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      Trump news at a glance: President hails shutdown as ‘opportunity’ to further campaign of cuts

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      As the US government shutdown stretched into its second day, Donald Trump on Thursday hailed the funding lapse as an “unprecedented opportunity” to further his campaign of firing federal workers and downsizing departments.The president announced on social media that he would sit down with Russell Vought, the White House office of management and budget chief, an architect of the mass firings and buyouts of federal workers.“I have a meeting today with Russ Vought, he of PROJECT 2025 Fame, to determine which of the many Democrat Agencies, most of which are a political SCAM, he recommends to be cut, and whether or not those cuts will be temporary or permanent,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.“I can’t believe the Radical Left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity.”Trump sees ‘unprecedented opportunity’ to punish Democrats as shutdown enters day twoThe government shut down on Wednesday at midnight, after Democrats refused to support a Republican plan to continue funding unless it included a series of healthcare-focused concessions. Vought has threatened to use the shutdown to conduct further layoffs of federal workers, and on Wednesday announced the cancellation of billions of dollars in federal funding for projects tied to Democrats.Read the full storyTrump declares that drug cartels operating in the Caribbean are ‘unlawful combatants’Donald Trump has declared that drug cartels operating in the Caribbean are “unlawful combatants” and says the United States is now in a “non-international armed conflict”, according to a White House memo obtained by the Associated Press on Thursday.Read the full storyHamas to demand key revisions to Trump Gaza plan before accepting, sources sayHamas is likely to provisionally accept Donald Trump’s Gaza ceasefire proposal in the coming days – but only on condition there are significant revisions of some of its key elements, analysts and sources close to the group say.Read the full storyCalifornia vows to ‘instantly’ cut funding to universities that cave to Trump ‘compact’Any California universities that sign the Trump administration’s proposed “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” will “instantly” lose their state funding, California governor Gavin Newsom said in a statement.The Trump administration on Wednesday offered nine prominent universities, including the University of Southern California, the chance to sign a “compact” that asks the universities to close academic departments that “purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas”, limit the proportion of international undergraduate students to 15%, accept the administration’s definition of gender and ban the consideration of race or sex in hiring and admissions, in exchange for “substantial and meaningful federal grants”.Read the full storyJudge denies Kilmar Ábrego García’s bid for asylum in the USAn immigration judge in Baltimore has denied Kilmar Ábrego García’s bid for asylum on Thursday, but he has 30 days to appeal.Ábrego’s case has drawn national attention since the 30-year-old was wrongfully deported by the Trump administration to El Salvador in March. The Salvadorian national has an American wife and children and has lived in Maryland for years, but he originally immigrated to the US illegally as a teenager.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      Elon Musk, the multibillionaire and self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist”, has in recent days trained his attention on getting people to cancel their Netflix subscriptions in protest of what he claims is the company’s “woke bias” and inclusion of LGBTQ+ characters.

      The White House recently issued a press release with links to scientific studies to back up Trump’s claim that use of acetaminophen, commonly referred to as Tylenol, during pregnancy causes autism, but those studies provided only “weak” and “inconclusive” evidence, according to physicians with expertise in reviewing medical research who spoke to the Guardian.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened 1 October 2025. More

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      US government shutdown: Donald Trump promises firings and cuts to ‘Democrats’ favorite projects’ if shutdown continues – live

