democrat said.The rift has reportedly sparked such anger among House Democrats that some are encouraging Ocasio-Cortez to challenge Schumer in a primary election, according to CNN. When asked about these suggestions, she declined to comment.On Thursday, Schumer said on the Senate floor: “The Republican bill is a terrible option. But I believe allowing Donald Trump to take even much more power via a government shutdown is a far worse option.”Trump praised Schumer on Truth Social, writing: “Congratulations to Chuck Schumer for doing the right thing – Took ‘guts’ and courage!”Schumer reiterated his support for the spending bill on the Senate floor on Friday, warning that a government shutdown would mean that Trump, Elon Musk and the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) would be free to make even more disruptive cuts to federal agencies.“If government were to shut down, Doge has a plan in place to exploit the crisis for maximum destruction,” Schumer said. “A shutdown will allow Doge to shift into overdrive. It would give Donald Trump and Doge the keys to the city, state and country. Donald Trump and Elon Musk would be free to destroy vital government services at a much faster rate than they can right now and over a much broader field of destruction that they would render.”But the Federal Unionists Network, a group of federal employees that opposes the administration’s campaign to dramatically downsize government, disagreed, saying the funding bill under consideration would make the situation worse.“Once again, Congress is failing in its responsibility to the American people,” spokesperson Chris Dols said in a statement. “If passed, this CR will give Trump and Musk the power to complete their assault on federal workers.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Senate majority leader, John Thune, a Republican, told reporters on Friday that he may allow some amendment votes on the spending bill, which could potentially offer a way to assuage Democrats’ concerns.The funding bill represents the first major leverage point in Trump’s second term, with House Democrats urging the Senate to instead consider a 30-day funding stopgap to allow more time for negotiations.Unlike the House vote, where all but one Democrat voted against the government funding bill, the response in the Senate is fractured. Republicans hold a 53-47 majority, and the Kentucky senator Rand Paul is expected to vote against the bill. If that is the case, eight Democratic votes will be needed to send the bill to Trump’s desk.While facing intense pressure from within their party to resist Trump and his billionaire ally Musk, the Senate Democrats who are leaning yes are worried about the impacts of a government shutdown, and what bill they could get passed from their minority position anyway.The yes crowd includes the Pennsylvania senator John Fetterman, who told MSNBC on Tuesday: “We don’t agree with what’s been sent to us but, you know, if we withhold our votes, that is going to shut the government down.”Still, Ocasio-Cortez particularly criticized Senate Democrats for even considering withdrawing support from a vote that nearly all battleground House Democrats were willing to take.“There are members of Congress who have won Trump-held districts in some of the most difficult territory in the United States who walked the plank and took innumerable risks in order to defend the American people,” she said. “Just to see Senate Democrats even consider acquiescing to Elon Musk, I think, is a huge slap in the face.” More

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      Democratic Senator Mark Kelly to let go of his Tesla over Musk’s federal cuts

