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      Trump says Hegseth is ‘doing a great job’ despite reports of second Signal chat

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      Donald Trump offered public support for defense secretary Pete Hegseth a day after it emerged that Hegseth had shared information about US strikes in Yemen last month in a second Signal group chat that included family, his personal lawyer and several top Pentagon aides.“He’s doing a great job. Ask the Houthis how he’s doing,” Trump said dismissively, referring to the rebel group in Yemen targeted by those missile strikes, on the sidelines of the White House Easter egg roll event on Monday.Hegseth was revealed to have shared, in a series of messages, plans about US strikes against the Houthis on 15 March before they happened in the Signal group chat that included his wife, his brother and a number of his top military aides.The details that Hegseth sent in were essentially the same information that he shared in a separate Signal group chat earlier this year that mistakenly included the editor of the Atlantic in addition to JD Vance and other top Trump officials, a person directly familiar with the messages said.But pressure on Hegseth has so far come from people outside of the White House. Trump called the defense secretary on Sunday after the story broke and aides concluded that it had been leaked to the news media by a former Hegseth aide who was in the group chat but abruptly fired last week.Trump has resisted firing top officials in his second term, not wanting to be seen as caving to a media swarm even if he has been unhappy with the negative coverage. Trump also stuck by his national security adviser, Mike Waltz, who had added the editor of the Atlantic to the first chat.According to a person familiar with the call, Trump told Hegseth that he had his support and that disgruntled leakers were to blame for the story, which was first reported by the New York Times.Trump also told his team to back Hegseth in public, and senior Trump aides repeated their defense line that none of the information shared in either of the group chats were classified, although the accusations have centered on why it was shared with Hegseth’s wife, for instance, since she is not a Pentagon official.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe defense secretary himself appeared furious when asked about the second Signal chat during the White House Easter egg roll event on the South Lawn, telling reporters that the story was a “hit piece” that repeated his defense that it had been pushed by “disgruntled former employees”.But Hegseth faced growing pressure to resign after John Ullyot, his former spokesperson, wrote in an extraordinary opinion essay in Politico on Sunday that the Pentagon was “in disarray under Hegseth’s leadership”.Republican congressman Don Bacon, who sits on the House armed services committee, did not explicitly call for Hegseth’s resignation but suggested he would not keep Hegseth in place were he was the president.“I had concerns from the get-go because Pete Hegseth didn’t have a lot of experience,” said Bacon, a former air force general. “I’m not in the White House and I’m not going to tell the White House how to manage this … but I find it unacceptable and I wouldn’t tolerate it if I was in charge.” More

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      Trump official threatens New York governor over halt of congestion pricing