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      President Donald Trump on Thursday said firings of federal workers and cuts to projects could occur if a government shutdown that began Wednesday continues, Reuters reports.“There could be firings, and that’s their fault,” Trump said of Democrats in Congress, when asked during an interview with OAN television network about a recent memo from the Office of Management and Budget that raised prospects of firings.“We could cut projects that they wanted, favorite projects, and they’d be permanently cut,” he said, adding “I am allowed to cut things that should have never been approved in the first place and I will probably do that.”My colleage Lauren Gambino has another key line from the Donald Trump interview that aired today on One America News:“A lot of people are saying Trump wanted this, that I wanted this closing, and I didn’t want it, but a lot of people are saying it because I’m allowed to cut things that should have never been approved in the first place, and I will probably do that,” Trump said.Federal authorities refuse to release a Michigan man in a pending deportation case, despite his life-threatening leukemia and the inconsistent health care he’s received while in custody since August, his lawyer said Thursday, according to the Associated Press.The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan is now seeking a bond hearing for Contreras-Cervantes, which could allow him to return to his Detroit-area family and doctors while his case winds through immigration court. He’s currently being held at a detention center about three hours away.Jose Contreras-Cervantes, a 33-year-old married father of three who has been living in the U.S. for about 20 years, but not legally, was arrested at a 5 Aug traffic stop in Macomb County, near Detroit. He had no criminal record beyond minor traffic offenses, said ACLU lawyer Miriam Aukerman.Contreras-Cervantes was diagnosed last year with chronic myeloid leukemia, a life-threatening cancer of the bone marrow, said his wife, Lupita Contreras.“The doctor said he has four to six years to live,” she said.Trump’s proposed “compact” with nine prestigious universities was offered to schools that were seen by Trump as “good actors”, May Mailman, a senior White House adviser told the Wall Street Journal yesterday, with a president or a board who were, in the Trump administration’s view, “reformer[s]” who have “really indicated they are committed to a higher-quality education.”The “compact” requires universities to eliminate departments that are seen as hostile or dismissive to conservatives, limit the proportion of international students on campus, accept the Trump administration’s definition of gender, and restrict the political speech of employees.Among the universities the Trump administration is wooing with promises of preferential federal funding in exchange for compliance with Trump’s values is the University of Southern California, a private research university with an $8.2 billion endowment.And even putting academic freedom aside, some of Trump’s proposals would be economically challenging for the University of Southern California, the Los Angeles Times reported.At USC, “26% of the fall 2025 freshman class is international,” the more than 50% of those students come from China or India, the Los Angeles Times reported. The Trump administration’s compact not only limits international student enrollment to 15% of students, but also requires that no more than 5% come from any one country.“Full-fee tuition from international students is a major source of revenue at USC, which has undertaken hundreds of layoffs this year amid budget troubles,” the Los Angeles Times noted.In threatening to cut state funding to any California university that cuts an ideological deal with Trump, California governor Gavin Newsom’s office called Trump’s proposed “compact” with nine leading American universities “nothing short of a hostile takeover of America’s universities.”“It would impose strict government-mandated definitions of academic terms, erase diversity, and rip control away from campus leaders to install government-mandated conservative ideology in its place,” Newsom’s office said in a statement. “It even dictates how schools must spend their own endowments. Any institution that resists could be hit with crushing fines or stripped of federal research funding.”Any California universities that sign the Trump administration’s proposed “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” will “instantly” lose their state funding, California governor Gavin Newsom said in a statement.“If any California University signs this radical agreement, they’ll lose billions in state funding—including Cal Grants—instantly. California will not bankroll schools that sell out their students, professors, researchers, and surrender academic freedom,” Newsom said in a statement. Trump offered nine prominent universities, including the University of Southern California, the chance to sign his “compact” yesterday, which asked that the universities close academic departments that “purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas,” limit the proportion of international undergraduate students to 15% , and ban the consideration of race or sex in hiring and admissions, in exchange for “substantial and meaningful federal grants”.Newsom’s office said Trump’s offer to universities “ties access to federal funding to radical conservative ideological restrictions on colleges and universities.”President Donald Trump on Thursday said firings of federal workers and cuts to projects could occur if a government shutdown that began Wednesday continues, Reuters reports.“There could be firings, and that’s their fault,” Trump said of Democrats in Congress, when asked during an interview with OAN television network about a recent memo from the Office of Management and Budget that raised prospects of firings.“We could cut projects that they wanted, favorite projects, and they’d be permanently cut,” he said, adding “I am allowed to cut things that should have never been approved in the first place and I will probably do that.”The government shutdown will likely go into next week, with Senate Majority Leader John Thune telling Politico that it is “unlikely” senators will be in the Capitol voting this weekend.“They’ll have a fourth chance tomorrow to vote to open up the government, and if that fails, we’ll give them the weekend to think about it, and then we’ll come back and vote on Monday,” the Republican senator said.Thune also reiterated he will not negotiate the Affordable Care Act tax credits, which has been the point of contention leading to the government shutdown.Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer previously said that Republicans need to work with Democrats “to reach an agreement to reopen the government and lower healthcare costs.”The Trump administration is considering giving at least $10bn in aid to US farmers, as the agriculture industry begins to grapple with an economic fallout due to Trump’s tariffs, the Wall Street Journal reports.The Journal reports that the Trump administration is considering using revenue from tariffs to fund the aid provided to US farmers and may start to be distributed in the coming months.The deliberations are reportedly still ongoing and the deal to give billions for US farmers has not been finalized. A potential negotiation with China in the coming weeks may change Trump’s calculation to provide aid to the farmers.House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said the Trump administration has done “nothing” to lower the high cost of living for people in the US, while at the same time giving the wealthy significant tax breaks.“The Trump tariffs are actually making life more expensive,” Jeffries said. “And now Republicans refuse to do anything to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credit.”House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries accused the Trump administration and Republicans of desiring a government shutdown.