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      Trump’s ambush of South Africa’s president shows how low the US has fallen | Justice Malala

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      Donald Trump should really try harder.When the US president unexpectedly and dramatically dimmed the lights inside the Oval Office on Wednesday and played a video clip of the alleged burial site of white victims of “genocide”, he meant to embarrass and humiliate his guest, Cyril Ramaphosa, the president of South Africa. It was his “gotcha!” moment after four months of relentless social media attacks, executive orders, boycotts, and threats of economic and diplomatic sanctions.As the video played, a smug Trump claimed it was proof of “white genocide” in South Africa and mumbled: “It’s a terrible sight, never seen anything like it.”It was all lies. The crosses in the video did not mark actual graves. It was a memorial made in September 2020 after two white people were killed on their farm a week earlier. The crosses were meant to represent farmers who had been killed over the years. The idea that it is “genocide” has been debunked so many times over the past 10 years that it is extraordinary that the US president is not ashamed to repeat it in public. The state department under Trump released a report in late 2020 pointing out that, according to official South African statistics for the 2018-2019 period, “farm killings represented only 0.2 percent of all killings in the country (47 of 21,022)”.So here we have a man who has the mighty US state department, the wily Central Intelligence Agency and numerous other resources at his beck and call to help him discern the truth, relying on a badly made propaganda video sourced from a racist, rightwing, anonymous South African X account. Instead of embarrassing Ramaphosa on Wednesday, Trump merely illustrated just how low the US has fallen.His poorly produced Oval Office show, taken with the 28 February attempt to humiliate Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, demonstrates that the country is now run by a man so steeped in discredited online conspiracy theories, so uncritical in his thinking, so poor in his grasp of global affairs, so careless in his exercise of power, that it is incredible that he is one of the most powerful figures in the world today. Such a figure’s power heralds instability and even danger for the world.The ambush of Ramaphosa is therefore not just spectacle. It is illumination. It underlines and emphasizes that Trump’s US is a fact-free, science-free, reality-television production lot whose leader daily defies court orders, alienates supporters of democracy, and tries to dismantle key practices such as the right to due process. It is an ugly place in which facts mean nothing and lies reign supreme.I was born under apartheid and lived under that heinous system until it was defeated in 1994. Those first 24 years were lived in Pretoria, in an impoverished village just an hour from Musk’s sumptuous family mansion in the suburb of Waterkloof. When I was teenager I walked the streets of Musk’s suburb, working as a “garden boy” or caddie, constantly harassed by police asking for my “pass book” – papers allowing me to be in the area designated “whites only”.I know apartheid. I grew up with it, breathed it and lived it every day. It is sickening to hear Trump compare the free, non-racist, democratic country that is South Africa today to the violent, murderous, hateful, system declared a “crime against humanity” by the United Nations in 1966.I know South Africa. I grew up in its brutal, cruel, divided past. I thrived in its hopeful democracy. I was one of the chroniclers of its political descent in the 2010s as its institutions came under assault from a leader with anti-democratic instincts. I visited my mother there last week. There is no genocide in South Africa. Yet, Trump recently posted on his Truth Social that he would not visit South Africa for the G20 summit when “white genocide” was happening there. Just more than 430,000 Americans visited South Africa in 2023, up 37.4% from 2022. I know of not a single one who can point to a genocide happening in the country.This is the president of the United States peddling lies.One is therefore not surprised by the numerous assaults on the American constitution by this administration. The kidnapping of student activists, the trampling upon of citizens’ constitutional rights, the assaults on institutions such as the judiciary, the shamelessness of politicians and their families and cronies enriching themselves – all this is typical of these kinds of corrupt regimes.What is going on in America? Kseniia Petrova, the Harvard Medical School researcher held for months in Louisiana for failing to declare samples of frog embryos she had carried from France at the request of her boss, told the New York Times: “I feel like something is happening generally in America … Something bad is happening. I don’t think everybody understands.”Petrova, who fled Putin’s murderous regime as darkness fell over Russia following the invasion of Ukraine, understands the profound cloud hanging over the US. Those of us who grew up in regimes such as apartheid understand this ominous period.Trump’s actions are scary enough. It is, however, the silence of the US as assaults on American constitutional principles unfold that is most disturbing.This is not a lament for South Africa and how badly it is being treated by the US. It is a lament for myself, for those of us who grew up under systems such as apartheid believing that the US would uphold the rule of law, stand up for truth and speak up for these principles, and for a better world. A monarchical Trump, defying the supreme court and abandoning fact-based decision-making, imperils it all. With every student bundled by masked men into a van, this vaunted republic becomes smaller, lesser. It becomes Putin’s Russia, it becomes something akin to the way I lived under apartheid – a place where a contrarian thought led to detention without trial, to disappearance and for many, to death.There was a telling moment in Wednesday’s interaction when Trump revealed himself. It was a moment which reminded one that corruption, or the smell of it, now sits in the White House. Trump had just referred to a reporter as a “jerk” and an “idiot” because he had confronted him about why he was accepting the “gift” of a jet from Qatar to use as Air Force One.“Why did a country give an airplane to the United States air force? So they could help us out, because we need an Air Force One,” Trump fumed.Ramaphosa quipped: “I’m sorry I don’t have a plane to give you.”Trump didn’t detect the disdain in Ramaphosa’s voice and doubled down on the corruption inherent in accepting such a gift.“I wish you did. I would take it. If your country offered the United States air force a plane, I would take it,” Trump said.And there was the emperor, naked: an unethical leader who worships the dollar and has no concept of how corrupt his actions look to the rest of the world. This is what Wednesday was all about: an America led by a man susceptible to lies and lacking in a moral centre.Wednesday was not about South Africa. It was all about America today.