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      US transportation secretary Sean Duffy issued a warning to New York governor Kathy Hochul on Monday saying that the state of New York “risks serious consequences” if it does not suspend its congestion pricing program.New York City’s congestion pricing initiative, which was approved by the Biden administration last year and began on 5 January, charges a $9 toll on most passenger vehicles entering Manhattan south of 60th Street during peak hours.Similar systems are already in some major global cities such as London and are popular with environmental groups.In a letter dated Monday and addressed to Hochul, the Trump administration reiterated its demand that she halt the collection of congestion pricing tolls and gave the governor until 21 May to either certify that the collection of tolls has ceased, or provide an explanation for why its continuation does not violate federal law.“I write to warn you that the State of New York risks serious consequences if it continues to fail to comply with Federal law,” Duffy wrote.“President Trump and I will not sit back while Governor Hochul engages in class warfare and prices working-class Americans out of accessing New York City,” Duffy wrote. “The federal government sends billions to New York — but we won’t foot the bill if Governor Hochul continues to implement an illegal toll to backfill the budget of New York’s failing transit system We are giving New York one last chance to turn back or prove their actions are not illegal.”Duffy warned that the administration could begin taking action against the state as early as 28 May if the congestion tolls remain in place, such as withholding federal funding and approvals for future transportation projects in the state.The latest letter follows multiple deadlines previously set by the Trump administration to cease the program.The administration had given Hochul a deadline of 20 April and before that 21 March, but both times Hochul did not end the program.New York leaders have said that the program for Manhattan was designed to reduce traffic congestion, lower pollution, and generate revenue for public transit projects and improvements in the state.In February, the Trump administration said it was terminating the program by revoking the federal approval.The Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA), which operates the tolls, has challenged the administration’s decision in federal court and says the scheme does not violate federal law – a position backed up so far by a judge.Since the program took effect, both the MTA and the governor have defended the program, asserting that it is already achieving its intended goals.In March, Hochul touted the early success of the program, saying that “traffic is down and business is up” since the program took effect.According to her office, traffic declined 11% in February, compared to the same period last year. That month, traffic also moved 30% faster on bridge and tunnel crossings, per the governor’s office.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionCommuters entering the zone are also reportedly saving up to 21 minutes per trip, she said.The MTA CEO and chair, Janno Lieber, said in March: “Congestion relief is working, cars and buses are moving faster, foot traffic is up and even noise complaints are down.”The program, according to the New York Times, is also delivering financially, reporting in February that the program raised $48.6m in tolls during its first month, exceeding expectations.MTA data released earlier this month also shows that around 560,000 vehicles entered the congestion zone daily in March – a 13% drop from the roughly 640,000 vehicles the agency projected would have entered without tolling.The agency also said in late March that the program is on track to generate $500m in revenue by the end of the year.A March survey found that 42% of New York City residents support keeping the toll, according to NBC New York, while 35% backed Donald Trump’s attempts to squash it.Statewide, favorability for the program is weaker, with only about one-third of people in New York state supporting the program, compared to 40% who want it halted, per NBC.Just last week, according to the Associated Press, a federal judge in Manhattan dismissed a number of arguments in lawsuits filed by the local trucking industry and other groups attempting to block the tolling system. More

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      From peppercorns to plastic forks: US businesses that rely on Chinese products reel from Trump tariffs

