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      Culture wars: Trump’s takeover of arts is straight from the dictator playbook

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      In 1937, leaders of Germany’s Third Reich hosted two simultaneous art exhibitions in Munich. One, titled the Great German Art Exhibition, featured art viewed by the regime as appropriate and aspirational for the ideal Aryan society – orderly and triumphant, with mostly blond people in heroic poses amid pastoral German landscapes. The other showcased what Adolf Hitler and his followers deemed “degenerate art” (“Entartete Kunst”). The works, chaotically displayed and saddled with commentary disparaging “the sick brains of those who wielded the brush or pencil”, were abstract, profane, modernist and produced by the proclaimed enemies of the Reich – Jewish people, communists or those suspected of being either.The Degenerate Art exhibition, which later toured the country, opened a day after Hitler declared “merciless war” on cultural disintegration. The label applied to virtually all German modernist art, as well as anything deemed “an insult to German feeling”. The term and the dueling art exhibitions were part and parcel of Hitler’s propaganda efforts to consolidate power and bolster the regime via cultural production. The Nazis used culture as a crucial lever of control, to demean scapegoated groups, glorify the party and “make the genius of the race visible to that race”, argued the French scholar Eric Michaud in The Cult of Art in Nazi Germany. Political control and suppression of dissent were one thing; art, said Hitler’s propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, was “no mere peacetime amusement, but a sharp spiritual weapon for war”.Earlier this month, Donald Trump took the unprecedented step of naming himself as chair of the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington DC, one of the nation’s premier cultural centers, after purging the board of Biden appointees and installing a slate of unqualified donors and loyalists. “NO MORE DRAG SHOWS, OR OTHER ANTI-AMERICAN PROPAGANDA”, the US president wrote on Truth Social. (The center hosted a nominal amount of acts with drag elements.) Days later, Trump was formally voted in by the board – “unanimously”, he noted on Truth Social in a Putin-esque flourish. “There’s no more woke in this country,” he told reporters.The move drew outcry from performers, artists and more, but still went through. The Kennedy Center’s trustees are presidential appointees, so technically it is vulnerable to such flexes of control, as are other federally supported institutions such as the National Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian Institution and DC’s consortium of national museums. Some of Trump’s cultural decrees trend ridiculous, such as an executive order calling for a “national garden of American heroes”, or the continued presence of Kid Rock. Others are more insidious – after long threatening to defund the National Endowment for the Arts during his first term, Trump has imposed restrictions on its terms, barring federal grants for projects concerning Maga’s favorite targets – diversity and “gender ideology”.View image in fullscreenWhile the takeover of the Kennedy Center may seem less dire and court less furor than, say, his dismantling of the civil service, Trump’s efforts to exert control over art typify the strategy of a dictator. Comparisons of the Trump presidency to Nazi Germany may be overdone and easily dismissed – even with Republican efforts to ban books in schools deemed “inappropriate”, among many other parallels, Maga and the Third Reich are not the same – but the new administration’s cultural decrees are very much a part of the authoritarian playbook to suppress dissent, scapegoat select groups and seize power.Pick your oppressive regime throughout time and you will find efforts to control the arts. Some of the most renowned artefacts from ancient Rome, from Virgil’s Aeneid to Trajan’s Column, were commissioned by emperors to vivify their divine right to power, celebrate military conquests and cement preferred narratives. The Stalinist regime in the 1930s Soviet Union abolished all independent artistic institutions, required cultural production to exist in absolute allegiance to the party, and systemically executed all of the country’s Ukrainian folk poets. Mao Zedong’s cultural revolution identified “old culture” as one of the four threats to be eradicated as part of his reshaping of Chinese society, which killed more than a million people. After Augusto Pinochet took over Chile in 1973, the regime arrested, tortured and exiled muralists. In her 2012 book Brazilian Art Under Dictatorship, the art historian Claudia Calirman recalls how the museum director Niomar Moniz Sodré Bittencourt hid artworks and advised artists on how to leave the country after officials from the country’s military regime entered her museum and demanded the removal of “dangerous” images – a claim not far removed from the Trump administration’s fearmongering around “gender ideology” and “threats” to children.These tactics continue in the present, carried out in some cases by Trump’s expressed allies. The same Brazilian dictatorship that overtook and blocked art exhibitions between 1968 and 1975 is today championed by the Trump ally Jair Bolsonaro, who worked during his time as president to rewrite the regime’s reputation. On his first day in office in 2019, Bolsonaro dissolved Brazil’s ministry of culture. He also halved funding for the Rouanet Law, a measure that publicly supports artists, and appointed rightwing cultural figures with little relevant experience to prominent cultural positions. In Poland, the rightwing Law and Justice party has tried to rewrite history at the second world war museum in Gdańsk and dismissed its director, Paweł Machcewicz; in recent years, Italy’s rightwing minister of culture, Alberto Bonisoli, threatened to not renew the contracts of non-Italian museum directors. Much ado was made in the western press when Cuba jailed the performance artist Danilo Maldonado for criticizing the Castro regime in 2017, or when China’s ruling party placed the renowned artist Ai Weiwei under house arrest.View image in fullscreenBut perhaps no one models what Trump aspires to be, and hopes to do, more than Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, who since his election in 2010 has rewritten the constitution, changed electoral law to favor his Fidesz party, positioned allies as heads of most media outlets and overhauled the justice system. And as part of his consolidation of power into full dictatorship, he has taken control of the country’s cultural institutions, managing their output and enshrining censorship. Starting when Fidesz first gained municipal power in 2006, the party has purged the boards of local theaters and installed Fidesz loyalists. In 2010, Orbán took over public institutions via appointment of governing bodies that could grant or withhold funds according to the organization’s willingness to heed demands. In 2013, he dismissed the artistic director of the National Theatre in Budapest, Róbert Alföldi, on account of his resistance to political interference and his sexuality, viewed as offensive by the homophobic regime.By 2019, Orbán could feasibly declare an era “of spiritual order, a kind of prevailing mood, perhaps even taste … determined by cultural trends, collective beliefs and social customs. This is the task we are now faced with: we must embed the political system in a cultural era.” His government subsequently banned funding for gender studies at universities and passed a “culture law” tying funding of theaters to their ability to “actively protect the interests of the nation’s survival, wellbeing and growth”, a censorship measure that significantly chilled the country’s art scene.Such a measure is not dissimilar, in intent and execution, from Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center, nor his new mandates on the National Endowment for the Arts, which has already been subject to decades’ worth of US culture wars. Those wars are heating up – if history and very recent precedent are anything to go by, then Trump and his party’s efforts to chip away at US cultural autonomy, at individual and institutional creative expression, will be one of his most corrosive and anti-democratic legacies. More

