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      Republican Iowa congresswoman booed at town hall over Trump policies

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      Constituents booed Republican congresswoman Ashley Hinson at a town hall in her Iowa district Wednesday when she praised Donald Trump’s tax-and-spending plan and spoke approvingly of the “department of government efficiency’s” (Doge) efforts to downsize the federal government.It was the latest instance of a Republican lawmaker being taken to task at a public event over their support for Trump’s policies, and came days after Hinson had voted for the the One Big Beautiful bill when it passed the House of Representatives. The wide-ranging bill will extend tax cuts enacted during Trump’s first term, create new deductions for tips, overtime and car loan interest and fund mass deportations, while slashing federal social safety net programs.Hinson drew a chorus of boos when she told the audience in the town of Decorah that she was “proud” to have voted for the bill. “This is your time,” she said over the din. A similar outburst occurred from the audience at mention of Doge, which Hinson said she had received positive feedback about during an event elsewhere.The crowd broke into cheers when a constituent who identified himself as Steve Peterson referred to Trump’s acceptance of a jet from Qatar and promotion of his own memecoin and asked Hinson: “Could you help me understand why you are silent about this corruption?”“I think it’s really unfair to imply that I like to see corruption in Washington DC. I reject that premise wholeheartedly. I am here answering your questions in public because I care about transparency,” replied Hinson, who added that the jet was acquired from Qatar “ethically”.First elected in 2020, Hinson’s north-east Iowa district leans towards the GOP, but has been represented by Democrats in the past. At least one attendee at her town hall identified herself as a Democrat, and the county party noted that Hinson would be holding events in the district on Wednesday.Similar scenes have played out at town halls held by Republican lawmakers in Iowa and elsewhere. The state’s long-serving senator Chuck Grassley was grilled last month by constituents over his support for Trump’s hardline immigration policies, while in Georgia, police used a stun gun on two people during a town hall held by Marjorie Taylor Greene, a fervent Trump supporter.Democrats hope the public discontent is a sign that voters are ready to sweep them back into the majority in the House next year, and the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, which coordinates House campaigns, reportedly advised lawmakers to stop holding town halls.Hinson was not alone in facing questions over her support for Trump’s Big Beautiful bill, which passed the House narrowly and awaits consideration by Senate Republicans.On Tuesday, Mike Flood, a Republican congressman, faced a raucous crowd at his town hall in Seward, Nebraska, and admitted he was not aware that the bill contained language that could prevent federal judges from enforcing injunctions or restraining orders, several of which have been issued against Trump administration policies.“I am not going to hide the truth. This provision was unknown to me when I voted for that bill,” said Flood, who added he had expressed his disapproval to senators. More

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      Musk is pivoting from DC and Doge’s failures – and wants investors to know