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      Chang Chang, a Sichuan restaurant in Washington DC, was already noticing that some of its business had dropped off after tens of thousands of federal workers living in the area lost their jobs. But the recent tariff rate hikes mark an even greater blow for the restaurant.Sichuan peppercorns, which create the signature numbing spice of the regional Chinese cuisine, along with other ingredients, face an at least 145% tariff after last week’s tit-for-tat trade battle between China and the United States. The steep rate is an existential threat for restaurants across the country that rely on specialty ingredients imported from China to craft the authentic flavors of their dishes, said operators who were blindsided.“We’re really worried,” said Jen Lin-Liu, the director of events for Chang Chang. The restaurant is part of the Peter Chang restaurant group that operates a dozen Sichuan restaurants across Washington, Virginia and Maryland.The restaurant group sources meats and vegetables from local farmers, including an Amish community in the Finger Lakes region that supplies its shiitake mushrooms and organic pork. Still, it is dependent on imported items such as fermented chili peppers and soy sauce, which give the dishes their unique taste.“Some of the products that we need just do not exist in the United States,” Lin-Liu said.The cost of other items is rising as well. “There are increases in any supply you can think of, from takeout boxes to printer paper to menu printing paper,” she said, adding that if the tariff rates stick, the price of a $20 dish may rise to $35 or $40.View image in fullscreenGeorge Chen, the chef who created Eight Tables, a fine-dining restaurant in San Francisco, said that while some of the items on his menu may be replaceable with options from Taiwan, it undermines the integrity he’s put into sourcing the unique ingredients for his dishes.“Replacements disrupt complex long-term relationships,” explained Chen. “It took me years to find the special spice vendors or the organic tea farmer in China from my many years living and working there.”Eight Tables is part of a larger marketplace called China Live, which includes a dining hall, a cold-drinks bar and a shop that sells wares including chopsticks, glass tea mugs and pots.“The area most concerning is our retail platform,” said Chen. For those items, “it’s not possible to re-order at the tariff rates”.For direct importers, like the Mala Market, an online shop, the tariffs on Chinese products threaten its entire business model. Sichuan peppercorns are popular on the site, but it also sells a number of items produced in their original region using traditional methods. The owner, Taylor Holliday, calls these “heritage products”, which include soy sauce handcrafted in Zhongba, fermented soybeans aged for three years in Sichuan and sesame paste stone-ground in Shandong.“These are products which have been made in that exact area for hundreds if not thousands of years,” said Holliday. “They have such a history, there’s no way these products can be made anywhere else.”While part of Holliday’s business supplies wholesale items to restaurants around the country, the majority of its orders are from home cooks.“A lot of our customers are people who have a cultural or emotional attachment to China,” Holliday said. “It’s more than just the food, it’s a cultural attachment to these products.”EMei, a Sichuan restaurant in Philadelphia, sources not only its peppercorns from China but also items such as chopsticks and plastic cutlery for takeout orders. Similar to many Chinese restaurants, delivery is a major part of the restaurant’s business.“So far, this is the main impact for us,” said Dan Tsao, the owner of EMei, who said the tariff hikes add about $1 to $1.50 to each delivery order.The tariffs may also create a supply issue for these items.“Importers are pausing more of their orders from China. They think 125% is crazy,” Tsao said.While the restaurant sources many of its ingredients from local farmers, it still relies on some imports from other countries. It orders broccoli from Mexico, shrimp from Ecuador and rice from Thailand. Rice is especially critical; the restaurant runs through a supply of about 200 pounds each night, Tsao said. Since Donald Trump’s “liberation day” announcement earlier this month, the price per pound has already risen more than 25%.View image in fullscreenThe frenetic nature of the tariff policy shifts has left owners and suppliers cautious about which steps to take and how to plan for the future.Tsao has plans to open two more restaurants later this year and has noticed some construction estimates for renovations rising. Most of the building materials come from China, too.“I’m hesitating now,” he said. The possibility of a recession while the prices of supplies and renovations keep going up may change his calculation. “There will be all these ripple effects on the system and there’s so much economic uncertainty,” he added.Holliday said she has one container of product already on the way from China that is scheduled to clear US customs in about five weeks, but will not raise prices until she is forced to.“I’m praying that something happens by then,” she said. But if it doesn’t, she’s resigned to paying the tariffs.“There’s no other way we can run our business,” she said. More

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      Fox’s new game show makes people guess what Trump’s been up to. Somehow I can’t see the joy in that | Dave Schilling