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      Trump administration briefing: top immigration official removed and judge clears way for USAid firings

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      The Trump administration made several moves Friday regarding US immigration policy, including the removal of the top Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) official and restoring legal aid for unaccompanied immigrant children. Meanwhile, the Senate passed a budget resolution to fund Donald Trump’s mass deportation plan and US officials made more comments about Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president.Here are the biggest stories in US politics on Friday, 21 February.Trump removes Ice chief amid apparent frustrationThe Trump administration has reassigned its top official at US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) after the agency’s arrests and deportations were slower than expected, Reuters reported, citing a senior administration official and two other sources familiar with the matter.Read the full storyTrump fires Black joint chiefs chair whom Hegseth accused of ‘DEI woke shit’Donald Trump abruptly fired the air force general CQ Brown Jr as chair of the joint chiefs of staff on Friday, sidelining a history-making Black fighter pilot and respected officer as part of a campaign to purge the military of leaders who support diversity and equity in the ranks. Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, previously questioned whether Brown got the job because of his skin colour as he outlined a plan for ridding the US military of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.Read the full storyUS judge clears Trump to put more than 2,000 USAid workers on leaveA federal judge on Friday cleared the way for the Trump administration to put more than 2,000 US Agency for International Development (USAid) workers on leave, a setback for government employee unions that are suing over what they have called an effort to dismantle the foreign aid agency.Read the full storyKellogg hails Zelenskyy in stark contrast with TrumpThe US envoy to Ukraine, Gen Keith Kellogg, has praised Volodymyr Zelenskyy as “the embattled and courageous leader of a nation at war”, striking a dramatically different tone from Donald Trump, who has called Ukraine’s president a “dictator”.Read the full storyAP sues Trump officials over barred access The Associated Press sued three officials in Donald Trump’s administration over access to presidential events, citing freedom of speech in asking a federal judge to stop the 10-day-long blocking of its journalists.Read the full storyUS Senate passes budget to fund Trump’s deportationsThe US Senate has passed a budget resolution that paves the way for funding Donald Trump’s mass deportation plan after his “border tsar” said there were insufficient funds for the operation. Voting concluded in the early hours of Friday morning with a 52-48 vote, almost entirely on party lines, in favor of a spending structure that includes $175bn reserved for border security and a $150bn boost to the Pentagon budget.Read the full storyZelenskyy will sign minerals deal, Trump aide predictsMike Waltz, the White House national security adviser, said on Friday that the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, was expected to sign a minerals agreement with the United States imminently, as part of broader negotiations to end the war with Russia. Waltz told the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC): “Here’s the bottom line: President Zelenskyy is going to sign that deal.”Read the full storyMass firings could cause ‘monumental’ billDonald Trump’s administration could rack up a “monumental” bill and is breaking the law by firing government workers on spurious grounds, according to a top labor lawyer. Officials have cited “poor performance” when terminating thousands of federal workers. In many cases, it’s not true, according to employees embroiled in the blitz, many of whom are now seeking legal advice.Read the full storyFrench far-right leader cancels US speech over Bannon ‘Nazi’ saluteJordan Bardella, the French far-right leader, cancelled a speech at CPAC after Donald Trump’s former aide Steve Bannon flashed an apparent fascist-style salute there hours earlier. Bannon, who helped Trump win office in 2016, finished his speech on Thursday with an outstretched arm, fingers pointed up and palm down – a sign that echoed both the Nazi salute and a similar gesture made by the tech billionaire Elon Musk at the US president’s second inauguration in January.Read the full storyTrump axes support for any research that mentions ‘climate’The Trump administration is stripping away grants and support for scientific research in the US and overseas that contain the word “climate”. The US president, who has said the climate crisis is a “giant hoax”, has already stripped mentions of climate change and global heating from government websites and ordered a halt to programs that reference diversity, equity and inclusion.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      A judge said he would not immediately dismiss Eric Adams’s corruption case, but ordered the New York mayor’s trial delayed indefinitely after the justice department asked for the charges to be dismissed.

      Trump faced pushback from the Maine governor after threatening to withhold federal funds over trans athletes’ participation in female sporting events. Janet Mills calmly told the president: “We will see you in court” as she refused to be cowed during an exchange at a White House event.