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      Elon Musk really wants the public – and investors – to know that he’s leaving Washington DC behind.In a series of interviews and social media posts this week, Musk has criticized Donald Trump’s marquee tax bill and emphasized his recommitment to leading SpaceX, Tesla and the artificial intelligence company xAI. The world’s richest person claimed that he was back to working around the clock at his companies – to the point of sleeping in conference rooms and factory offices once again.Musk has been telegraphing a pivot back to his businesses for months, but in recent appearances, he has repeatedly distanced himself from his unpopular stint in Washington while proclaiming that his new sole focus is his tech empire. It is a drastic turnaround for Musk, who spent most of the last year constantly at Trump’s side promoting far-right ideology online, appearing on stage at political rallies and pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into the Republican party.The shift, which comes amid public and investor backlash against Musk’s political ambitions, was apparent this week as SpaceX launched and lost control of its Starship prototype rocket. Musk gave a round of media appearances to the Washington Post, Ars Technica, CBS News Sunday Morning and a YouTube aerospace influencer, all of which featured him emphasizing his dedication to his companies or attempting to explain away the shortcomings of his heavily criticized “department of government efficiency”.“The federal bureaucracy situation is much worse than I realized,” Musk told the Washington Post on Tuesday. “I thought there were problems, but it sure is an uphill battle trying to improve things in DC, to say the least.”Musk additionally told the Post that Doge had been turned into a “whipping boy” that was criticized for anything that went wrong under the Trump administration. In Ars Technica, Musk admitted: “I think I probably did spend a bit too much time on politics.”Bashing Trump’s tax billThe turn from Trump’s self-appointed “first buddy” back to the familiar territory of space travel and tech has taken place as Doge faces numerous legal challenges and remains widely unpopular.Although Musk successfully seeded the government with his allies and helped gut regulators that would oversee his companies, Doge’s central promise to slash $2tn worth of fraud and waste has been an obvious failure. Doge’s cuts, while devastating to government services, humanitarian aid and the federal workforce, have amounted to little in terms of actual budget savings. Much of the savings it has claimed on its “wall of receipts” have also turned out to be false, including the cancellation of an $8bn contract that in reality was an $8m contract.Musk’s answer for Doge’s shortcomings appears to be casting the blame on some of his familiar foes: politicians and bureaucrats. In doing so, however, he has increasingly split with the Republican party – though notably stopped short of any criticism of Trump himself.Musk’s split with Congressional Republicans has been starkest on X, the social media platform that he owns. Musk’s posts have fully leaned into the narrative that Doge’s actions were successfully reducing waste, but that Congress hamstrung its operations through actions like approving Trump’s tax bill, which is expected to add $2.3tn to the deficit.Musk told CBS that he was “disappointed to see the massive spending bill, which increases the budget deficit …  and undermines the work that the Doge team is doing”.Now, Musk claims, he will focus on saving humanity through technologies like self-driving cars, interplanetary rockets and humanoid robots – exactly the products his companies need investors to believe in.“I have come to the perhaps obvious conclusion that accelerating GDP growth is essential,” Musk posted on Friday in response to a thread calling the GOP bill “disastrous” and demanding term limits on Congress. “Doge has and will do great work to postpone the day of bankruptcy of America, but the profligacy of government means that only radical improvements in productivity can save our country.”In a separate exchange, he replied to a conversation between two users with large followings who routinely praise his leadership and business acumen.“I think Elon is realizing that, despite the promises made by the new administration and a Republican-controlled Congress – and all the campaign platforms they ran on – the current incentive structures and entrenched special interests in government make it nearly impossible to enact any meaningful, long-term changes to address the many big issues we face,” one pro-Musk account posted.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“DOGE has done incredible work, but the GOP has failed to actually implement any of the cuts,” another prominent Musk-booster replied.“Yeah (Sigh),” Musk responded to the thread.Musk goes back to selling the futureWhat became clear throughout Musk’s time in Washington was that the public did not enjoy seeing him and many in the Trump administration did not like working with him. Numerous polls showed his overall popularity declining even as people supported the premise of reducing government inefficiencies. Musk’s prominent involvement in a Wisconsin supreme court election intensified opposition to his influence, while international demonstrations made him the face of the administration. Musk also found few friends within the Trump administration, with report after report of heated clashes with senior officials and some Republican political operatives warning his brand had become too toxic for the party.The pushback against Musk affected his businesses, causing Tesla sales to plummet to the point that the company’s board reportedly began considering replacing him as CEO. While Musk denied those claims, in recent weeks he has very loudly reaffirmed his dedication to leading his businesses.“Back to spending 24/7 at work and sleeping in conference/server/factory rooms,” he posted on Saturday. “I must be super focused on 𝕏/xAI and Tesla (plus Starship launch next week), as we have critical technologies rolling out.”While only a few weeks ago Musk’s posts on X were a nonstop stream of invectives against Democrats, fringe theories about immigration and demands to gut the judicial system, his online output has also changed. His posts this week have been heavily focused on SpaceX’s ambitions to go to Mars and Tesla’s self-driving car program, stopping only occasionally to promote attacks against “the woke mind virus” or feud with the government of his native South Africa.As Musk moves away from full-time politics and tries to win back investor confidence, he has also doubled down on his habit of making grandiose predictions of how his technologies will transform the world. Echoing a long list of previous claims that have missed deadlines and so far failed to come to fruition, he has promoted new endeavors like Tesla’s humanoid robots as crucial to the future of civilization.“Once you have humanoid robots, the actual economic output potential is tremendous. It’s really unlimited,” Musk said on stage at the Saudi-US Investment Forum on 13 May. “Potentially, we could have an economy 10 times the size of the global economy, where no one wants for anything.”Rather than dwell on a year of missed targets and intense backlash, Musk is back to selling a future where anything is possible. More