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      The classic television gameshow is one of the simplest pleasures available to the sedentary, socially maladjusted people we used to call “couch potatoes”. An average Joe is required to perform a task – ranging from answering a trivia question or spinning a large, colorful wheel to keeping a hand on a Toyota Land Cruiser for as long as possible – in exchange for the possibility of winning a cash prize (or a truck). For the viewer, there is the satisfaction of believing, perhaps falsely, that you could win the prize if you were in the contestant’s place. Maybe you identify with that contestant and actively root for their success. Or perhaps you just want to see some poor bastard shot out of a cannon, like on TBS’s dearly departed series Wipeout. Whatever your pleasure might be, it’s not an uncommon or esoteric one.We watch gameshows because they are basic human drama distilled into an easily repeatable format. TV development executives have tried to modernize it with the fancy graphics of something like NBC’s The Wall or the gratuitous flesh-baring of the 2000s disasterpiece Are You Hot, in which a panel of “celebrity” judges such as Lorenzo Lamas critiqued people on the number of visible abs on their bodies. The simpler a gameshow premise – guessing the cost of basic household items, answering multiple choice questions in a spooky room, or doing menial tasks for a man who combs his hair forward – the better. Perhaps this is why my initial reaction to the press release for the forthcoming mini-series Greg Gutfeld’s What Did I Miss?, on the Fox Nation streaming service, was so immediately negative.In the new series, Gutfeld (who made an entire career out of sporting a perpetually self-satisfied smirk that turns liberals into feral animals running around in circles and urinating on the floor) quizzes contestants on the headlines. The unusual part: these contestants have been sequestered in upstate New York for three months, “with no contact to the outside world – no phones, internet, television, or social media” – not unlike the short-lived BBC series The Bubble. Some of the headlines Gutfeld offers are real. Some are fabricated. It is up to the sad group of media-starved test subjects to ferret out what’s real from what isn’t.Imagine, a blissful 90 days of not knowing what is happening outside your window. A three-month vacation of regular meals, uninterrupted sleep and zero temptation to spend hours scrolling TikTok for videos of people marinating chicken in NyQuil. Doesn’t that sound lovely? Jared Leto spent 12 days in blissful meditative isolation at the start of the Covid pandemic and when he came back into civilization, someone had to tell him he couldn’t eat inside at Nobu any more. I feel bad for the guy, but he probably reminisces about those 12 days constantly.The blessed contestants of What Did I Miss? were afforded not just 12 days of peace, but 90 of them. That’s almost eight times what Jared Leto got! And on the other side, there’s the chance to win $50,000. Hopefully the inflation rate doesn’t spike again and that money keeps its value. They’re gonna need it when they hear about those tariffs.I suppose What Did I Miss? is more of a stunt than a traditional gameshow premise. Something closer to Joe Millionaire, a dating show where women vie for the attention of a man they think is rich but is actually not. How many times can you do something like that before the novelty wears off? You can only sequester so many people for three months before it starts to feel even cheaper than it is.Of course, beyond the show being crass, it trivializes everything in our current moment of social upheaval and angst. “Isn’t that Donald Trump a wacky guy? He’s so wild, you’ll never guess the nutso stuff he got up to last week!” Being that this is a Fox Nation production starring Fox News’s favorite bobblehead doll, it stands to reason that the audience for the show is people who still find something funny about news headlines. We are far beyond the days when someone could riff for hours on the image of George HW Bush puking on the prime minister of Japan. That was, in fact, quite amusing. I mean, man, just look at him hurl! That’s something else, isn’t it, folks?Donald Trump has yet to vomit on a world leader, but we can certainly say he has soiled the basic functions of democracy. This is not speculating on what your crazy uncle got up to after he raided the liquor cabinet. Are these contestants expected to suss out the fake headline from choices like “sent an innocent man to a supermax prison that looks like it was ripped off from Judge Dredd comics” or “threatened to tank the world economy just to see what would happen”? Call me a stick-in-the-mud if you like, but I’m just not seeing the breezy joy of the standard gameshow in a series in which people must guess whose human rights have been denied and why.The Fox Nation president, Lauren Petterson, said in the press release: “Truth can be stranger than fiction and who better to help isolated Americans catch up on the headlines they missed during an unprecedented news cycle than Greg Gutfeld.” The word I’m thinking of for all of this is not “strange”. “Grim”? Yes. “Dispiriting”? Sure. “Morally reprehensible”? Bingo.Instead of calling what we are witnessing a series of preventable calamities, we refer to it as a “news cycle”. Life is reduced to the whims of the media machine. It is, itself, a gameshow played for big money, where the object is to do or say the worst thing possible so people pay attention to you. That seems like the aim of the entire endeavor – to use cheeky TV smarm to make all of this palatable. It flattens that which we should be outraged about into a sickly sweet pancake of gameshow pablum. I hope the winner of this farce refuses the money in exchange for being sent back to the little house in upstate New York, free of the knowledge that human suffering is now government policy.