      Two polls show Americans are becoming worried that Trump is overreaching, though he still remains more popular than he was in his first term.

      The United States might actually be serious about airstrikes on Mexican drug cartels, but experts don’t think they’d make much of a difference, the Los Angeles Times reports. More

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      Trump says he ‘had very good talks with Putin’ and again criticizes Ukraine – live

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      Donald Trump repeated his criticisms of Ukraine in remarks to a group of governors, while also speaking fondly of his interactions with Vladimir Putin.“I’ve had very good talks with Putin” and “not such good talks with Ukraine”, the president told a meeting of the National Governors Association, which featured Democratic and Republican leaders of states nationwide.He went on to accuse Kyiv of talking “tough” but having little in the way of bargaining chips.The remarks are the latest swings in the feud that began earlier this week between Trump and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Here’s more about that:The Associated Press has sued three Trump administration officials over access to presidential events, citing the first amendment.“The press and all people in the United States have the right to choose their own words and not be retaliated against by the government,” the AP said in its lawsuit, which names the White House chief of staff, Susan Wiles; deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich; and the press secretary, Karoline Leavitt.“This targeted attack on the AP’s editorial independence and ability to gather and report the news strikes at the very core of the first amendment … This court should remedy it immediately,” the AP said.A Washington DC judge has denied a preliminary injunction in a suit over the Trump administration’s efforts to wind down operations at USAid, Bloomberg’s Zoe Tillman reports.As a result, a temporary restraining order that paused placing thousands of workers on paid leave is no longer in effect.“The Court will accordingly deny plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction, ECF No 9, and will dissolve its previously issued temporary restraining order, ECF No 15,” US district judge Carl Nicholas wrote.The Guardian’s Joan E Greve went and checked out the Principles First summit, the anti-Trump conservative response to the Maga-loving Conservative Political Action Conference. Here’s what she found:While Donald Trump and his acolytes take a victory lap at the Conservative Political Action Conference this week, some of the president’s staunchest right-leaning critics will convene for their own event just 10 miles away.The Principles First summit, which will be held in Washington from Friday to Sunday, has become a venue for anti-Trump conservatives to voice their deep-seated concerns about the “Make America great again” faction of the Republican party, and the gathering has now grown in size and scope. As its organizers confront another four years of Trump’s leadership, they are stretching beyond party lines with speakers such as the billionaire Mark Cuban and Jared Polis, the Democratic governor of Colorado, to craft their vision for a new approach to US politics.That vision looks quite different than it did six years ago, when the conservative attorney Heath Mayo founded Principles First. At the time, Mayo, formerly a rank-and-file Republican who supported the presidential campaigns of Mitt Romney and Marco Rubio, hoped to present an anti-Trump alternative to fellow conservatives.“It started as disgruntled Republicans and conservatives, but that was back in 2019 when that objective seemed to be perhaps more realistic or people were holding out hope that the party would come to its senses,” Mayo said. “Over the years, it’s grown.”The White House is working to develop a network of military bases where immigrants will be held prior to deportation, the New York Times reports.The first hub is expected to be at Fort Bliss in Texas, near the border with Mexico, but further sites are being considered at bases across the US. Here’s more on the plan, from the Times:Fort Bliss would serve as a model as the administration aims to develop more detention facilities on military sites across the country – from Utah to the area near Niagara Falls – to hold potentially thousands more people and make up for a shortfall of space at Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities, the officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details of a plan that is still in its early stages and has not yet been finalized.Previous administrations have held some immigrants at military bases, most recently children who would then be released into the country to the care of relatives or friends. The bases served as an emergency backup when the federal government’s shelter system for migrant children reached capacity.But the Trump administration plan would expand that practice by establishing a nationwide network of military detention facilities for immigrants who are subject to deportation. The proposal would mark a major escalation in the militarization of immigration enforcement after Mr Trump made clear when he came into office that he wanted to rely even more on the Pentagon to curtail immigration.For Trump officials, the plan helps address a shortage of space for holding the vast number of people they hope to arrest and deport. But it also raises serious questions about the possibility of redirecting military resources and training schedules. Military officials say the impact would depend on the scale of arrests and how long detainees remained in custody. And advocates for immigrants point to a history of poor conditions for immigrants held in military facilities.Gil Kerlikowske, the former commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, said military facilities are not designed for a project like this.