      Justice Malala is a political commentator and author of The Plot To Save South Africa: The Week Mandela Averted Civil War and Forged a New Nation More

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      Trump’s barbarism is turning his biggest strength into a liability | Osita Nwanevu

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      If you can bear to hear it, there are still more than 1,300 days remaining in the Trump administration. That’s an interminably long time given all the havoc the president has been able to wreak since January alone; the chaos and cruelty of the term so far also happen to have used up his political capital remarkably quickly. The New York Times average of polls, which found him at 52% approval on inauguration day, had him at 51% disapproval on Wednesday. That collapse is less a problem for Trump specifically ⁠– assuming, perhaps optimistically, that he won’t appear on a ballot again ⁠– than it is for the Republican party, which will have to answer for the mess he’s made in next year’s midterms and beyond. And one of the challenges they seem likely to face is a changed public opinion landscape on immigration ⁠– a strength that Trump’s barbarism, just as in his first term, seems to be turning into a liability.While it remains his strongest issue, polls have shown the public’s confidence in Trump on immigration declining steadily since January ⁠– averages suggest the public is newly and evenly split on his handling of it and some polls taken around the 100-day mark even found an outright majority of Americans disapproving. It’s no mystery why. The shock-and-awe campaign the administration is waging against immigrants legal and not has produced a steady stream of headlines that sound awful to all but Stephen Miller and the nativist fanatics driving Trump’s agenda. The deportation of a four-year-old citizen suffering from a rare form of cancer. The end of temporary protected status for 9,000 Afghan refugees even as the administration welcomes Afrikaners supposedly fleeing “white genocide”, a myth most voters who don’t frequent white supremacist forums are probably unfamiliar with. The use of the immigration enforcement apparatus to pursue and persecute critics of Israel’s war in Gaza. Even as voters succumbed to a panic over the migrant surge under Biden, moves like this under Trump and a public backlash to them were inevitable.What should be especially dismaying to the president’s supporters ⁠– and especially heartening to the rest of us ⁠– is the administration’s absolute failure to win over the public on the Kilmar Ábrego García case. That battle was probably lost as soon as it was conceded that he was deported by mistake, but it’s notable that none of the efforts to muddy the waters and obfuscate the main issues at hand with lies and character assassination have worked. The escalatory rhetoric ⁠– Ábrego García is not an innocent man but a member of MS-13, not merely a member of MS-13 but one of “the top MS-13 members”, not merely one of “the top MS-13 members” but a terrorist ⁠– has been almost comic. The complaints that the media has been stretching the facts of the case have been pathetic. “Based on the sensationalism of many of the people in this room,” the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, fumed last month, “you would think we deported a candidate for father of the year”.The administration was surely pleased when the domestic violence claims made by Ábrego García’s wife several years ago, which she dismisses now, began picking up traction in the press. And it is just as surely disappointed that a majority of Americans believe Ábrego García should be returned to America anyway ⁠– which suggests that the principles at stake in the case matter more and matter to more people than cynics might assume. Wholly irrespective of who Ábrego García is ⁠or what he might have done – and there remains no solid evidence at all that he belongs to MS-13 – he is entitled to due process under the law and fair treatment by our government. The fact that many Americans remain committed to this ideal here ⁠– despite the president’s best efforts to render Ábrego García unsympathetic, despite all that’s been done to frame undocumented immigration as an invasion and a society-breaking crisis ⁠– is one of the brightest glimmers of light against the pall Donald Trump and the right have cast over this country.Bright as it is, there are Democrats who are determined not to see it. Infamously in Axios last month, one anonymous House member ⁠– some nameless, brainless invertebrate, croaking from the bottom of a boot ⁠– warned the party against defending immigrants like Ábrego García or the makeup artist Andry Hernández Romero, also deported as a gang member for having tattoos. Trump, they said, was “setting a trap for the Democrats, and like usual we’re falling for it […] we’re going to go take the bait for one hairdresser”. In an appearance on Fox News Radio, the Democratic congressman Henry Cuellar argued that Ábrego García, in particular, was “not the right case” for Democrats to take up. “This is not the right issue to talk about due process,” he said. “This is not the right person to be saying that we need to bring him back to the United States.”Fortunately, most Americans disagree. And there is an opportunity here, for those with the good sense and courage to take it, to use the public’s dismay at the Ábrego García case and the realities of Trump’s immigration agenda to sell it on an alternative vision for our immigration policy and an alternative set of culprits for the problems immigrants have proven easy scapegoats for.Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents supposedly on the prowl for the thugs and thieves who’ve ruined communities and degraded our public infrastructure would be better off kicking down the doors of Congress than smashing the windows of asylum seekers. And, of course, if preserving law and order means that criminals who are sucking our public resources dry and who pose a danger to women ought to be dealt with harshly, we should insist on bringing the convict, grifter, and accused rapist in the White House to justice. The chief priority of his administration is terrorizing people for committing the crime of coming to this country and working harder for it than he ever has. His agenda here is corrosive to our values. It is degrading to our society. It materially profits no one. In important ways, it hurts us all.More and more Americans are wising up to this. Fewer and fewer are willing to stand for it.