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      Trump confirms he’ll be negotiating his signature tax bill after Musk criticism

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      Donald Trump said he will be negotiating his signature tax bill after Elon Musk publicly criticised the president’s spending plan, saying it “undermines” cost-cutting efforts that the world’s richest man once spearheaded.Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Trump acknowledged the bill “needs to get a lot of support” in Congress, adding “we have to get a lot of votes”. The president also said he was “not happy about certain aspects of it, but I’m thrilled by other aspects of it” and confirmed he would be negotiating the legislation.The remarks come after Musk said he was “disappointed to see the massive spending bill, which increases the budget deficit … and undermines the work that the Doge team is doing” in comments made to CBS as part of a longer interview due to run on its Sunday morning programme this weekend.Musk had been leading the “department of government efficiency” (Doge) since January, which was given the task of cutting state spending. He later announced in April he would be stepping back from the Trump administration after Tesla’s earnings plunged, and spending millions of dollars in a supreme court race that his Republican candidate ultimately lost.Musk now appears to be hitting out at Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which was narrowly approved last week by the House of Representatives.The bill pushes ahead with a number of Trump’s campaign promises, including extending tax cuts for individuals and corporations and ending clean energy incentives enacted under Joe Biden.It also involves about $1tn (£741bn) in cuts to benefits aimed at supporting struggling households, including a health insurance scheme for low-income families, Medicaid, and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) food stamps.However, the bill also funds the construction of a wall along the border with Mexico, as well as staff and facilities for mass deportations of undocumented immigrants. Even when taking cuts into account, the bill is expected to add about $2.3tn to the deficit, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.Musk told CBS: “I think a bill can be big, or it can be beautiful. But I don’t know if it can be both. My personal opinion.”The comments will fuel rumours of a growing rift between the billionaire and the US president, whom Musk helped bankroll last year. In total, Musk’s super political action committee donated $200m to Trump’s presidential campaign before the November election, which many credit with helping to return Trump to the White House.Musk also has business interests at stake, with Trump’s bill due to end a $7,500 tax credit for electric vehicles and to impose a $250 annual registration fee for owners. The Tesla boss has previously called for an end to those incentives, although that was months before the EV maker’s earnings started to wobble.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionLast month, Tesla reported a 71% drop in first-quarter profits to $409m, compared with $1.39bn in the same period in 2024. Tesla’s stock has also suffered, with the company losing about a quarter of its market value since Musk took a top spot in Trump’s administration at the start of the year.Musk’s criticism is likely to fuel opposition by hardline Republicans, who threatened to block Trump’s legislation as it passes through the US senate unless the president rolls out deeper cuts that would reduce the national debt. One key senator, Rand Paul from Kentucky, told Fox News Sunday that the bill’s cuts were “wimpy and anaemic” and would “explode the debt”.However, Trump has already been treading on politically sensitive territory by supporting a bill that makes big cuts to programmes he promised to protect. He pledged multiple times on the campaign trail last year that he would not touch basic safety nets, including Medicaid.Some of the president’s “make America great again” supporters, including the former White House strategist Steve Bannon, have also warned against such a move, with one Missouri senator, Josh Hawley, saying that cutting health insurance for the working poor would be “politically suicidal”. More

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      Family of four-year-old who would ‘die within days’ fighting deportation from US to Mexico