“It’s beyond odd,” Mr Kerlikowske said. “Securing the people is labor intensive and it could also be resource intensive.”Donald Trump has ordered the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) out of the job, after data showed deportations lagged during his first month in office, Reuters reports, citing an administration official and two other sources.The president’s decision to reassign Caleb Vitello, who took over as acting Ice director when Trump was sworn in, came after government data showed that 37,660 people had been deported in his first month in office, below the 57,000 monthly average during the final year of Joe Biden’s presidency. The homeland security department said that Biden’s numbers were “artificially high” because of the large number of people crossing the southern border.Reuters reports that Vitello was under pressure to increase the pace of deportations.As bad as Donald Trump’s feud with Volodymyr Zelenskyy may be, the Guardian’s Luke Harding reports that the president’s opinions do not appear to be shared by everyone in his administration:The US envoy to Ukraine, Gen Keith Kellogg, has praised Volodymyr Zelenskyy as “the embattled and courageous leader of a nation at war”, striking a dramatically different tone from Donald Trump, who has called Ukraine’s president a “dictator”.Kellogg left Kyiv on Friday after a three-day visit. Posting on social media, he said he had engaged in “extensive and positive discussions” with Zelenskyy and his “talented national security team”. “A long and intense day with the senior leadership of Ukraine,” he said.The general’s upbeat remarks are in glaring contrast to those of the US president and his entourage, who have heaped abuse on Zelenskyy during a tumultuous week. Trump claimed Ukraine was to blame for starting the war with Russia, and accused Zelenskyy of doing “a terrible job”.On Friday, Trump returned to the theme, saying he did not consider it essential for the Ukrainian president to be present at negotiations. “I don’t think he’s very important to be in meetings,” Trump told Fox News. “He’s been there for three years. He makes it very hard to make deals.”The Trump administration wants Ukraine to sign a deal that will allow the United States access to its supply of critical minerals, as a way of paying Washington back for its support against the Russian invasion.But Democratic senator Adam Schiff views the proposed deal a different way. Writing on X, Schiff said:
      Translation:
      That’s a nice country you’ve got there.
      Would be a shame if something happened to it.
      The justice department is investigating one of America’s largest health insurers for potentially bilking Medicare, the Guardian’s Jessica Glenza reports:The US Department of Justice is reportedly investigating the insurance giant UnitedHealthcare for its Medicare billing practices.The federal government is examining whether UnitedHealthcare is using patient diagnoses to illegally increase the lump sum monthly payments received through the Medicare Advantage program, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.Although it is best known for its insurance operations, UnitedHealthcare is one of the largest corporations in the world with a $457bn market capitalization. Its businesses touch health technology, pharmacy benefits and physician practices.The company is so large that one industry analyst estimated 5% of US gross domestic product flowed through its infrastructure each day. It is the largest employer of doctors in the US with more than 90,000 physicians in 2023, or nearly one in 10 American doctors.This Valentine’s Day, a new political power couple took their vows on the plush white couches of Fox & Friends in midtown Manhattan: Donald Trump’s “border czar”, Tom Homan, and the New York City mayor, Eric Adams.The pair appeared on the conservative TV show to discuss an agreement they had reached the day before. Their deal reversed longstanding New York City policy by letting federal immigration agents back on to Rikers Island, the city’s jail complex that largely holds people who have been charged with but have not yet been convicted of crimes. The surprise agreement came as the newly installed leaders of Trump’s Department of Justice were making an extraordinary push to dismiss criminal corruption charges that the agency had been pursuing against Adams.As Adams grinned beside him, Homan said that allowing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents to once again roam the city’s jail complex was just “step one”.“We’re working on some other things that we don’t really want to talk about,” Homan said, alluding to their joint efforts to circumvent New York’s “sanctuary city” law.Then Adams, a Democrat who had risen to power vowing to protect immigrants from the president’s agenda, publicly pledged his acquiescence to the White House’s hardline immigration enforcement agenda: “Let’s be clear: I’m not standing in the way. I’m collaborating.”You can read the full story here:After the US Department of Justice asked federal judge Dale Ho to dismiss Adams’ corruption charges, Ho responded with a decision that he would not immediately dismiss the case, but delay his trial indefinitely. Ho is also appointing an outside lawyer, Paul Clement from the law firm Clement & Murphy PLLC, to present arguments against the prosecutors’ bid to dismiss to help him make a decision.Adams stands accused of bribery, fraud and soliciting illegal campaign donations from Turkish foreign nationals.Things got heated between Donald Trump and Maine’s governor, Janet Mills, after the president threatened to withhold federal funds from the state if it continues allowing transgender athletes to compete in female sports. Trump recently signed an recent executive order which seeks to prevent trans girls and women from participating in female sports teams. “We will see you in court,” the Democratic governor said as she stood up and confronted Trump during a White House event.Here’s video of the exchange:Senate Republicans had a late one, staying up all night and into the morning to approve a budget framework that will fund Donald Trump’s mass deportation plans, despite howls from Democrats. It was a key step on the Republican-controlled Congress’s path to implementing Trump’s agenda, even as signs of discontent over the president’s aggressive moves against the federal government have emerged. A Republican congressman was condemned by his constituents in a deep-red district, another GOP lawmaker publicly objected to the rapid pace of Trump’s executive orders, and the Pentagon reportedly had to pause plans to fire civilian employees en masse over concerns the move could harm military readiness. Meanwhile, the national security adviser, Mike Waltz, said Trump would win the Nobel peace prize for all the wars he plans to end, even as he simultaneously threatened military action against Mexican drug cartels.Here’s what else has happened today:

      Trump continued his feud with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, accusing Ukraine of talking “tough” but not having much leverage, while saying he enjoyed his talk with Vladimir Putin.

      Two polls show Americans are becoming worried that Trump is overreaching, though he still remains more popular than he was in his first term.

      The United States might actually be serious about airstrikes on Mexican drug cartels, but experts don’t think they’d make much of a difference, the Los Angeles Times reports.
      The Trump administration is pressuring Ukraine to sign an agreement that will allow the United States access to the country’s critical minerals, and the Guardian’s Joseph Gedeon reports that national security adviser Mike Waltz today said he expected Volodymyr Zelenskyy to soon agree to its terms:The White House national security adviser, Mike Waltz, said on Friday that the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, was expected to sign a minerals agreement with the United States imminently, as part of broader negotiations to end the war with Russia.“Here’s the bottom line: President Zelenskyy is going to sign that deal, and you will see that in the very short term,” Waltz said during remarks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).The statement comes amid an increasingly public dispute between Zelenskyy and Trump, with Waltz telling Fox News this week that the Ukrainian leader needs to “tone it down” and sign the proposed agreement.The proposed partnership would give the United States access to Ukraine’s deposits of critical minerals including aluminum, gallium and tritium, Waltz said – materials that are essential for advanced technology manufacturing such as nuclear research and semiconductors, and have significant military applications. The so-called agreement is also being positioned as a way for American taxpayers to recoup some of their investment in Ukraine’s defense, with US aid to Ukraine having exceeded $175bn, according to Waltz.Donald Trump repeated his criticisms of Ukraine in remarks to a group of governors, while also speaking fondly of his interactions with Vladimir Putin.“I’ve had very good talks with Putin” and “not such good talks with Ukraine”, the president told a meeting of the National Governors Association, which featured Democratic and Republican leaders of states nationwide.He went on to accuse Kyiv of talking “tough” but having little in the way of bargaining chips.The remarks are the latest swings in the feud that began earlier this week between Trump and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Here’s more about that:Here’s more from the Guardian’s Robert Tait on the budget resolution Senate Republicans passed early this morning, which will fund mass deportations and other top priorities of the president:The US Senate has passed a budget resolution that paves the way for funding Donald Trump’s mass deportation plan after his “border czar” said there weren’t enough funds for the operation.A 10-hour marathon session – dubbed a “vote-a-rama” – concluded in the early hours of Friday morning with a 52-48 vote almost entirely on party lines in favor of a spending structure that would see $175bn reserved for border security, including Trump’s prized border wall with Mexico, and a $150bn boost to the Pentagon budget.Rand Paul, a senator from Kentucky, was the sole Republican to vote against the package at the end of a session that saw Democrats place numerous roadblocks in the form of amendments.Friday’s vote came ahead of an attempt by the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives to fashion legislation that would roll Trump’s agenda – including a mass tax cut – into what the president has called “one big beautiful bill”.The Los Angeles Times reports that the United States is considering military actions such as airstrikes on drug cartel operations in Mexico – and that experts don’t think such a strategy would change much.Were Washington to go that route – as threatened by national security adviser Mike Waltz earlier today – it would mark a major shift in US policy towards Mexico, and the criminal organizations that hold great sway in the country. The Times reports that military action is being seriously considered:
      Todd Zimmerman, the Drug Enforcement Administration’s special agent in Mexico City, said in an interview that the administration’s decision this week to label drug cartels as terrorist organizations was a pointed message to their leadership that US military action is on the table.
      ‘They’re worried because they know the might and the strength of the US military,’ he said. ‘They know that at any time, they could be anywhere – if it comes to that, if it comes to that – they could be in a car, they could be in a house, and they could be vaporized. They’ve seen it in the Afghan and Iraq wars. So they know the potential that’s out there.’
      …
      Other experts pointed out that past efforts to deploy military might against drug traffickers have failed to slow the flow of drugs into the United States. When the Mexican government declared war on cartels in 2006 and sent soldiers into the streets to fight them, the clearest result was a massive increase in homicides.
      ‘It doesn’t work,’ said Elisabeth Malkin, deputy program director for Latin America at the International Crisis Group. ‘A whole constellation of actions are needed: to pursue proper investigations, to create cases that hold up in court, to dismantle whole networks rather than just going after the big drug kingpin, who is paraded before the cameras.’
      Mike Vigil, a former head of international operations at the DEA, described Trump’s efforts as ‘all for show.’
      ‘The military aircraft, the troops at the border, the talk of drones: It’s all a flash in the pan,’ he said. ‘It’s not going to have an impact.’
      Using multimillion-dollar munitions to strike primitive drug laboratories would be a laughable waste of resources, Vigil said.
      ‘You’re not talking about sophisticated laboratories. We’re talking about some tubs and pots and pans, kitchenware,’ he said. ‘And the labs are not fixed, they’re mobile. They move them around, they’re not operational 24/7. And these labs are easily replaced. So you’re not accomplishing anything.’
      The annual Conservative Political Action Conference is the biggest gathering of its type in the United States, attracting Donald Trump, JD Vance and fellow travelers from countries across the world.But after Trump ally Steve Bannon threw up what looks like a Nazi salute (something powerful people in the president’s orbit seem to like doing), the leader of a far-right party in France canceled his appearance. We have more on that, and all other news happening in Europe, at our live blog covering the continent:National security adviser Mike Waltz also upped the rhetoric against Mexican cartels, after the Trump administration earlier this week named six of them as foreign terrorist organizations.“We are going to unleash holy hell on the cartels. Enough is enough. We are securing our border, and the cartels are on notice,” Waltz said.It’s unclear what practical effect designating cartels as terrorist groups will have on US policy, but experts worry it could be a first step towards the United States taking military action against the criminal organizations: More

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      Trump is reportedly mulling over disbanding US Postal Service leadership