      Osita Nwanevu is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Trump’s evidence of South Africa ‘white genocide’ contains images from Democratic Republic of Congo

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      The evidence of supposed mass killings of white South Africans presented by Donald Trump in a tense White House meeting on Wednesday were in some cases images from the Democratic Republic of Congo, while footage shown during the meeting was falsely portrayed as depicting “burial sites”.“These are all white farmers that are being buried,” said Trump, holding up a print-out of an article accompanied by a picture during the contentious Oval Office meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.The picture accompanying the article was in fact a screengrab of a video published by Reuters on 3 February and subsequently verified by the news agency’s fact check team, showing humanitarian workers lifting body bags in the Congolese city of Goma. The image was pulled from Reuters footage shot after deadly battles with Rwanda-backed M23 rebels.The White House did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.At another point in the meeting, Trump ambushed Ramaphosa by playing a video that he claimed proved genocide is being committed against white people in South Africa. Within it was footage that Trump claimed showed the graves of more than a thousand white farmers, marked by white crosses.The footage – taken at a highway connecting the small towns of Newcastle and Normandein in South Africa – in fact showed a memorial site, and not graves.Rob Hoatson, who set up the memorial to capture public attention, told the BBC it was not a burial site.“It was a memorial. It was not a permanent memorial that was erected. It was a temporary memorial,” he said. The memorial was setup in the aftermath of a murder of two Afrikaner farmers in the local community.The video played by Trump on Wednesday contained several falsehoods and inaccuracies, but was intended to back the president’s offer of “refuge” to persecuted white farmers, which has angered the South African government which disputes the allegations. The White House claimed it showed evidence of genocide of white farmers in South Africa. This conspiracy theory, which has circulated among the far-right for years, is based on false claims.The video prominently featured Julius Malema, a firebrand politician known for his radical rhetoric. He was seen in several clips wearing the red beret of his populist, Marxist-inspired Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party and chanting calls to “cut the throat of whiteness” as well as a controversial anti-apartheid song “Kill the Boer, kill the farmer”.Trump falsely said he was a government official, insinuating his inflammatory slogans reflected an official policy against South Africa’s white minority.Malema is an opposition politician who gained prominence advocating radical reforms including land redistribution and nationalising key economic sectors.The party only came fourth in last year’s elections, with 9.5% of the vote. During the Oval Office meeting, Ramaphosa and his delegation distanced themselves from Malema’s rhetoric.Agriculture minister John Steenhuisen, a member of the centre-right Democratic Alliance, told Trump he joined Ramaphosa’s multiparty coalition “precisely to keep these people out of power”.Ramaphosa visited Washington this week to try to mend ties with the United States after persistent criticism from Trump in recent months over South Africa’s land laws, foreign policy, and alleged bad treatment of its white minority, which South Africa denies.With Reuters and Agence France-Presse More