“They want to inflict on the American people, they continue to engage in their retribution efforts,” Jeffries said. “And they have zero interest in providing high-quality, affordable and accessible care to everyday Americans.”House Minority leader Hakeem Jeffries called Trump’s behavior “unserious and unhinged.”Ahead of the looming shutdown, Trump shared a racist video on his Truth Social account on Tuesday, depicting Jeffries wearing a sombrero and mustache, while Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer spoke in a fake, AI-generated voice.House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said “Republicans have shown zero interest in even having a conversation” to come to a government funding agreement.Jeffries added Democrats are willing to meet with Republicans, including Trump and vice-president JD Vance, to come to an agreement.House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries blamed Republicans for the government shutdown during a press conference.“This is day two of Donald Trump’s shutdown, but it’s day 256 of the chaos that the Trump presidency has unleashed on the American people,” Jeffries said. “Republicans have shut the government down because they don’t want to provide healthcare to working class Americans.”The Trump administration is seeking to strike deals with companies across 30 different industries deemed critical to national or economic security, Reuters reports, in a concerted push before next year’s midterm elections. In some cases, the Trump administration is offering tariff relief in exchange for concessions.Reuters reports that pharmaceutical companies have been contacted by the White House and top Trump administration officials to strike potential deals. For example, Eli Lilly was asked to produce more insulin, Pfizer was asked to produce more cancer and cholesterol medications and AstraZeneca was asked to consider moving its headquarters from London to the US.The administration’s plan to strike deals with companies is an effort to push companies to further Trump’s goal of moving manufacturing to the United States, reducing dependence on China, strengthening supply chains for critical products and contributing to the government’s coffers, according to Reuters. It is an all-out effort to secure wins before next year’s midterms.The administration has reached out to companies working in the pharmaceutical, semiconductor, AI, mining, energy and other industries.This week, Trump announced a deal with Pfizer to cut drug prices in exchange for relief from looming tariffs on imported pharmaceuticals.WIC, the federal program that provides free, healthy food to low-income pregnant women, new mothers and children under five, could run out of funds if the government shutdown persists, NBC News reports.The program serves some 6.8 million people. According to the National WIC Association, “devastating disruptions” may deny millions of moms and children access to nutritious foods if the government remains closed for longer than a week or two, as contingency funds from the USDA will have dried up by then.“Historically, when there has been a shutdown, WIC has remained open for business, but because this one falls at the start of the fiscal year, there are some risks,” Georgia Machell, president of the National WIC Association, told NBC. She called on Congress to pass a funding bill that protects the program and keeps it running without interruption.A USDA spokesperson told the outlet that WIC’s continued operation will depend on “state choice and the length of a shutdown”.Meanwhile, some administration officials are privately warning agencies against mass firings during the shutdown, the Washington Post (paywall) reports.Senior federal officials are telling agencies not to fire employees en masse, warning that it may violate appropriations law and be vulnerable to challenges from labor unions, the Post reports citing two anonymous sources.Senate majority leader John Thune told Politico last night that Democrats folding is the only way he sees the shutdown ending.His comments were echoed House speaker Mike Johnson, who earlier told reporters this morning, “I have quite literally nothing to negotiate,” and insisted that Democrats should support the “clean” continuing resolution.Per Politico’s report, Thune “insisted he would not negotiate on the substance of an extension [to Obamacare subsidies] while the government is closed. But pressed on whether he was open to discussions with Democrats about how the health care negotiations might work post-shutdown or how to advance full-year appropriations bills, he said, ‘We are.’”
      Some of those conversations are happening. With our members and their members there’s a lot of back-and-forth going on right now about some of the things they would like to see happen.
      Thune also said it’s “unlikely” that there will be Senate votes this weekend, meaning the shutdown is likely to last for at least six days. He told Semafor this morning:
      They’ll have a fourth chance tomorrow to open up the government. If that fails, we’ll give them the weekend to think about it. We’ll come back vote again Monday.
      Venezuela’s defense minister General Vladimir Padrino said on Thursday that five combat planes had been detected near country’s coast, in what he characterized as a threat by the United States.“They are imperialist combat planes that have dared to come close to the Venezuelan coast” Padrino said at an air base, in comments broadcast on state television, saying information about the planes had been reported to a control tower by an airline. “The presence of these planes flying close to our Caribbean Sea is a vulgarity, a provocation, a threat to the security of the nation.”The US has deployed a fleet of warships through the Caribbean, which Washington says is to combat drug trafficking, and has also struck several boats it claims were carrying drugs from Venezuela, killing those aboard. Experts have questioned the legality of the strikes.Earlier, we reported that Trump has declared drug cartels operating in the Caribbean are unlawful combatants and said the US is now in a “non-international armed conflict”, according to a memo obtained by the Associated Press.The US military last month carried out three deadly strikes against alleged drug smuggling boats in the Caribbean. At least two of those operations were carried out on vessels that originated from Venezuela.On Monday, Venezuela’s vice-president said Nicolás Maduro was ready to declare a state of emergency in the event of a US military attack on the country, and warned of “catastrophic” consequences if such an onslaught materializes.Hamas will demand key revisions to Donald Trump’s Gaza ceasefire proposal but is likely to accept the plan in coming days as a basis for renewed negotiations, analysts and sources close to the group have told my colleague and Guardian international security correspondent Jason Burke.Trump imposed a deadline of “three or four days” from Tuesday for Hamas to give its response to his 20-point plan, which aims to bring the two-year war in Gaza to a close and allow an apparently indefinite international administration of the devastated territory, or “pay in hell”.Mkhaimar Abusada, a political scientist from Gaza based in Cairo, said Hamas now had to “choose between the bad and the worst”. “If they say ‘no’, as Trump has made clear, that will not be good and will allow Israel to do whatever it takes to finish this. They will say “yes, but we need this and that”, Abusada said.Hamas leaders are divided between Istanbul, Doha and Gaza, which complicates discussions on the group’s response. Turkey and Qatar are putting pressure on Hamas to make concessions.One sticking point is the plan’s demand that Hamas disarm, a source close to the organisation said. The surrender of all weapons would be very difficult for Hamas to accept, especially without any political process or substantial progress towards a two-state solution.Another concern for Hamas is the vague promise of Israeli withdrawals, though the clear statement that there will be no annexation or occupation of Gaza by Israel was welcomed by one source close to Hamas.Hugh Lovatt, a senior fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said it would be very difficult for Hamas to accept the terms unconditionally. “That is understandable. The text lacks details. But then anything other than total and final acceptance will be used against Hamas by Israel, the Trump administration and possibly the Europeans,” he said.You can read Jason’s full piece here: More