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      The Arizona Democratic senator Mark Kelly announced he was ditching his Tesla car, because of brand owner Elon Musk’s role in slashing federal budgets and staffing and attendant threats to social benefits programs.“Every time I get in this car in the last 60 days or so, it reminds me of just how much damage Elon Musk and Donald Trump is doing to our country,” Kelly said, in video posted to X, the social media platform owned by Musk.Kelly also said he did not want to be “driving the car built and designed by an asshole”.Kelly and Musk first clashed recently after Musk responded to messages Kelly posted about a trip to Ukraine – criticizing Trump regarding military aid to Ukraine troops as they fight against Russian invaders – by calling him a “traitor”.Kelly called Musk “not a serious guy” and added: “Traitor? Elon, if you don’t understand that defending freedom is a basic tenet of what makes America great and keeps us safe, maybe you should leave it to those of us who do.”Musk is the world’s richest person but his focus is currently domestic, implementing brutal cuts through the so-called department of government efficiency, or Doge.Polling shows such cuts are unpopular. Musk’s move into politics has also had an adverse effect on some of his businesses, in the case of Tesla prompting boycotts and vandalism and seeing sales and shares fall. Earlier this week, it all led Trump to promote Teslas at the White House.On Friday, Kelly joined Americans including the singer Sheryl Crow in dumping his Tesla, alluding to his past as a Nasa astronaut by saying: “I bought a Tesla because it was fast like a rocket ship. But now every time I drive it, I feel like a rolling billboard for a man dismantling our government and hurting people. So Tesla, you’re fired!”In video shot near the Capitol, Kelly said he was driving to work in the car for the last time.View image in fullscreen“When I bought this thing,” he said. “I didn’t think it was going to become a political issue. Every time I get in this car in the last 60 days or so, it reminds me of just how much damage Elon Musk and Donald Trump [are] doing to our country, talking about slashing social security, cutting healthcare benefits for poor people, for seniors. It’s one bad thing after the next. [Musk is] firing veterans. I’m a veteran.”Kelly is also a former US navy pilot.“So I have a really hard time driving around in this thing,” he continued. “So I think it’s time for an upgrade today. So this is going to be my last trip in this car. There’s some things I really liked about it. There are things I didn’t like about it, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is … doing the right thing. I think it’s time to get rid of it.“You know, Elon Musk kind of turned out to be an asshole, and I don’t want to be driving the car built and designed by an asshole. So, looking forward to my new ride.”Kelly’s language reflected a trend of Democrats using profane language in an attempt to better communicate with voters, particularly on social platforms and podcasts, seeking to bypass traditional media.Lis Smith, a Democratic operative famous for her own F-bombs, told Politico: “Some of it is genuine, some of it is people trying to seem faux-edgy authentic.”On Friday, Musk did not immediately respond to Kelly. He did post complaints about vandalism done to Teslas and Tesla stores, one of which compared such actions to Kristallnacht, the “Night of the Broken Glass” in 1938 when Nazis in Germany attacked Jewish people and businesses.Musk remains the subject of controversy over his behavior at Trump’s inauguration, when he gave two Nazi-style salutes. More

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      The US government could shut down: here’s what you need to know

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      The US stands hours away from a partial government shutdown as Democrats decide whether to play ball with Republicans on the first major legislative hurdle in Trump’s second administration.The House approved a stopgap funding measure called a continuing resolution last week, and the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, has urged Democrats in the Senate to pass the measure in the upper chamber.Lawmakers face a midnight Friday deadline, or the government will be partly shut downIt is an event with the potential to inflict disruption to a range of public services, cause delays in salaries and wreak significant damage on the national economy if it becomes prolonged.Schumer faces intense backlash from House Democrats and others in his party, many of whom see any compliance with the Trump agenda as giving up the little leverage Democrats have.What happens when a US government shutdown takes place?It’s not immediately clear which government services would be affected in this shutdown, as the Trump administration hasn’t warned the public about what could happen.But in past shutdowns, thousands of federal government employees were put on furlough, meaning that they were told not to report for work and go unpaid for the period of the shutdown, although their salaries were paid retroactively when it ended.Other government workers who perform what are judged essential services, such as air traffic controllers and law enforcement officials, continued to work but did not get paid until Congress acted to end the shutdown.Depending on how long it lasts, national parks could either shut entirely or open without certain vital services such as public toilets or attendants. Passport processing could halt, as could research at national health institutes.What causes a shutdown?Simply put, the terms of a piece of legislation known as the Anti-Deficiency Act, first passed in 1884, prohibits federal agencies from spending or obligating funds without an act of appropriation – or some alternative form of approval – from Congress.If Congress fails to enact the 12 annual appropriations bills needed to fund the US government’s activities and associated bureaucracy, all non-essential work must cease until it does. If Congress enacts some of the bills but not others, the agencies affected by the bills not enacted are forced to cease normal functioning; this is known as a partial government shutdown.How unusual are US government shutdowns?For the first 200 years of the US’s existence, they did not happen at all. In recent decades, they have become an increasingly regular part of the political landscape, as Washington politics has become more polarised and brinkmanship a commonplace political tool. There have been 20 federal funding gaps since 1976, when the US first shifted the start of its fiscal year to 1 October.Three shutdowns in particular have entered US political lore:

      A 21-day partial closure in 1995 over a dispute about spending cuts between President Bill Clinton and the Republican speaker, Newt Gingrich, that is widely seen as setting the tone for later partisan congressional struggles.

      In 2013, when the government was partially closed for 16 days after another Republican-led Congress tried to use budget negotiations to defund Barack Obama’s signature Affordable Care Act, widely known as Obamacare.