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      Trump news at a glance: administration escalates Harvard feud; supreme court blocks religious school

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      The Trump administration escalated its feud with Harvard on Thursday, halting the university’s ability to enrol international students and ordering existing international students at the university to transfer or lose their legal status.Homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, accused Harvard of “fostering violence, antisemitism and coordinating with the Chinese Communist party on its campus”.Pippa Norris, a lecturer at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, told the Guardian the move would “benefit Oxford and Cambridge and many other academic institutions … America, again, is going to have problems as a result.”Previously, the Trump administration terminated a further $450m in grants to the university in May, after an earlier cancellation of $2.2bn in federal funding. In response to the federal cuts, the university – with an endowment of more than $53bn – filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration.Trump halts Harvard’s ability to enrol international studentsUS media reported that the White House notified Harvard about its decision after ongoing correspondence regarding the “legality of a sprawling records request”.Kristi Noem justified the decision by saying: “This action … is the unfortunate result of Harvard’s failure to comply with simple reporting requirements.” A Harvard spokesperson called the government’s action “unlawful” in a statement to the Guardian on Thursday.Read the full storyUS supreme court blocks religious charter school in split rulingThe US supreme court blocked a bid led by two Catholic dioceses to establish in Oklahoma the nation’s first taxpayer-funded religious charter school in a major case involving religious rights in American education that challenged the constitutional separation of church and state.Read the full storyHouse passes Trump’s sweeping tax-cut billHouse Republicans won passage of a major bill in a 215-214 vote to enact Donald Trump’s tax and spending priorities while adding trillions of dollars to the US debt and potentially preventing millions of Americans from accessing federal safety net benefits. Trump cheered the vote passage and encouraged the Senate to pass the measure quickly.The bill threatens to reverberate across the US by costing more than 830,000 jobs, raising energy bills for US households and threatening to unleash millions more tonnes of the planet-heating pollution that is causing the climate crisis, experts have warned.Read the full storyRFK’s health report omits key facts A new report led by the health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, lays out a dark vision of American children’s health and calls for agencies to examine vaccines, ultra-processed foods, environmental chemicals, lack of exercise and “overmedicalization”. But the report ignores leading causes of death for children: firearms and motor vehicle crashes.Read the full storyTrump administration seeks to end basic rights and protections for child immigrants in its custodyThe Trump administration is trying to end a cornerstone immigration policy that limits the amount of time children can be detained by immigration officials. It also requires the government to provide children in its custody with adequate food, water and clean clothes.In a court motion filed Thursday, the justice department argued that the Flores agreement should be “completely” terminated, claiming it has incentivized unauthorized border crossings and “prevented the federal government from effectively detaining and removing families”.Read the full storyWhistleblower tried to warn Musk he was a Russia targetA former FBI counterintelligence agent turned whistleblower has claimed he tried to gain access to Elon Musk in 2022 to warn the billionaire that he was the target of a covert Russian campaign seeking to infiltrate his inner circle, possibly to gain access to sensitive information.Johnathan Buma, who was arrested in March and is out on bail, claims in a new interview that efforts to target Musk were “intense.”Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      Iran warned it would hold the US responsible for any Israeli attack on its nuclear sites, setting a tense backdrop for the fifth round of US-Iran nuclear talks.

      The FDA’s advisory committee unanimously recommended that the newest vaccines for Covid should be updated to target a variant of strains currently on the rise, during a meeting on Thursday – the first since the Trump administration took office.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 21 May 2025. More

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      Trump administration seeks to end basic rights and protections for child immigrants in its custody