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      The family of a four-year-old girl who is receiving life-saving treatment in the United States are fighting against deportation, as her medical team warns she will likely die “within days” if forced to return to Mexico.Deysi Vargas, her husband and their daughter – whom lawyers identified by the pseudonym Sofia – came to the US in 2023, receiving permission to enter the US on humanitarian grounds to seek medical care. Sofia suffers from short bowel syndrome, requiring specialized care that includes IV treatments for 14 hours a day. She has seen significant improvement since arriving in the US and obtaining care at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, her mother said.But in April, Donald Trump’s administration terminated the family’s legal status and ordered them to self-deport, which would have grave consequences for Sofia.“Sofia’s doctors have been clear she will die within days,” Gina Amato, the directing attorney of Public Counsel’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, which is representing the family. “Deporting this family under these conditions is not only unlawful – it constitutes a moral failure that violates the basic tents of humanity and decency.”View image in fullscreenThe family’s attorney has sought to have the administration reverse its decision and restore humanitarian parole, a temporary status granted to people on urgent humanitarian grounds, citing Sofia’s dire need for care. The family has not received a response.The legal status the family previously received saved Sofia’s life, her mother said at a press conference on Wednesday, as her curly-haired daughter sat nearby, feet dangling off a chair while she played with stickers. Sofia was born with her condition and, while in Mexico, was hospitalized constantly and did not improve, Vargas said.“Now with the help she’s received in the United States, my daughter has an opportunity to get out of the hospital, know the world and live like a normal girl of four years,” she said through a translator.Sofia currently receives nutrition intravenously as well as through a feeding tube, Amato said, but that treatment is not available abroad because the equipment cannot be taken outside the US. While her condition has significantly improved, Sofia cannot yet survive without the treatment she receives from the hospital, her mother said.Humanitarian parole was made for people like Vargas and Sofia, the family’s lawyer, Rebecca Brown, said, adding that she came to the US legally – applying to enter the country and waiting until her application was approved before entering. If the government conducted an individualized assessment, as required by law, they would see the need for Sofia to remain in the US, Brown said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAmato argued the case was a symbol of “the recklessness of this administration’s deportation policies”.“To suddenly yank away that welcome mat, take away Sofia’s lifesaving care and quite literally risk her life is a cruel betrayal of our nation’s values and an affront to our shared humanity,” Amato said, adding that the government’s policies are endangering many immigrants seeking refuge. “These are people coming to us for protection and instead we’re sending them to die.” More

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      Trump is stretching his pardon power – to the delight of his Maga acolytes