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      Donald Trump is reportedly considering disbanding the leadership of the US Postal Service (USPS) and folding it into his administration in a move that would end the 250-year-old agency’s independence and potentially threaten the mail delivery system’s impartiality.The Washington Post reported that an executive order was being prepared to fire the service’s governing board and place it under the authority of the new commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick.The White House issued an immediate denial amid fears of the effects of such a move on the mail delivery system and millions of dollars of e-commerce transactions handled by USPS.“This is not true. No such EO [executive order] is in the works, and secretary Lutnick is not pushing for such an EO,” CNN quoted an administration official as saying.However, there was no comment on whether the postal service – which polls have shown is the US’s most popular agency after the National Park Service among Democrats and Republicans alike – would be privatised as part of the administration’s drive to slash public spending and reduce the federal workforce.Trump floated the idea of selling off the service, which he has often criticised, while he was still president-elect.“It’s an idea that a lot of people have liked for a long time,” he told a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate last December. “We’re looking at it.”He had a fraught relationship with the agency during his first presidency, labeling it “a joke” and Amazon’s “delivery boy”, and threatened to withhold emergency funding from it during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic unless it raised the price of package delivery fourfold.The then treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, only authorised a loan for the service in exchange for access to its contracts with top customers.Before the 2020 election – when coronavirus rules triggered an expansion of postal voting – Trump claimed the service was unable to facilitate mail-in voting because it could not access the emergency funding his administration was then blocking. The postal service delivered nearly 98% of ballots to election officials within three days of them being mailed.The postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, who was appointed towards the end of Trump’s first presidency, this week announced plans to resign, less than halfway through his designated 10-year term. Trump’s transition team vetted candidates to replace him before he returned to the White House.The USPS has about 630,000 workers and reported a net loss of $9.5bn in the 2024 fiscal year.It has post offices in every zip code in the US and delivers millions of letters and packages every week, including medications and e-commerce deliveries.Its functioning is overseen by the postal regulatory committee to ensure that there is no discrimination in its delivery practices and that all areas and neighborhoods are served adequately.The Washington Post reported that the service’s governors were preparing to fight any executive order disbanding it. They staged an emergency meeting on Thursday and retained outside legal counsel.Postal experts suggested placing the commerce department in charge of it would violate federal law.“This is a somewhat regal approach that says the king knows better than his subjects and he will do his best for them,” James O’Rourke, of the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza college of business, told the outlet. “But it also removes any sense that there’s oversight, impartiality and fairness and that some states wouldn’t be treated better than other states or cities better than other cities.”The American Postal Workers Union – which represents many of the service’s workers – called any move to disband the governors or privatize the service “outrageous”.“Any attack on the postal service would be part of the billionaire oligarch coup, directed not just at the postal workers our union represents, but the millions of Americans who rely on the critical public service our members provide every single day,” the union said in a statement. More

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      French far-right leader cancels CPAC speech over Steve Bannon’s ‘Nazi’ salute

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      The French far-right leader Jordan Bardella on Friday morning cancelled a scheduled speech at the US Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, after Donald Trump’s former aide Steve Bannon flashed a fascist-style salute there hours before.Bannon, who helped Trump win office in 2016 and is now a popular rightwing podcast show host, finished his CPAC speech on Thursday with an outstretched arm, fingers pointed and palm down – a sign that echoed the Nazi salute and a controversial gesture made by the tech billionaire Elon Musk at the US president’s second inauguration in January.Bardella, of the far-right National Rally party in France, pulled out of CPAC citing Bannon’s allusion to “Nazi ideology”.The salute during Bannon’s speech brought cheers from the audience at the US gathering.Bardella, who was in Washington ahead of his appearance and had said he intended to talk about relations between the US and France, issued a statement saying: “Yesterday, while I was not present in the room, one of the speakers, out of provocation, allowed himself a gesture alluding to Nazi ideology. I therefore took the immediate decision to cancel my speech that had been scheduled this afternoon.”The National Rally party was bested in France’s snap election last summer by a leftwing alliance.Bannon on Thursday night fired up the CPAC crowd, where he spoke directly after Musk, the man who has eclipsed him in Trump’s circle and with whom Bannon is not on good terms.“The only way that they win is if we retreat, and we are not going to retreat, we’re not going to surrender, we are not going to quit – we’re going to fight, fight, fight,” Bannon said of opponents, echoing Trump’s exhortation to supporters following the assassination attempt on him.Bannon then flung out his right arm at an angle with his palm pointing down. The Nazi salute is perhaps more familiar, especially from historical footage of Adolf Hitler, with the arm pointing straight forward – but the fascist overtone of Bannon and Musk’s signals has been unmistakable.The Anti-Defamation League, which campaigns against antisemitism, defines the Nazi salute as “raising an outstretched right arm with the palm down”.“Steve Bannon’s long and disturbing history of stoking antisemitism and hate, threatening violence, and empowering extremists is well known and well documented by ADL and others,” the Anti-Defamation League wrote on X in response, adding: “We are not surprised, but are concerned about the normalization of this behavior.”Bannon, speaking to a French journalist from Le Point news magazine on Friday, said the gesture was not a Nazi salute but was “a wave like I did all the time”.“I do it at the end of all of my speeches to thank the crowd,” Bannon said.However, from video, when he shoots his arm in the brief, straight-arm gesture, then nods sharply with a smile, to audience cheers, and says “amen”, it looks distinctly different from the very end of his address, when Bannon walked about the stage saluting the audience, throwing first his right arm out, then his left arm out, in a looser gesture that looked much more like conventional post-speech acknowledgment of a crowd.Online, some far-right users suggested Bannon had made the gesture purposely to “trigger” liberals and the media. Others distanced themselves.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionNick Fuentes, a far-right influencer and Trump ally who uses his platform to share his antisemitic views, said in a livestream that Bannon’s salute was “getting a little uncomfortable even for me”.Bannon’s gesture, like Musk’s, has been characterized by some as a “Roman salute” – though some historians argue that is a distinction without a difference. Some rightwing supporters have argued, without evidence, that the Roman salute originated in ancient Rome. Historians have found, instead, that it was adopted by the Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini in the 1920s, and then Hitler’s Nazi party in Germany.However the ADL concluded that in that group’s view Musk had “made an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute”.The Bannon speech showcased CPAC’s evolution from a traditional conservative conference to an all-out Trump-centric rally. Bannon also spoke about the forthcoming election in 2028, prompting cheers of “We want Trump,” and saying himself: “We want Trump in 28.”The statement echoed those of Trump himself, who on Wednesday asked a crowd if he should run again, was met with calls of “four more years”, and called himself a “KING” in a post on social media. US presidents are limited to two terms.Meanwhile, Musk on Thursday brandished a chainsaw at CPAC, gloating over the slashing of federal jobs he is overseeing across multiple departments, in the face of legal challenges and protests. He called it “the chainsaw for bureaucracy”.It was handed to him on stage by Argentina’s rightwing president, Javier Milei. More