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      The Trump administration is trying to end a cornerstone immigration policy that requires the government to provide basic rights and protections to child immigrants in its custody.The protections, which are drawn from a 1997 consent decree known as the Flores Settlement Agreement, limit the amount of time children can be detained by immigration officials. It also requires the government to provide children in its custody with adequate food, water and clean clothes.The administration’s move to terminate the Flores agreement was long anticipated. In a court motion filed Thursday, the justice department argued that the Flores agreement should be “completely” terminated, claiming it has incentivized unauthorized border crossings and “prevented the federal government from effectively detaining and removing families”.Donald Trump also tried to end these protections during his first term, making very similar arguments.The move to end protections follows a slew of actions by the Trump administration that target children, including restarting the practice of locking up children along with their parents in family detention. Immigration advocacy groups have alleged in a class-action lawsuit filed earlier this month that unaccompanied children are languishing in government facilities after the administration unveiled policies making it exceedingly difficult for family members in the US to take custody of them. The president and lawmakers have also sought to cut off unaccompanied children’s access to legal services and make it harder for families in detention to seek legal aid.“Eviscerating the rudimentary protections that these children have is unconscionable,” said Mishan Wroe, senior attorney at the National Center for Youth Law. “At this very moment, babies and toddlers are being detained in family detention, and children all over the country are being detained and separated from their families unnecessarily.”The effort to suspend the Flores agreement “bears the Trump administration’s hallmark disregard for the rule of law – and for the wellbeing of toddlers who have done no wrong”, said Faisal al-Juburi of the Texas-based legal non-profit Raices. “This administration would rather enrich private prison contractors with the $45bn earmarked for immigrant detention facilities in the House’s depraved spending bill than to uphold basic humanitarian protections for babies.”The Trump administration in 2019 asked a judge to dissolve the Flores Settlement Agreement, but its motion was struck down. During the Biden administration, a federal judge agreed to partially lift oversight protections at the Department of Health and Human Services, but the agreement is still in place at the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agencies.“Children who seek refuge in our country should be met with open arms – not imprisonment, deprivation and abuse,” said Sergio Perez, executive director of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law.The settlement is named for Jenny Flores, a 15-year-old girl who fled civil war in El Salvador and was part of a class-action lawsuit alleging widespread mistreatment of children in custody in the 1980s.Since the settlement agreement was reached in 1997, lawyers and advocates have successfully sued the government several times to end the mistreatment of immigrant children. In 2018, attorneys sued after discovering unaccompanied children had been administered psychotropic medication without informed consent.In 2024, a court found that CBP had breached the agreement when it detained children and families at open-air detention sites at the US southern border without adequate access to sanitation, medical care, food, water or blankets. In some cases, children were forced to seek refuge in portable toilets from the searing heat and bitter cold. More

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      Key takeaways: RFK Jr’s ‘Maha’ report on chronic disease in children

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      Donald Trump’s health secretary and long-time vaccine skeptic, Robert F Kennedy Jr, presented a highly anticipated report on children’s health this week.The “Maha commission” report, referring to the “Make America healthy again” movement, was required by a presidential executive order in February. The report focuses on chronic disease among children.The 68-page report broadly summarizes five areas affecting children’s health, with a focus on ultra-processed foods, environmental chemical exposure, lack of physical activity, “overmedicalization”, and “capture” of regulatory agencies.It notably omits some of the most common causes of chronic disease and death in children, insinuates there could be harms where there is lack of evidence, and avoids discussing how Republicans have already changed the health system in ways researchers believe are harmful.Art Caplan, a professor of bioethics at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine, told the Guardian that the report has “interesting ideas about health and children’s health and crackpot fringe tin-hat-wearing nonsense – it’s got it all”.Here are five of the key takeaways from the report.1. The report ignores some common dangers to childrenThe most common causes of death among children are car crashes and firearm accidents. The report ignores these issues, as well as behaviors that often start in adolescence and lead to chronic disease in adulthood, such as smoking and alcohol use. It also criticizes water fluoridation, without mentioning its protective effects against cavities.Also, absent from the report is a discussion of how the administration has already changed the health department in ways that advocates argue will benefit industry and could exacerbate chronic disease.For instance, Kennedy eliminated two smoking prevention offices at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in what one former regulator told Stat was “the greatest gift to the tobacco industry in the last half century”. He also eliminated a world-leading sexually transmitted infection laboratory.In another example, one of the nation’s leading researchers of ultra-processed foods quit his “dream job” after facing what he described as censorship from the administration (the health department reportedly asked him to return). In a similar vein, the Trump administration cut a program that delivered local whole foods to schools soon after taking office, in spite of Kennedy calling for healthier school meals.2. The report focuses on issues key to Kennedy’s view of healthThe report is roughly broken up into five sections focusing on ultra-processed foods, environmental chemical exposures, children’s mental health, “overmedicalization” and “corporate capture” of regulators by the industries they are supposed to oversee.Kennedy has harped on many of the issues listed in the report for months in public appearances and even though his defunct presidential campaign – especially including ultra-processed foods and obesity. Although some of these concerns may find bipartisan support – such as the focus on “forever chemicals” such as Pfas – it also pushes into areas where the science is unsettled.For instance, the report mentions that high levels of fluoride are potentially associated with reduced IQ, but does not mention its well-established protective effects against cavities – the most common chronic condition in children, according to the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research.Similarly, the report argues that the childhood vaccine schedule is causing concern among parents for,“their possible role in the growing childhood chronic disease crisis” – without citing evidence that vaccines are linked to any specific chronic disease.3. It’s likely to face diverse pushback – and create new alliancesEven before the report was published, congressional lawmakers were being bombarded by calls from agricultural and chemical lobbyists wary of how the report would criticize their products – and indeed it did.One of the report’s sections questions whether “crop protection tools” including “pesticides, herbicides and insecticides” could harm human health. It then specifically name-drops glyphosate, the key ingredient in Roundup, and atrazine, a common herbicide. That is sure to make for strange political bedfellows and consternation within the Republican party. Similarly, the report cites synthetic dyes and ultra-processed foods are potentially harmful.Chemicals and food additives have been issues of concern for decades on the left. However, the Maha movement has also catalyzed opposition to them on the right.4. The report’s authors are not namedThe commission’s members are made up of the heads of intersecting agencies, including Kennedy at the Department of Health and Human Services, and the heads of the departments of agriculture, housing, education, veterans affairs and the Environmental Protection Agency, among others.However, the exact authors of the report are unknown. This contrasts with Kennedy’s repeated promise at his confirmation hearing that his health department would practice “radical transparency”.The work of the “Maha” commission was reportedly spearheaded by senior Kennedy adviser Calley Means, a former food lobbyist and healthcare entrepreneur who rose to prominence as a Maha truth-teller. Means co-wrote a bestselling book with his sister, current US surgeon general nominee Casey Means, which blames many of America’s ills on sedentary lifestyle and poor diet.5. Changing any of the issues identified is likely to be toughOne of the key issues the report identifies is the influence of food, pharmaceutical and chemical companies on American policy. They are monied and powerful.As a result, getting real change through Congress is certain to be tough – especially in an administration devoted to reducing regulations. More