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      Donald Trump pardoned the hosts of a reality TV show convicted of defrauding banks to fund their luxurious lifestyle in the same week that he pardoned a sheriff who accepted bribes from businessman in order to make them into law enforcement officers.The latest pardons build on Trump’s pattern of granting clemency to people who align with him politically and who he believes were part of a justice system weaponized against conservatives, particularly Trump supporters.Trump, who was himself prosecuted by the federal government and state governments, is stretching US presidential pardon power beyond its norms, much to the delight of his Make America Great Again (Maga) acolytes and conservative lawmakers, who previously took former president Joe Biden to task for his last-minute pardons of his family members and allies.Trump started his second term with a massive act of clemency: granting pardons and commutations for all those convicted for their roles in the January 6 riot at the US Capitol, including some who had engaged in violence that day.Since then, he has pardoned a host of people convicted of fraud or public corruption, as well as a group of anti-abortion protesters who blocked access to a clinic.Those pardoned include the former governor of Illinois who now calls himself a “Trump-ocrat”, the founder of the Silk Road darknet online market, two police officers convicted for their roles in the death and coverup of a young woman, a former state senator in Tennessee, the founder of an electric vehicle company, a nursing home executive and a woman who collected money for a police memorial who used the money for herself instead.On Wednesday, he pardoned a labor union leader who pleaded guilty to failing to report gifts from an advertising firm. James Callahan was general president of the International Union of Operating Engineers when he accepted at least $315,000 in tickets to sporting events and concerts and other amenities from a company that the union used to place ads.The moves to pardon people convicted of fraud and public corruption charges shows how the justice department is de-emphasizing these kinds of cases, NBC News reports. The pardons come alongside dropped public corruption cases, most notably one against New York City’s mayor, Eric Adams.“Pardoning a sheriff who took cash for deputy badges is just the latest in a string of actions this president has taken to undermine any effort to hold officials accountable to the public they are sworn to serve,” Stacey Young, a former justice department official, told NBC News.In several instances, the convicted or their attorneys made appeals to Trump by saying they were politically prosecuted for their views.The lawyer for Julie and Todd Chrisley, the reality TV stars pardoned on Wednesday, had put together binders to show the Trump administration why his clients should be granted clemency, the New York Times reported. Alex Little wrote in these documents that the Chrisleys’ conviction “exemplifies the weaponization of justice against conservatives and public figures, eroding basic constitutional protections”.Paul Walczak, a former nursing home executive, was pardoned by Trump for misusing employee tax money to fund his lifestyle, after his mother had attended a $1m per person fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago in April, the New York Times reported. In his bid for a pardon, he had brought up his mother’s political connections, saying her role in raising money for Trump and boosting conservative causes motivated the Biden justice department to go after him.The office of the pardon attorney is typically run by a career appointee, not a political appointee chosen for their adherence to the president’s agenda. Presidents at times go outside the pardon attorney’s office for the less routine pardons, often for their political allies, as Biden did when he pardoned his family members. There are criteria the justice department would follow when considering a typical pardon application, including showing rehabilitation and remorse, though the president decides whether to act on their recommendation.Liz Oyer, the former pardon attorney who was fired for refusing to recommend gun rights restoration for actor Mel Gibson, told Newshour that Trump’s use of pardons are “not at all how pardons normally work”. His pardons show a pattern of people who have shown political loyalty or who are wealthy and well-connected, Oyer said.“In the current administration, there is no path forward that we know of right now for ordinary people to be considered for clemency,” Oyer told Newshour. “And the other thing that’s really striking and shocking is that the president is granting clemency to individuals who owe tens of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars in restitution and fines and other financial penalties. And it’s never been done by any other president.”Now, though, a political appointee is in charge. Ed Martin, the recently appointed pardon attorney, is a staunch Trump ally who advocated for pardons for January 6 defendants before he took a role in the administration. Trump also appointed a “pardon czar” in February who will recommend people for clemency.Politico reported this week that, in Martin’s first week on the job, he was reviewing an application for a full pardon for Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the far-right militia group who received a commutation from Trump as part of the January 6 clemency, but not a full pardon. Martin has said he will investigate Biden’s preemptive pardons issued just before he left office.Some in Maga world are now pushing for federal pardons for Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis police officer convicted in the killing of George Floyd, and Tina Peters, a Colorado election clerk convicted for allowing unauthorized access to election machines as part of a quest to find voter fraud. Both of these cases involve state crimes, Peters exclusively, but have become cause celebre for Trump allies, who want to see the administration pressure for their release. More

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      Will Donald Trump defy the US supreme court? | Steven Greenhouse