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      Trump says drug cartels operating in the Caribbean are ‘unlawful combatants’

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      Donald Trump has said that drug cartels operating in the Caribbean are “unlawful combatants” and says the United States is now in a “non-international armed conflict”, according to a White House memo obtained by the Associated Press on Thursday.A US official familiar with the matter who was not authorized to comment publicly told the AP that Congress was notified about the designation by Pentagon officials on Wednesday.The story was first reported by the New York Times.It comes after the US military conducted strikes on three boats in the Caribbean Sea last month that killed 17 people and triggered widespread international outrage, especially in Central and South America.The administration is required by law to report to Congress the US government’s use of armed forces. The Times reports that the administration’s memo cites that statute and also repeats its past justifications that the strikes were conducted in self-defense and accusing the boats of containing members of a Venezuelan drug gang. But the memo also reportedly goes further and frames the US military’s attacks on the boats to be part of a sustained conflict.The memo also reportedly states that Trump has deemed cartels engaged in smuggling drugs as “non-state armed groups” whose actions “constitute an armed attack against the United States”.The Trump administration has been increasing its military presence in the Caribbean in recent months, deploying a number of ships and military personnel to Puerto Rico. It has justified the military action as a necessary escalation to stem the flow of drugs into the US. But some lawmakers as well as human rights groups have questioned the legality of the attacks.The notice to Congress is an aggressive escalation in the US government’s attempts to stop the flow of narcotics. The US government’s drug war in recent years has increasingly focused on political targets, and this latest escalation may be seen as an attempt by the administration to further place pressure on the Venezuelan government.Earlier this year, the Trump administration determined several criminal groups to be “terrorist” organizations. The designation by the administration included a number of Mexican cartels, the MS-13 gang, the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and the Venezuelan so-called Cartel de los Soles.For years, the US government has accused the Venezuelan government of Nicolás Maduro of being involved in drug trafficking. The Trump administration earlier this year accused Maduro of directing the activities of Tren de Aragua, and used it as a justification to expel hundreds of immigrants to a notorious Salvadorian prison under the Alien Enemies Act.Intelligence assessments have determined there is little proof of Maduro’s links to Tren de Aragua.Maduro and members of his cabinet and military also stand accused by the US of running the Cartel de los Soles and seeking to traffic cocaine to the US. The infrastructure of the cartel has been disputed, with drug trafficking analysts and experts saying that the Cartel de los Soles is a loose network of lower-ranking military officials without a strict hierarchical structure.Earlier this year, the US government raised its bounty for Maduro to $50m. There is an active indictment in a Manhattan federal court related to the Cartel de los Soles case. A co-defendant and former top Venezuelan military intelligence chief pleaded guilty earlier this year to narco-terrorism crimes.The three vessels that were targeted by the US in recent weeks were traversing through the Caribbean. Trump administration officials, without proof, have said the vessels were carrying members of Tren de Aragua with drugs destined for the US.The administration has been adamant in escalating its fight against fentanyl trafficking into the US. However, fentanyl typically arrives across the southern US border from Mexico. More

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      James Comey’s real ‘crime’? Daring to put the law before loyalty to Trump | Lawrence Douglas