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      The Guardian view on the US and South Africa: Trump looks to his base and partners look elsewhere | Editorial

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      The most telling moment of Donald Trump’s meeting with Cyril Ramaphosa was not the cynical screening of footage promoting false claims of “white genocide” in South Africa. It was when a reporter asked the US president what he wanted his counterpart to do about it. Mr Trump replied: “I don’t know.”Leaders enter the Oval Office uneasily, especially since the kicking administered to Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The South African president came armed with gratitude, two golf stars, a billionaire and compliments on the decor – and kept a cool head and a straight face as he was ambushed. Mr Ramaphosa later described it as “robust engagement”. But, in truth, it was a clash of two worlds rather than an interaction.On one side sat a political heavyweight who calmly asserted the facts; on the other, Mr Trump, espousing wild and inflammatory myths. One side wanted to do bilateral business; the other to pander to the grievances of his domestic base, many of whom doubtless relished the public scolding of an anti-apartheid veteran. No solution was proffered to the imaginary problem.The ruling African National Congress (ANC) has fallen far short in too many regards. Violent crime is rife. But the administration’s accusations invert reality. White South Africans are 7% of the population but still own 72% of the land. Experts say that it is poor black people, not wealthier whites, who are disproportionately likely to be victims of violence. Yet as the scholar Nicky Falkof has written, white South Africans have become a “cautionary tale for the White far right [internationally] … central to the landscape and language of White supremacy”. Look where DEI gets you.Mr Trump aired complaints about the “large-scale killing” of white farmers in his first term, amplifying conspiracy theories that originated in far-right forums. Since then, he has grown closer to the South African-born Elon Musk, who has accused politicians there of “promoting white genocide”. The US has now cut aid to South Africa, accusing the government of “unjust racial discrimination” and attacking its genocide case against Israel at the international court of justice. Washington has expelled the South African ambassador and given white Afrikaners asylum even as it turns away those fleeing wars.Mr Trump’s divisive conspiracy theories and failed attempt to humiliate Mr Ramaphosa appear, ironically, to be fostering unity on foreign affairs within South African politics, where the ANC and its (white-led) coalition partner, the Democratic Alliance, have had very different histories and priorities. The US still accounts for a tenth of the country’s trade. South Africa must shore up its auto sector and agriculture, given its sky-high unemployment rate. But like other governments, Pretoria is salvaging what it can in US relations now, while looking ahead to diversifying its ties. Few expect Washington to renew duty-free trade arrangements for African states this autumn.Warming relations with other western countries is one option. But increasing closeness to China, already South Africa’s top trading partner, looks like an inevitability. Members of the Brics grouping see an opportunity to strengthen ties, though South Africa is discovering that expansion does not always mean greater influence for its dominant players. Mr Trump is looking for kudos, free planes and red meat to throw to his base. Washington’s partners are increasingly looking elsewhere. It’s in US interests to show them respect and nurture longstanding relationships.