      A 34-day shutdown, the longest on record, lasting from December 2018 until January 2019, when Trump refused to sign any appropriations bill that did not include $5.7bn in funding for a wall along the US border with Mexico. The closure damaged Trump’s poll ratings.
      What is triggering the latest imminent shutdown?Republicans hold 53 seats in the Senate but need 60 votes to get the bill ready for passage, meaning they need Democratic support. Democrats in the House near uniformly oppose the measure, with just one member defecting. These budget votes are one way Democrats can exert power with the runaway Trump administration, led by the billionaire Elon Musk and his so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) slashing the federal workforce.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSchumer plans to vote to move the measure forward, saying it’s worse for Americans if he doesn’t approve the “deeply partisan” Republican stopgap legislation. “If government were to shut down, Doge has a plan in place to exploit the crisis for maximum destruction. A shutdown will allow Doge to shift into overdrive. It would give Donald Trump and Doge the keys to the city, state and country. Donald Trump and Elon Musk would be free to destroy vital government services at a much faster rate than they can right now and over a much broader field of destruction that they would render.”Other Democrats strongly disagree. Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker, said the bill would be a “devastating assault on the wellbeing of working-class families”. Senators should follow their appropriations leaders, Rosa DeLauro and Patty Murray, who have proposed a four-week funding extension to keep the government operating while both parties work on a bipartisan agreement, she said.“America has experienced a Trump shutdown before – but this damaging legislation only makes matters worse,” Pelosi said.The younger wing of the party is especially incensed by Schumer’s defection. “There are members of Congress who have won Trump-held districts in some of the most difficult territory in the United States who walked the plank and took innumerable risks in order to defend the American people,” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said. “Just to see Senate Democrats even consider acquiescing to Elon Musk, I think, is a huge slap in the face.”How could a shutdown affect the wider economy?There is no current estimate of what the costs to the economy could be if the government shuts down this time.However, according to the congressional budget office, the 2018-19 shutdown imposed a short-term cost of $11bn on the US economy, an estimated $3bn of which was never recovered after the stoppage ended.How has Donald Trump reacted?Trump would probably face blowback if the government shuts down, just as he did during the 2018-19 shutdown.He has so far praised Schumer for “doing the right thing”.“Took ‘guts’ and courage!” the president wrote on Truth Social. “The big Tax Cuts, L.A. fire fix, Debt Ceiling Bill, and so much more, is coming. We should all work together on that very dangerous situation. A non pass would be a Country destroyer, approval will lead us to new heights. Again, really good and smart move by Senator Schumer. This could lead to something big for the USA, a whole new direction and beginning!” More

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      The threat of Trump is vast. But don’t underestimate incremental change | Michael Brownstein