      Dave Schilling is a Los Angeles-based writer and humorist More

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      Pete Hegseth reported to have shared Yemen attack details in second Signal chat – US politics live

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      Norway’s prime minister Jonas Gahr Stoere and finance minister Jens Stoltenberg will meet with US president Donald Trump in Washington on Thursday, the prime minister’s office said.The meeting at the White House will, among other things, cover the security policy situation, Nato and the war in Ukraine as well as trade and business topics, the statement on Monday said.“Norway and the US cooperate in a number of areas, and the US is an important trading partner for Norway. I look forward to talking about areas where we can cooperate even more closely in the future,” Stoere said.Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I’ll be bringing you the latest news lines over the next few hours.We start with news that defense secretary Pete Hegseth sent detailed information about military strikes on Yemen in March to a private Signal group chat that he created himself and included his wife, his brother and about a dozen other people, the New York Times reported.The Guardian has independently confirmed the existence of Hegseth’s own private group chat.According to unnamed sources familiar with the chat who spoke to the Times, Hegseth sent the private group of his personal associates some of the same information, including the flight schedules for the F/A-18 Hornets that would strike Houthi rebel targets in Yemen, that he also shared with another Signal group of top officials that was created by Mike Waltz, the national security adviser.The existence of the Signal group chat created by Waltz, in which detailed attack plans were divulged by Hegseth to other Trump administration officials on the private messaging app, was made public last month by Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic, who had been accidentally added to the group by Waltz.The fact that Hegseth also shared the plans in a second Signal group chat, according to “people familiar with the matter” who spoke to the Times, is likely to add to growing criticism of the former Fox weekend anchor’s ability to manage the Pentagon, a massive organization which operates in matters of life and death around the globe.According to the Times, the private chat also included two senior advisers to Hegseth – Dan Caldwell and Darin Selnick – who were fired last week after being accused of leaking unauthorized information.See our full report here:In other news:

      Immigration officials detained a US citizen for nearly 10 days in Arizona, according to court records and press reports. Jose Hermosillo, a 19-year-old New Mexico resident visiting Arizona, was detained by border patrol agents in Nogales, a city along the Mexico border about an hour south of Tucson. Hermosillo’s wrongful arrest and prolonged detention comes amid escalating attacks by the Trump administration on immigrants in the US.

      Senator Chris Van Hollen, who travelled to El Salvador last week to meet Kilmar Ábrego García, the man at the center of a wrongful deportation dispute, said on Sunday that his trip was to support Ábrego García’s right to due process because if that was denied then everyone’s constitutional rights were threatened in the US. The White House has claimed Ábrego García was a member of the MS-13 gang though he has not been charged with any gang related crimes and the supreme court has ordered his return to the US be facilitated.

      Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar warned on Sunday that the US is “getting closer and closer to a constitutional crisis”, but the courts, growing Republican disquiet at Trump administration policies, and public protest were holding it off. “I believe as long as these courts hold, and the constituents hold, and the congress starts standing up, our democracy will hold,” Klobuchar told CNN’s State of the Union, adding “but Donald Trump is trying to pull us down into the sewer of a crisis.”

      Massachusetts governor Maura Healey said on Sunday that Donald Trump’s attacks on Harvard University and other schools are having detrimental ripple effects, with the shutdown of research labs and cuts to hospitals linked to colleges. During an interview on CBS’s Face the Nation, the Democratic governor said that the effects on Harvard are damaging “American competitiveness”, since a number of researchers are leaving the US for opportunities in other countries. After decades of investment in science and innovation, she said: “intellectual assets are being given away.”

      A draft Trump administration executive order reported to be circulating among US diplomats proposes a radical restructuring of the US state department, including drastic reductions to sub-Saharan operations, envoys and bureaus relating to climate, refugees, human rights, democracy and gender equality. The changes, if enacted, would be one of the biggest reorganizations of the department since its founding in 1789, according to Bloomberg, which had seen a copy of the 16-page draft. More

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      Peter Navarro: the economist who has outsmarted Elon Musk and has the ear of Donald Trump