      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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      Systems are crumbling – but daily life continues. The dissonance is real

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      View image in fullscreenIn January, the comedian Ashley Bez posted an Instagram video of herself, trying to describe a heavy mood in the air. “How come everything feels all …?” she says, trailing off and grimacing exaggeratedly into the camera.Digital anthropologist Rahaf Harfoush saw the video, and got it immediately.“Welcome to the hypernormalization club,” Harfoush said in a response video. “I’m so sorry that you’re here.”“Hypernormalization” is a heady, $10 word, but it captures the weird, dire atmosphere of the US in 2025.First articulated in 2005 by scholar Alexei Yurchak to describe the civilian experience in Soviet Russia, hypernormalization describes life in a society where two main things are happening.The first is people seeing that governing systems and institutions are broken. And the second is that, for reasons including a lack of effective leadership and an inability to imagine how to disrupt the status quo, people carry on with their lives as normal despite systemic dysfunction – give or take a heavy load of fear, dread, denial and dissociation.“What you are feeling is the disconnect between seeing that systems are failing, that things aren’t working … and yet the institutions and the people in power just are, like, ignoring it and pretending everything is going to go on the way that it has,” Harfoush says in her video.Within 48 hours, Harfoush’s video accrued millions of views. (It currently has slightly fewer than 9m.) It spread in “mom groups, friend chat circles, political subreddits, coupon communities, and even dog-walking groups”, Harfoush tells me, along with variations of: “Oh, so that’s what I’ve been feeling!” and “people tagging their friends with notes like: ‘We were just talking about this!’”View image in fullscreenWhy hypernormalization is relevant in the USThe increasing instability of the US’s democratic norms has prompted these references to hypernormalization.Donald Trump is dismantling government checks and balances in an apparent advance toward a “unitary executive” doctrine that would grant him near-unlimited authority, driving the US toward autocracy. Billionaire tech moguls like Elon Musk are helping the government consolidate power and aggressively reduce the federal workforce. Institutions like the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration, which help keep Americans healthy and informed, are being haphazardly diminished.Globally, once-in-a-lifetime climate disasters, war and the lingering trauma of Covid continue to unfold, while an explosion of generative AI threatens to destabilize how people think, make a living and relate to each other.For many in the US, Trump 2.0 is having a devastating effect on daily life. For others, the routines of life continue, albeit threaded with mind-altering horrors: scrolling past an AI-generated cartoon of Ice officers arresting immigrants before dinner, or hearing about starving Palestinian families while on a school run.Hypernormalization captures this juxtaposition of the dysfunctional and mundane.It’s “the visceral sense of waking up in an alternate timeline with a deep, bodily knowing that something isn’t right – but having no clear idea how to fix it”, Harfoush tells me. “It’s reading an article about childhood hunger and genocide, only to scroll down to a carefree listicle highlighting the best-dressed celebrities or a whimsical quiz about: ‘What Pop-Tart are you?’”In his 2016 documentary HyperNormalisation, the British film-maker Adam Curtis argued that Yurchak’s critique of late-Soviet life applies neatly to the west’s decades-long slide into authoritarianism, something more Americans are now confronting head-on.“Donald Trump is not something new,” Curtis tells me, calling him “the final pantomime product” of the US government, where the powerful are abandoning any pretense of common, inclusive ideals and instead using their positions to settle scores, reward loyalty and hollow out institutions for personal or political gains.Trump’s US is “just like Yeltsin in Russia in the 1990s – promising a new kind of democracy, but in reality allowing the oligarchs to loot and distort the society”, says Curtis.Why the concept of hypernormalization is usefulWitnessing large-scale systems slowly unravel in real time can be profoundly surreal and frightening. The hypernormalization framework offers a way to understand what we’re feeling and why.Harfoush created her video “to reassure others that they’re not alone” and that “they aren’t misinterpreting the situation or imagining things”. Understanding hypernormalization “made me feel less isolated”, she says. “It’s difficult to act when you’re uncertain if you’re perceiving reality clearly, but once you know the truth, you can channel that clarity into meaningful action and, ideally, drive positive change.”Naming an experience can be a form of psychological relief. “The worst thing in the world is to feel that you’re the only one who feels this way and that you are going quietly mad and everyone else is in denial,” says Caroline Hickman, a psychotherapist and instructor at the University of Bath specializing in climate anxiety. “That terrifies people. It traumatizes people.”People who feel the “wrongness” of current conditions acutely may be experiencing some depression and anxiety, but those feelings can be quite rational – not a symptom of poor mental health, alarmism or a lack of proper perspective, Hickman says.