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      Donald Trump is attempting to dismantle American constitutional democracy before our eyes. For the past six weeks, many of us have been telling ourselves we have to do something about this before it’s too late. And yet many people who feel this way – no matter how outraged they are or how genuinely worried they are about our country’s future – are doing very little but handwringing and doomscrolling.Elected leaders in the Democratic party are mostly failing to provide inspiration for people who are alarmed about the president’s actions. The protest paddles they held up at Trump’s speech before a joint session of Congress underscored the fact that they’re flailing more than they’re leading. Meanwhile, for most of us, the chance to vote again is almost two years away.The problem is not that there aren’t meaningful things ordinary people can do. There is strong evidence that protesting, calling our elected representatives and even just talking with people about our political concerns can create change. Fighting back against Trump’s naked power grab requires a whole “ecosystem of resistance”, as Sherrilyn Ifill, a law professor and former president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, recently put it. Each bit of that ecosystem adds up to more than the sum of its parts.The question isn’t whether there are meaningful steps to take. It’s why we don’t take them more often.The work of making change is difficult. Most of it is boring, unsexy and, at best, modestly incremental from day to day. But if asked to describe a success story of political change – for example, the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which is widely credited with paving the way for the 1964 Civil Rights Act – what comes to mind is an image of hundreds of thousands of people gathered together in a triumphant, decisive moment. Images like these can be inspiring, but they can also cloud the imagination. What doesn’t always come to mind are the thousand small steps that led to that moment and carried the work forward the day after.An anti-incrementalism bias keeps many of us from taking action. As the economist Albert Hirschman put it: “It is the poverty of our imagination that paradoxically produces images of ‘total’ change in lieu of more modest expectations.” The thing about modest expectations, though, is that they have a way of being met. Then they can grow a little. Then grow a little more. And before you know it, diseases such as smallpox are eradicated, global poverty has plunged and the average human lifespan has doubled.One reason we resist incrementalism is because we mistakenly think it requires tolerating injustice, such as moderating on an issue like transgender rights in an effort to court swing state voters. But embracing incrementalism doesn’t determine whether you are a moderate, a liberal, a progressive or a radical. Incrementalism is about the means with which we achieve change, not the ends we seek. No matter one’s goals – growing local support for clean energy projects, persuading elected representatives to consider proportional representation or even amending the constitution – change requires small steps, each one pushing a bit further beyond the status quo.Activists, organizers and other social change entrepreneurs are frequently incrementalists, even if they don’t say so. For example, members of the Black Panther party were no milquetoast moderates, yet they were serving breakfast to kids each morning in Oakland starting in 1969. Their work expanded to similar programs across the nation, which eventually inspired the federal school breakfast program, which now feeds millions of kids. Love or hate the Panthers, they showed up day after day, knocking on doors, gathering signatures, planning budgets, making the coffee.The same is true for successful public policy. In most cases, incremental steps – such as ratcheting up social security through successive revisions over decades – are the most efficient path to transformative change. Whatever one’s goals, there’s no avoiding “doing the work”.Another barrier to incrementalism is how easy social media makes it to put off doing the work while simultaneously helping us feel as if we’re actually doing it. In a survey from 2018, the political scientist Eitan Hersh found that one-third of respondents reported spending at least two hours a day reading, discussing and thinking about political news. Yet virtually none of these people spent any time working or volunteering for a political organization. Hersh worries that too many of us, especially on the left, misunderstand what politics is – or, at least, what it’s actually for. As he wrote in a 2020 essay for the Times: “Politics is about getting power to enact an agenda. It’s about working in groups to turn one vote into more than one vote, one voice into more than one voice, by getting others on board with you. If you aren’t doing that, you aren’t doing politics. But hey, congratulations on your interesting hobby.”Other barriers to embracing incremental change run deeper: imagine two city governments, each of which sets a goal for policing reform. Their goals are basically identical, but government A gets much closer than government B to the target, even though neither of them reaches it. In a 2022 paper titled Losing Sight of Piecemeal Progress, the psychologist Ed O’Brien shows that, once a threshold for success is clear, people often lump nearly complete failures together with partial successes as “all the same”. Even though government A made real progress compared with government B, we’re liable to discount its efforts if they don’t result in total success. Worse, O’Brien shows that when we chalk up partial progress as failure, we lose motivation to keep working for change.Some climate activists worry that we’ll apply the same logic to the goal of keeping global warming under 1.5C. Indeed, the climate crisis demonstrates what is perhaps the greatest barrier to incrementalism: if we don’t know about progress, why would we doggedly keep working for it? Per capita, greenhouse gas emissions in the United States are currently down to 1920s levels. Annually, our country now emits about what we did in the 1980s. But as Hannah Ritchie discusses in her book Not the End of the World, when asked whether emissions have increased, decreased or stayed the same in the US over the past 15 years, only one out of five people correctly say they’ve decreased. This lack of awareness of partial victories can breed cynicism and despair.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAmerican conservatives have often been successful incrementalists, perhaps most notably in their decades-long assault on reproductive rights that culminated in the overturning of Roe v Wade. Even as progressives recoil at this rollback of rights, they should learn from how this political goal was accomplished.Acknowledging partial success isn’t tantamount to complacency. While the United States and other countries have made important progress on the climate crisis, global greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, paving the way for a tremendous amount of suffering. Yet not acknowledging partial success is a recipe for inaction. It leaves us with the idle hope for a moment of liberation, delivered on the wings of a social change angel who doesn’t exist.What’s giving me hope nowWhat gives me hope is the unoriginal, even banal thought that most people are trying to be decent, most of the time. Of course, that leaves a lot of room for bad things to happen. We can do terrible things to one another under the misapprehension that we’re doing good. We’re biased about how, and to whom, we extend our decency. And the indecent few can manipulate the many to look away while they steal and plunder. But justice wouldn’t be possible if most of us didn’t care about it, however fallibly we pursue it. And most of us do, I think.