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      In 1931, an exceptionally talented young Berlin attorney named Hans Litten summoned Adolf Hitler to testify in a criminal case. Litten represented four victims of a brutal assault perpetrated by members of Hitler’s Sturmabteilung, or SA, on a dance hall frequented by leftist workers; by the time the assault ended, three people were dead. At trial, the defense sought to portray the SA as a disciplined political organization, under orders from Hitler to use force only as self-defense.In his three-hour cross-examination of the head of the Nazi party, Litten managed what precious few dared to attempt. Hitler had expected the young lawyer to be intimidated; instead, Litten aggressively and skillfully dissected him under oath, reducing the supposedly gifted orator to a stammering rage. In trapping Hitler in contradictions and exposing him as an inveterate liar, Litten also made clear the Nazis’ goal of destroying the Weimar Republic. Hitler left the witness stand rattled and humiliated, henceforth forbidding Litten’s name to be uttered in his presence.Hitler’s revenge came two years later, barely a month after he had been installed in power. In the wake of the Reichstag fire – an arson attack on the parliament building – and relying on a hastily drafted emergency decree for the “protection of people and state”, Hitler ordered the arrest and “protective custody” of numerous perceived political enemies, including Litten. Over the next five years, as he was shuttled from concentration camp to concentration camp, Litten was repeatedly beaten and tortured. In 1938, with no prospect of release, he took his own life. His crime: trying to protect the role of law and a constitutional democracy from a would-be authoritarian.The United States in 2025 is not Germany in 1933. That said, Litten’s experience has a disturbingly familiar ring. Last week, the US attorney’s office for the eastern district of Virginia (EDVA) announced that the former FBI director James Comey had been indicted for allegedly lying under oath to a congressional committee. The case against Comey is so flimsy that Erik Siebert, Trump’s hand-picked chief federal prosecutor for the post, balked at filing charges. Siebert’s fair assessment predictably earned him the ire of the president. “I want him out,” Trump fumed, and so Siebert resigned before he could be fired, vacating the position he had occupied for barely eight months.Trump hastily named a replacement: Lindsey Halligan, a member of Trump’s coterie of personal lawyers who now occupy some of the most pivotal positions within the Department of Justice. Never mind that Halligan has no prior prosecutorial experience and that the head of the EDVA oversees the prosecution of many of the nation’s most complicated and sensitive cases involving national security and financial crimes; Halligan’s great qualification was apparently her willingness to do what Siebert would not: indulge Trump’s hankering for revenge. Her indictment of Comey, handed down scant days before the five-year statute of limitations on the alleged crimes was to expire, only confirmed Siebert’s doubts. Law students invariably learn the old canard that any decent prosecutor can get a grand jury “to indict a ham sandwich” – but maybe not Halligan: the grand jury refused to indict on one of the three counts that the prosecutor submitted.Trump greeted the news of the two-count indictment by crowing on Truth Social: “JUSTICE IN AMERICA!” – which might be an apt, if inadvertently Orwellian, description of the present state of the rule of law in our nation. The case is certainly about score-settling, but it’s also far more disturbing than that. Let’s assume for the moment that Trump was unfairly targeted for investigation during his first term; it would still be unseemly for a sitting president to respond to one injustice with another. But the fact is that the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election – the source of Trump’s crusade against Comey – was not a politically motivated “witch-hunt” (Trump’s favorite go-to term of impugnment to discredit attempts to hold him to account). Instead, it revealed a “sweeping and systematic” campaign to interfere with the 2016 election.Comey’s true “crime” recalls Hans Litten’s. He dared to show fidelity to his office and to the law, and not to the Great Leader. This is not to say that Comey risks sharing the fate of the intrepid German lawyer. In publicly declaring Comey “guilty as hell” and in transparently interfering in the legal process, Trump has handed the judge a reason to simply dismiss the case as an exercise in vindictive prosecution. Should Comey go to trial, the case’s obvious weaknesses might well result in an acquittal. And even if Comey were to be convicted and sent to prison, the US does not, at present, operate a system of concentration camps where political opponents face systematic torture.But that is cold comfort. The fact remains that Comey is being persecuted, not prosecuted, for putting service to the nation above obedience to a man. As if following a script from the authoritarian playbook, Trump is making Comey pay for his act of constitutional fidelity. What should disturb all Americans is the ease with which Trump, aided by his craven and opportunistic legal lackeys, has turned the proudly independent justice department into a tool of authoritarian consolidation.

      Lawrence Douglas teaches at Amherst College. His newest book, The Criminal State: War, Atrocity, and the Dream of International Justice, will be published in the spring of 2026 More

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      Do you know about shitposting? It’s cheap humour, rage bait – and now, it seems, US government policy | Robert Topinka