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      With the most authoritarian and lawless president in history sitting in the White House, the US supreme court is no doubt worried about looking weak in one of two ways. First, the court fears it will look pathetically weak if it becomes the first supreme court in history to have a president defy its rulings in a wholesale way. With that in mind, the court seems to be taking pains to avoid provoking Donald Trump’s defiance – it has issued several decisions upholding the president’s actions while in other cases, it has given him lots of wiggle room even as it objected to his administration’s moves.Then there’s the court’s second, big worry – that it will look pathetically weak if it doesn’t stand up to the most authoritarian president in US history. Many legal experts criticize the court for not standing up more to Trump, even though he has brazenly attacked the court and many lower-court judges, has defied several judicial orders and has, according to numerous judges, repeatedly violated the law – whether by deporting immigrants without due process or by freezing funds approved by Congress.The court’s six conservative justices have let themselves seem like Trump’s chumps because they’ve often bowed to him instead of standing up and ruling against him. The foremost example is last year’s supreme court ruling giving Trump astonishingly broad immunity from criminal prosecution.The image-conscious chief justice, John Roberts, and his court have to decide which of two paths to take. One path – which the court’s conservative supermajority seems to be following – is to issue pro-Trump rulings to avoid inciting his ire and defiance. That approach might spare the court the Maga movement’s anger, but historians will look dimly on the court for bending in Trump’s favor – they’ll accuse it of complicity and sacrificing principle for not blocking Trump moves that, many legal experts, conservative, centrist and progressive, say, violate federal law and the constitution.The court can choose a more courageous path: stick to principle and not shrink from ruling against Trump. That might spur the bull-headed president to defy the court, but under that scenario, historians would praise the justices for upholding the law and the court’s constitutional role and for not letting themselves become stooges for a power-hungry president.The Roberts court has given us some hope, but not much. In a surprise ruling at 1am one April night, it seemed to develop a few inches of backbone by ordering the Trump administration not to deport several dozen Venezuelan immigrants to El Salvador without first giving them due process.That was a promising ruling, but on the other side of the ledger, the court has often bowed to Trump, for instance, by overturning a lower court ruling and letting Trump fire 16,000 probationary federal employees and by letting his administration suspend $65m in teacher-training grants. Moreover, the rightwing supermajority did Trump a big favor by letting him provisionally remove the heads of two independent agencies, the National Labor Relations Board and the Merit Systems Protections Board. That hurried ruling, made without full briefing or arguments, indicated that the court’s conservatives are eager to overturn a unanimous, 90-year-old supreme court decision that limits presidents’ ability to fire officials at independent agencies. In this way, the Roberts court is giving more power to our dangerously authoritarian president.Let’s not forget how weak the court has looked for failing to act firmly to assure the return of Kilmar Ábrego García, an immigrant from El Salvador who even Trump administration officials acknowledged was deported illegally. On 10 April, the court issued a wimpy decision that called on the Trump administration to “facilitate” Ábrego Garcia’s return – it stopped short of using the district court’s more muscular language to “effectuate” his return. More than six weeks have passed since the high court called on Trump to bring back Ábrego García, but Trump hasn’t done so. His administration has sidestepped outright defiance by pretending that it is seeking to facilitate Ábrego García’s return.Not only that, Trump has smeared the justices by saying: “THE SUPREME COURT WON’T ALLOW US TO GET CRIMINALS OUT OF OUR COUNTRY!” Trump has also savaged several federal district court judges, calling one a “radical left lunatic” and denouncing others as “MONSTERS WHO WANT OUR COUNTRY TO GO TO HELL”.With their hard-right ideology, the court’s supermajority evidently sympathizes with many of Trump’s moves and has blessed such moves far more often than many legal scholars would like. In doing so, the court has emboldened Trump to take even more actions that push – and often overstep – the boundaries of what is legal. In a worrisome development, the court has, at least thus far, shown surprisingly little concern about Trump’s defiance of district court judges’ orders and his authoritarian effort to assert his dominance over the two, other theoretically co-equal branches of government: the judiciary and Congress.For its own good and for the nation’s good, the supreme court needs to step up and do its utmost to stop Trump’s lawlessness and his unprecedented efforts to defy district court rulings and lash out against the judiciary. Trump has called for impeaching judges who ruled against him, and as his tirades against judges have increased, the number of judges who have received threats has soared.The court needs to issue some strong, clarion decisions that make clear to the nation that Trump has shown repeated contempt for the constitution, the rule of law and the judiciary. The justices should move quickly to issue an outrage-filled ruling that finds that Trump violated law firms’ free speech rights by punishing several firms for taking cases he didn’t like or employing lawyers he didn’t like. The justices should also move swiftly to issue a strong ruling in favor of Harvard University and against Trump’s vindictive assault – an assault that violated Harvard’s first amendment rights by seeking to suppress speech and ideas that Trump doesn’t like and by trying to dictate much of Harvard’s hiring, curriculum and admissions policies.The court should also issue a forceful ruling that demolishes Trump’s arguments that he can invoke the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members en masse without due process. The court should trumpet the absurdity of Trump’s claim that Venezuelan immigrants constitute an invasion force the way, for instance, British troops constituted an invasion force during the war of 1812.The court should also shoot down Trump’s efforts to gut federal agencies and freeze funding by making it emphatically clear that those efforts violate Congress’s article I spending power. The conservative supermajority should also rethink its intention to overturn the 1935 ruling that limits presidents’ ability to fire members of independent agencies. That ruling sought to ensure that those agencies didn’t become partisan puppets that do whatever a president wants – something that no one should want when the nation has such a vengeful and capricious president.With the Roberts court slated to issue a flood of rulings by early July, the justices have an important choice: to bend to Trump or to grow a real backbone. Does the Roberts court want to be remembered as cowardly enablers who helped the most authoritarian and lawless president in history consolidate power? Or do the justices want to be remembered as determined defenders who stood up to an authoritarian bully to protect our laws, our constitution and our democracy?