      Michael Brownstein is professor and chair of philosophy at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and professor of philosophy at the Graduate Center, Cuny. He is the author, along with Alex Madva and Daniel Kelly, of the forthcoming Somebody Should Do Something: How Anyone Can Help Create Social Change. More

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      Trump administration asks supreme court to uphold order curtailing birthright citizenship – live

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      The Trump administration has appealed to the supreme court to uphold the president’s executive order curtailing birthright citizenship, Reuters reports.Donald Trump signed the order shortly after taking office, but multiple federal judges have ruled against it in lawsuits filed by rights groups. Here’s more on the appeal, from Reuters:
      The Justice Department made the request challenging the scope of three nationwide injunctions issued against Trump’s order by federal courts in Washington state, Massachusetts and Maryland.
      The administration said the injunctions should be scaled back from applying universally and limited to just the plaintiffs that brought the cases and are “actually within the courts’ power.”
      “Universal injunctions have reached epidemic proportions since the start of the current administration,” the Justice Department said in the filing. “This court should declare that enough is enough before district courts’ burgeoning reliance on universal injunctions becomes further entrenched.”
      Trump’s order, signed on his first day back in office on January 20, directed federal agencies to refuse to recognize the citizenship of U.S.-born children who do not have at least one parent who is an American citizen or lawful permanent resident.
      The order was intended to apply starting February 19, but has been blocked nationwide by multiple federal judges.
      As our colleagues Anna Betts and Erum Salam reported on Wednesday, a government charging document addressed to Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent US resident and green card holder who is currently being held in a Louisiana detention center, said that secretary of state Marco Rubio “has reasonable ground to believe that your presence or activities in the United States would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States”.The phrase “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States” is a direct reference to a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 that gives the secretary of state the power to expel non-citizens deemed to be a threat.As the New York Times reported this week, in 1996, when the Clinton administration tried to use this provision to deport a former Mexican government official, a federal judge ruled that this section of the law was “void for vagueness”, deprived the non-citizen of “the due process right to a meaningful opportunity to be heard”, and was “an unconstitutional delegation of legislative power”.That judge was Maryanne Trump Barry, the president’s eldest sister, who was nominated to the federal bench by Ronald Reagan in 1983, elevated to an appeals court by Bill Clinton, and passed away in 2023.Although a three-judge appeals court panel later overturned her ruling on procedural grounds, in an opinion written by then-Circuit Judge Samuel Alito, the forceful language of her opinion still resonates with the arguments of Mahmoud Khalil’s lawyers:“Make no mistake about it. This case is about the Constitution of the United States and the panoply of protections that document provides to the citizens of this country and those non-citizens who are here legally and, thus, here as our guests”, Judge Barry wrote. “The issue before the court is not whether plaintiff has the right to remain in this country beyond the period for which he was lawfully admitted…[t]he issue, rather, is whether an alien who is in this country legally can, merely because he is here, have his liberty restrained and be forcibly removed to a specific country in the unfettered discretion of the Secretary of State and without any meaningful opportunity to be heard. The answer is a ringing ‘no’”.Corks were not popping on Wall Street on Thursday, as stocks plunged again following Donald Trump’s threat to impose a 200% tariff “on all wines, Champagnes, and alcoholic products” from European Union countries if the trading bloc makes good on its threat to retaliate for steel and aluminum tariffs announced by the US president by adding a 50% tariff on American products, including Kentucky bourbon.The sharp drop in the S&P 500 meant that a the index is now in “a correction” — a term used when when stocks falls 10 percent or more from their peak.While the Wall Street Journal blamed the drop on “investors on edge over new tariff threats”, pro-Trump media outlets further to the right, like Newsmax, sought to play down the president’s role in the plunging markets. “This correction is overdue”, a guest on the far-right network assured viewers on Thursday. “Nothing to do with Trump. Nothing to do with tariffs”.As the New Yorker staff writer John Cassidy noted in a podcast interview this week, the downturn began in the middle of February “when it became clear that Tump was serious about these tariffs, a lot of people on Wall Street thought he was bluffing”.Cassidy went on to explain that Trump appears to be wedded to a dream of undoing globalization and returning to a period in the 19th century when the United States was closer to being an autarky, a self-sufficient country, closed off from the rest of the world.That seems to jibe with Trump’s claim, in his announcement of the 200% tariff on Champagne, a form of sparkling wine that is only produced in the Champagne region of France, “This will be great for the Wine and Champagne businesses in the US”.The Trump administration has appealed to the supreme court to uphold the president’s executive order curtailing birthright citizenship, Reuters reports.Donald Trump signed the order shortly after taking office, but multiple federal judges have ruled against it in lawsuits filed by rights groups. Here’s more on the appeal, from Reuters:
      The Justice Department made the request challenging the scope of three nationwide injunctions issued against Trump’s order by federal courts in Washington state, Massachusetts and Maryland.
      The administration said the injunctions should be scaled back from applying universally and limited to just the plaintiffs that brought the cases and are “actually within the courts’ power.”
      “Universal injunctions have reached epidemic proportions since the start of the current administration,” the Justice Department said in the filing. “This court should declare that enough is enough before district courts’ burgeoning reliance on universal injunctions becomes further entrenched.”
      Trump’s order, signed on his first day back in office on January 20, directed federal agencies to refuse to recognize the citizenship of U.S.-born children who do not have at least one parent who is an American citizen or lawful permanent resident.
      The order was intended to apply starting February 19, but has been blocked nationwide by multiple federal judges.