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      On 24 September, a White House communications adviser posted a video on X of a new presidential Walk of Fame, captioned: “Wait for it”, with a pen and eyes emoji. The video pans over a succession of presidential portraits to reveal – in place of Joe Biden’s portrait – a framed photograph of an autopen signing his name. The sight-gag references the Maga conspiracy theory that, unbeknownst to “Sleepy Joe”, unscrupulous aides used the autopen to sign pardons in his name. The post delighted supporters and outraged critics, which only further delighted supporters.And that was precisely the point. This combination of cheap humour and rage bait is the province of the shitpost, a genre of low-effort social media content designed to amuse insiders and annoy outsiders. Like so much of internet culture, shitposting was pioneered on the message board 4chan – but Donald Trump is a natural. On the 12th anniversary of 9/11, he tweeted: “I would like to extend my best wishes to all, even the haters and losers, on this special date, September 11th.” The shitpost forces a choice: undermine public decorum by laughing along, or get offended, outing yourself as a hater and a loser.The deliberate impropriety of the shitpost makes good-faith engagement impossible. Like a children’s game of made you look, responding means either sinking to the level of the shitpost or looking ridiculous by responding earnestly to a low-effort provocation, which only proves the shitpost has had its intended effect.Refusing to abide by discursive norms can signal a refusal to abide by political norms. After Trump dubbed him “Low Energy” Jeb Bush during the 2016 Republican primaries, the more professorial younger brother of George W Bush made the mistake of arguing that he was, in fact, dynamic and busy, as if Trump were making a political claim that could be contested. But this was nicknaming as shitposting. Instead of clever metaphors, Trump’s nicknames are low-effort direct literalisms. From “Little Marco” Rubio to “No Talent” Jimmy Kimmel, their purpose is not to make a substantive claim or offer an accurate description of reality, but to titillate allies and bait enemies.Unencumbered by the establishment strategists who urged decorum during his first administration, Trump has elevated shitposting to a national strategy in his second term. Two days before the Walk of Fame announcement, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) posted a video of masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents hauling civilians into unmarked vans, cut to the opening credits of the Pokémon television series. As the theme song’s refrain has it: “Gotta Catch ’Em All”.On 4chan, home to the small but significant crossover of anime fans and the extreme right, posters debated whether the video was “based” (internet slang meaning authentically cool and irreverent) or “cringe” (shamefully straining for the approval the “based” attain with ease). But the real target audience was liberals outraged not only by state violence but by its shameless public celebration. If the right dominates meme culture, it is less because the “left can’t meme” than because it is far easier to “own the libs” who remain committed to rational political discourse. Where liberals seek earnest debate, the shitpost offers a polemic without a point, an opportunity to indulge in cruelty.At best, shitposts function as satire. The hopecore genre on TikTok combines motivational speeches with slideshows of mountain lakes and island sunsets over a soundtrack of atmospheric strings and lo-fi guitar scales. Hopeless core shitposts adopt the same format but with comedically clumsy speeches that render the inspirational slideshow absurd, mocking the vacuousness of online inspo culture. A day after the Pokémon shitpost, the DHS turned hopeless core satire into a schoolyard taunt, posting a clip of podcast bro Theo Von saying, in his trademark laconic style, “Heard you got deported dude – bye” followed by Ice arrest videos cut to a soundtrack of reverb-soaked introspective guitar scales. The DHS deleted the post over Von’s objections, but just as “Low Energy” Jeb’s protests guaranteed his nickname would stick, Von’s complaint only attracted more attention to the video.In recent days, the vice president, JD Vance, has called one prominent liberal pundit a “dipshit” and told critics to “go straight to hell”. Vance is too much of a try-hard to succeed as a shitposter, but his comments revel in the chaos shitposting creates. This chaos can have dire consequences. The 2019 Christchurch mosque shooter described his attack as moving from shitposting to effort posting, by which he meant from trolling to taking meaningful action. But political violence itself has begun taking the form of the shitpost. Charlie Kirk’s assassin inscribed a furry meme to bait newscasters into reading it aloud, and friends of the Dallas ICE facility shooter described him as an “edgelord” and speculated that he signed a bullet “anti-Ice” as an irony-poisoned provocation. Liberal encomiums to civil discourse can feel pious, but as shitposting stretches public decorum to breaking point, what remains is an incoherent politics of cruelty that licenses outrage for its own sake.

      Robert Topinka is a reader in digital media and rhetoric at Birkbeck, University of London More

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      Democrats finally have some leverage in the shutdown fight. They should use it | Robert Reich