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      Elon Musk called him “dumber than a sack of bricks” but, in the raw contest for political power, Peter Navarro has outsmarted the billionaire.The tumult in global trade shows that for now it is the 75-year-old economist, not Musk, who has Donald Trump’s ear in the Oval Office.Navarro is the US president’s chief trade adviser and the intellectual driving force behind the global tariffs and trade war with China. The chaos and uncertainty have been too strong even for Musk, the great disrupter, but Navarro’s silky mien still assures the US all is well.Even after the tech tycoon publicly compared him to a sack of bricks, and added that he was “truly a moron”, Navarro retained his composure. “I’ve been called worse,” he told NBC.That is true. Navarro has been called a charlatan and a criminal who risks driving the world economy off a cliff.It is a remarkable metamorphosis for a man who a decade ago was a little-known academic nearing retirement at the University of California, Irvine, a respected, stolid institution in Orange County.Then the professor’s hawkish views on China caught the eye of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and vaulted him to Washington, where he played key roles in economic policy, the Covid pandemic and the attempt to overturn the 2020 election, a vortex that landed him in jail – for contempt of Congress – only for him to re-emerge, more influential than ever, in Trump’s second administration.“This is the land of reinvention, both cosmetic and ideological, and he is part of that,” said John Pitney, a political scientist and author at Claremont McKenna College.Critics worry that Navarro is trying to reinvent economic rules and the postwar global order with improvisation and bluster that could trigger recession and backlash. For Trump, Navarro is the expert who can articulate a daring and necessary pivot to protectionism.Navarro’s early life, and career, suggested a different trajectory. The son of a musician and a secretary, he grew up on the east coast and obtained a master’s degree in public administration and then a PhD in economics from Harvard. His doctoral dissertation was not on trade but on corporations’ charity motives.He taught economics at San Diego universities and did research on public utilities before landing a tenure position as professor of economics and public policy at UCI in 1989. Tanned and svelte, he had the look of a glossy politician and ran as a Democrat for elected office, including for mayor of San Diego and Congress, but lost.In 2001 he switched to writing get-rich investing books such as If It’s Raining in Brazil, Buy Starbucks: The Investor’s Guide to Profiting from News and Other Market-Moving Events.In 2006 the professor took another swerve by publishing the first of a series of books, and accompanying documentaries, that assailed China as an insatiable menace that bullies, lies and cheats, especially on trade rules through currency manipulation, illegal export subsidies, intellectual property theft and polluting sweatshops.There is no evidence of causality but Navarro’s alarm coincided with California’s proliferating number of Chinese investors and students, notably at UCI, which prompted racially tinged nicknames such as the University of Chinese Immigrants and the University of Caucasian Isolation.Other economists also accused Beijing of unfair practices but Navarro’s radical critique put him on the fringe.In 2016 Trump reportedly instructed his son-in-law Jared Kushner to do research to bolster his views on China. Kushner found Navarro’s book, Death By China, on Amazon, and Navarro ended up advising the campaign.In an interview that year with the Guardian near his Laguna Beach home, Navarro endorsed Trump’s use of the word rape to characterise Beijing’s impact on the US. “It’s an apt description of the damage and carnage that China’s trade policies have wrought on the American economic heartland. What’s happening is rapacious.” He also endorsed Trump’s proposed 45% tariffs on Chinese goods, which he said would compel Beijing to back down. “We’re already in a trade war with China. The problem is we’ve not been fighting back. Trump, through tariffs, wants to call a truce.”Trump had few credentialed academics on his team so Navarro served a useful purpose, Pitney said. “He provided a degree of scholarly cover for what Trump was saying. That’s why he was brought into the administration.”Navarro’s standing in the White House survived the disclosure that his books cited a fictitious expert, Ron Vara, that is an anagram of Navarro. He sought to shrug off the deception by calling it an “inside joke” with himself and a “Hitchcockian writing device”.In Trump’s first administration, more mainstream economic advisers prevailed and there was no trade war. Even so, Navarro expanded his remit to public health during the pandemic, which afforded more opportunity to assail China, and established personal chemistry with the president that made him a survivor amid White House personnel flux.After his chief lost the 2020 election, Navarro promoted the theory that the election was rigged and sought to delay its certification. For rebuffing a congressional committee that investigated the January 2021 attack on the Capitol he was found guilty of criminal contempt and last year served four months in prison.Now back in the White House as Trump’s senior counsellor for trade and manufacturing, Navarro’s influence has been felt in tariffs, stock market volatility and grim economic warnings despite a pause in the most severe tariffs for 90 days.Navarro has a combative streak yet he chose to project indifference over Musk’s insults. “It’s no problem,” he told CNN. A White House spokesperson shrugged off the row: “Boys will be boys.” More