      The US Postal Service will reduce its staff by 10,000 through early retirements, and has signed an agreement with Elon Musk’s department of government efficiency (Doge) to streamline its operations, postmaster general Louis DeJoy announced.USPS aims to reduce its workforce in 30 days, DeJoy said in a letter addressed to leaders of Congress – a much faster timeline than the 30,000 positions it reduced from fiscal year 2021.The postmaster added that Doge would help USPS “in identifying and achieving further efficiencies”.“This is an effort aligned with our efforts, as while we have accomplished a great deal, there is much more to be done. We are happy to have others to assist us in our worthwhile cause. The DOGE team was gracious enough to ask for the big problems they can help us with,” DeJoy said.A dozen national Jewish organizations are condemning the Trump administration for detaining and attempting to deport Columbia University student activist Mahmoud Khalil under the pretense of fighting antisemitism.“Arresting and/or deporting people because of their political views goes against the very foundation of our national identity and is profoundly un-American,” the groups wrote in a letter to homeland security secretary Kristi Noem today.The organizations, including J Street and T’ruah, warned that using antisemitism as justification for suppressing political dissent threatens both Jewish safety and democracy in the United States.The coalition are urging the administration to ensure Khalil receives due process and to stop “co-opting the fight against antisemitism” in ways that endanger vulnerable communities.White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt hit back at the federal judge who ordered the Trump administration to reinstate thousands of federal workers fired during their probationary terms, saying they overstepped their bounds.Leavitt added that the administration would appeal the decision. Here’s her statement:
      A single judge is attempting to unconstitutionally seize the power of hiring and firing from the Executive Branch. The President has the authority to exercise the power of the entire executive branch – singular district court judges cannot abuse the power of the entire judiciary to thwart the President’s agenda. If a federal district court judge would like executive powers, they can try and run for President themselves. The Trump Administration will immediately fight back against this absurd and unconstitutional order.
      Several Senate Democrats have announced their determination to block passage of a measure approved by House Republicans earlier this week to keep the government funded through September and prevent a shutdown that will begin after Friday.It’s a significant move, as it raises the possibility that funding will lapse after midnight on Saturday, potentially handing Donald Trump the ability to further undermine the federal government’s operations. But several Democratic senators say it’s a fight worth having.Mark Kelly of swing state Arizona said:
      I cannot vote for the Republican plan to give unchecked power to Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
      I told Arizonans I’d stand up when it was right for our state and our country, and this is one of those moments.
      Fellow Arizonan Ruben Gallego said much the same (it’s worth noting neither man is up for election next year):
      This is a bad resolution that gives Elon Musk and his cronies permission to continue cutting veterans’ benefits, slashes resources for Arizona’s water needs, and abandons our wildland firefighters.
      Newly arrived New Jersey senator Andy Kim is against it:
      Republicans have made it so Musk and the most powerful win and everyone else loses. I don’t want a shutdown but I can’t vote for this overreach of power, giving Trump and Musk unchecked power to line their pockets. I’m a NO on the CR.
      So is Ben Ray Luján and Martin Heinrich, both of New Mexico:
      We want to see the federal government funded and functional, and we have been fighting every day to force this administration to put the chainsaw down when it comes to the healthcare, education, and VA benefits our communities depend on.
      But we won’t stand by as Republicans try to shove through this power grab masquerading as a funding bill. For the people of New Mexico, we will vote ‘no’ on Republicans’ continuing resolution.
      The GOP controls the Senate but will need at least some Democratic support to get the spending bill through. Despite this opposition, there is also a chance that enough Democrats will get on board with the bill for it to be enacted.Donald Trump’s order to release billions of gallons of water from California reservoirs is widely viewed in the state as a waste of water.Despite that, the president believes it helped Los Angeles deal with its risk of wildfires, a contention he just repeated, using some odd phrasing, in the Oval Office:
      I broke into Los Angeles. Can you believe it? I had a break in, I invaded Los Angeles, and we opened up the water, and the water is now flowing down. They have so much water, they don’t know what to do. They were sending it out to the Pacific for environmental reasons, okay, can you believe it? And in the meantime, they lost 25,000 houses … Nobody’s ever seen anything like it.
      The facts tell a different story:On Greenland, Trump gets asked about his vision for potential annexation of the island.“Well, I think it will happen. I’m just thinking, I didn’t give it much thought before, but I’m sitting with a man that could be very instrumental,” he says, as he turns to Rutte saying “Mark, we need that for international security … as we have a lot of our favourite players, cruising around the coast.”Rutte distances himself from his comments on annexing Greenland, but says Trump is right talking about growing risks in the North Arctic.Trump is then asked about the recent elections in Greenland, and says “it was a good election for us.”“The person that did the best is a very good person as far as we are concerned, so we will be talking about it and it is very important,” he says.The president says the US “is going to order” 48 icebreakers, and that would help to strengthen US position “as that whole area is becoming very important.”“So we are going to have to make a deal on that and Denmark is not able to do that [offer protection],” he says.He then mocks Denmark saying they have “nothing to do with that” as “a boat landed there 200 years ago or something, and they say they have rights to it?” “I don’t know if that is true.”“We have been dealing with Denmark, we have been dealing with Greenland, and we have to do it,” he says.He again suggests Nato could be involved given its bases there, and says “maybe you’ll see more and more soldiers” there. He then asked defence secretary Pete Hegseth if he should send more troops there. “Don’t answer that Pete,” he laughs.Reporters took the opportunity to question Trump and whether he’s willing to let up on the tariffs he is levying on major trade partners like Canada.“No, we’ve been ripped off for years,” Trump said. “I’m not going to bend at all.”He went on to say that the country has nothing the US needs but added that he loves Canada and mentioned its contributions like former Canadian ice hockey player, Wayne Gretzky.You can follow our Europe live blog for more on Trump and Rutte’s comments happening now:The Trump-Rutte meeting is being held to discuss the costs of supporting Ukraine as it defends itself against Russia.Trump said hundreds of billions of dollars are being spent and “really wasted” on defense for Ukraine. He said: “It’s also a tremendous cost to the United States and other countries.” More