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      Judge rejects DoJ call to immediately dismiss Eric Adams corruption case

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      A New York judge on Friday said he would not immediately dismiss Eric Adams’s corruption case, but ordered the Democratic New York City mayor’s trial delayed indefinitely after the justice department asked for the charges to be dismissed.In a written ruling, the US district judge Dale Ho in Manhattan said he would appoint an outside lawyer, Paul Clement of the law firm Clement & Murphy PLLC, to present arguments against the federal prosecutors’ bid to dismiss, in order to help the judge make his decision.Justice department officials in Washington asked Ho to dismiss the charges against Adams on 14 February. A hearing was held in New York earlier this week.That came about after several prosecutors resigned rather than follow orders from the acting deputy attorney general, Emil Bove, an appointee of Donald Trump and the Republican president’s former personal criminal defense lawyer, to seek dismissal of the case brought last year by prosecutors during the Biden administration.The current justice department argued that dismissal was needed so Adams could focus on helping Trump crack down on illegal immigration. The controversy, especially because the city has a strong sanctuary law designed to stop local enforcement from assisting federal immigration enforcement, has sparked a political crisis in the most populous US city. Senior Democrats have said that dismissing the charges makes Adams beholden to Trump’s administration.Adams, 64, was charged last September with taking bribes and campaign donations from Turkish nationals seeking to influence him. Adams, running for re-election this year, has pleaded not guilty.Many have called on Adams to resign.Four of the mayor’s deputies plan to resign amid loss of confidence in the mayor. The governor of New York state, Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, said on Thursday she would not use her power to remove Adams, but proposed new oversight of the mayor’s office. More

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      The Guardian view on Germany’s election: a chance to reset for a new era | Editorial

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      When Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, chose in November to force this weekend’s snap election, it felt like awkward timing. In the United States, Donald Trump had just won a decisive victory and was promising to move fast and break things. With a political storm brewing, was this the right time for the EU’s most important member state to embark on a period of prolonged introspection?Three tumultuous months later, with German democracy itself in the crosshairs of a hostile Trump administration, Sunday’s poll feels more like a valuable opportunity for an emergency reset. Any federal election carries huge significance beyond Germany’s borders. This poll is distinguished by being the first of a new era – one in which the transatlantic alliance that underpinned Europe’s postwar security can no longer be relied upon. Its outcome will be fundamental to shaping the EU’s response to that new reality, as existential decisions are made over defence spending and protecting Ukraine.With the centre-right coalition of the Christian Democratic Union and the Christian Social Union comfortably ahead in the polls, the strong likelihood is that Mr Scholz, a Social Democrat, will be replaced as chancellor by Friedrich Merz. Mr Merz has emphasised the need to stand up to bullying from Mr Trump over Ukraine and potential trade tariffs. Increasingly hawkish on Russia and the need to protect the EU’s eastern flank, he would be likely to take a more expansive approach on the European stage than Mr Scholz, whose inward focus exasperated the French president, Emmanuel Macron.Mr Scholz had his reasons for that. However alarming the international outlook, for many voters Germany’s urgent priorities remain narrowly domestic. A spate of fatal attacks involving migrant suspects has been ruthlessly exploited by the far‑right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party, driving immigration to the top of the political agenda.All mainstream parties remain committed to the traditional firewall excluding the AfD from power (though Mr Merz relied on its votes to pass a recent opposition motion on stricter migration rules). But polls suggest it will achieve a comfortable second place on Sunday – a deeply disturbing position of strength for an ethno-nationalist party officially classified as suspected extremist. The party’s growing popularity among under-35 voters, and particularly among young men, is ominous.The rise of the far right has been accelerated by prolonged economic stagnation. Post-pandemic, Germany’s business model has been crushed by an end to the era of cheap Russian energy, higher interest rates and falling demand for its exports. Since Covid, almost a quarter of a million manufacturing jobs have been lost, in a country that prided itself on being Europe’s industrial powerhouse. A historic reluctance to borrow to invest – constitutionally enshrined in the 2008 debt brake – has become a liability, stymieing Mr Scholz’s attempts to respond.A suddenly isolated Europe needs a confident and prospering Germany at its heart. In a fragmented political landscape, it will almost certainly fall to another broad coalition government, led by Mr Merz, to try to deliver this. The AfD will, meanwhile, position itself as a Trumpian alternative-in-waiting, talked up by the likes of Elon Musk and the US vice‑president, JD Vance. Rarely has it been so important that the politics of moderation and consensus should succeed. In the post‑reunification era, the stakes both inside and outside Germany have never felt higher. More