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      Trump news at a glance: Hegseth reportedly had Yemen Signal chat with wife, brother

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      Defence secretary Pete Hegseth is in the spotlight for a communications blunder in which he reportedly created his own Signal group chat that included his wife and brother, in which he shared confidential details of a US strike on Yemen this March.The chat on Signal, a commercially available app not authorized as a means to communicate sensitive or classified national defense information, allegedly included more than a dozen people.The revelations come weeks after national security advisor Mike Waltz created a separate Signal chat to discuss the Yemen strikes, which included top officials from the Trump administration, and inadvertently, the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic.President Trump downplayed the first incident, describing it as “glitch”.Here are the key stories at a glance:Pete Hegseth shared Yemen attack details in second Signal chat – reportBefore the US launched military strikes on Yemen in March, Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, sent detailed information about the planned attacks to a private Signal group chat that he created himself, which included his wife, his brother and about a dozen other people, the New York Times reported on Sunday.According to unnamed sources familiar with the chat, Hegseth sent information such as the flight schedules for the F/A-18 Hornets that would strike Houthi rebel targets in Yemen, that he also shared with another Signal group of top officials created by Mike Waltz, the national security adviser.Read the full storyUS citizen wrongfully arrested by border patrol in Arizona held for nearly 10 daysImmigration officials detained a US citizen for nearly 10 days in Arizona, according to court records and press reports.Jose Hermosillo, a 19-year-old New Mexico resident visiting Arizona, was detained by border patrol agents in Nogales, a city along the Mexico border about an hour south of Tucson. Hermosillo’s wrongful arrest and prolonged detention comes amid escalating attacks by the Trump administration on immigrants in the US.Read the full storySenator says trip to El Salvador was to support Kilmar Ábrego García’s due processSenator Chris Van Hollen, who travelled to El Salvador last week to meet Kilmar Ábrego García, the man at the center of a wrongful deportation dispute, said on Sunday that his trip was to support Ábrego García’s right to due process because if that was denied then everyone’s constitutional rights were threatened in the US.The White House has claimed Ábrego García was a member of the MS-13 gang though he has not been charged with any gang related crimes and the supreme court has ordered his return to the US be facilitated.Read the full storyAmy Klobuchar calls on supreme court to hold Trump officials in contemptMinnesota senator Amy Klobuchar warned on Sunday that the US is “getting closer and closer to a constitutional crisis”, but the courts, growing Republican disquiet at Trump administration policies, and public protest were holding it off.“I believe as long as these courts hold, and the constituents hold, and the congress starts standing up, our democracy will hold,” Klobuchar told CNN’s State of the Union, adding “but Donald Trump is trying to pull us down into the sewer of a crisis.”Read the full storyMassachusetts governor calls Trump’s attacks on Harvard ‘bad for science’Massachusetts governor Maura Healey said on Sunday that Donald Trump’s attacks on Harvard University and other schools are having detrimental ripple effects, with the shutdown of research labs and cuts to hospitals linked to colleges.During an interview on CBS’s Face the Nation, the Democratic governor said that the effects on Harvard are damaging “American competitiveness”, since a number of researchers are leaving the US for opportunities in other countries. After decades of investment in science and innovation, she said: “intellectual assets are being given away.”Read the full storyTrump draft order calls for drastic restructure of state departmentA draft Trump administration executive order reported to be circulating among US diplomats proposes a radical restructuring of the US state department, including drastic reductions to sub-Saharan operations, envoys and bureaus relating to climate, refugees, human rights, democracy and gender equality.The changes, if enacted, would be one of the biggest reorganizations of the department since its founding in 1789, according to Bloomberg, which had seen a copy of the 16-page draft.Read the full storyJD Vance granted lightning audience with Pope Francis in VaticanPope Francis and JD Vance, who have disagreed very publicly over the Trump administration’s attitude to immigration and its migrant deportation plans, met briefly in Rome on Sunday to exchange Easter greetings.The meeting came a day after the US vice-president, who converted to Roman Catholicism in 2019, sat down with senior Vatican officials and had “an exchange of opinions” over international conflicts and immigration.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      It was a nation of dreams, built for the screen. Then it shattered. Read this essay by Stephen Marche: The America I loved is gone.