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      Democratic congressman Raúl Grijalva dies aged 77

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      Democratic US representative Raúl M Grijalva of Arizona, who championed environmental protection during his 12 terms in Congress, died on Thursday of complications from cancer treatments, his office said.Grijalva, who was 77, had risen to chair the US House natural resources committee and was the top Democrat on the committee until earlier this year. He had been absent from Congress as he underwent cancer treatment in recent months.Grijalva’s office said in a statement: “From permanently protecting the Grand Canyon for future generations to strengthening the Affordable Care Act, his proudest moments in Congress have always been guided by community voices.”Another Democratic House member, Sylvester Turner of Texas, died last week from health issues.Grijalva, the son of a Mexican immigrant, was first elected to the House in 2002. Known as a liberal leader, he led the Congressional Progressive Caucus in 2008 and dedicated much of his career to working on environmental causes on the natural resources committee. He stepped down from that position this year, after announcing that he planned to retire rather than run for re-election in 2026.During his time in Congress, Grijalva championed protections for endangered species and wilderness areas, as well as stronger regulations on the oil and natural gas industries. He played a key role in writing the National Landscape Conservation System Act and the Federal Lands Restoration Act, which were passed and signed by Barack Obama.Grijalva had announced in April last year that he had been diagnosed with cancer but would be able to continue his work. He also sought re-election and won easily in the blue-leaning district. More

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      The ADL and the Heritage Foundation are helping to silence dissent in America | Ahmed Moor