      Steven Greenhouse is a journalist and author focusing on labor and the workplace, as well as economic and legal issues More

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      How long will it be before Melania steps aside for MelanAI? | Arwa Mahdawi

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      I imagine students at the US Military Academy at West Point are trained to handle unexpected situations, but I’m not sure anyone could have prepared them for the bonkers speech Donald Trump delivered to graduates on Saturday. I wish I could point you to a government transcript, but the White House recently started removing official transcripts of the president’s public remarks, replacing them with curated videos instead. I imagine (just a hypothesis!) that this is to make Trump seem more coherent.One of the “highlights” of the disjointed ramble Trump delivered at West Point was his thoughts on trophy wives: “I must tell ya. A lot of trophy wives, doesn’t work out [sic],” he mused in the middle of an anecdote about a divorced real estate developer (not him). This has raised a few eyebrows; particularly as Michael Wolff’s 2018 book about Trump claimed the president used to boast that Melania was his “trophy wife.”I don’t know if Trump ever really thought that Melania was some sort of compliant accessory to be paraded around. If he did, I’m sure he’s now seen the error of his ways. Melania has made it clear to everyone that she is unbothered, unbossed, and entirely uninterested in pretending to care about either her husband or her role as first lady. It’s claimed that as of early May, Melania had spent fewer than 14 days at the White House. Trump is her useful idiot husband, she’s not his trophy wife.Melania is certainly collecting her own trophies, however. I’ve got to hand it to the woman: she’s mastered the art of making enormous amounts of money with the minimum amount of effort. Last year, she released what columnist Pamela Paul described as a “book-adjacent object” titled Melania, which one imagines she did not write herself. Last week, she announced that the audiobook was narrated with an AI-generated version of her voice. Now we’ve officially got an AI Melania voice, can it be long before we get a full-on MelanAI? A realistic AI-powered robot who does all the boring first lady things that Melania clearly hates doing – and doesn’t swat Trump’s hand away in public. More

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      Trump’s unfounded attack on Cyril Ramaphosa was an insult to all Africans | John Dramani Mahama