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      The United States government is officially closed.Starting on Wednesday at 12.01am Washington time, the federal government ran out of money.Agencies and departments designed to protect consumers, workers and investors are now officially closed, as are national parks and museums.Most federal workers are not being paid – as many as 750,000 could be furloughed – including those who are required to remain on the job, like air-traffic controllers or members of the US military.So-called “mandatory” spending, including Social Security and Medicare payments, are continuing, although checks could be delayed. The construction of Trump’s new White House ballroom won’t be affected.Shutdowns are symptoms of a government off the rails.I’ve been directly involved in two, one when I was secretary of labor. It’s hard for me to describe the fear, frustration and chaos that ensued. I recall spending the first day consoling employees – many in tears as they headed out the door.There have been eight shutdowns since 1990. Trump has now presided over four.But this shutdown is different.For one thing, it’s the consequence of a decision, made in July by Trump and Senate Republicans, to pass Trump’s gigantic “big beautiful bill” (which I prefer to term “the big ugly” bill) without any Democratic votes.They could do that because of an arcane Senate procedure called “reconciliation”, which allowed the big ugly to get through with just 51 votes rather than the normal 60 required to overcome a filibuster.The final tally was a squeaker. All Senate Democrats opposed the legislation. When three Senate Republicans joined them, JD Vance was called in to break a tie. Some Republicans bragged that they didn’t need a single Democrat.The big ugly fundamentally altered the priorities of the United States government. It cut about $1tn from healthcare programs, including Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, meaning that health insurance premiums for tens of millions of Americans will soar starting in January.The big ugly also cut nutrition assistance and environmental protection, while bulking up immigration enforcement and cutting the taxes of wealthy Americans and big corporations.Trump and Senate Republicans didn’t need a single Democrat then. But this time, Republicans couldn’t use the arcane reconciliation process to pass a bill to keep the government going.Now they needed Senate Democratic votes.Yet keeping the government going meant keeping all the priorities included in the big ugly bill that all Senate Democrats opposed.Which is why Senate Democrats refused to sign on unless most of the big ugly’s cuts to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act were restored, so health insurance premiums won’t soar next year.Even if Senate Democrats had obtained that concession, the Republican bill to keep the government going would retain all the tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations contained in the big ugly, along with all the cuts in nutrition assistance, and all the increased funding for immigration enforcement.There’s a deeper irony here.As a practical matter, the US government has been “shut down” for more than eight months, since Trump took office this second time.Trump and the sycophants surrounding him, such as Russell Vought, the director of the office of management and budget, and, before him, Elon Musk, have had no compunction about shutting down parts of the government they don’t like – such as USAID.They’ve also moved to fire, furlough or extend buyouts to hundreds of thousands of federal employees doing work they don’t value, such as those working at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.They’ve impounded appropriations from Congress for activities they oppose, ranging across the entire federal government.On the first day of the shutdown, Vought announced that the administration was freezing $18bn that Congress had appropriated for funding infrastructure in New York City (home to the Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer and the House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries).All of this is illegal, but it seems unlikely that courts will act soon enough to prevent the administration from harming vast numbers of Americans.Vought threatened to permanently fire more federal employees if the Democrats didn’t vote to continue funding the government. But nothing stopped Vought from doing it before the shutdown, and the shutdown presents no greater opportunity for him to do so.In fact, the eagerness of Trump and his lapdogs over the last eight months to disregard the will of Congress and close whatever they want of the government offers another reason why Democrats shouldn’t have caved in.Had Democrats voted to keep the government going, what guarantee would they have had that Trump would in fact keep the government going?Democrats finally have some bargaining leverage. They should use it.If tens of millions of Americans lose their health insurance starting in January because they can no longer afford to pay sky-high premiums, Trump and his Republicans will be blamed.It would be Trump’s and his Republicans fault anyway – it’s part of their big ugly bill – but this way, in the fight over whether to reopen the government, Americans will have a chance to see Democrats standing up for them.

      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist and his newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com. His new book, Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America, is out now More

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      American democracy might not survive another year – is Europe ready for that? | Alexander Hurst

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      Fascism is supposed to look a certain way: black-clad, uniformed, synchronised and menacing. It is not supposed to look like an overweight president who can’t pronounce acetaminophen and who bumbles, for a full minute, about how he would have renovated the UN’s New York headquarters with marble floors, rather than a terrazzo. But as Umberto Eco remarked in his timeless essay on identifying the eternal nature of fascism: “Life is not that simple. Ur-Fascism can come back under the most innocent of disguises.”Historians, scholars and even some insiders from the first Trump administration have seen through the comedic quality of the disguise. They appear to have seen in Donald Trump himself and those around him, Eco’s core criteria: the call to tradition and the rejection of reason, the fear of difference, the hostility towards disagreement, the ressentiment, the machismo, the degradation of language into newspeak, the cult of a “strong” leader. Almost a year ago, the historian Robert Paxton, in explaining why he had changed his mind about employing the word to describe Trumpism, remarked: “It’s bubbling up from below in very worrisome ways, and that’s very much like the original fascisms. It’s the real thing. It really is.”Since then, the Trump administration has deployed the US military and National Guard to cities against the will of their state governors. It has put pressure on state legislatures to disenfranchise opposition voters in extraordinary ways, and floated the idea of disenfranchising all voters residing outside the US by ending mail-in voting. It has used the power of the state to censor books, bully the media and “cancel” comedians who regularly make fun of Trump. It has seized executive power in alarming and potentially illegal ways, including the use of tariffs, immigration policy and targeted exemptions to generate subservience among powerful corporate actors.An over-fixation on whether actions are legal or not misses the forest for the trees: constitutionality is, practically speaking, whatever the supreme court decides. If the supreme court acquiesces to fundamental changes in the nature of what the US is, that is merely one more sign of how deep the rot goes. And from concrete policy to the decision to publicly venerate the Confederacy, the intended direction of travel is clear.The disguise dropped a little bit more, in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s murder – one more tragic datapoint in the merging of the US’s epidemic of gun violence and its growing political violence. At his strange funeral-rally-spectacle, Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, gave a speech dripping with everything Eco sought to warn us against, raging against a diffuse “they” who “cannot conceive of the army they have arisen in all of us”. “You are nothing,” Miller continued. “You have nothing. You are wickedness. You are jealousy. You are envy. You are hatred. You are nothing. You can build nothing. You can produce nothing.”In the past year, as Trump and those behind him have dismantled the institutions of US democracy with incredible speed, the European conversation finally moved from denial to attempts at bargaining, with some acceptance of US disengagement and disinterest going forward. But there has been almost no space for a high-level, public conversation about what to do when the US government is, for the foreseeable future, in the hands of actors hostile to the EU’s basic raison d’être and its values.I understand why European leaders don’t want to have this conversation openly with voters. They fear that alienating Trump, even slightly, will lead him to drop US support for Ukraine. The cleverest think they can buy time by flattering Trump, manipulating him just long enough to find a better footing, while the blindly optimistic look to the 2026 midterms as an inflection point, and some sort of “return to normal”. But the midterms will not save us. As the Democrats’ elections attorney Marc Elias laid out in detail for The New Yorker, the 2026 elections will probably not be wholly free and fair, and even where they are, Trump’s prior history of insurrection indicates that the results very well might not be honoured. And Trump is already laying the groundwork to drop Ukraine fully into Europe’s lap.During the first Trump administration, we heard, ad nauseam, that he should be taken seriously, but not literally. It was a mistake then, and it’s a mistake now. When Trump says, “I hate my opponent and I don’t want the best for them”, we in Europe (“a foe,” remember?) should take him literally. The radical authoritarian agenda the Trump administration is pursuing domestically matters to Europe. A US with a new, masked, secret immigration police with nearly unlimited funds, whose “red” government deploys its military to “blue” cities, and uses the criminal justice system to exact retribution on political opponents at the president’s behest – in short, the end of the rule of law – necessarily affects European democracy. Not least, because the Trump administration is engaged in a culture war against Europe, promoting forces that seek to destroy it as it currently exists.European voters are out in front of the politicians on this one. The spring Eurobarometer survey showed that large majorities of citizens want the EU to protect them from crises and security risks, think the EU needs more financial means to do so, and support that new funding coming from the EU as a whole, rather than member states alone. A survey of the EU’s five biggest states, France, Germany, Spain, Italy and Poland, found that 52% think the EU was humiliated in the recent trade deal with the US. They blame the commission for not “defending” Europe more ardently, with a strong minority of 39% wanting the bloc to become more “oppositional” to Trump.Timothy Garton Ash recently gave Americans 400 days to save their democracy. As an American, I don’t think the country has that long. As Europeans, we should assume that it does not.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionEuropeans are ready for an honest conversation about the challenge Europe faces from Trump – the same way they’ve solidified in the face of aggression from Vladimir Putin. The danger lies in Europe’s leaders fudging, hesitating and avoiding this conversation. If they cannot lead with candour, voters will conclude that European democracy and its institutions are too weak to withstand the pincer move that is building against it.