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      The repression that began under the Biden administration has accelerated under Trump. Mahmoud Khalil’s detention by federal agents – reportedly Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers – despite his legal, permanent resident status will probably have its intended effect. People will speak up less; their fear of the irreversible harm meted out by a vengeful state is justified. Now we are all left to contend with the wreckage of the first amendment to the US constitution, which used to guarantee the right to speech in this country.Responsibility for the erosion of our rights is attributable – in part – to the bipartisan embrace of the non-governmental, non-profit sector. That’s because from the 1940s onward, the federal government has ceded much state authority to philanthropies and non-profits. Those groups, in turn, have acted to craft policy – everything from how to develop equitable housing or the benefits of inoculating children to ensuring that speech targeting Israel is punishable by law.The tax code ensures that we subsidize special interest groups, such as the Israel lobby, even as it skirts the ordinary mechanisms of democratic policymaking and accountability. Today, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a rightwing Israel advocacy group, has taken the lead in seeking to undermine bedrock American freedoms in support of Israel. The Heritage Foundation’s Project Esther roadmap explicitly describes its goal of having “foreign [‘Hamas Support Network’] leaders and members deported from the US”.It should be said here that “Hamas Support Network” is a made-up, strangely emotional and overwrought phrase used by the Heritage Foundation to describe college students who oppose Israel’s genocide in Palestine.In her essay How Philanthropy Made and Unmade American Liberalism, Lila Corwin Berman, a professor of American Jewish history at New York University, argues that the rise of the philanthropic apparatus in America, defined broadly as tax-exempt, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), presented special interests with the means to exercise power in an unregulated, nontransparent way.Starting in the early 20th century, when the federal income tax was codified into law, special effort was made to exempt “public-benefit associations” from taxation. The argument was that they acted in the public good while simultaneously representing the best of capitalist success, a core tenet of American liberalism.There was a practical component to the argument, too. Philanthropies could act as policy labs – in the 1930s, the Carnegie Foundation could support educational programs away from the public. If policies were successful, they could be implemented across a broader swathe of society. For their utility, NGOs and philanthropies received tax-exempt status. Yet, as Corwin Berman said, “any time there’s a tax exemption, it’s a tax expenditure, but it’s an expenditure which avoids public scrutiny”. When Nixon restructured USAid through the Foreign Assistance Act in 1973, it was in part to obscure government efforts “that doubled as global capitalist and neocolonial ventures” – all without democratic oversight or public participation.Early opposition to private policymaking for the “public good” came from anti-elite quarters and from the right. In the 1960s, Wright Patman, a populist Democratic representative from Texas, kicked off a series of investigations designed to curtail the power of what’s sometimes called the “submerged state”.But in the 80s and 90s, the right began to co-opt non-governmental frameworks. The Heritage Foundation and others learned how to leverage “philanthropy as a tool and a cudgel”, as Berman said to me. Today, non-profits work across a broad range of policy issues both domestically and abroad. Many of the groups that have engineered the bipartisan consensus on the suppression of speech that is critical of Israel are non-profits. They obtain tax-exempt status and simultaneously craft policy, and they do so on behalf of Democrats and Republicans, away from public scrutiny.The ADL, which controls total net assets of 200m tax-free dollars, in particular lobbied for policy responses to student activism in both the Biden and Trump administrations. In 2022, the ADL – which regularly conflates antisemitism with criticism of Israel – commended the Biden administration for developing a “national strategy to combat antisemitism”.The statement went on to take credit for the policy: “This is one of the steps that we have long advocated for as part of a holistic approach to address the antisemitism that has been increasingly normalized in society.”After Khalil’s detention, the ADL, whose leader, Jonathan Greenblatt, was paid more than $1.2m in 2022, issued a statement on X that reads in part: “We appreciate the Trump Administration’s broad, bold set of efforts to counter campus antisemitism.”There is an irony in all this. The right is now on a mission to defund universities, a process which started with angry pro-Israel billionaires on X. It seems reasonable to expect the IRS to be weaponized to revoke the tax-exempt status of philanthropies and other elite institutions deemed to be sympathetic to the Democratic party’s agenda.Khalil’s detention – a shocking assault by the Israel lobby on American freedom – is not the first time that constitutional rights in this country have been assailed by a president. Abraham Lincoln famously suspended habeas corpus during the civil war, this country’s first major constitutional crisis. But this may be the first time that a dramatic erosion in Americans’ constitutional liberties has been engineered by policymaking organizations that are subsidized by the public but are accountable to no one at all.

      Ahmed Moor is a writer and fellow at the Foundation for Middle East Peace. He is a plaintiff in a lawsuit that charges the US state department with circumventing the law to fund Israeli military units accused of human rights abuses More