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      The meeting at the White House between Donald Trump and the South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, was, at its heart, about the preservation of essential historical truths. The US president’s claims of white genocide conflict with the actual racial persecution and massacres that took place during the two centuries of colonisation and nearly 50 years of apartheid in South Africa.It is not enough to be affronted by these claims, or to casually dismiss them as untruths. These statements are a clear example of how language can be leveraged to extend the effects of previous injustices. This mode of violence has long been used against Indigenous Africans. And it cannot simply be met with silence – not any more.The Kenyan writer Mzee Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o wrote: “Language conquest, unlike the military form, wherein the victor must subdue the whole population directly, is cheaper and more effective.”African nations learned long ago that their fates are inextricably linked. When it comes to interactions with the world beyond our continent, we are each other’s bellwether. In 1957, the year before my birth, Ghana became the first Black African country to free itself from colonialism. After the union jack had been lowered, our first prime minister, Dr Kwame Nkrumah, gave a speech in which he emphasised that, “our independence is meaningless unless it is linked up with the total liberation of Africa”.Shortly after, in 1960, was the Sharpeville massacre in South Africa, which resulted in 69 deaths and more than 100 wounded. In Ghana, thousands of miles away, we marched, we protested, we gave cover and shelter. A similar solidarity existed in sovereign nations across the continent. Why? Because people who looked like us were being subjugated, treated as second-class citizens, on their own ancestral land. We had fought our own versions of that same battle.I was 17 in June 1976, when the South African Soweto uprising took place. The now-iconic photo of a young man, Mbuyisa Makhubo, carrying the limp, 12-year-old body of Hector Pieterson, who had just been shot by the police, haunted me for years. It so deeply hurt me to think that I was free to dream of a future as this child was making the ultimate sacrifice for the freedom and future of his people. Hundreds of children were killed in that protest alone. It is their blood, and the blood of their forebears that nourishes the soil of South Africa.The racial persecution of Black South Africans was rooted in a system that was enshrined in law. It took worldwide participation through demonstrations, boycotts, divestments and sanctions to end apartheid so that all South Africans, regardless of skin colour, would be considered equal. Nevertheless, the effects of centuries-long oppression do not just disappear with the stroke of a pen, particularly when there has been no cogent plan of reparative justice.Despite making up less than 10% of the population, white South Africans control more than 70% of the nation’s wealth. Even now, there are a few places in South Africa where only Afrikaners are permitted to own property, live, and work. At the entrance to once such settlement, Kleinfontein, is an enormous bust of Hendrik Verwoerd, the former prime minister who is considered the architect of apartheid.Another separatist town, Orania, teaches only Afrikaans in its schools, has its own chamber of commerce, as well as its own currency, the ora, that is used strictly within its borders. It has been reported that inside the Orania Cultural History Museum there is a bust of every apartheid-era president except FW de Klerk, who initiated reforms that led to the repeal of apartheid laws.Both Kleinfontein and Orania are currently in existence, and they boast a peaceful lifestyle. Why had the America-bound Afrikaners not sought refuge in either of those places?Had the Black South Africans wanted to exact revenge on Afrikaners, surely, they would have done so decades ago when the pain of their previous circumstances was still fresh in their minds. What, at this point, is there to be gained by viciously killing and persecuting people you’d long ago forgiven?According to the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, half of the population of South Africa is under 29, born after the apartheid era and, presumably, committed to building and uplifting the “rainbow nation”. For what reason would they suddenly begin a genocide against white people?Ramaphosa was blindsided by Trump with those unfounded accusations and the accompanying display of images that were misrepresented – in one image, pictures of burials were actually from Congo. Trump refused to listen as Ramaphosa insisted that his government did not have any official policies of discrimination.“If you want to destroy a people,” Archbishop Desmond Tutu once said, “you destroy their memory, you destroy their history.” Memory, however, is long. It courses through the veins of our children and their children. The terror of what we have experienced is stored at a cellular level. As long as those stories are told, at home, in church, at the beauty and barber shop, in schools, in literature, music and on the screen, then we, the sons and daughters of Africa, will continue to know what we’ve survived and who we are.Mzee Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o wrote: “The process of knowing is simple. No matter where you want to journey, you start from where you are.” We journey forward with a history that cannot be erased, and will not be erased. Not while there are children dying in the mines of the Congo, and rape is being used as a weapon of war in Sudan.Our world is in real crisis; real refugees are being turned away from the borders of the wealthiest nations, real babies will die because international aid has been abruptly stopped, and real genocides are happening in real time all across the globe.

      John Dramani Mahama is president of the Republic of Ghana

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