      Alexander Hurst is a Guardian Europe columnist More

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      White House plays racist deepfake video of Democratic leaders on loop

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      As the Trump administration insists it is serious about negotiating an end to the government shutdown, a pair of racist deepfake videos mocking Democratic leaders played on a loop in the White House briefing room for hours on Wednesday.The videos, posted by Trump on his social media platform on Monday, use fabricated audio to make it seem as if the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, called Democrats “woke pieces of shit”, and showed the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, with a fake mustache and sombrero.JD Vance, the US vice-president, made light of the tactic during a rare appearance in the briefing room. “I think it’s funny. The president’s joking and we’re having a good time. You can negotiate in good faith while also making a little bit of fun at some of the absurdities of the Democrats’ positions, and even poking some fun at the absurdity of themselves.“I’ll tell Hakeem Jeffries right now, I make the solemn promise to you that if you help us reopen the government, the sombrero memes will stop. I’ve talked to the president of the United States about that.”Jeffries has denounced the memes as racist. Vance retorted: “I honestly don’t even know what that means. Like, is he a Mexican American that is offended by having a sombrero meme?”The clips, both set to Mexican mariachi music, are intended to drive home the administration’s false claim that the Democrats are demanding health insurance subsidies for unauthorized immigrants as a condition for funding the federal government.In fact, Democrats want to ensure that funding is provided to Americans who rely on Affordable Care Act subsidies to purchase health insurance. Undocumented immigrants are not eligible for those subsidies.Democrats have also asked to reverse a provision of the Republican tax and spending bill that stripped health benefits of lawfully present immigrants, including refugees with Temporary Protected Status and non-citizens who were brought to the US as children, who were previously eligible for federal benefits under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) designation.The fabricated words put in Schumer’s mouth are presented as an admission by the Democratic senator of a far-right conspiracy theory promoted by white supremacists, that Democrats want to give government benefits to undocumented immigrants from Latin America as part of a plot to replace white voters with immigrants who will then vote for Democrats.The so-called “great replacement” theory has been cited by a number of shooters who have carried out racist mass shootings, including the gunman who killed 23 people at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, in 2019, and another who murdered 11 congregants in the the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018. The conspiracy theory also prompted torch-carrying, white supremacist marchers at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 to chant “Jews will not replace us.”After Jeffries called the first video racist, Trump posted a second clip, of the Democrat calling the fabricated video “disgusting”, in which the sombrero and mustache are again added to the congressman, and a mariachi band featuring four versions of Trump plays in the background.David Smith, Guardian Washington bureau chief, contributed reporting More