      Tom Philipps, the Guardian’s Latin American correspondent, has written a compelling feature of the family of Venezuelan musician sent to El Salvador prison who are agonizing over his fate.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened 19 April 2025. More

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      US citizen wrongfully arrested by border patrol in Arizona held for nearly 10 days

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      Immigration officials detained a US citizen for nearly 10 days in Arizona, according to court records and press reports.As the NPR affiliate Arizona Public Media, first reported, 19-year-old Jose Hermosillo, a New Mexico resident visiting Arizona, was detained by border patrol agents in Nogales, a city along the Mexico border about an hour south of Tucson.According to a border patrol criminal complaint, on 8 April, a border patrol official found Hermosillo “without the proper immigration documents” and claimed that the young American had admitted entering the US illegally from Mexico. Two days later, the federal court document notes that Hermosillo continued to claim he was a US citizen. On 17 April, a federal judge dismissed his case.Hermosillo’s wrongful arrest and prolonged detention comes amid escalating attacks by the Trump administration on immigrants in the US. Since Donald Trump took office, the administration has emboldened immigration officers to arrest and deport undocumented people, including foreign students whose visas have been revoked, leading to a series of errors.“Under the Trump administration’s theory of the law, the government could have banished this U.S. citizen to a Salvadoran prison then refused to do anything to bring him back,” Mark Joseph Stern, a legal analyst for Slate, wrote on Bluesky. “This is why the Constitution guarantees due process to all. Could it be more obvious?”During his campaign for the presidency, the US president promised to carry out “mass deportations”. In the three months since he took office, several foreign tourists have been wrongfully detained, federal agents from other agencies have been deputized to engage in immigration enforcement and Trump has invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, declaring that Venezuelan gang members are a leading foreign invasion of the United States to give himself the power to expel immigrants to a notorious Salvadorian prison.According to AZPM’s report, Hermosillo was visiting the Tucson area from Albuquerque, got lost without identification and was arrested by border patrol officials near its headquarters in Nogales. Hermosillo’s girlfriend’s family made numerous calls looking for him before they discovered he was being held at the Florence Correctional Center, a privately run Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) facility. After his arrest, the court docket shows, he was temporarily detained in the custody of the US marshals.After the family tracked him done, they provided officials with his birth certificate and social security card.“He did say he was a US citizen, but they didn’t believe him,” Hermosillo’s girlfriend’s aunt told AZPM. “I think they would have kept him. I think they would have, if they would have not got that information yesterday in the court, and gave that to Ice and the border patrol. He probably would have been deported already to Mexico.”Ice, Customs and Border Protection, the Department of Homeland Security and Hermosillo’s attorney did not respond to requests for comment.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionFederal magistrate judge Maria S Aguilera dismissed the case on 17 April. Hermosillo was released later that evening.Since Trump stepped into office, there have been a rising number of US citizens detained by immigration officials around the country. But immigration officials’ detention of citizens is not new, and it has taken place across presidential administrations. In 2021, the Government Accountability Office found that from 2015 through 2020, Ice arrested 674 US citizens and deported 70 of them. And from 2007 through 2015, 818 US citizens were held in immigration detention, according to a 2016 analysis from NPR.In recent months, the Trump administration has revoked the visas of hundreds of foreign students, many for taking part in Gaza solidarity protests the administration call antisemitic . Among those swept up in that crackdown is Aditya Wahyu Harsono, an Indonesian student in Minnesota, who is married to a US citizen, arrested at his hospital workplace this month after his visa was secretly revoked. More