“What we’re really scared of is that the people in power have not got our back and they don’t give a shit about whether we survive or not,” she says.View image in fullscreenMarielle Greguski, 32, a New York City-based retail worker and content creator, posted about everyday life feeling “inconsequential” in the face of political crisis. Greguski says the outcome of the 2024 election reminded her that she lives in a “bubble” of progressive values, and that “there’s the other half of people that are not feeling the same energy and frustration and fear”.To Greguski, the US’s failings are not only partisan but moral – like the racism and bigotry that Trump’s second term has brought out of the shadows and into policy.Greguski is currently planning a wedding. It’s hard to compartmentalize “constant cruelty, things that don’t make sense”, she says. “Sometimes I’ll be like: ‘I have to put aside X amount of money for the wedding next year,’ and then I’m like: ‘Will this country exist as we know it next year?’ It really is crazy.”The effects of hypernormalizationConfronting systemic collapse can be so disorienting, overwhelming and even humiliating, that many tune it out or find themselves in a state of freeze.Greguski likens this feeling to sleep paralysis: “basically a waking nightmare where you’re like: ‘I’m here, I’m aware, but I’m so scared and I can’t move.’”In his 1955 book They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933–45, journalist Milton Mayer described a similar state of freeze in German citizens during the rise of the Nazi party: “You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ Why not? – Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.”“People don’t shut down because they don’t feel anything,” says Hickman. “They shut down because they feel too much.” Understanding this overwhelm is an important first step in resisting inaction – it helps us see fear as a trap.Curtis points out that governments may intentionally keep their citizens in a vulnerable state of dread and confusion as “a brilliant way of managing a highly febrile and anxious society”, he says.When we feel powerless in the face of bigger problems, we “turn to the only thing that we do have the power over, to try and change for the better”, says Curtis – meaning, typically, ourselves. Anxiety and fear can trap us, leading us to spend more time trying to feel better in small, personal ways, like entertainment and self-care, and less time on activism and community engagement.View image in fullscreenHow to overcome hypernormalizationProgressive commentators have urgently called for moral clarity and mobilization in response to changes like the cuts to USAID funding, which has resulted in an estimated 103 deaths per hour across the globe; the dismantling of the CDC; and Robert F Kennedy’s campaign against vaccine science.“Where is the outrage?” asks the Nation’s Gregg Gonsalves. “Too many lives are at stake to rest in this bizarre moment of frozen agitation.”“I don’t know if there’s a massive shift toward racism as much as an expanded indifference toward it,” the historian Robin DG Kelley said in a February interview with New York Magazine. “People are just kind of like: ‘Well, what can we do?’”Experts say action can break the spell. “Being active politically, in whatever way, I think helps reduce apocalyptic gloom,” says Betsy Hartmann, an activist, scholar and author of The America Syndrome, which explores the importance of resisting apocalyptic thinking.Greguski and a co-worker have been helping distribute multilingual information about legal rights and helpline numbers, to be used in the event of Ice raids.“It’s easy to feel like: ‘Oh, I’m in community because I’m on TikTok,’” she says. But genuine community is about “getting outside and talking to your neighbor and knowing that there’s someone out there that can help you if something really bad goes down,” she says.“You’re actually out there talking to people, working with people and realizing there are so many good people in the world, too, and maybe feeling less isolated than before,” says Hartmann.“But I also think we need a broader vision,” Hartmann notes. She suggests looking to resistance efforts against authoritarianism in countries like Turkey, Hungary and India. “How might we be in international solidarity? What lessons can we learn in terms of rebuilding sophisticated, complex government infrastructure that’s been hacked away at by people like Elon Musk and his minions in a more socially just and sustainable way?”“We are in a period now when it’s absolutely essential to protest,” says Hartmann, citing the Harvard professor Erica Chenoweth, who argues that just 3.5% of a population engaging in peaceful protest can hold back authoritarian movements.What makes dysfunction so dangerous is that we might simply learn to live with it. But understanding hypernormalization gives us language – and permission – to recognize when systems are failing, and clarifies the risk of not taking action when we can.In 2014, Ursula Le Guin accepted the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, saying: “We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.”Harfoush reflects on this quote often. It underscores the fact that “this world we’ve created is ultimately a choice”, she says. “It doesn’t have to be like this.”We have the research, technologies and wisdom to create better, more sustainable systems.“But meaningful change requires collective awakening and decisive action,” says Harfoush. “And we need to start now.” More