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      Anti-Trump conservative summit charts alternative to CPAC Maga-fest

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      While Donald Trump and his acolytes take a victory lap at the Conservative Political Action Conference this week, some of the president’s staunchest right-leaning critics will convene for their own event just 10 miles away.The Principles First summit, which will be held in Washington from Friday to Sunday, has become a venue for anti-Trump conservatives to voice their deep-seated concerns about the “Make America great again” faction of the Republican party, and the gathering has now grown in size and scope. As its organizers confront another four years of Trump’s leadership, they are stretching beyond party lines with speakers such as the billionaire Mark Cuban and Jared Polis, the Democratic governor of Colorado, to craft their vision for a new approach to US politics.That vision looks quite different than it did six years ago, when the conservative attorney Heath Mayo founded Principles First. At the time, Mayo, formerly a rank-and-file Republican who supported the presidential campaigns of Mitt Romney and Marco Rubio, hoped to present an anti-Trump alternative to fellow conservatives.“It started as disgruntled Republicans and conservatives, but that was back in 2019 when that objective seemed to be perhaps more realistic or people were holding out hope that the party would come to its senses,” Mayo said. “Over the years, it’s grown.”The group’s first summit attracted just a couple of hundred attenders in 2020, but the guest count at this year’s sold-out event has increased to about 1,100.“We’ve been surprised actually with the number of people that have signed up to come,” Mayo said. “I think it’s this hunger for new spaces in our politics – new ideas, new faces.”Those new faces include Cuban, who plans to address the summit on Saturday as his name has been floated as a potential presidential candidate in 2028. A vocal supporter of Kamala Harris’s campaign for the White House last year, Cuban might seem like an unorthodox choice for a presidential candidate, as he has never served in public office, but the same was said of Trump 10 years ago.“Clearly we live in a moment of disruption. Things are changing really fast … Democrats may have learned that lesson the hard way in November,” Mayo said. “That’s what I hope the weekend will be – a time for people to set aside the party labels and really ask where we’re going as a country.”The summit’s list of speakers reflects that mission, ranging from John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, to Polis, the Colorado governor who has occasionally clashed with fellow Democrats over how to navigate the new Trump era. Other speakers include Chris Christie, the former Republican governor of New Jersey who has become a fierce critic of Trump, and four of the police officers who responded to the Capitol on 6 January 2021, as a group of the president’s supporters attempted to disrupt the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s electoral victory.View image in fullscreen“I feel like character and integrity are two non-negotiable, key components of Principles First,” said Rich Logis, founder of a group called Leaving Maga and a speaker at the summit. “If you look at the attendees, it’s a large, diverse swath of authors, thinkers and former elected officials. It doesn’t skew rightwing. It doesn’t skew leftwing. But what they all share in common is that they’re devoted to truth, democracy, liberal democracy and the rule of law.”Kyle Sweetser, another speaker at the summit and a former Trump supporter who voted for Harris in November, hopes that the event can offer an example of productive political discourse to fellow voters.“I think it’s more crucial than ever to offer some sort of platform, at least to reaffirm our commitment to core democratic values and principles,” Sweetser said. “And I’m really looking forward to some good discussion and hopefully some exchange of ideas that will strengthen our democracy.”Sweetser knows firsthand how difficult it can be to reach Trump supporters who have embraced the Maga movement. He voted for Trump twice before starting to question that loyalty, prompting him to diversify his media diet and seek out more information about the president’s record. He considers himself proof that Trump supporters can change their ways, a message he wants to bring to the Principles First summit.“I want some of the Democrats to understand that there’s a lot of Republicans out there that are good people, and if Democrats work for those people, then they will be able to pull some of those people over to their side,” Swisher said. “But unfortunately, it’s going to be a heavy lift. It’s going to take a lot of work, and it’s going to take patience.”Sweetser and Logis both predicted that Trump’s eventual failure to follow through on key campaign promises, like addressing the high inflation seen in recent years, would chip away at the president’s base and perhaps spur some of his supporters to reconsider their political identity.Some early examples of this trend may already be emerging. In Sweetser’s home state of Alabama, about 250 customers of a public utility company based in Huntsville just learned they would see a $100 surcharge on their energy bills after one of Trump’s executive orders paused a program aimed at lowering heating costs for low-income households.“I am wagering a bet that many in the Maga community right now are going to realize that the president is not going to fix anything for them,” Logis said. “When the scales start to fall a bit from the eyes, I want them to know that there’s an exit ramp.”That exit ramp eventually brought Logis to the Democratic national convention, where he was featured in a video explaining his transformation from a diehard Trump supporter to a Harris voter. Harris may not have been successful in November, but Mayo still sees a potential path to victory for a pro-democracy candidate who can unify the ideologically diverse group represented at Principles First.“There’s still a broad coalition out there that can be assembled, and it has got to be constructive. It’s got to have ideas and solutions for the challenges that Americans face, like the affordability crisis,” Mayo said. “At a time when it feels hopeless, it feels like there is a reason to be hopeful when you see that many people coming together to talk about these things.” More